Becoming American

After watching the Becoming American video I can find some correlation to my family and our ancestors. My heritage is deeply rooted in the Italian culture because I have family from all parts of  Italy. One story in particular that I could connect with was when they were talking about making fun of the Italian's last name, and calling Italians, "eye-talian". My great great grandfather's last name is Butticovoli, and when he came over to America the people at Ellis Island shortened it to Butt. Personally, my last name Fischetti, is often mispronounced and I cannot tell you how many times I have to correct people and how upset I get when someone does mispronounces it.

The fact that between 1820-1924 so many different types of cultures immigrated to America is amazing. Especially when you think about how the immigrants were under the pretense that they could achieve the "American Dream" and turned out that so many of them ended up in tenements and working less then minimum wage and in poor working conditions is hard to conceive. But, during my core class at Molloy (which was called "The American Dream") I had the privilege of visiting the tenement museum in NYC and having a first hand look at that living in this country meant for the immigrants. We were shown documents of people who signed in and they had their stories on display with personal artifacts that were left behind. It is amazing to think that our ENTIRE country's essence was because of families such as those that came over from their homelands to find a better life, one of prosperity and a dream.

A Class Divided

Having watched this video series during my undergraduate career,  I am familiar with the experiment and the results. Having watched it a second time, a year or so later, I have the same view as I did then.

Based on the results of the experiment I believe there was a valuable lesson to be learned and sometimes children need hands on experiences to understand and learn an abstract concept. This experiment addresses racism and prejudice by allowing the students to experience it first hand in an appropriate and safe setting.

I personally would do something like this in my classroom so the students can learn exactly how it feels to be on the other side of fence. Often in classrooms the issue of bullying needs to be addressed especially in the younger grades. Role playing is an effective way for students to act out and see results that they may not have known otherwise; such as a reaction of tears or retaliation instead of just walking away. Several times during my student teaching experience we used role playing to act out scenarios in which abstract concepts such as respect, or tolerance needed to be addressed and this strategy worked well with the students. The experiement is in the same fashion and it could be used with anything; i.e. shirt color, hair color, or even left handed and right handed. The purpose is to have the students understand another persons point of view.

CULTURES CULTURES CULTURES

Where do I begin?

The first video spoke about the importance of education in different cultures and how each culture views education to hold a different level of importance, depending on the culture. The example the video used was if there was a death or a marriage the entire family would attend and if the child missed school then they miss school. As educators we are expected to be accepting of this fact and help the student. I personally believe the opposite. In the educational community of OUR culture, missing school comes with consequences and those consequences should be enforced. Missing school regardless of the reason would result in having to make up the work or be punished for missing class (depending on the circumstance) and that should be how it is. In our culture we take education to be in high regards and I personally believe the more we allow education to become less of an importance the worse off we will be as a culture, nation, and world.

The second and third videos spoke about Manners and body language, and verbal expressions. I believe that it is important to be understanding of what these aspects of society mean to different cultures and embrace them. It is important to understand that the Indian student in our class may not look us in the eyes and we should be accepting of this fact and work with the student to help them realize it is okay to look the teacher in the eye. The whole basis of understanding is tolerance. I believe we should be, as educators tolerant of these differences but at the same time, it is important to educate the student and have the student realize that they are apart of our culture as well. Thus, assimilating to the culture in the classroom, or educational community is important for success. It is important to explain to the student that while it is important for you to keep your cultural values, at other times it is important for the student to assimilate into our culture.