Diversity in the Classroom

First off, I want to apologize to all my faithful readers for the long lapse between post. My only excuse is that my grad. school class is whipping my butt. Nevertheless, I offer you the following. Teachers are so often put in precarious positions on a daily basis. Most educators learn rather quickly that they will have to become masters at balancing the great diversity in each of our rooms with the demands of high stakes testing. It is often difficult to educate, truly educate, a minimum of 25 students in most cases that are all from varying races, socioeconomic backgrounds, religions, experiences, gender…etc, while at the same time making sure that the stars are properly aligned on that one day each year when the end of grade test day arrives. Teachers are no longer judged by how profoundly they impact a young person’s life or the life experiences the teacher exposed the students to, rather we are now seemingly judged as ‘quality’ educators based solely on the results of one test that each of our students take each year. It is demoralizing for both educators and students in my opinion.
In addition, the marginalized portions of our society are frequently left out, willingly or unwillingly, by our educational system as it currently stands in America. In my view teaching, good teaching, comes most often from educators that have lived through a multitude of experiences with those groups so frequently marginalized in our society. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel that by most accounts I provide my students from all backgrounds with the respect and education they need and deserve. My reasoning stems largely from my background, as I have certainly reaped the benefits of being one of the ‘privileged’ as I am a white male and it is easy for me to interact with that segment of society. However, when I came up through middle and high school my situation was not pleasant. My family, what there was of it, was extremely poor and I lived in what most would consider not nice places. I did not have nice clothes or nice things, but guess who readily accepted me despite that…those very same marginalized portions of society. As such, I feel like I am better able to reach the students that some my colleagues are either unwilling or unable to. There are certain behaviors that my poor African American students do that drive other teachers, mostly older white females, absolutely nuts. I tend to work with and around those behaviors, because I lived that lifestyle. In my humble opinion an educator can never teach a student whose life experiences they do not understand.