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 class status in classrooms 
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I started thinking about what we discussed in class today and what the movie was portraying. I started wondering as a teacher how would I handle class status in my classroom. Little kids like kindergartens and first graders never pay attention to what class status a student is. The only thing they care about is getting other kids to play with them. However, the older the kid gets the more influences it gets from friends, family on how they should act or who they should hang out with. As a teacher we will have to face this separation in our classroom. I guess what I am trying to say is students will know who’s the low class or as they would say the nobodies, or the high class students known as preps. So what would you say to your students to make them understand no matter what our class status is we are all the same? All of these labels or stereotypes we put on people is wrong. Actually if you get really techniqual about it our DNA between people are basically the same, actually 99.5 percent the same. Think about it, the only thing that makes you different from someone else is .50 percent. However, this .50 percent consists of a lot of things like class status, race, your morals etc. These things are what make us different.

So how would you handle class status in your classroom?

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Christin Peterson


Tue Sep 12, 2006 3:19 pm
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I feel like this is a situation that you have to start handling in Kindergarten. In order for middle schoolers and high schoolers to realize everyone is equal you have to start teaching them this in Kindergarten. We have to make it a point to teach multicultural activities and do activities to help them identify with everyone in the classroom. Basically my point is that you must start at the beginning!!!

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Courtney N. Cox


Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:59 pm
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I definitely agree with Courtney that we should begin teaching equality in Kindergarten. I think that this is easier said than done, but it should be something that we strive for as teachers. One of the factors that make this so hard is that by the time they reach school, they have already picked up on their personal “statusâ€

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Anna


Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:05 pm
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I think it is very important to teach equality in schools, but like Anna said it's easier said than done. No matter how hard we try as teachers to educate children in this, it's impossible to say that the same teaching is going on in their home. I think one of the hardest things a teacher has to deal with is the parents, but I do think we should stress to our students the importance of equality, and what they take from it is up to them

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Emerald Johnson


Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:47 pm
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This summer I was a part time nanny for a family with three kids, ages 4, 8 and 11. I had my hands full the 4 and 8 year old were both girls. I was very surprised with some of the things they had said. The would talk about house sizes ones they liked and didn't like, body image, just things that children that age shouldn't even be thinking about. The family that I was a nanny for were upper class but still I didn't realize that the realization of class started so young, 4 years old. I tried to explain many times that it wasn't the things you had or the way you looked it was what is on the inside. THis is tough and the parents have a lot to do with it and it is really a hard thing because that is how America is divided and we have to truly do something to try to break this way of life.

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Traci Miodusewski :)


Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:06 am
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Just a thought; Students in our future schools and classrooms will create there own environment. They will determine their own class system. We as teachers are not part of that system yet we deal with its affects. I was an outcast in school because I liked to answer questions. If a teacher ever tried to intervene on my behalf it only made the problem worse. I think that bereaving that we can directly change the social structure in a school or classroom is a little naive. What we do need to try and foster is an environment where students respect knowledge and understanding and hold them as laudable goals.

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"I Never Let My School'n get in the way of my Education"


Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:47 am
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I agree with everyone that equality should begin when the children are in elementary school/kindergarden. Where I am from, like I have said, is mainly middle/lower class with a few rich people. When I was in school, it was never really who had money, it was the families that were well known. The only people that ever made the sports team were the "Halls, Burlesons, Buchanans, etc." and these were always the people that everyone wanted to be like. I used to hang out with all these people and I used to take offense when I heard someone say "its because she is a Buchanan". It was not because these people had money, they just had a well-known last name. I think that teaching equality should consist of more than just social class within our schools!

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Ashley Dawn Gentry


Thu Sep 14, 2006 11:04 am
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Cliques in Schools -

Kids will always fall in and out of cliques as they try to find their own identity. Most cliques start forming in 4th and 5th grade (upper elementary), which continues to high school. Kids often attach group distinctions by the music they listen to, the fashions they wear, ethnicity, gender, intellectual ability, and/or family background. However, the younger children don’t see the diversity (younger elementary). To them, the entire class is a group. But older kids see differences in their classmates, and actively seek friendships with those most like themselves.

These days, elementary schools play an active role in teaching children the problem-solving skills they need to navigate the social seas. Some schools rely on school counselors to educate students. The counselors make periodic classroom visits and conducts mini-lessons on everything from bullying to peer pressure, handling disappointment, and what it means to be a friend. If necessary, counselors can pull out small groups of children to help negotiate differences. I believe that this will promote kindness, cooperation, gain confidence, and communication.

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Melissa Venant


Fri Sep 15, 2006 11:52 am
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Derrick and Melissa make the most complelling replies for me.

Derrick brought up classroom environments as a dynamic of students. A classroom is not divested of the external, social world where students learn to discriminate by immitating their parents or peers, however, I -- as the conciencious teacher -- can nuture a classroom aura that is an outlet for discriminatory stress and a haven for equality. Classroom management probably has methods describing how teachers nuture such an outlet and haven.

Melissa opened up sociology and its pertienance to the social/class wars. We are like students; we befriend some people but not others. Perhaps the number of friends is limited by one's time and energy -- where one cannot be friends with everyone in the physical sense, or it is arbitrarily limited by us -- in the social sense. It is far too easy for me to say that I am not prejudice, but I believe admitting my prejudices allows me to confront them. This ability to judge myself is more difficult than my ability to judge others because I am caught up, so to say, in believing that I am not prejudiced. I believe Jesus of Nazerene said something about a spec in someone else's eye while a beam is in mine, so how could I fairly see that spec? (Luke 6) So I tend to reflect on my preferences and this self-judging opens up the realization that other people, like students, might be assuming similar things.

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Justin Pittman


Mon Sep 18, 2006 8:19 pm
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