The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression
I have witnessed prejudice in my classroom towards my Hispanic children. My classroom is a majority of Native American and Hispanic children with a minority of white and black students. The Native American children are very prejudice towards the Hispanic children. This does not usually show until they have a conflict, but the things that they say to one another are just disturbing. Some examples of incidents that I have witnessed are children correcting or picking at ESL students that mispronounce or use the wrong words in their sentences to the students fussing at the students for speaking Spanish. The students always think that when the Hispanic children are speaking Spanish that they have to be talking about them. It disturbs me that the children fuss about such trivial matters. I have heard students say “You are in America, you should speak English”. When these incidents occur I usually stop the lesson and address the matter. If it is the other students “correcting” or picking at a language mishap, we discuss issues with the dialect of the Native American students or other grammar issues within our classroom. If it is because the students are speaking Spanish, I discuss with the class how the Native Americans in our community can no longer speak their native language because we were taunted and demanded to speak English. I inform the students of the importance of maintaining ones cultural identity as we also work to come together and learn from one another in the classroom. My golden rule is to treat others as you would like to be treated, so I usually end with the reading of that rule and asking the person that is out of line if they would like for me to treat them in the same manner. The students in my classroom quickly learn that I will not accept racial or cultural slurs or negativity inside my classroom. We are all there for the same purpose, and we cannot achieve it when we are treating one another in a negative manner.