Annotated Bibliography

The article that I chose for one of my bibliographies was the Lisa Delpit article posted on the website for suggested reading. In her article, Delpit described five main points in her article about multicultural education and how not to stereotype children of different backgrouds. First off, she stated that a teacher should know how to recognize when there is a problem with for a particular student and how to seek its cause in the most broadly conceived fashion. A student of another race should not be automatically labeled as an "at-risk" student or put into special classes. The teacher should know her students' backgrounds and what their aptitude is before making an decisions about their educational future.

Delpit's five main points of the article were: the cultural clash between students and school, stereotyping, child deficit assumptions that lead to teaching less instead of mor, ignorance of community norms and the "messiah complex" and invisibility. Under each topic, Delpit stressed the idea more of teachers whoe underestimate and stereotype children of different ethnicities. She also gave some examples and a few solutions to these problems in education today.

I think this article is very helpful for my research paper. Delpit highlights some key points of what is wrong when teaching in a multicultural classroom and gives some great offerings to help teachers work through the problem of stereotyping.

Delpit, Lisa. Education in an Multicultural Society: Our Future's Greatest Challenge. Copyright 1992. Accessed 25 March 2007

Personal Narrative

Being a high school history teacher in a suburban setting, I am faced with many racial and social backgrounds in my classes. I have a pretty good group of students this year and most of them work hard for their grades while there are always the “slackers.” However, one student stands out to me the most when it comes to working hard, yet slacking.

Michelle is a junior in my U.S. History class. She is Latino and comes from a middle class, hard working family. She is extremely smart and always behaving. However, what I find weird is that she hands in all her homework, completes it correctly, but strangely has the wrong answers in her work. I fear that Michelle is purposely putting the wrong answers so she will not be teased by her friends. Occasionally, Michelle will put the correct answers on her homework or on a test. When this happens, she gets an A+ because of her hard work and study skills. I praise her and tell her all her tests could be ‘A’s’ if she allowed herself to succeed. Whenever I praise her, I notice that her friends and other classmates make fun of her and call her a brown-noser.

WeI believe this is the reason why Michelle won’t allow herself great achievement. Most of her friends are Latinos and come from poorer backgrounds. Because of her cultural competence, she is aware of the social factors that surround her. She realizes that she would rather get bad grades than to be made fun of. I have talked to Michelle and we have worked out a system where I will not praise her for her hard work and she will put in all her effort and work for the correct answers. If this is what it takes for Michelle to achieve the grades she deserves, this is what I have to do to help her succeed.