Running head: DIVERSITY STATEMENT OF INFORMED BELIEFS ESSAY

Diversity of Informed Beliefs Essay

Belin, Brayden

Instructor: Dr. Egbert

EDUC 204: Families Community Culture

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Diversity of Informed Beliefs Essay

Students can learn, regardless of their background. Students who come from

homes that are not ideal to their learning style may struggle to learn including socializing,

but sometimes all they need is the right kind of person in their life to push them in the

right direction and help them understand how they learn best and how they can help

themselves to learn.

How All Students Can Learn

All students are capable of learning, every student also has a right to learn. Some

teachers move on past the children who do not understand something completely because

the majority of the class understands it fairs and all they seem to care about is that they

have a lot of people who understand fairly well instead of everyone completely

understanding the content. The premise of this concept of making sure everyone knows

all they need to know before moving on is called Mastery Learning and is discussed by

Sal Kahn, founder of Kahn Academy in a TED Talk called “Let’s teach for mastery – not

test scores”. In this talk he discusses the concept that, while it would take longer to finish

studies, the results of the teaching style will be much stronger. Sal talks about how

strange it is to move on when even if the highest score was a 95% , the student still does

not understand 100 % “On that test, maybe I get a 75 percent, maybe you get a 90

percent, maybe you get a 95 percent. And even though the test identified gaps in our

knowledge, I didn’t know 25 percent of the material. Even the A student, what was the

five percent they didn’t know? Even though we’ve identified the gaps, the whole class

will then move on to the next subject, probably a more advanced subject that’s going to
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build on those gaps. It might be logarithms or negative exponents. And that process

continues, and you immediately start to realize how strange this is.” (Kahn)

Students’ Social Ecology

There are many kinds of families in the states. The divorced families can have a

very negative effect on the children but can also result in some amazing attitudes. By

using agile programing, the kids are they’re most harsh on themselves and are very good

at regulating themselves into doing positive actions and constructive to their own

discipline. A lot of people may be scared to try this as a parenting technique Bruce Feiler

talks about this and his wife’s hesitation in an interview “My wife was skeptical at first.

But she also, as she says, was so desperate for ideas, she was willing to try. And then

what happened was our girls - we started when they are five - they're almost eight now, so

we had been doing for three years weekly - they really embraced it. And what was

interesting about it was, first of all, the most amazing things started coming out of their

mouths, right. So, what worked well this week? Getting over our fears of riding a bike or

making our beds. What didn't go well? You know, our math sheets or greeting visitors at

the door. You know, like a lot of parents, Rachel, we thought our children were like

Bermuda triangles. You know, like ideas would go in but they would never come out.

This meeting gave us kind of access to their innermost thoughts. You know, think about

it, Rachel. We have our jobs. We work on those. We have our hobbies. We work on those.

We have our bodies. We work on those. The family is so central to our lives. And the

truth is very few of us actually work on that.” (Feiler)

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Discrimination and Learning

There was a time in human history in which discrimination against another person

was allowed and, in some cases, encouraged. If a person were to watch an old west movie

such as Big Jake or Chisum, two movies filmed during a time when women were treated

as lesser members of society, talked down to and abused for speaking out of turn, they

would see that there used to be no protection for women or people of different color.

There was absolutely no protection in the school, but it’s a good thing we have things

such as Title IX which prohibits discrimination of any five classes, disability, age, race,

national origin, sex, and color.

There are ways to work around the discrimination. One of the best ways, in my

opinion, is to create open ended activities without or with minimal overtones of an

agenda. Theses open ended activities would include games about honesty, coloring

pictures of children doing activities that are neutral such as building a snowman or

making snow angels. Do not have any holiday celebrations in the classroom, Doing so

would make children who do not celebrate certain holidays feel left out or even cast out.

In order for celebration of holidays to be allowed in the classroom, it should be decided

unanimously among the class with input from teachers, the problem with this method is it

is very tedious and difficult, it is possible but may be more hassle than the end result is

worth.

The discrimination of another person is not only in the classroom, it is in society

and the discrimination is an issue not many people in society want to talk about and that

is why it is still an issue in society. I once heard from Morgan Freeman in an interview

back when I was in middle school, “if you want to end racism, stop talking about it,” I
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greatly disagree with this, I’m a firm believer of the idea that, if a person is not part of the

solution, they are part of the problem. The idea of this being that by not taking action to

solve an issue, you are allowing the issue to progress which is one of the biggest

problems in society, nobody wants to take action and so the issue continues.

Equitable Education for All Students

Those who have disabilities such as deafness or blindness accommodations are easy

in comparison to other disabilities such as a learning disability. The accommodations are

easy, get and interpreter or get copies of the readings in Braille, but learning disabilities

are different because the idea of “one size fits all” only really works in a situation where

the solution is obvious such as deaf or blind but learning disabilities can’t be seen and are

very different from case to case. One student may learn from hands on experience, such

as myself, where as another student does not learn well from hands on and needs to read

material. In order to combat the leaning disabilities, there are programs put in place such

as IEP’s and 504’s to support and assist student where and when they need it.

The IEP’s and 504’s are not just programs for helping a student learn at school, they

also teach a child how to socialize by having paras with the child to assist them in

understanding social situations that arise and how to react appropriately. Learning to

socialize is a hurdle that I struggled with almost my entire childhood and was fairly bad

at until my senior year of high school, even then I was an outcast because I still struggled

to understand certain social cues. According to Sal Khan, the creator of the educationl

help website Khan Academy, students can learn no matter what, “So our model is learn

math the way you’d learn anything, like the way you would learn a bicycle. Stay on that
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bicycle. Fall off that bicycle. Do it as long as necessary until you have mastery” (Khan,

2011).
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Conclusion
After researching the effects of different cultures on student’s ability to learn, I

have concluded that anyone can be taught, all that in needed is the student’s learning

style. Programs put in place in schools are designed to help a student learn in a learning

environment that may not suit their learning styles or needs but also work to help the

child understand how to socialize and understand the world. Students may come from

what seems like different worlds sometimes but that does not mean that they are

incapable of learning due to language barriers or learning styles, it simply mean they

have a different background than other people and no two people have to exact same

backgrounds as everyone has different views and has experienced different life events

from small events such as how old they were when they had their first to big events such

as parents getting divorced. No matter the background of a person, their disabilities, their

learning style, everyone can be taught, it’s just a matter of finding out how.
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References

Berns, R.M. (2013). Child, family, school, community: Socialization and support (7th

ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.

Feiler, B. (n.d.). A Tao of Parenting [Interview by R. Martin]. Retrieved from

https://www.centertao.org/media/A-Tao-of-Parenting-Transcript-of-Interview.pdf.

Kauchak, D., Eggen, P., & Carter, C. (2014). Introduction to teaching: Becoming

a professional (2nd ed.). Columbus, Ohio: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Khan, S. (n.d.). Let's teach for mastery -- not test scores. Speech presented at TEDx in New

York, New York City.