What lengths am I willing to go to educate all children?

 I strongly believe that every single child deserves a high quality and equal education as they are moving through the public education system. In our schools today we see unfit teachers, poor financial support from school boards, and injustice towards our non-white students because teachers choose to ignore their backgrounds instead of encouraging them to learn about their cultures. It is my goal as a future educator that my students never worry about the inequality certain students face while learning, because my own classroom will be and inclusive learning environment that accepts and motivates children to embrace their cultures because it makes them who they are. 

In order to educate all children we must first have a caring heart that allows us, teachers, to realize that our school curriculums have not taken our students with different backgrounds, possibly their race, socioeconomic status, or cognitive abilities into account. By having compassion for these students and understanding the struggles they might have faced, you are already on your way to being a progressive educator that includes everyone. I personally will focus on what benefits my students and their educational journey when I am teaching, and elaborate off of the standard curriculum by incorporating events and lessons that also relate to the children, and I will do so by taking the time to learn about their lives in and out of school. 

The article “The Culturally Responsive Teacher” by Villegas & Lucas (2007), highlights six main concepts of how to accomplish culturally responsive teaching, which I would like to base my own teaching style off of. One key idea that stuck out to me was Holding Affirming Views About Diversity, where the color of ones skin does not determine who they are or what the are capable of, but it allows us to open up conversations about their background, because I believe that race is ultimately just a part of their culture. I am willing to put my own control and power aside to teach my students, as I have already been blessed enough to receive a high quality education, and now it is their turn to experience the same as they are entering a diverse world. It is all about understanding your students and advocating for them that leads to an equal education for all, and there is no length that I wouldn't go to for each of my students to truly feel as if they are valued and receiving the education that they deserve. 

How Does Gender Affect the Teaching Profession?

 We see stereotypical gender norms play out everyday in society, but today we are specifically diving into the role gender, and diversity in general, affects the teaching profession. 

Throughout my years of public education, I have always had a majority of White, female teachers educating me. I feel as if this affects future generations of educators because it is what we are used to seeing in the classroom, and it leaves males to believe that teaching is strictly for women. This constructs a bias that only women can teach because we have been portrayed as nurturing, and the caregivers for children since the beginning of time, which are both very important traits to have in the classroom, but in no way do these projections suggest that men are not capable of this occupation as well. These early on-set opinions that men work the hard-labor jobs while the women are the "housekeepers" create a stigma in young developing minds, making them believe that they also have to follow in the same footsteps.

The inequality we have seen throughout history with men and women in the workforce has also drastically affected teaching and who we view as educators. In the PBS document "Only A Teacher," it takes us through the becoming of female educators in the classroom, where we see women only began teaching because the "promising" young men were being hired by more prestigious professions, and the Common School movement had begun for the fight against the public to integrate women in the education field. Even after being accepted by the public for female teachers, we still saw inequality in pay, because women were not "fit" or "educated" enough to teach others and their intellectual capabilities were doubted by many. Although the fight for equal pay between male and female educators was eventually resolved, I believe that the long running view that women are lesser than men heavily affects why we see such a difference in gender within the education system today.