Start Seeing Diversity Blog: “We Don’t Say Those Words in Class!”

In Week 6 Blog I have the pleasure of sharing my good friend Jeanine Garcia’s experience with ” We Don’t Say Those Words in Class!”. 

A time when you witnessed an adult (or yourself) reprimand or silence a child after he or she pointed out someone they saw as different (e.g., “That lady talks funny,” ” That man only has one leg!” “Why is that man so pretty!”). Include what the child said and what the adult did or said in response.
I am currently a STEM teacher for an elementary school. I teach grades pre-k-5. In a few of my classes, we have students from the life skills class join us during rotation. During one class, the life skills students were very agitated. All the students turned to see what the commotion was and gestured to each other to turn and look towards the back of the class, to which the aide got after them for looking and staring. I called the attention of the students back to the front and asked for the teacher’s aide to return to her class with the agitated students. Once the life skills students had left the room, I addressed the situation with the remaining students.
 What messages might have been communicated to this child/these child by the educator or adult in response
 The teacher’s aide might have communicated to the remaining students that their interest and curiosity is bad. That their questions to what had just happened were invalid and that they were not respected enough to understand what had just taken place, and how it affects them too.
 An example of how an anti-bias educator might have responded to support the child’s (or classroom’s) understanding
 An anti-bias teacher would understand that both parties involved are affected by the situation. The regular ed students turned because they were curious about what was going on. There was no name calling or commenting, they were simply in the middle of a lesson when commotion interrupted their learning and they turned to make sense of what was going on. I would like to think that an anti-bias educator would take that as an opportunity to educate both types of students. Because of the teacher’s aide’s agitated state, I asked her to remove the students to a more controlled and familiar environment (their regular classroom). I then asked the students how they felt about what had just occurred. We talked about the similarities and differences between themselves and the other students. And we discussed how they will try to return to our class the following week for rotation and what can we do help them function when we come together. The students decided to “adopt a buddy” so that all the life skills students would not be altogether feeding off the energy of each other in case one of them had another bad day. They also decided that the table leader will help the “buddy” complete assignments so that they have someone to talk to, feel comfortable with and so that they won’t get frustrated with not being able to keep up. So far, this is currently working, and we have not had another outburst.