Blog Post #4 Debbie Berni

As a general education teacher, I teach a wide range of students.  Throughout my day, I interact with students who have mild learning disabilities to students identified as gifted.  Within all of this diversity, I have noticed that my classes are segregated.  My honors class mainly consists of white students while my general math classes consist of students with a variety of backgrounds.  The lack of minority students in my honors class is very troublesome to me.  My everyday school environment seems to reinforce the idea that “the design, content and assumptions on which American schooling are based continue to validate the goals of white Americans, sometimes at a cost to students of color”. (Jimenz and Graf, 2004, p.132).  I also feel that another cost to students of color is in their disproportionate representation in special education.  Even though our country has made great strides in improving the special education referral process, we still struggle with a disproportionately high representation of racial and ethnic minorities in special education.

One way to help stop the overrepresentation of minorities in special education is during the referral process.  When teachers refer students for special education, they need to really look at the student to determine if they have a learning disability or if they have educational deficits.  As a teacher in a near urban school setting, I often get students who are new to the district as eighth-graders.  It can be challenging to determine if students are performing poorly in my class because they lack basic math skills or if they have a mild learning disability.  I know that I have often struggled with where some of my lower achieving students really belong. 

Another way to help with the disproportionate representation is through culturally responsive instructional practices.  One thing I never thought of with the desegregation movement was the fact that many African American students gave up being educated by teachers who knew and understood their culture.  Once these students were placed in white schools, “they were viewed as deficient and faced rejection by their teachers” (Jimenz and Graf, 2004, p. 135).  I believe this happened mainly because the white teachers did not understand the African American culture and viewed these students as poorly educated.

Our book, Education For All, also provides another culturally responsive instructional practice.  “It means letting go of the notion that mainstream Anglo Saxon cultural norms completely drive standards of acceptability and success” (Jimenz and Graf, 2004, p. 148).   When teachers take time to learn about a student’s culture and help to incorporate that information into the school culture, they help the student’s realize that their culture is significant.  Teachers also need to take the time to build relationships with a student’s family.  When this happens, the families feel that they are truly a part of their child’s educational process.  The teachers and family will begin to have mutual respect for each other.  Families can be a great support to the schools. When parents and teacher work together, the benefit to students is inconceivable.