Final Blog Post: Reflection

Throughout this class, I have learned so much about diversity and multiculturalism. It has been great and I feel that I have gained so much out of it. At the beginning of the semester, I knew that I should expect to be reading children’s literature and that I would somehow be analyzing it. I figured that it would be a lot like TE 348. It was actually quite a bit different from TE 348. In TE 448 we focused on all types of underrepresented groups in the United States in children’s books. We learned to ask questions about these books and had a lot of discussion around these topics.
I am a special education major, so the week that we discussed Al Capone Does My Shirts and the articles that went along with that topic on disabilities, I felt that I had more to contribute to the discussion because I had so much more knowledge about disabilities especially in the classroom. I also felt that I had a lot to learn about disabilities being represented in children’s literature. I enjoyed discussing this book and was able to write my questioning the text paper on this book. I found the articles to be interesting and am happy to be doing my final project on children’s literature and disabilities. I have found something from this class that relates to something in my life that I can connect with and take with me in my future. This class has been of great importance to my future career as a teacher and more importantly a special education teacher.
I feel that I am a little bit more competent in many areas of diversity and can take much of this information with me in my future. I have more resources to go to and I feel as though I will better know how to find children’s literature that is good and useful when teaching children about diversity and other issues along with that. I feel that there is so much more information out there for us teachers to view and to read about diversity. We need all of the information that we can have in order to be successful in the future. I will continue to learn about these topics and from this class I have opened up to new ideas and I have overcome many stereotypes that I have had about different cultures. I hope to be a good educator and open up children’s minds to issues of diversity. I feel that I will find it easier to select the proper literature for my classroom when dealing with diversity. I have gained a lot more insight into these issues on diversity from this class and hope to continue learning about them. I have enjoyed this class very much and I am happy that I was given the opportunity to take it.