Diversity is a very important discussion for teaching as it is important for teachers to recognize the multiple identities and backgrounds that students bring to the classroom. I have often reflected upon the diversity in my Northfield Middle School classroom, as Northfield itself is a very interesting town when it comes to the diversity of its inhabitants. In the first class I observe, there are a majority of white students and a few African American and Hispanic students. I also believe that there is one transgender student. In the second class I observe, there are even more white students and only a few Hispanic students. I felt that as an outside observer it was harder for me to fully appreciate the diversities of each student which would come with knowing them better. I felt like a detective at times, picking up on small comments (about politics, parent’s occupations, etc.) in order to better understand a student’s background and how that might affect their school experience. Piecing together these small clues, while also remaining careful not to make any assumptions, made me appreciate the effort teachers should make in order to at least partially understand each student and their diversities.

According to the reading Culturally Responsive Teaching, an important part of recognizing diversity in the classroom is to account for a range of intellectual modes (3). Mrs. Kuehl has done a relatively good job of incorporating various learning styles into her classroom in order to both challenge and match the student’s preferred method of learning. For example, the persuasive paragraph writing assignment students completed was all individual work but now students are working in groups for their book groups. During book groups, students are expected to both verbally communicate to one another and also write their responses. Hopefully incorporating this range of learning styles will help students feel comfortable at times while also gaining new skills and pushing themselves at times.

Not only should teachers recognize diversity within their students but they should also incorporate diversity into their lessons. We read about this in the Culturally Responsive Teaching readings which outlined elements of culturally responsible pedagogy. Interestingly, in my tutoring I saw Mrs. Kuehl attempted to provide the option of a more culturally diverse lesson plan which was ultimately thwarted because she gave agency to her students. For the book groups which students worked on for the last month of school the students were asked to rank the book options 1-7. Several of the books on the list were your basic Middle School novels written by white authors about white characters, including Holes, Stargirl, Flipped, and Al Capone Does my Shirts. Mrs. Kuehl also included two other options for novels (which I can’t remember the names of). These novels were clearly supposed to bring diversity to the list, as one was about a family of Mexican immigrants working in agriculture in Maine and another was about a child bride in India. Both books brought me pause, as they could potentially simply perpetuate the stereotypes of Mexican immigrants and Indian arranged marriages. Furthermore, it was clear that they were added as the “diversity” options to the otherwise very homogeneous list of novels. Then, when it came time for Mrs. Kuehl to form the groups, not enough students in either of the periods I observe had listed either of the two “diverse” books high enough to form a book group. As a result, neither of the two books are being read in class.

This incident caused me to reflect a lot about diversity in the classroom and the role of the teacher. First, I wondered why none of the students ranked the two books high enough. I thought about whether some of the Latino students in the room had parents who were immigrants and therefore wouldn’t want to read and analyze a story about the trials of Mexican immigrants in Maine. In regards to the book about India, I’m not totally sure why the students chose not to read it, but perhaps because they were not familiar with the subject. I then wondered how Mrs. Kuehl could promote more diversity in classroom reading. While it was important to give students agency for choosing books, perhaps if Mrs. Kuehl had increased the number of books that told more diverse stories then one of them would have been chosen. Furthermore, I reflected that it was only racial/ethnic diversity which was being represented in the two additional books and that there were no books which addressed issues such as gender/sexuality.

Additional Comments

This week the students were working on their group scripts for their group presentations on their book, for which they will receive a group grade. Mrs. Kuehl gave a long speech at the beginning of class on the importance of collaborating with the group and how the group isn’t done working until everyone has completed their sections and everyone has looked it over together. One student who often has her head down in class and is clearly very grumpy and bored raised her hand to voice her opinion that group work is stupid because “what if one person doesn’t do their work and everyone fails.” Mrs. Kuehl told her that is exactly why they are working on group work in order to learn how to make sure everyone contributes to the presentation. At first I thought the student’s question was a bit rude, but later I visited the girls’ group and learned from her group mates that she had been doing all the work for everyone. It is clear that the girl is very smart and does not trust the other students to do the work correctly, so she jumped right in and fixed everyone’s sections, adding substantial paragraphs to each. I now understood how the student must have been frustrated by the group work. Mrs. Kuehl did realize that the group wasn’t working well together, however all she did was occasionally come over to tell the students to please be nice, which did little to actually help dissipate the tension. I thought that maybe Mrs. Kuehl should have had more individual and serious conversations with some of the students in the group in order to help the dynamic and ensure that everyone was doing a fair share of the work.

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