Indian Removal

Dear Katie,

It's not easy being a Native American in the United States right now. Native Americans have been living on these lands longer than your ancestors, yet we are considered "domestic foreigners" (p.21). There has even been recent talk that a man named Thomas McKenney is trying to remove us from our lands now and force us to move west of the Mississippi River for our "civilization" (p.23). My Tribe is very angry with the United States government right now because we all feel like we should not have to move. We have been on this land the longest and have made our homes here.

The Anglo-Saxon culture wants all Native Americans to become literate. Most tribes are accepting of this. However, we do not care to learn about religious conversion because our tribe does not plan on converting (p. 25). The government is trying to push religious conversion on us. I can't sleep that well anymore because I am in constant fear of being forced to leave tomorrow. I have grown up here, my family and tribe has made their living here. We have cultivated the earth, grown our food and I've done a lot of cooking for the tribe. I'm accustomed to living here and I don't want to start over. I don't want to travel across the Mississippi and risk having members of the tribe die. Tribes that have caved in and made the journey had cases of cholera, contaminated foods and more (p.28).

I just pray that our Tribe will be able to stay where we are.

Your Friend,
Pocahantas

Nieto's Article

In Nieto's article: Solidarity, courage and heart: what teacher educators can learn from a new generation of teachers, I thought she made many good points.

I agreed with Nieto when she stated that an effective teacher has a deep knowledge of subject matter, strong communication skills and effective organizational skills. However, these skills are insufficient because they do not take into account diversity of the students. Whether it be a student's language, ethnicity, social class or race.

I want to know how it is determined that someone is prepared to be a teacher. Anyone can take the college courses and student teach, but I don't think that that means a young teacher is going to be able to handle twenty to thirty diverse students. I don't think that a new teacher is ever ready to handle a diverse class in a poverty district. No one can be fully prepared for that.

In the article, Nieto put in pieces from her book 'Why We Teach.' She gave reasons for teaching such as: a sense of mission, solidarity and empathy for students and a passion for social justice. All of these reasons are good, but a great reason for teaching, I believe, is because you have the passion and want to help children learn and become better learners, no matter their race, ethnicity or language.

I thought that Nieto gave great reasons for why future teachers need to have more experience teaching in urban settings with a diverse group of students. Someday, we'll all have our own classrooms and there will always be diversity. We need to start experiencing that now.