Miranda Ditta

Standard 2
How my family home life developed my educational development 
    

   For my standard 2 selection, I decided to talk about 2a, “Know about, understand, and

value the diversity of families.” This standard hit home for me because my family’s background

and ethical upbringing helped my educational development when I started school. Everyone is

shaped into who they are because of the home life that they were raised around. My family raised

me in a great environment with two financially stable parents, plenty of backyard space to play,

and always had food on the table. My family and I are not ignorant of the fact that other children

do not have these things, but we are always grateful for what we have and we always try to help

those in need. When I started going to school, I saw the diversity become much greater and not

everyone had a great home life. 

           I was raised as a Christian with strong core beliefs. My family wanted me to attend a

Christian Catholic school for the first couple of years of my academic career because they

wanted me to stay rooted in our Christian background. They wanted me to start school with a

strong foundation, then go to a public school. In the Christian tradition, I was taught that

authoritative figures like teachers deserve to be respected and I should honor them, as well as my

mother and father. I wanted to honor my mother and father by getting good grades and just being

good to my teachers. Therefore, I believe that my home diverse life affected my educational

career. I knew someone who had a difficult childhood and they were not brought up with any

belief and they had no parents. Their parents were in and out of jail and they were handed off to

social workers, and because they did not have anyone who cared, they did not have a good

academic standing in school. They failed at many exams and got detention many times because

they exemplified the lack of discipline at home. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that a
foster family took this person and their siblings in, and their academic development started to

increase, not decrease. It was amazing to see the family finally have a good home life. My

classmates started passing the exams, they started to get closer as a family and they always

showed up to each other’s games and activities. They knew that they had the support and they

can achieve higher academic standards. 

           When I started student teaching, I wanted to extensively study how my students talked

and how academically well they performed. A couple of weeks in, I wanted to know more about

the parents because I could see that some students were very successful, and some others were

not as successful and had many issues with behavior. In the classroom, there was a mini book

that was created for the students, about their families. It had pictures and descriptions of the

family members but what caught my attention was that some student’s pages were empty. The

students whose pages were empty I noticed were students with behavioral issues or no academic

development. Some of the students that were very well behaved and polite, went to church. I

knew this because they told me that they attended Sunday school and it looked like they had a

similar upbringing like I did. I could see that my students were diverse but that affected their

educational development. Families can strongly influence their children because they teach them

morals and how to react to ethical situations. 

           Each student and their family can bring something special to the classroom. A child’s

diverse family can either leave a positive or negative influence on the classroom. I grew up with

very strong morals and I had loving parents that made sure I was taken care of, but I knew

someone that did not have that and it resulted in them being in trouble as well as low grades. It

wasn’t until they were removed from their home and put into another home that they started to

turn around. In student teaching I ran across many students with diverse backgrounds and that
affected their behavior in the room. Having diverse families are important but it can either help

develop the student’s educational journey, or destroy it.