At the school that I am doing my practicum in Block I something has been on my mind since day one. I prefer not to say what school and classroom that I am in for personal reasons and not to offend anyone that may or may not be able to read this. The teacher that I am helping in class has the children separated by race. All of the white children are sitting beside each other, the hispanic children are together, and the african american children are together. I have not had the nerve to ask the teacher why she has her classroom set up like this but to me I feel as if this is wrong because to me the classroom looks segragated and at the school that I am working at there are a lot of hispanics so it is evident that about half the class is hispanic and half is white and you can tell they are separated. I do not want to judge the teachers actions as wrong because she may want them together because they speak little english and they can help each other. I just wanted to know someone else's opinion on this subject, that is why I am posting. If anyone has any ideas on how me and my practicum partner could address this in a non threatening or judgemental way to our advising teaching please let me know!

Honestly I am glad you posted this... no suprise for me and race topics but anyways.. I am sure this teacher thinks she is doing the kids a favor by placing them around kids they would be most comfortable with. I haven't personally worked with the woman so I dont know her true intentions behind her seating arrangement. You could ask her in a way where you have a question on how she does her seating chart so you have a better understanding so you can have a heads up when you start teaching. For instance does she sit a quiet kid next to a talkative child. Btw that doesn't work... I always got the quiet kids to talk ... I hope this helps a little bit.

OK, this infuriates me!!! This teacher should have excellent reasons for arranging her classroom this way! Does she teach each group individually? I do not understand why she would "segregate" her classroom. The students have to feel even more "different" because the of the way she has them arranged according to color-they are not a box of crayons!!!

These students need to be mixed and to be interactive with each other. The hispanic children need to be around all races, and the black children do not need to feel singled out either. This reminds me of the exercise we did this semester with the "rich" kids down to the poverty kids-is this what she is doing-showing the upper class as the white kids?

Now that I have vented, I would ask her how she came upon this particular seating arrangement as it is one you hadn't thought of. This would open the discussion up. I realize that you are assisting her, but if you feel this has anything to do with racial discrimination, then you need to tell the proper people. This is not fair to the children. Let us know what happens!!

Wow I am shocked. I would have never thought that this was still an issue today. It amazes me that this teacher would make this public. She is clearly speaking out for segregation, which we (in this day in age) dont speak of in present tense. However, I am with you. It would be hard to ask or say something to the teacher in fear of offending her. Thats a hard one, and I can't say that I wouldn't be flabergasted by that arrangement of the classroom either. I know that I would never do such a thing, for I would feel that everyone would think wrong of me. That teacher is brave if you ask me, but she must have some good reason. Keep us posted!

I would think that unless the students are grouped together for the purpose of helping each other with English as you suggested, this is not a healthy situation. Even if the excuse is the language difference, I view that as an even better reason to mix up the seating. By placing the children with whites and hispanics side by side, they could help each other and probably accelerate their learning. I think that maybe a better solution would be to place two hispanic children side by side, and then two white children. This mixes the children together, but still allows the hispanic children to be near one other child that they more easily relate to.
I think it would be perfectly fine to ask the teacher what her reasoning is behind the seating arrangement. As long as it is asked in a way that does not sound like you are accusing her of anything, there should be no problem. In this kind of situation, I would probably question the arrangement in a way that made it sound like I don't even understand that this is a segregation issue; rather make it seem as if I were genuinely interested in how she picks the best seating arrangement for her classes.

The first question that popped into my mind was, “What are we teaching our students about accepting people of different color if a teacher segregates students by race in his/her classroom?â€

I completely agree with everyone. This is absolutely outrageous. Even if the students are arranged due to language difficulties, that is not a good excuse. The teacher should bother to take the time to learn a few common spanish words to get her points across. The students that understand are going to get more and more behind because they will spend at least half of their time trying to translate. If it has nothing to do with language, then there is absolutely no excuse in my eyes. Even if you're teaching classification and sorting, that's highly inappropriate. The children should not be segregated. If the seats happen to be chosen by the students, then the teacher should intervene. There is a tendency to want to be near those most like you, but they need to have the experience of being around new and different people.

I agree with what everyone is saying. I am shocked that a teacher would place students in a seating arrangement by their race. Teachers should be teaching diversity and having students embrace each others differences, not separate them because they are different. How are we going to teach students to be accepting of one another in this type of environment? I hope this teacher has a reason for seating this students the way she did, otherwise it is detrimental to the students.

This is outrageous!!! I agree with everyone so far and how this does not seem fair to the students. If language is an issue then I think it would be beneficial for the hispanic students to be around white students to learn more English and the white children can possibly learn more Spanish. I do not see how segregating the children can be conducive to their learning environment.
I do not know how to go about asking your teacher about her arrangement. Maybe you can say something like you like the way her classroom is arranged and ask her how she came up with her idea. Or you can ask her if she ever changes her seating arrangement throughout the year.

Wow...bad idea. So i'm sure the students have noticed this and I wonder what they think? I'm sure they are a little bewildered as the what the heck is going on. First off, it's a little embarassing to separate people based on their race like that. How awkward to sit at a table that your fellow peers consider the "black kids table" or the "white kids table." I can't believe she is doing this and I'm in shock that the Principal hasn't done anything. She must have a damn good reason because I don't have a clue. I agree with Eva on how to ask her with the questions on seating arrangement.

This really irritates me. Has this teacher ever heard of teaching children diversity? All I have to say on this topic is that I think it is crazy!

This is insane. I think that if i were sitting in this classroom, I would have to ask the teacher what she was doing this for....what is this teaching the students about color? what are they going to be like when they get older if all they know now, is that they are separated by color. I would really like to hear this teachers rationale behind this.

WOW that makes me mad!!!!! Honestly, if I was in there I know I would go up to her and ask as politely as I could why she has her students arranged like that. Since were in block learning why not? "I have never seen a class separated like this before and I was wondering why."

I think that you should ask the teacher. I immediately want to jump to conclusions, but maybe there is some new theory or study she is thinking about that is supposed to be beneficial to the classroom. It would be very interesting to hear her answer, and not to mention if she is just blatantly racist or ignorant she needs to be better informed. I do not think that we should ever be afraid to question people unbiased. we must remember that we as teachers, have some psychology background aiding in our understanding of people. Once we understand people better we can help them better. Thanks for posting this. I really want to know what she says if you ask.