This week's readings really resonated with me and the journey that I have been on the last two or so years. As someone who has always valued kindness, Sonia Nieto's piece captures some of the lessons I've learned as a teacher, and more specifically a white teacher in an urban school.
The piece was plain and simple-- being nice is not enough to not conform to racist practices or tendencies. The other readings discuss the significance of relationships in teaching, moving away from strictly technical pedagogy and toward prioritizing making meaningful relationships with our students. A line that really stuck out to me was that we tell our students what to do and what to learn, but we do not bother to ask who they are. So teachers can be "nice" in the most basic way (perhaps a better word is polite or well-mannered). But if we deny parts of our students' lives, we are not making those meaningful relationships and thus not allowing students to truly flourish.
Like I mentioned earlier, I value kindness and have always wanted to be known as a nice person. But I can be nice to all my students and, as Nieto explains, convey a disdain, disrespect, or disapporibal of a student's identity by suggesting that aspects of their culture or home life or identity has no place in school. Or that my values and my culture are what should be learned in school, not theirs. That's why it is so important to at the very least attempt to make your curriculum more culturally responsive.
Nieto goes on to say that "nice" teachers will also lower expectations for students of color because of the disadvantages they may have that their white peers do not. This is something that was really drilled into my head by many different people-- lowering the bar does nothing but further harm your students and contribute to the institutional racism ingrained in our school system. Making "accommodations" only sends the message that their teacher is just another person who does not believe they are capable of learning.
My biggest take away from this week was to reinforce what it means to make meaningful connections and build real relationships with students. It is easy to be nice. It is not easy to get out of one's comfort zone to make real impact.
The piece was plain and simple-- being nice is not enough to not conform to racist practices or tendencies. The other readings discuss the significance of relationships in teaching, moving away from strictly technical pedagogy and toward prioritizing making meaningful relationships with our students. A line that really stuck out to me was that we tell our students what to do and what to learn, but we do not bother to ask who they are. So teachers can be "nice" in the most basic way (perhaps a better word is polite or well-mannered). But if we deny parts of our students' lives, we are not making those meaningful relationships and thus not allowing students to truly flourish.
Like I mentioned earlier, I value kindness and have always wanted to be known as a nice person. But I can be nice to all my students and, as Nieto explains, convey a disdain, disrespect, or disapporibal of a student's identity by suggesting that aspects of their culture or home life or identity has no place in school. Or that my values and my culture are what should be learned in school, not theirs. That's why it is so important to at the very least attempt to make your curriculum more culturally responsive.
Nieto goes on to say that "nice" teachers will also lower expectations for students of color because of the disadvantages they may have that their white peers do not. This is something that was really drilled into my head by many different people-- lowering the bar does nothing but further harm your students and contribute to the institutional racism ingrained in our school system. Making "accommodations" only sends the message that their teacher is just another person who does not believe they are capable of learning.
My biggest take away from this week was to reinforce what it means to make meaningful connections and build real relationships with students. It is easy to be nice. It is not easy to get out of one's comfort zone to make real impact.
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