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.