Developing a personal philosophy

As a future teacher I feel it is very important to teach literature in the classroom. More importantly in relation to this, I feel that it is essential to make sure I am using multicultural literature that represents a great variety and span of diverse groups and does so accurately. Representing diverse groups authentically through literature is something that I highly value and will be sure to do as a teacher in my own professional career. The skills I need to develop an understanding of how to make sure this goal is being met are currently developing through the experiences within this class and will be carried with me throughout my teaching profession. Because children come from various backgrounds and life experiences it is important that all children know they are equally as important as everyone else in the world around them. Teaching multicultural literature helps to develop this idea and notion within children. By teaching about diverse groups within our society, children will gain a better understanding of the culture, experiences, hardships that people of that group may encounter, etc. This will help them to develop empathy towards others. It will also help to gain in their understanding of difference in people in which they will encounter directly within their own diverse classrooms as well as those they may encounter in the future outside of the classroom. When thinking about the importance of teaching multicultural literature and the impact it has on children some concerns about incorporating this arise. One thing that slightly worries me is that the event will occur that while reading a particular piece of multicultural literature in the classroom, we will encounter something stereotypical or offensive to a group that I did not previously notice. While I know that it will be important to point this out and discuss it with the students, I fear that if a child in my class is someone that is representative of a particular group that the offence in the literature was found against, it may make them as well as myself uncomfortable when discussing this issue. However, the more multicultural literature that I incorporate into my teaching, the more the students in general will be comfortable with issues of diversity and they will be able to recognize stereotypes and disregard them as true. Hopefully this attitude portrayed by the students in my classroom, that I strive to develop through the diverse literature, will help my students to feel more secure when things are brought up in literature that may offend their particular group.

Al Capone Does My Shirts - Response

I really enjoyed reading the novel Al Capone Does my Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko. This has been my favorite book we have read in the class this far. I felt that I was able to connect to this book because of my own experiences. I have worked with many children with autism. The children in which I have worked with have been autistic on varying degrees of the spectrum. In reading about the actions and behaviors of Natalie in this novel, it reminded me of several of the actions and behaviors that I personally have seen in the autistic children that I have worked with. I thought the ways in which they represented autism were accurate for the most part. However I do think it is important to keep in mind that children can be diagnosed with autism and still be very high functioning. It seemed to me that Natalie had a more severe level of autism. One thing that concerns me about what this book may portray to people who do not know much about autism is that all children with this particular disability have as high behavioral needs as Natalie does.