After a recent lawsuit put upon Durham Public Schools, cultural sensitivity and diversity are the buzz words. This is interesting because diversity has been a huge aspect of Durham for as long as I've been living here, which is all my life, folks. Yesterday, I was privy to a very "barely scraping at the surface" cultural sensitivity and diversity training which I am later to turn around and present to my fellow teachers. OK, I can do that.
The take away point from this thing was that we all need to be aware of cultural differences when working with people from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Misconceptions and communication breakdowns are the status quo when you have teachers who get angry when students don't make eye contact with them while they're chewing them out and students who's cultural beliefs state that making eye contact with an adult is a sign of disrespect. Or students who aren't coming to school because they are at home taking care of younger brothers and sisters which to us seems like a reason to call DSS but in their culture it's just normal. These are just a couple of examples of the many misunderstandings that can and have happened.
So, we're supposed to just be aware and understanding of cultural differences That's great, but what happens when it's part of your culture to be a bigot or a racist? Am I supposed to be sensitive to that? Does it make me wrong to try to change your culture by educating you about cultural sensitivity?
How does merely being aware really change paradigms and practices? I feel like we've been aware for a very long time and things are still the same. So, what to do?
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