Running head: CULTURE REPORT 1

Jami Miller

Teaching People of other Cultures / ENGL 4723

Ms. Donna Ogle

Arkansas Tech University

13 March 2019
CULTURE REPORT 2

African Americans

Throughout this course I felt as if the African American culture was one that had more of

a lack in the education field than others. This culture is also one that I feel more desired to want

to focus on and further the better for it. Throughout this paper I want to try and focus it more

between a student and an educator perspective. I have said this phrase a million times throughout

this course and I will continue to stick to it, “The student’s education is far more important than

the culture background they come from”. African American tend to come from a background

with some to none English language around, which then leads them to some struggle when

stepping in to an educational area like school. The focus for an educator is to use everything they

can to do better and help the students to complete success. Through the reading in week five

about African Americans it goes into saying that the success and achievement gap that this

culture has does not just affect the people but the entire community and culture as well. This

goes onto saying that the performance in school take away future opportunities from African

American’s because their educational achievement is substantial from other culture groups. To

help understand how the education achievement is not up where other culture groups are in this

area, it states in the reading that African American children test scores or lower than Asian, white

and Latino students, which tends to lead them to drop out or fail classes in their adolescent years.

Since this is the major issue from the African American culture it can tend to break down the

education success for them. Barriers are put up from these students because of their culture

background and lack of education success. These students struggle the most because as they

grow up in their early on developing stages they do not always have the learning environment

that is school related language and skill that they need to be success and to growth through their

development learning stages. I am not saying that African Americans do not learn because they
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do, they do in their culture form but they do not get the correct fundamentals and environments

that they would need to be able to take on skills such as literacy in English, math or science. The

education development and culture is not the only cause of African American’s not doing well in

school. Since there is a lot more poverty and unstable home lives from this culture area and

students tend to not get the extra amount of stability and guidance that they truly need to face

adversity and the demands that schools put forth. With all of this being said, there are a lot of

barriers that students from this culture background face as they enter into the education field and

it tends to get more and more difficult. I only say that is gets more difficult because as I talked

with another classmate about this culture background, she processed that say that she was one of

the students that still continues to struggle in school, even in high school and even though she

was getting some help, she needed more but there wasn’t more help for her. This then leads to

me saying that this is where the school system needs to step up and do what is needed for these

students. African American students need educator to look at them like they are normal and no

different than any other student in the classroom. If the student needs more focus in areas for

them to learn and develop I feel like this is where the educator learns to expand its vocabulary to

get to the level that the African American needs it to. African American come from a background

where English is not the fluent language and even at times, never spoken at home. This then

means that they do not know English and sometimes it is harder for them to develop the skills to

learn it. In a classroom setting if the classroom is not all culture background friendly, a student

from a different culture like African American, they can tend to feel uncomfortable and

unwelcomed to be in the classroom. As well if maybe the curriculum does not talk any about the

African American culture in a natural way, the students can feel out of place. This can lead to

back behavior, no comfort zones and for the students to instantly not do well in school. The focus
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should be on the students doing well in school. Another thing is that the educator needs to have

an open mind and have open hearts and warms to all backgrounds no matter what their own

beliefs are. It is important to build comfortable relationships beyond the classroom so that

everyone feels accepted and comfortable to learn amongst each other. African American tend to

struggle more in school and education and a classroom setting can be challenging for them but it

can all stop with the educator taking a stand and be that help that they need to be successful.