my paper for chapter 3 and 4 and Boyd K. Packer Talk

How would you modify curriculum without lowering expectations and help ALL children learn and achieve? How might this relate to your growing definitions of multicultural education and being politically correct?
Gordon Allport defined discrimination as “Any conduct based on distinction made on the grounds of natural or social categories which have no relation either to individual capacities or merits or to the concrete behavior of the individual person.” (Neito, 2004). There are too many teachers out in the world who discriminate in the classroom. There are those teachers who put down and teach differently to those students of different races and social standings just because they are a different color or come from a house hold that is not well off. These teachers don’t look beneath the skin to see what the student is capable of. The place where the most damage is done to the student is done in the school. “Institutional discrimination generally refers to how people are excluded or deprives of rights or opportunities as a resort of normal operations or the institution.” (Neito, 2004). The teachers treat the students like they don’t know anything. There are some teachers who tell students that they will never amount to anything, that they are dumb, that they should just quite school because it is doing nothing for them. They put the student down based on what they look like not the student as a whole. Multicultural education is not found here.
In my teaching I do not want to make the same mistake those teachers make. I am a believer in multicultural education, I guess my task now is to find the best way to help my class to be unified and be able to teach all my students in the best way that I can. I need to find a way to break out of the bubble that most teachers find their way into by discriminating against students. I don’t ever want to treat my students with such disrespect. A teacher needs to know each and everyone one of their students’ strengths and weaknesses in orders to best provide ways for the students to learn the best. In making modifications to the curriculum it should not just be for one student to learn better but for the class to learn. If changes were to be made to one student it would be pointing that one student out of everything, discriminating against the student. So in my classroom instead of just teaching one way of doing something I would teach a few different ways. It will help each student learn and choose the way that works the best for them. If a student needs extra help, I will be there for them, and so will the students. In my classroom I will have the students help and teach each other because I am a firm believer that teaching is learning. My students will all be expected to know the material, but if it takes some different way for the student to understand then that is what I will have the student use. The success of my students is of great importance and anything I can do to help them learn the material I will try and do with the student(s).
In a talk by Boyd K. Packer he said, “However out of step we may seem, however much the standards are belittled, however much others yield, we will not yield, we cannot.” (Packer, 2003). We are never to give up on a student. We are to try our best to always teach them, no matter what. Other teachers may be saying to give up on the student and just put them in a different program, or that you are wasting you time and they will never learn, you must never give up. Stick to your guns and help the student no matter what you need to do. The most important thing should be the student succeeding, and that is what a teacher should always do.
In my classroom I will teach all my students to learn, I will not discriminate against any student for any reason. They are all there to learn and whatever it takes to help them learn I will do. So, in asking how I would modify my curriculum, I would mold it to the students, teach them knowing how they learn and teach them many different ways. Like I have said, whatever it takes, I will teach and help and try new ways of teaching until the student knows the material.
Works Cited:
Packer, Boyd K. (2003). “The Standard of Truth has been Erected”. October 14, 2009, from http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=c291ee9ba42fe010VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=f318118dd536c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD.
Nieto, Sonia. (2004). Affirming Diversity: The Socio-political Context of Multicultural Education, 4th edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.



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