Teaching tolerance and respect in the classroom (blog post #3)

In class this week we learned about how to incorporate LGBTQ literature into our classrooms and how to make these students feel included and confortable in their school environment.

Monday’s class made me think back to my days in the pubic school system and I remembered that it was not very fun for me. My teachers after I moved to the west side of town in 4^th grade were not very accepting of my odd personality and they ignored my problems that I was having when it came to other students bullying me.

I never want to be that teacher that brushes those things under the rug because that causes students to hide their problems and let them build up inside of them. Nothing good ever comes from keeping harmful things to yourself.

It is really interesting to see that not even 4 years ago I was in high school and there were no traces of young adult literature in the class room besides maybe a few books on a teacher’s shelf that they wouldn't even let you read for an independent reading project because YA lit was “not scholarly enough” in most cases. Now is 4 years later and it is being incorporated into English curriculums at so many schools and that is awesome. Young adult literature is an easy way to learn about different perspectives and lifestyles because it is written in a way that isn’t intimidating and students relate to YAL books and get into them more than they do when reading the classics (even though they are still extremely important to teach in my opinion).

In my future classroom I plan on having many YAL books on my personal bookshelf. I also think that it would be a fun idea to make a packet of YAL book previews for my students and hand it out at the beginning on the year for them to have as a resource. I might book talk a number of YAL books (some having LGBTQ content) and have students vote on which one that they would want to read as a class if I ever got the opportunity to do something like that. I definitely will do literature circles in my classes and LGBTQ YAL books will be options for those.

In my future classroom, I will always try and have books that contain different perspectives and lifestyles available to my students because reading books that you can relate to helps students to not feel alone and reading about people who are different from you teaches you how to appreciate other perspectives, lifestyles, and cultures. If students become tolerant and appreciative of all kinds of backgrounds, then they are less likely to bully people because they are different from them and they will, in turn, stand up for their peers when they get bullied.

Teaching tolerance and respect is extremely important in my opinion. I will teach my students that they do not have to agree with everything that they read and everything that people say, but they will be expected to respect different opinions because it is the appropriate and mature thing to do.

I plan on letting my students know on the first day of class that my room is a safe place for every one of my students to express themselves, and that bullying of any kind will not be tolerated in my classroom.