EDF2085-Reflection #4

I have not had many experiences that have me prepared for diversity, but I have had a few encounters here and there. I attended a school from Prek-4 through eighth grade in Hialeah. The school consisted of all Hispanics; almost eighty percent of everyone was Cuban or American. I grew up being surrounded by people that were just like me, but this isn't how the real world is. There are all types of people out there nowadays, far beyond the ones that are exactly like us. But, of course after eighth grade High School comes into place, and this is where everything changed. I attended a High School that was located in Opa-Locka and had a diversity of cultures attending. There were Hispanics, Americans, Africans, and Asians. At first, I didn't know what to expect since I wasn’t used to the diversity of ethnicities and cultures but as soon as I started everything was fine. I had friends from different races, and none of that mattered because we were all the same on the inside. It was a Catholic school but there were other religions involved as well. In my perspective, none of this mattered to me or changed anything because we were all young adolescents in school for the same reason. This childhood experience will now help me for the near future and the present time I’m living in, with things such as attending college and for my career. I hope to learn more about how to approach this with students when I will have my own classroom, but to me diversity doesn't make a difference and every child is the same. I am a very fair and equal person and will take this into the classroom and look beyond diversity of religion, beliefs, learning styles, or cultures. Diversity class is really important because it teaches you how to approach certain problems that may come about in the classroom that you may not even know about because you have never experienced. It should be necessary for preparing for a major in education because you are faced with challenges teaching in a classroom that’s filled with children from all over the county and/or area. Sam should have learned why it is useful, and so far I’ve learned a couple of things I would have never known you may encounter in a public school classroom so this has been really useful, now I know the importance of it.