Teaching Diverse Populations: Introduction and Reflection

Hello all,

I am Christina and just started this Masters of Education program at UMASS Lowell.  My journey to teaching has evolved over time.  I graduated in 2005 with an undergraduate degree in biology and a minor in psychology from Houghton College (a small college in western New York.)  From there, I entered a Masters in Counseling program at Lesley University.  This program is unique in that when I graduated, I was not only qualified to do mental health counseling, but also had (have) a license for grades 5-12 guidance counseling.  I had to do two internships there, and one of them was at the Haverhill High School Guidance Department.  When I graduated from Lesley, I desperately tried to find a job as a guidance counselor, but nothing panned out for me.  I ended up accepting a job in the mental health side of my degree - at a psychiatric day treatment program for adults with chronic mental illness.  Even though I absolutely loved working in a school, I was content enough to work with this population, since chronic mental illness was another area of interest for me.  Every day I run 4 psychiatric and psychoeducation groups and have a caseload of 16 clients.  Even though I am a counselor currently, there are many aspects of my job that are like teaching, and it is these aspects that have been a part of my journey toward UMASS Lowell.  I have been reminded of how exciting it is to help people see their life and the world in new ways.  It is immensely rewarding to explain something to someone in a way that, finally, they can make sense of it. 

In my graduate studies at Lesley, we had the "counseling version" of this class, which was called "Power, Privilege, and Oppression."  I am looking forward to expanding what I learned in that class with what I will come to learn in Teaching Diverse Populations.  One of the most valuable things I learned in PPO at Lesley is to let the client (or perhaps, student?) be the expert in their experience.  Yes, it is very important to be informed about social issues, the impact of the "isms," and challenge your own preconceived notions about different groups of people. However at the end of the day, I believe it's the individual person who should be telling you who they are, both ethnically and otherwise.  This is comforting news because you don't have to feel as though you have to learn everything about every racial or ethnic group. 

The article in this week's readings that had the biggest emotional impact on me is MIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack." In fact, I have the vague feeling that I may have read this piece before at Lesley.  In any case, this article is a reminder that in order to be multiculturally competent, a person can not ignore the factors that give them privilege.  To be multiculturally competent and have white privilege gives me immense responsibility.  It's easy to have a sense of guilt that I have these "unearned" privileges and they help me more easily navigate the world in ways that I may not even have considered.  For example, as McIntosh describes, walking into a classroom at graduate school and not having to worry about whether or not I will stand out as different.  Acknoweldging this unearned white privilege is difficult, but there is no denying it's presence.  I hope that as I transition to educator, I can continue to work on using this power for positive influence in my future school. 

Futhermore, I hope to be a "Type III" teacher as described by Hollins in "Ethnic and Racial Identity and Teaching."  I want to have enough "cultural knowledge to understand the relationship between the students' home culture and how they learn in school." (Hollins, pg. 190)  I also want all students to feel "comfortable and supported" (Hollins, pg. 191) in my classroom.  My concern is that this will be hard to maintain as I become settled into my classroom and school.  As a mental health counselor in my fourth year, I understand what it means to become "desensitized" and "burnt out."  This is something I attempt to fight against every day, and yet there are days when people get to me.  In this position, I am becoming desensitized to certain diagnoses, not racial groups, but the effect is the same.  It's so easy to generalize about particular groups of people and miss the individual person, particularly when you lose your idealistic new graduate energy. From this experience, I know that it will take effort to not become desensitized or burnt out as a teacher as well.