Looking Deeper

This semester I'm taking my first education class since I'm planning on majoring in secondary education. This class focuses on the diversity of students that I will potentially be teaching in the future. I have learned a lot so far about laws that exist for helping students with disabilities, as well as programs that are available for gifted students. I have had to think from a totally new perspective- one in which I'm not the student focused on my own needs, but the teacher figuring out how I can reach out to all of my students with different needs.

This week we started looking a little closer into our personal backgrounds and culture since our personal backgrounds could influence how we deal with future students. We started by discussing our ancestry and how much our families know about where we came from. That was a lot of fun hearing how some of my classmates have connections to people who signed the Declaration of Independence or who fought in the civil war.

This week we have an assignment to look up definitions of culture and explain our culture. One of the definitions that I found talked about culture being one's beliefs, social forms, and material traits. So then I had to think about my own beliefs, social forms, and material traits- which wasn't as easy as it sounds. It was fun thinking back to some of the values and rituals that I picked up from my family. One example of a ritual at my house when I was younger, my dad would teach night classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and my mom would make my 2 older siblings and me 'silly suppers' on some of those nights. These silly suppers often included popcorn, apples, crackers and cheese, or pancakes with green food coloring. We always ate dinner together as a family and this was just one memory that sticks out as special, and something that I would want to continue with my own family in the future.

After putting a lot of thought into what I believe and how I formed those beliefs, it was pretty clear that my family and my experiences greatly influenced me. The next part of the assignment now involves comparing my culture with someone with a different culture. I love seeing how everyone is unique and has different beliefs and attitudes based on our experiences growing up. Everyone has their own story to tell, and each of us should take the time to examine our own lives to gain a better understanding of where we come from and why we believe what we do.