It's a Healing Process

Becoming more accepting is a process. Thinking about how others think and understand things means that we are moving in the right direction. Howard suggests that honesty, empathy, advocacy and action are the steps to bring about a river of change in today's schools.

Being honest with ourselves is key. White educators need to acknowledge the differences between students. They need to acknowledge the differences between races, cultures, and ethnic groups. By doing this it is not a secret and not something that is just hushed because it is uncomfortable to talk about. All educators must have empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. It is something that may be hard to understand if we have never felt the way someone else has felt. Being able to understand what it is like to be the student who doesn't catch on, or the one who cannot understand the teacher are just a few examples. If a teacher cannot understand what a child is going through, it will be incredibly hard to reach and help that student. In order to have empathy for these students, we need to look at them for who they are, not through our own lens. Howard says, "Empathy begins with seeing others in their own light rather than through our projections of them in our light" (p 79). Advocacy and action are where the real change can start to occur. More people may be accepting when the action takes place. Howard says, "We are not responsible for having been born White, but we are accountable for how we respond to racism and dominance in our schools and communities today" (p 82). Acknowledgment of this topic needs to be given to our students if we want to start this "River of Change" as Howard calls it.

I have been in placements where the student population is diverse. I have heard a teacher address the issue once. I understand that I am not in the classroom all the time, but I believe that if the topic was brought up more often, students may not feel so uncomfortable about it. The teacher who talked about different races and cultures was from Ireland. She talked freely about how different families did things in different ways. She talked about her personal experiences in Ireland and how she was raised. One thing that I was very impressed by was the student's response. Junior Higher's shared how their family did things and how they were all different. I think this environment was so accepting and diverse that everyone felt comfortable sharing where they were from. They understood that they all had different experiences and that is why they were different from one another. It was not a bad thing, but it was definitely different and it was ok. This is the kind of change that I look forward to seeing as a teacher. I hope that my classroom will be an environment of discovery and learning, not only academic learning, but learning about who we are as human beings as well.