Auditing Inequity:

In the article Auditing Inequity Education students were surveyed regarding certain aspects of social
justice. One aspect was social class, which elicited several divergent responses that were grouped as
either questioning, class-blind, or sitting back.

According to one reflection the student wrote, "I have begun to think about social class the way that I
think about race. I was born into the middle upper class and never thought that people lived much
differently than I did". He also, stated that, "I think for any teacher it is difficult to teach to students
who are different from you, (9).

I have thought about racial and social class in terms of privilege, and entitlement since I was about 18. It
was at that time that I became aware of social injustice. But, I went over the top, rebelling against my
own people and my own class and ultimately not being as constructive as I might have been. I agree to a
certain degree that it is difficult to teach to students who are not like me. In fact, it so much easier to
relate to students who share social and economic experience. When I am teaching low socioeconomic
students, though, I often take little things for granted. For example, I told a girl the other day that I
thought she had enough clay left over from her previous project to complete the next assignment. She
ended up using all of that clay and running out. The next day she sat away from the rest of the class, so I
went over to see what was the matter and she stated that she couldn't finish the assignment because
she hadnt enough clay. Whereas the other students would have asked for more clay, she didn't think
she was entitled to more, so she just went off by herself without finishing her work because in her mind
she couldnt. I was glad that I was able to get to the bottom of her issue, but I wished that I had
recognized it before and made sure she understood that she was an equal among her peers and that she
deserves the same amount of resources. She knows now, at least.

Another issue that the Education students were asked to respond to was the rapidly changing
demographics at their school sites. According to one of the reflections by "Peterson",

"The type of student that will be attending [high school name] 3 years from now will be far different
than the student that attended 3 years ago, let alone 20 years ago, making it difficult for our veteran
staff to relate," (8).

This quote describes exactly what my school site is experiencing. What is worse, some of our veteran
teachers were born and raised in the local community, so the timeline reaches back more than 20 years.
Not only do these teachers have nostalgic notions of how the school once was, they keep traditions
around that no longer serve the school's much more diverse population. Many of the traditions exclude
lower socio-economic students and many others exclude female students. Peterson says this situation
drives him "nuts", well me too. I'm not sure where to start because the systems in place are so
entrenched.