Our students will come from a variety of cultural and social backgrounds that may or may not be apparent to the teacher at first glance. As a teacher, it is important to be aware of the cultural and social backgrounds of your students so you can present content in a sensitive way to the culture. This would be apparent in a history class, but what if you have a Math or Science class? It's just as important to be respectful and aware of students' cultural histories in these classes because it affects the classroom dynamic and in some cases, affects their performance (for example, Native Americans experienced trauma in residential boarding schools and this affects their sense of trust in the school system today and ability to perform with nearly a century of abuse by the U.S. government.)
Below is a video I watched about Japanese Internment camps. In college, one of my Chinese friends was badgered in a restaurant by a older Caucasian man who said snarled at her and called her a derogatory term for Korean. She corrected him but we left the restaurant anyways. The man was assigning his own personal anger to my friend who had nothing to do with his situation. I could see how these sorts of tensions could play out in a classroom in a similar way. A student can overhear a parent or grandparent making racial remarks and that transfers into the classroom in a dramatic and negative way, both latent and sometimes more obvious.
Personally, I had visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii and had heard stories from my Grandpa about being a pilot in WWII. I only heard one side of how the Japanese military attacked an killed U.S. soldiers. We did briefly review the Japanese Internment camps in high school history class, but there was still a lot I did not know. This video highlights some of the aspects pretty well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTV-WNNouws
What strikes me in this video is the pictures with the small children eating at the tables inside the camp. How would you even take care of a family through all of this when you have no sense of home or safety? The images of the family standing next to the smashed store windows of their business saying, "NO JAPS WANTED" is startling. I also noticed the sign outside the internment camp, the "War Reeducation Center." Anytime you attach "Re" to "Education," it can't be good. After this video was over, another video followed was a video with U.S. Propaganda about the reason the Japanese internment camps were started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OiPldKsM5w&t=103s
The government official in the video ways that the west coast of California was deemed a potential war zone with 1/3 aliens and 2/3 Japanese citizens. The official stated this was potentially dangerous to allow Japanese forces to invade us so they were moved. This is eerily similar to today's statements from our administration as to why we can't allow Muslims into our country as legal immigrants.
I should also point out, that I would not have ever seen either of these videos if it weren't for YouTube. The historical content that we have available here is incredible! So, as an educator, I am grateful for YouTube, despite my previous position of being annoyed by it.
I should also point out, that I would not have ever seen either of these videos if it weren't for YouTube. The historical content that we have available here is incredible! So, as an educator, I am grateful for YouTube, despite my previous position of being annoyed by it.
It's important, no matter what subject we teach, to be aware of the political and social environment we are teaching in. Tensions may be hidden or very apparent, so it is important as a teacher that we listen, stay neutral, and do our best to remove the political and cultural barriers that may impede our students' learning in our classrooms.
