Reflecting back on last Tuesday’s seminar, it is important to realise that it’s not only resources that can be unequal in society. When it comes to being a teacher, there are a number of inequalities that exist within society and they can be a variation of economic, social and political.
For the seminar I was in a group where we had loads of resources – almost too many – and we didn’t quite know what to do with them! Looking back on it now, I was completely oblivious to the other group’s resources as I just assumed that they all had the same as we did – this turned out to not be the case.
When you are teaching lessons, for example a lesson about the children’s home life, you will need to make sure that you are sensitive to their situations and how each individual feels about because no matter how old they are they will all have encountered their own individual experiences.
In a school setting all children constantly compare themselves to the other people in their class – whether it’s to do with clothes, bags, shoes, food, juice bottles, money or just how they behave – it is a constant cycle of kids lacking self confidence because they compare their own situation to that of someone else. However, as a teacher it is our job to remind the kids that each child is a unique individual with their own story as to how they got where they are today and it is important that not only teachers recognise and acknowledge this, but reinforce this message so that the children do too.
As a future teacher, it is important to realise that even if you think everybody has the same “resources” as you ,but this, actually isn’t always true.
