Angel Doughty

Culture and Inclusion

Essay week 2
November 27, 2015

Cultural Awareness
I feel like I have a broad view of culture because of the experiences I have
had in my life. I was in the military. I served my country with people of all races and
cultures. I have been exposed to many people and many places. As a teacher and
now an administrator, I have continued my exposure to all of the people in the areas
where I have lived. I define the idea of culture as including everyone (including their
beliefs) in my life. I know that my view as a white upper-middle class woman is
skewed, but it is the only view I am capable of having. I do not think differently of a
person because of their sexuality or religious beliefs. I embrace that and want to
learn from them. I ask dumb and often probing questions because of that. I teach
my children, at home and at school, to embrace the differences that we all share
because it is important. It is what made this country what it is today.
I worked with a teacher who I knew was gay, but very few others did. He
waited until his retirement party to come out to everyone. I asked him why he
waited and he said he didnt want it alter what the others thought about him. To me,
I couldnt understand this thinking. I didnt think of him any differently, so in my
mind, why should anyone else? After his party, this became the discussion in all of
the break rooms. This was someone who some people had worked with for over 20
years. Why should this become the discussion. When I asked that question, one of
the men said, Well, youve been in the military, you have a different view of
people. Why should my view be different just because I accept someone for who
they are? He was afraid that his colleagues would view him differently, and his
families as well. This cultural view of fear is one that we need to educate about.
With so many of our students struggling with identity and gender issues, I feel that
he would have had a perspective of acceptance that couldve been shared.
The age old question of how to teach culturally different students is one that
is of growing concern. I had a family decline to enroll their children in my school
because there werent any teachers that looked like them. For this family, the
question of how their children would be taught is a very real consideration when
choosing education for their family. I dont know the reason why most educators are
white. I wish I did know. During my administrative internships, I looked in to how to
recruit and retain teachers of color. The school I was working in had 1200 6-8 th
grade students. The school was approximately 23% non-white. There were 72 staff
members and all of them were white. I asked the question of why arent we going to
the predominantly black colleges to recruit teachers? I was living in Minnesota at
the time, and my school mirrored most of the schools in the state, including the
inner city schools of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The difficulty in recruiting doesnt lie

in how to get them to our schools, thats the easy part. The difficulty lies in how do
we keep them. We would be asking them to uproot their lives and become socially
isolated without the help and support of their identifying culture. So, until we can
find a way to put supports for all cultures in place, we will continue to struggle with
inclusion of culture in our schools.