My Experience: Growing up I attended a few different elementary schools, for

4th-6th grade I attended Skinner Magnet School, this school is located in North
Omaha and the majority of the population was African American. For middle
school I went to Beveridge Middle School, this was a very big change for me; I
had come from a school with a totally different population, to a new school with
middle to upper income families and predominantly Caucasian students. I went to
Burke High school, which was not much of a change for me, as many of my
friends from Beveridge also went to Burke. I went to Peru State College for my
Undergrad; I took mostly online classes because I was working fulltime, as a
private nanny so commuting back and forth to school was not really an option. I
student taught at Westgate Elementary in Special Education and Kindergarten,
and I was hired as a Special Education teacher for Westgate so I was able to
return to Westgate in the fall to start teaching! I have just finished up my first year
of teaching at Westgate, my first year was very challenging but most of all very
rewarding I learned so much and I can not wait to continue teaching at Westgate
for many years to come!
Student Life:

Located in the southeast part of District 66, Westgate Elementary was built in
1957 and rebuilt 1975 after being destroyed by a tornado. Westgate Elementary
is a School-wide Title I building that services about 305 students K-6. Our student
population is among the most diverse in the district, and the staff is committed to
ensuring individual student success for all [Link] majority of our
population of students are transported from Cedar Woods Apartments which is a
Section 8 Apartment Community, Westgate has teamed up with this apartment
community and offers serval community resources for families in needs, one in
particular is free lunches for the community through out the summer; families of
the community (inlcuding parents), are welcome to come to Westgate and
receive a free lunch, we set up tables in the cafeteria and famlies are welcome to
come and go as they please. At the Cedar Woods apartments we also have a
Student Study Center set up, at the study center we have two tutors that come in
and work with the students from 3:30-5:30 everyday after school. We also have
mentors that work with students in the Study Center as well.
 The most predomenant race at Westgate is Causcasian students which
makes up about 75% of our population followed by African American students,
we have a pretty low rate of ELL students which make up only 9% of our school
population. Over 50% of our students receive free/ reduced lunch and our
mobility rate is a little over 11%. The mobility rate is any child who enters or
leaves school between the last Friday in September and the last day of school is
counted in the mobility rate. An individual child is counted only once. Special
Education services are all inclusive at Westgate Elementary, which means that
the children are in the general education classroom with same age peers, and
the students are provided with interventions and services within their classroom.
My Diversity Experience: The school that is visited was Chandler View
Elementary; I had actually done some practicum experiences at Chandler View
while completing my Undergrad, so I was familiar with the learning community,
and excited to learn more about the schools population. Chandler View is an
Elementary school in the OPS School District, it is located in South East Omaha,
off of 36th and Chandler Rd. Overall Chandler View is a much bigger school than
Westgate, they have 742 students enrolled [Link] population of students at
Chandler View differs in that they have 81% of students that receive free/
reduced lunch and a much higher rate of ELL students which make up 28% of
their population. As far as student population overall, most of their population is
made up Hispanic students, and they also are surrounded by low-income
housing, so like our school they offer many community services to the
surrounding community, one of the things they offer is tutoring after school.
When speaking with Megan Bruns, a Kindergarten teacher at Chandler View, she
mentioned that much of their Special Education services are offered in alternate
settings. Many of the children receiving Special Education Services are taken to
a resource room and work in small groups or one on one within the resource
room, and return to their general education classrooms upon completion of
services. This is much different from my school in that we offer all of our services
within the classroom. When speaking with her she mentioned that she would like
to see those students included more in the general education classroom, she
said it proves to be very difficult to include those children in-group work, as they
are often being pulled out of the room. I talked to her about how we do full
inclusion and since my school is on a school wide schedule it makes supporting
those students much easier. At Westgate we have a school wide schedule, we
have 9 blocks through the day, each block being about 45 min., with two blocks;
one block in the morning and afternoon scheduled for 15 min for a homeroom at
the beginning and end of the day. The schedule is very helpful because everyone
knows what is happening in each of the classrooms at what time through the day,
which makes scheduling much easier for support staff such as myself when we
are working with multiple grade levels. Megan said that at Chandler View each
teacher is allowed to make their own schedule, but they are given a distinct time
for their Specials. She really liked the idea of a school wide schedule and said
how much easier inclusion would be with that type of scheduling.
From what I have learned about Chandler View it seems that is has some
similarities to Westgate, the most apparent one being the low income
communities that we both serve, I was very pleased when hearing that Chandler
View also offers services to the surrounding communities, I think that is so
important when getting families on board and interested in their childs learning
community. The biggest difference I saw was the amount of children that we
serve, Chandler View is a much bigger school, with a diverse teaching
community as well, Megan stated that they have teachers of all different ethnic
backgrounds, which is much different from Westgate in that most of our teachers
are Caucasian. I think having a diverse teaching community in your school can
be very beneficial because the teachers can offer insight and background
information about their cultures which can be a great learning experience! It is
interesting to me that even being in the same state, with the same standards,
each school has a different learning community and each school brings
something unique but we as educators all work together to empower the students
to be successful learners.
