Learning Log

What?

In class today we talked about group differences, moslty culture & ethnic differences (eye contact, wait time, personal space, language & dialect) gender, & SES.

So What?

This is really important because all teachers will face these situations we talked about, all people face situations where these group differences are a factor.

Now What?

In the activity where we shared our assumptions about the kids that we saw on the powerpoint i realized how quick i am to judge and how stereotypical my ideas sometimes are. I need to start working now to change the way i think and to try and stop judging people according to stereotypes.

The discussion in class today was very interesting to me and because I don't want to forget what I was thinking i'm going to write down some of what was running through my mind during class. We were talking about competition and how it will vary from group to group, but competition is also a very individualized trait. Within my family we have so many different types of people. My brother turns everything into a competition, and i hate competition, but have learned to deal with it as i started running. I realized that though i was competeing against myself to become better i wasn't as good as i could be if i had a better competitive edge and pushed myself to beat the girl next to me. I have been able to learn to be competitive and i love it, but only in that aspect of my life. I still don't compete in other areas of my life, i hate doing it becuase i guess that don't want to make anybody feel bad. I don't want to win and make somebody else lose. I don't like people looking at me and saying, "she's smart" or "she always wins" I really don't know why, but i have always hated the stereotype i recieve of being smart because i feel that anybody can be just as smart if they would just work as hard as i do. I understand that people are definitely at different levels, but everybody can improve and can be better and to do this we have to create a competition to be better within ourselves instead of having the competition be between others, where somebody is the 'loser' and somebody is the 'winner.' I probably also feel like this because i have definitely been on both ends of the spectum in my running. I have won races and felt so awesome about myself, but then seen the ohter girls crying & i wish that i could have changed things to make everybody happy, I guess it just comes down to that i'm a pleaser and with most competitions, everybody can't win, and i want to be able to have everybody win and to have everybody feel good about themselves. Now that i realized this about myself, i will definitely be a lot more wary of competition that i do with my class and i will try different motivational techniques instead of pitting students against students.