SOP-111: Building Cultural Responsiveness

This is an essay I wrote for my Relay course in Building Cultural Responsiveness. It's pretty cheesy, but interesting nonetheless.                                  If I were to choose the two identity markers that are most meaningful to me, they would be female and Jewish. Identity markers are categories used to define a person. They can include age, ethnicity, language, class, age, gender, region, race, and sexuality.                 First, I am female. This is important to me because it defines the way I live my life and challenge myself. Every day I live my life with the understanding that I am expected, by myself and by society, to one day create children with my own body. While I don't limit my professional choices because I am female, I have made decisions based on my goal of one day raising a family. I am fortunate to have found a career that is suitable for having a family, although I plan to stay with it because I love it. Perhaps if I didn't love my career so much, I might have considered a career that involves more education and less flexibility, like medicine, but I love teaching, so I don't have to worry about that. I am aware, though, that as a female, social expectations are different than they would be if I were male. It did not go unnoticed that I was one of the few women to receive a Master of Science degree at Brown in 2010, while the Master of Arts degree ceremony showed the opposite gender ratio. During my brief career in research, I discovered that the majority of scientists are male, and that there are higher standards and lower expectations for females, especially when it comes to running a lab and publishing work in a peer-reviewed journal. If I had chosen that career path for my future, I certainly would have faced obstacles. However, I hope I would have noticed the obstacles and worked harder to overcome them, as I have done in the past.                 Secondly, and equally importantly, I am Jewish. As a person who fights harder when challenged, I take pride in my family’s ability to survive in the face of adversity. When I struggle at work, I think of the strength my grandfather must have shown, not only when he survived the Holocaust in Poland, but also when he sailed over to the United States with very little money and eventually built up his business through hard work and dedication. I am proud of everything my family has provided, and feel obligated to succeed on my own in a way that both makes me happy and gives back to the community. Throughout my Jewish education, both at home and at countless hours of Jewish after school programs, I feel that I have been taught well how to work hard and to care for others. These are the parts of my identity that are most significant.

                Data from the 2010 US Census make it clear just how different my background is from that of my students. In my hometown of Roslyn, New York, 3613 out of 3935 identify as white alone, which is 91.8%. 307, or 0.078% identify as Asian alone, 14 identify as 2 or more races, and 1 identifies as black or African American alone. The margin of error is greater than the actual values for 2 or more races and black or African American. Conversely, in my students’ neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, 3240 out of 3588 identify as black or African American alone, which makes up 90.1%. Another 7.5% identify as white alone. This shows that the racial makeup of Roslyn is almost entirely different than that of Newark. Whereas my hometown is mostly white, with a small Asian population, according to my Newark school’s website, “nearly all” students “are students of color”. This means that I will look different than nearly every single one of my students. Additionally, according to the excerpt Tatum’s book, my students will know a lot more about my race due to the overwhelming portrayal of the dominant race in popular media, whereas I will not know as much about them.

                A similar disparity occurs in median family income. In Roslyn, median family income is $214,614. In Newark, it is $31,022. This describes a difference in access to food, clothing, health care, and child care. This means that my childhood differed from most of my students, in that I had access to anything I needed, and could get new clothes when I wanted. My students may or may not have that privilege. I was also lucky to never worry about health care, and to have my mother home much of the day to take care of me. My students may not have parents home to help with homework, may not have access to plentiful healthy food, and may not have regular access to health care.

                Although the 2010 US Census does not show any points of convergence in racial diversity, economic status, age distribution, housing, transportation, and employment, there are certainly convergences. We both have access to the same popular media, which provide stereotypes and expectations. Additionally, we both live in a very segregated area of the country, in which people of color live in struggling urban areas, while white people live in more affluent suburbs. My students and I may have similar racial biases and expectations, despite the drastically different environments in which we grew up. Lastly, as in most populations, I can relate to the female half in that we share similar physical and social experiences.

                I would like to think that I am a perfectly unbiased teacher and person, but I know that this is practically impossible. According to Aronson, “It would be absurd for teachers to pretend not to see a student’s race or ethnicity.” If I were to describe my bias, it would be that I walk into a minority school and see students who need my help. Of course, this is an oversimplification. In my school, just like in any other school in the country, there are students who would benefit from my help, but also students who are capable of success on their own, due to their background or upbringing. The best solution to avoid succumbing to my biases, according to Aronson, is to “form and maintain trusting relationships, seeing and treating one another as individuals, rather than reducing one another to the social categories to which we belong”.

                 Forming relationships is a weakness of mine; I tend to get so caught up in planning, grading, data, and classroom management that I forget to see my students as individuals with individual needs, desires, strengths  and weaknesses. This is something I have to work on. It is a personal goal of mine this year that I will always seek out the student first. if a student has shown a success or is acting defiant, I will speak to the student. I will ask the student what is wrong; i will not tell the student what is wrong (of course, after applying the appropriate consequence). I will ask the student before asking a colleague, a dean, or the student's parent. In order to constantly move past my biases, and to see students as individuals with varied backgrounds and beliefs, I need to look past them as parts of a class or parts of a data set, and get to know each one as an individual.

To end this with a student, I will post a list of questions I came up with during the assignment. I didn't actually ask them, but I did want to. Sometimes I miss being a high school student.

Should we organize it into standard essay format, with introduction, bodies, and conclusion? Or organize by topic/assignment?

Mr. V (the head of the program, and founder of North Star/Uncommon), what is your personal opinion on the Oxford comma (which should, in my opinion, be on the major list of identity markers)?

Do you mean 2-4 pages standard margins, or 2-4 pages on the template?

Which font do you prefer?


I spent an hour searching the 2010 US Census for "points of convergence" between my students and me. There are none. Literally, none.