The idea of race/Assessment Laws and Policies

     In education 350, we have been discussing the idea of "race." Is race a real, cultural difference, or is it something that the United States has decided to establish as a difference between people groups? Does the color of your skin truly change the person you are? These are all questions we discussed in class. In order to gain some insight to these questions, we watched a video based on the blue eyes/brown eyes experiment conducted by educator Jane Elliot in 1968, not long after Martin Luther King had been killed (See link at bottom). In her classroom, Jane Elliot convinced the blue eyed children that they were superior to the brown eyed children. She made the brown eyed children wear collars in order to easily be identified, and she pointed out each mistake made by a brown eyed child. It was very eye opening to see the children quickly accept the divide that had been made. The brown eyed children were isolated and avoided by the blue eyed children. Next, Jane Elliot switched the experiment and convinced the brown eyed children that they were superior to the blue eyed children. The blue eyed children now had to wear the collars, and were now avoided by the others. In both scenarios, the children that were labeled as lesser took more time to do a phonics lesson than they did when they were considered superior. At the end of the experiment, Jane Elliot asked her students if eye color really mattered, and they all agreed it did not. She then asked them if skin color mattered, and they again agreed that it didn't.
      I thought this was very eye opening that students would so quickly accept that a physical characteristic makes a person lesser.  I think, in the same way, this has happened in the United States between racial groups. When discussing an article called "the narrative of whiteness" in education 350, we discussed white privilege and the hardships and disadvantages there are to being of another race. I believe that this is something that society has simply accepted, just like the children in Jane Elliot's experiment. Although race is linked with the cultural background of a person, the color of their skin is not what changes who they are. Culture and the way a person grew up is what molds a person into who they are. In my future classroom, I hope to recognize the racial challenges faced by my students in order to combat them and make them feel as if they do not have to fit the mold society likes to put them in. I want my future students to feel as if they can achieve anything they strive for. This related directly to the North Carolina Teacher Candidate Standards (NCTCS), standard two element c, which states that "Teachers treat students as individuals." I hope to help my future students to know that I do not expect them to be the same as every other student in the room, and that I love and care for them as the individual they are.

      In education 410, we have been discussing assessment and what laws and policies the federal, state, and county have in place regarding assessment. While researching these laws and policies, I have found that the laws are mostly geared toward making sure students are all taught at a high standard, and therefore they provide standardized testing to ensure this occurs. Many of the laws and policies seem to be written for students with disabilities as well (links at bottom). I did not realize how many laws and policies about assessment would be focused on students with disabilities, but once I thought over the challenges many disabled children may face when assessing, I realized how necessary these laws and policies are. In order to fairly assess disabled students, they need to have proper arrangements and alterations made. Before these laws were in place, I do not think educators could have possibly gained accurate feedback from students that needed accommodations. Assessment and feedback are both extremely important when teaching students in order to know what areas they need further instruction on, and without the laws helping disabled students, as well as the laws ensuring that all schools teach at the same standard, educators may not know how to properly continue learning for their students.
      This relates directly to standard five of the NCTCS, specifically element a which states that "Teachers analyze student learning." In my future classroom, I hope to ensure that all students are assessed fairly and at a high standard in order to gain proper feedback so that I may help students to continue their learning. It is extremely important that I learn how to properly assess my future students based on the federal, state, and local laws and policies.


http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306/
http://idea.ed.gov/http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/accountability/policyoperations/tswd/tswdguide1516.pdf