Hello everyone

I am currently teaching at a middle school and I always hear the students making racial comments. It is sad that they don't have the opportunity to interact with students from different backgrounds. I ask my students why they have that opinion or why do they have that certain belief? Most of the times the answer that I get is from T.V or from other friends who have probably gotten their information from T.V as well. I tell the students that T.V is only a one side view and it is usually the wrong one. I try to incorporate as much diversity in my teachings because the population of students that I work with don't have the oportunity to encounter other cultures outside their community. Going to the Saturday workshop made me see how much T.V influences the world, and how it can create the wrong stereotypes.

I am constantly shocked by some of the images that are available for our youth. I was checking out YouTube the other day and I was barraged by images that were too explicit in nature. With the internet being available at the local library, kids have access to these materials without supervision! Or even typing in the wrong domain can lead you in the wrong website...and the variation is slight -- for example, during a 4th grade lesson a while back, my students had a chance to virtually tour the White House. Some of the students accidentally typed in .com as opposed to .gov and ended up in an inappropriate site that had nothing to do with the objective of our lesson. It was an experience I'll never forget!

I did not go to the workshop but I wanted to second the motion on TV stereotypes. I think, in general that middle school students practice racism and bullying to a fault and this is reinforced by television. Giving someone "grief" is considered by most to be appropriate humor. One of my warm-ups is "How does name-calling lead to death?" This idea came from my teaching of the Holocaust in 10th grade history and also from participating in a "Facing History" course. I have found that students in middle school are ripe for this discussion since they are often trying to assert themselves at other's expense. Sometimes they perpetuate the name-calling by calling each other racist names because they are all part of the same sub-culture (i.e. the "n" word). In 7th grade history a common theme is how groups are marginalized. For example, when we think of Barbarians during the Roman Empire we forget that they were protecting the borders of the Roman Empire until they were treated as second-class citizens. Or the idea that because Jewish traders as guests in the Holy Roman Empire did not get the plague that they must be responsible for the spread of the disease leading to the "pograms". In the teaching of history there are many examples of how stereotypes and name-calling have determined the outcome of history. For example, "what does it mean to be civilized" and who are we to judge and by what criteria? As you can tell, as we explore different cultures and value their differences, I use racism as an object lesson and it is not tolerated in my classroom.