This week, I was placed in a grade 4/5 classroom. For the first time, the teacher I was placed with actually asked us for help. She had me and the other university student with me take a few of the kids to read in the hallways. I think this was a great way to show inclusion for some of their students. The teacher knew she had a few students who had problems focusing in the classroom, or needed a bit of extra help reading. By taking them out of the class, pairing them up with people to keep them in check, and lowering the amount of distractions for them to help them focus. This all worked great to keep these students on track, to help them learn. The next class, she noticed she had a few kids behind on the assignment. It was to make a poster about an animal of their choice. She saw that some of these kids were struggling getting words onto the page, and had us take a small group to the library to work through the assignment with them. Honestly, I had a lot of fun suggesting different weird animals I knew about, like wombats or okapis, to give them something interesting enough that they wanted to research about them.
Throughout the room itself, I saw a plenty of posters promoting diversity and gender identity inclusion. The teacher had a pride flag hung up as well. This is something I didn’t really see in my school until I was in about 7th grade. My school didn’t really talk about gender diversity until I was in high school. I think a huge part of this was due to our principle at the time being gay. I think its great to see poster up these days about accepting and protecting peoples gender identity and sexuality at such young ages. I personally come from a small town, which unfortunately means I’ve had to deal with plenty of people who aren’t as accepting of people in the LGBT community, or from other cultures. Its sad, really. I think the best way to solve these issues is to educate the younger generations properly, and that’s what I see more and more of in todays schools. Its a great thing to see.