prompt 4

My personal history may interject with those of my students in various ways. I believe that I have experienced much for my young age. For example, my house going for foreclosure and not having a place to go, being a teenage mother, and being a victim of abuse. Such experiences shape any person’s character to be very strong and opinionated. I feel like I am at a disadvantage because such experiences can cause someone to close up or become distant and that is not something I want to do with my students.
At the same time experiencing such hardships can be an advantage. I can empathize with my students, who experience loss, struggle, abandonment, and other tough emotions that are hard to handle. I can be a support system for those students. This question is one that I really struggle with answering still being that I am trying to fully understand who I am. As a teacher it would be ideal not to have any misconceptions or have any bias opinions, but unfortunately that’s not possible.
During this experience I have not had a moment where I have had to confront any cultural misconceptions and I’m very glad that I have not. Although I will be honest in saying that I am very afraid for that moment to come. Not because I do not want to learn from the experience but because I am afraid of how I may come across to my students unintentionally. While as an educator I feel it is a moral obligation to uphold one’s own professional and almost immaculate image, I know that my own beliefs or passion towards certain subjects, may evoke emotional reactions that may be irresponsibly negligent to demonstrate towards young and impressionable youth. I am confident that I will have had the right experiences to prepare me for such an occasion and that I am able to see myself outside the situation to be able to remain as objective as possible.
This prompt has helped me to really think about such an experience and how I might react to a situation where one of my students makes me face one of my ugly misconceptions. I came to the conclusion that I would do something called “unpacking the idea”. It’s a practice we learned about during Promising Practices. The key note speaker, Tricia Rose, spoke on unpacking ideas and getting to the bottom of where they originate from. I would hope to be a humble teacher and unpack my misconceptions before my class to demonstrate that just as I may have had that misconception, many of us have unknown misconceptions as well. I would explain that it is not our fault that we may have these misconception but we can be responsible in changing them. So thank you Tricia Rose, for teaching me how to “Unpack” an idea, because when I do have to face a misconception before my class I may not be prepared but I will know a wonderful tool that I can use.