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Case: Your Dad Looks Like Osama. Cultural awareness is important because we live in such a diverse country. As a teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to promote as much cultural awareness as possible in my 5th graders. As part my efforts, I invite people from diverse backgrounds to my classroom as guest speakers. I start with parents of my current students from various cultural backgrounds. Two weeks ago, I sent an invitation to the parents of my Arab-American student Mahmoud. Mahmoud's parents moved from Saudi Arabia to the US before he was born. His father works as an engineer in a large company and his mother is a nurse. I received an answer to my invitation the next day. Mahmoud's father agreed to come and talk to my class about his cultural and religious background. His guest talk was very informative and interesting. My students seemed to enjoy the session also. However, the next day I started hearing some of my students tease Mahmoud about his father's beard. They called Mahmoud's father "Osama." They asked him if his father was a "terrorist." I was shocked that despite my efforts to raise cultural awareness, my students gave into stereotypes so easily. Where did I go wrong? How should I respond to this situation? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) You definitely didn't do anything wrong in this situation. This is unfortunately a big problem that many people of that ethnicity face while living here in the United States. I would start by addressing the man that came and about all that he has done for our country. I would also have a lesson on other influential people from that ethnicity and their impact on our learning. I would then lead a discussion on why we can't judge a book by it's cover. I wonder if I wouldn't necessarily discuss the man that came but another person we learned about in the lesson and how some people think this man looks like Osama. I would compare people's pictures who have had positive impacts on the world to those who haven't and say that even though we may have the same skin color as those who have done horrible things, we cannot assume that all people are bad. People can't assume that they as students are bad because of their skin color either. |
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