22nd Feb 2006
bad and good
One thing that kept coming up this week was this idea of good and bad homes and environments that kids are exposed to outside of school. As in, “The kids in my class are from bad homes and therefore …” or “These kids are from good homes and….” Well, it’s hard to tell exactly the good from the bad except in the most egregious cases (New Jersey child welfare and NYC is having problems with the egregious ones too). Nearly all kids come from homes where their parents love them, where there is print (in this day and age, a child would have to live under a rock not to be exposed to print — which is on clothing and computers and even school buses), and where they have lots of experiences. It’s just that thosse experiences might be different from the ones the teachers had themselves growing up. Trust me, I know, and I made lots of stupid assumptions teaching in a city classroom — mistakes that my Mexican-American and Vietnamese students, among others, delighted in setting right.
Good and bad are loaded terms. One of the responsibilities we *all* have (yes, me too) is to step outside the terms and thoughts we take for granted. The tricky part is in doing that — how do we do it? How do we keep remembering to do it?
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