Something about Liam's post calling Boston-based Sociedad Latina's campaign for cultural training for teachers ?delusional? rubs me the wrong way. I concede his point about one thing: The Boston Globe reports that ?culturally relevant instructional practices? will boost student achievement, which of course rings hollow in lots of ed policy folks' ears.? Since when? Liam was right to call that out. But I don't think folks in Boston presume that ?training teachers in the intricacies of dreidels and C?sar Ch?vez will lift test scores, eliminate lacunae, and quash truancy?? The article never said as much.
Further, the Globe's piece also names lots of other reasons to install such training among teachers who have been blatantly callous toward non-English speakers or Muslims (as the piece tells anecdotally). It notes that such training will help students ?feel more confident and engaged? and ?appreciated and respected.?
Shrug this off if you will. But having taught a classroom of Black, Latino, and mixed race five-year olds whose frankness (and cultural insensitivity) is in its rawest, youngest, purest form ? I recommend not shrugging it off. Kids are impressionable ? especially at young ages ? and racial/cultural/religious insensitivity coming from the only adult in the room is bound to rub off.
During my two years teaching I'd heard more racial epithets and stomach-turning sorts of insults than I'd heard my whole life, even growing up in small-town Ohio. My Latino students would segregate themselves by table during lunch and spit on the Black children. Slurs abounded. A child's head scarf was torn off. Her mother's burqa was mocked by students (and other parents) during an event. And these were all incidents wherein other children or their parents were the perpetrators ? how much worse if it would have come out of my mouth?
Here's the thing: I really don't care if cultural training or sensitivity coaching lifts test scores.
Here's the thing: I really don't care if cultural training or sensitivity coaching lifts test scores, prevents truancy, improves graduation rates, or has anything to do with anything academic. I think coming down (and sometimes hard) on ignorance and callousness of this sort is simply the right thing to do to protect people's dignity, and especially to protect the dignity of kids and to teach them that such behavior is simply unacceptable. Maybe my nerves are frayed after reading one too many disgusting anti-Islamic remarks about the New York mosque (thanks, Facebook, for giving every cretin a voice) or taking this personally based on the aforementioned vignettes, but seriously ? to me this isn't a question about the efficacy of the program as it relates to achievement. Is that really the issue?
- Jamie Davies O'Leary
