Taylor Keib

Reflection 3

After our class discussion on Thursday and my first time at my field placement, I

was able to make some connections through class and field. In Teacher Leadership

for Social Justice, there is a quote that I was able to make connections through,

These myths reinforce the notion that poor kids are culturally deficient, often

enabling educators to embody deficit thinking. Deficit ways of thinking position that

targeted students) for example, students of color, students living in poverty,

students whose first language is not English) come from homes with families who

do not care about education. (Poetter, pg. 87). Deficit thinking is something that I

see all of the time in schools and even in my own life and thinking unfortunately. For

instance, in field of Tuesday, my teacher said a few times that some of her students

who come in not ready to learn probably have home lives that are not the best.

Unfortunately, this is something that happens all too often in schools which links

back to how the dominant culture is marginalizing these non-dominant groups all

of the time. I think back to my field experience last Tuesday and I wonder if my host

teacher would have made that same comment about those children if they were any

other race besides African American. Unfortunately, I believe that her comment

would have been different if her students were white or Asian and this links back to

a little of what we talked about on Thursday about how making relationships and

teaching to make relationships is something that will help with the dominance

factor that leads to marginalization of non-dominant groups. Schools and teachers

can help students build these relationships to help build a school community overall
to help with stereotypes and dominance. The question of whether building a school

community would help address the root of the problem in schools or not was talked

about during our class session but is something that cannot be solved in a day, week

or even a year of progress. Dominance and marginalization will happen everywhere

and the dominant group will always be changing depending on where you are but I

believe that teachers and schools can continue to work on building school

communities to help lessen the amount of marginalization and stereotyping that

happens on a daily basis.