My Research in Diversity:
The first article I read was about closing the achievement gap in our schools.
Most Americans assume that the low achievement of poor and minority children
is bound up in the children themselves or their families. "The children don't try."
"They have no place to study." "Their parents don't care." "Their culture does not
value education." These and other excuses are regularly offered up to explain
the achievement gap that separates poor and minority students from other young
Americans. (Marietta Saravia-Shore,1993) The article stated that the most
diverse group is our young learners, almost 9 million children ages 5-17 speak a
language other than English, and within that group 2.6 million struggle with
speaking English. Schooling in America is constantly changing, and within recent
years there has been a major push for Early Childhood programs, these
programs are so important as most of the brain growth/ formation happens within
the first three years of life. This means that children should be learning as young
as 18months. Many schools offer head start programs to eliminate these learning
gaps, but other schools that do not have resources such as Head Start have
implemented other ways to close the gap. The article talked about a study done
over 5 yrs at a high school, to close the gap the teachers worked with struggling
students and placed them into more rigorous math, reading and writing classes,
and gradually eliminated remedial classes. Throughout the study they saw a
dramatic increase in the number of passing students on State Exams and an
increase in graduation rates. From this article I learned that it is so important not
to give the children an excuse. It is so important not to assume that because a
child comes from a low-income family that they will be less likely to succeed, it is
important to equip each child with the tools and strategies to be a successful
learner regardless of their background.
The second article I read was about creating culturally compatible learning
environments. Research has shown that students learn more when their
classrooms are compatible with their own cultural and linguistic experience
When the norms of interaction and communication in a classroom are very
different from those to which students have been accustomed, they may
experience confusion and anxiety, be unable to attend to learning, and not know
how to appropriately seek the teacher's attention or participate in discussions. By
acknowledging students' cultural norms and expectations concerning
communication and social interaction, teachers can appropriately guide student
participation in instructional activities. (Jordan 1995) When reading the article I
learned that not only can having a cultural classroom make the children feel more
comfortable it can also improve their reading scores, in the article it talked about
a school in Hawaii, it stated that having posters up on the wall and books in the
classroom about the childrens culture the children we more likely to read the
posters and become more interested in the books in the classroom. They found
that when they implemented books about the childrens cultures the children
were more interested in their reading and they felt more confident when they
were reading because they were able to use their background knowledge to
make connections about their readings. After reading this article it really opened
up my eyes about how implement culture in your classroom can have such an
affect on the students! It made total since that the children were more interested
in reading, because they were reading about things that they were familiar with,
from reading this article I will make it a point to have more cultural books in my
classroom for the children to relate to.
The last article I read was about using cooperative learning strategies. One of
the most difficult issues faced by teachers in multiethnic classrooms is that
students, particularly those from ethnic groups suffering social discrimination,
tend to cluster in cliques based on ethnicity. Students may observe that one peer
group draws itself apart and, in reaction, may come to feel that they must do so
as well. To break down this defensive withdrawal into ethnic groups, teachers
need to give students time to get to know each other and to find that they share
common ground, common problems, and common feelings. (Saravia-Shore,
1993) In the article it talked about how important it is to give children time to
socialize with their peers. Socializing is a great learning experience for students
and it breaks down artificial barriers between students. Giving the children the
opportunity to learn cooperatively with their peers gives the children a chance to
get to know each other as individuals rather than as stereotypes. As students
learn together and get to know one another, mutual respect and friendships can
develop. After reading the article and from past teaching experience I have
realized how important cooperative learning is, the children learn so much from
each other, that we as adults cant always teach them, they are able to pick up on
social queues from their peers, and when we group children with children that are
different from them they learn to accept others differences and learn how to work
together to achieve a common goal.
Action Steps:

After learning about cultural diversity and how much of an impact it can have on
the learning community I have decided that as an educator I need to work harder
to make my classroom more culturally inviting. Culture has such a strong impact
on children and it is important that they feel like their culture is valued in their
learning community, this makes children feel for comfortable in their learning
community. In my classroom I plan to have more posters in different language so
that children have the opportunity to converse and learn about the different
cultures in our community. I also plan to have more books in my reading center
that correspond to different cultures, and lastly I plan to give the children more
opportunities to work in collaborative learning groups, after researching about
this topic I have found that it is so important to give the children the opportunity to
work in groups and learn from each other, there are so many different things that
they can learn from each other. Overall I want my classroom to be a welcoming
community and I want the children to feel comfortable and want to talk about their
culture within the classroom, and most importantly I want to children to learn to
respect and value each others differences.

Community Resources:

Westside High School- Food Drive

Westgate Community Lunch- Offered during summer

Kids Connection- Health Resources for families that do not qualify for Medicaid

Boys Town- Behavior Supports 1-800-488-3000

Child Saving Institute- 402-553-6000

Diverse Teaching Strategies: Marietta Saravia-Shore,1993(2), Jordan 1995