Problem Posing Questions

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The following questions will help you assess your learning of the concepts in this chapter.

This activity contains 2 questions.

You are a Kindergarten teacher, and you notice that two of your students are arguing as they are washing their hands. You go over to intervene and hear a White child telling an African American child that if she just scrubbed harder that her 'dirty' skin would get clean. What do you do?

Privately talk with both children. Then take the opportunity to create curriculum and have conversations about skin color with your students and their families. Scold the White child and send her to 'time out.' Ignore it, because you don't see color and kids just say 'funny'' things.

Racism and discrimination are manifested in schools. Sometimes it is difficult to separate what is racist or discriminatory from what appear to be neutral school policies, practices or behaviors of individual teachers (p. 70). In the study cited by Ray McDermott, Black children had to try three times harder to catch the teacher's eye for signs of approval, affection and encouragement than their White or light skinned classmates. What can teachers do with this information?

Some teachers may invite a colleague to videotape or document the pattern of attention that the teacher pays to all children in the classroom. This teacher could then critically analyze his/her unconscious patterns for potential bias and change his/her patterns of attention accordingly. Teachers could decide to focus the majority of their attention on children of color. Calling on them or singling them out three times as much as their White classmates. Some teachers may disregard this information because there is no concrete evidence that racism is occurring.

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