Conclusion Page

Conclusion Page

Looking back at the reading of this book and what I have learned from this writing, I think that this book has mainly made me re-think how I look at the world and how I view my students in my classroom. I think that I have always been tried to bring equality to the classroom in general and I have always viewed my students equally. But this book would say that viewing my students as equals is not enough, instead I need to really understand where they are coming from, why they are making the decisions that they are making, and what makes them who they are. This means that I need to re-think how I view my students and how I view my classroom. According to the author, I view the world around me through a viewpoint that is solely white-oriented. In order to best serve my students I must be able to view the world around me in a diverse way, in a way that is not only based on my whiteness, but is instead based on the diversity around the classroom and around the world. I think this changes my teaching in the future as I am just much more conscious about what my own thinking and perspectives are and what they look like and how not everyone thinks in the same ways that I do. I think that this changes how I see other people as well, as I realize more that my way is not always the right way, but that there are so many factors that need to be taken into account before I can make judgments about others or think I know why someone is acting a certain way.

I think that I still wrestle with a number of issues from this reading and this book in general. Most of these are based off of the generalizations that the author made about white people in general through the first couple chapters. In later chapters the author clarified that he did not mean to villainize white people, but through the beginning of the book this really seemed to be the case. Through the first couple chapters the author wrote about how white people basically bear the sins of their fathers who started slavery, encouraged slavery, and encouraged discrimination in the past. I agree with the fact that white people really treated other races horribly both in the near and distant past, but this does not mean that I need to feel guilty about these wrongs if I am treating other peoples fairly and with dignity. I should not have to feel bad about what people did years and years ago, there was nothing that I could do to stop them considering I was not yet on the Earth. So at the beginning of this book I feel that I was made to feel guilty for things that I had not done so I was not appreciative of this. I think also that a lot of generalizations were made about white people and Christianity in the book. Some were true, some were not. I really did not appreciate the author writing in a way that made Christianity look so evil. Once again, in the past people have done bad things in the name of Christianity, but this does not mean that my beliefs are to blame. So in these areas I definitely wrestled with some of the author's ideals and the ways that he portrayed a number of issues in his book.

Looking forward to my professional growth, I would like to read another book about this topic, but definitely from a different author and a different perspective. I think that I would also appreciate a book that went more in-depth about diversity in the classroom and how to teach in the most effective manner in a diverse classroom. I feel that the author in this book focused too much on general ideas and generalizations instead of specific methods and ways that can be used to teach in a diverse school or classroom. I would also appreciate hearing a speaker in person on this topic. Hearing someone speak in person is more powerful than reading many times and I would appreciate to see a speaker talk about diversity in the schools and the role of white teachers and be able to talk about this with others as well as seeing the perspectives of other people also listening to the speaker. I think that overall I really would like to attend a conference or a speaker the most of all, I think that this would be a very interesting experience and something that really would be outside of my comfort zone. I think that doing some field experience, teaching, or volunteer work in a neighborhood that was much different than my own would also be helpful. To see first hand how other cultures live and how other neighborhoods work together and what that looks like would be very fruitful for my professional development and I think that this would give me really a good feeling and a good grasp of other cultures, much more so than simply reading or listening to someone else talk about their own experiences.