Diversity in the Classroom-movie reflection

One of the many topics my group is writing about for our presentation is diversity in the classroom. I think having a classroom filled with not only diverse students, but a classroom filled with learning about diverse students and their cultures, is very important in this era. With times changing and history in the making with our new president having an African American background, I think that now more then ever it is important that students are well educated in different backgrounds other then their own.



A couple class periods ago my diverse and exceptional learners class watched the movie "A Class divided." This movie is about a teacher in Riceville Iowa, who studied the effects of segregation and racism on her third grade students in 1970. When Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, the third graders came to class upset and confused. How could their "Hero of the Month" have been murdered? Mrs Elliott wanted to teach her class the meaning of discrimination,and what it really feels like to people. The class was divided into blue eyes, and brown eyes. Mrs Elliott proceeded by telling all the blue eyed people they were smarter then the brown eyed, nicer, neater, and just plain better. The brown eyed students had to wear collars around their neck, not drink out of the drinking fountain, and be last in the lunch line. Whatever they did, their performance was constantly criticised by Elliott. The roles were reversed the second day. The results showed that the students who were seen as inferior performed worse in school. The third grade students turned into nasty machines, yelling insults at each other and only focusing on one difference amongst themselves; the color of their eyes.

After the experiment, the students talked about what it felt like to be treated that way just because of the color of their eyes. One of her students said years later, "You hear these people talking about different people and how they'd like to have them out of the country. And sometimes I just wish I had that collar in my pocket. I could whip it out and put it on and say 'Wear this, and put yourself in their place.' I wish they would go through what I went through."

This lesson taught students that all are equal. In classrooms today, there are other ways of going about teaching this. Today in my group discussion we talked about how it is important to teach a wide range of culture. We shouldn't only use American books, but Indian and Asian as well. We need to make sure our students are introduced to global cultures to make them more well rounded and culturally educated people.