Sarah Breneman

ELED 310
Dr. Keeler

Five Diversity Events

1. Parent Panel at Waterman Elementary
a. I went to Waterman’s annual diversity parent panel. This parent panel
is put together by parents that volunteer from different classrooms
who did not have the same schooling that their child is having at
Waterman. I listened to two parents on their educational career, the
first parent was from Nepal and has only been in the United States for
five years now and the other parent is a homeschooling mother. These
two parents were very different from one another, which provided
with a broader understanding of the different educational
opportunities that are offered to children around the world. The
parent that had her education done in Nepal is grateful for the
education that her son is gaining at Waterman Elementary, because
she hated school there. School was a dreaded activity that the
students in Nepal didn’t want to go to. There was one teacher per 40
students, and each subject that there was to be taught a different
teacher would come in to teach it. The students were afraid of getting
in trouble at school in Nepal because they believed in physical
punishment. The students looked at school as a chore, instead of a
positive experience giving opportunity to their futures. While the
other parent that I got to listen to was a homeschooling mother to her
5 children. She has now put 4 out of 5 the children into public schools,
because she began to notice that she couldn’t continue trying to find
new ways to describe and review things with the children and they
were getting bored at home. The parent decided to homeschool in
order to keep her children sheltered from the real world a little
longer, and to create a close fit family bond. She is pleased with the
education her children are now getting at Waterman Elementary it
has allowed her to become now just a parent mother role in her
children’s lives rather than also being a teacher role. This experience
at the parent panel opened my mind to several new concepts about
education that I had no knowledge of. It also made me grateful for the
education that I have received because you don’t realize the different
opportunities that are offered to students around the world that are
not as positive and affective as the one I received.
2. Freedom Writers the movie
a. This movie was an eye opening film that brought to my attention a
different side of teaching that I never thought I would see. It made
teaching more real in my eyes through the mindset of not only the
teacher, but also the students. This young Caucasian woman went into
a low-income urban school, which in the eyes of a lot people in society
is unheard of and a waste of time for a teacher like that. I am used to
 people saying the phrase “those who cant, teach.” This phrase is
destroyed in the movie, because it portrayed reverse roles and the
hardships and struggles that teachers face that I believe are not
acknowledged or known by society. The way the students bully and
do not interact with the teacher prove, that it is not only up to the
teacher to have a full impact on the success of students. This film
taught me that there clear path of teaching styles that are put into text
books and lectured continuously to us in college is not always how the
real world works. This woman brought the lifestyle and what
interests the students of her class into the lesson plans that were
required of her to teach to them in order to have them pass. Teaching
goes beyond showing up every day and handing out worksheets,
homework assignments, pop quizzes, and lectures. This movie reveals
how the personable aspect of teaching of getting to know the
background and motivation behind each student correlates with the
success of the classroom. At the end of the movie, the students let the
woman into their lives and meeting her halfway in the classroom by
accepting her approach to them with the new teaching styles that
relate to their lives, and returned the favor by paying attention and
actually trying in the classroom. This movie proved to me that it does
not matter the ethnicities in a classroom, but how the teacher takes
the time to appreciate and acknowledge the lifestyles of each student
in order to accommodate to all of their needs in the classroom for
them to gain respect and trust in that teacher to begin putting in an
effort with their education.
3. Greek Festival in Richmond
a. I attended a Greek festival in Richmond, Virginia this year that was
being held behind a Greek Orthodox Church. The Greek festival
involved food stands of their traditional meals and snacks they eat,
and also had a stage for traditional Greek performances. These Greek
performances involved dancing, traditional outfits, and some shouting
of “opa.” I really enjoyed going to this festival because it pushed me
out of my comfort zone with the typical foods that I eat on an
everyday basis. It made me appreciate more cultures for what they
stand for, and how they are still passionate about their traditional
values and customs to present day. I was surprised to see the turn out
at the festival, when I arrived the place was completely crowded with
wall to wall of people. This surprised me because I had no idea how
popular of an event this festival was, and it also made me feel left out
for not knowing about the festival earlier to be apart with the rest of
the crowd. I really enjoyed experiencing their different meals and
snacks, it brought out taste buds of mine that I had no idea existed.
Being around the atmosphere of food, dancing, music, and a lot of
people did not make me feel out of place or comfortable at all during
the festival. Instead, the atmosphere was very welcoming and made
 everyone who was not part of the Greek Orthodox Church that they
were just for this festival.
4. The movie “Babies” on Netflix
a. This movie called, “Babies,” I had no idea ever existed. It is a movie
with no speech in it at all, but it portrays the life of four babies and
their upbringings from being a new born to one years old all over the
country. The babies were in America, Mongolia, Japan, and Africa. The
power of no speaking in the film portrayed the diversity even more in
my opinion, because all you are observing are pure interactions of a
baby evolving into their culture. The four different cultures surprised
me with the upbringings compared to the American baby, that we
know it by living and being brought up in America. It made me realize
that the American style of upbringing is a lot more sheltered and
monitored than the other three babies. The most surprising
upbringing was the baby that was born and raised in Africa. This baby
was pretty much raised by his siblings it seemed to me, and the
mother only involved herself to bathe him with her saliva and to
breast feed him. The Mongolian baby’s upbringing surprised me
because majority of its time as a new born had him swaddled up in a
blanket with the legs tied together to not have him move around, so
that the parents could do work in the fields. The baby raised in Japan
had the most similarities to the American upbringing, but was not as
controlled or monitored, and displayed how the mother was more
involved than the father with the upbringing of the child. This movie
made me appreciate and understand the different cultures of child
upbringing, and how that there is not one correct way to raise a child
because by the time all four of these babies were one-years-old they
had all developed the same as one another.
5. Madison Equality Presentation in my Alpha Phi Sorority Chapter
a. During chapter for my sorority we had a presentation from Madison
Equality. Madison Equality is an organization that creates a safe space
and provides information to the rest of campus about the LGBTQ+
community at our school. Honestly, I had no idea that this
organization even existed until a representative came into our chapter
to enlighten us about their purpose and what they are striving to
change around on JMU’s campus. This presentation taught me that
diversity goes deeper than just ethnic and cultural differences, but to
include gender and sexual identities. In the presentation, it brought to
my attention that people at JMU are not feeling safe to fully be
themselves, which upset me because I have found my home here at
JMU and have assumed that everyone feels that same way as I do. I
had no idea that with the LGBTQ community, that they have added the
plus sign with that giving more meaning to those individuals to have a
way to label themselves than the traditional labels of either being
homo or heterosexual. I learned through this presentation the
pronouns that people identify themselves, which I also had no idea
existed. The purpose of this presentation for why they presented at
our chapter, was explained to us that they have a goal to meet with
every Greek organization to break down stereotypes and provide the
proper information about the LGBTQ+ community that people, like
myself, are unaware of. From this presentation I have gained a new
perspective of the LGBTQ+ community and want to contribute to their
goals of making everywhere on campus feel like a safe space for all
students to be themselves. Besides the information I have gained
about the community from the presentation, it also taught me that you
can’t tell the feeling of a person based on their facial expression or
participation in life. Instead, one cannot judge or understand the
feelings of every individual, but the purpose of diversity is to respect
and embrace everyone’s diversity. I want to help create safer spaces
around JMU’s campus to help ensure every student feels like home
and happy as I do attending this University.