Not in New York

    New York City is so diverse in regards to its people. It is truly a melting pot of cultures but why this diversity doesn’t reflects in its classrooms’ curriculum. Oh yes, once a year in February you will find teachers in NYC reading Dr. Martin Luther’s dream speech and mentioning Chinese New Year, and in March they introducing some Spanish American achievements. Some schools also have international night. Is this considered multicultural education? “Get outta here! “

   Our classrooms, especially in New York, must reflect the students’ culture in all subjects in the curriculum every day. Teachers need to find examples or ways to link topics to their student’s cultures. This will make the content being taught more real to the student because they will be able to make connections. The classroom will become a bridge between the school, community and the world.

   Also, multicultural education will influence students to appreciate and accept other people’s cultures, while embracing the wonderfulness of their own along with the importance of learning about the similarities and difference without making any culture seem superior or inferior. It teaches students tolerance, understandings and appreciation of different cultures and get rid of stereotype. Especially in a place like NYC, we must all learn to get along.

   There are so many opportunities to promote culture awareness in NYC. New York City’s teachers need to take these opportunities to integrate or infuse the many different cultures of the class into their everyday curriculum to promote awareness at the highest level.  Our students because of our city diversity should be globe knowledgeable.  Let’s go beyond, NYC schools should be number one in multicultural education.  So come on here, give me a hotdog and some multicultural education.

Carolyn Jobes-Padellan

Touro College Student

SCHOOLS ARE BUILT ON FEAR

SCHOOLS ARE BUILT ON FEAR

Fear is everywhere. It’s in our culture, society, institutions, and workplace.  It is especially in our classrooms.  It is found in our teachers, students, school administration, colleagues, and parents. The school walls are painted with fear. It disconnects and paralyzes our school community from teaching, learning and growing but we can go beyond it.  

Our school system creates fear through a cycle of disconnections between all members of our school community and in our conscience. Teachers and students are separated by a grading system which allows the teacher to be completely in power. Power always creates fear. Teachers fear not being a good enough teacher, being evaluated based on standardize test scores, and they fear their students’ behaviors and disabilities. Colleagues fear collaboration in the event that their ideas would be stolen and they won’t gain recognition for them. Administrations fear law suits and that their school might not receive a good annual report card and as result close down. Parents fear that their children are not getting a good education and are single out. There is no trust where fear exists. This creates a disconnected environment, a place where fear hinders learning, growth, a sense of community, and self-awareness.

Students have other fears besides failing. They fear having their ignorance exposed, prejudice challenged and looking foolish in front of their peers. Students can hide behind their books, desk, behavior, disabilities, and silence out of fear. Teachers also bring other fears into the classroom such as their own personal fears and reflected it onto the students, which makes the teacher and student relationship more disconnected. Also, the school’s prejudice of quickly diagnosing our children as brain death, divides us completely.

We need to get connected to conquer some fears in our school. The whole school community needs to be there for the students. Teacher must be prepared to handle all types of students and get rid of their stereotypical ideas and find an “out of the box” way to teach our children.  Administration needs to find a better way to evaluate our teachers’ and students’ performance.  Students need a voice in their own education to gain empowerment, parent and teacher need to communicate better, and teachers need to not to teach only for the standardize test, doing all these things will  reconnect us and eliminate some fears. The only fear the school community can embrace is the fear of our future in the hands of our students. This why we must reconnect in order for all of us to grow, learn, have a sense of community, and go beyond our fear for the sake of our students, ourselves, and our future.

Carolyn Jobes-Padellan                                                                                   

Student at Touro College, Brooklyn NY