Culturally Relevant

Today a consultant visited our school to demonstrate to us what implementation of Imagine It! should look like in the classroom.  We toured each grade level and she atught each class for a brief period of time.  This was very exciting for us because we wanted to make sure we weere doing it right and if not correct what we are not doing.  We also viewed her visit as a plus for our school because our teachers would be able to glean little tips and tricks that could help them in their facilitation of the program.  After visiting a few classes I was really  impressed with the way the lessons flowed for the consultant, but I noticed in one class the program is not culutrally relevant.  The consulstant was going over the vocabularly and came to the word "mist."  The students thought she said "miss" so they got excited and raised their little hands.  "You're a miss", they chimed, but it was not the correct word.  She had pronouced it correctly but they didn't hear it correctely which often happens with vocabularly.  However, when she attempted to explain the word, she gave the denifintion saying, "You know how your momma sometimes mist her plants."  I almost fell over because little did she know or realize that the children she was instructing were 100% minority and 100%  on free and reduced lunch.  These children have no plants at home to mist.  Some of them live in shelters and don't even have homes. The consultant seemed totally oblivious to this.  She taught as if she were teaching affluent white students.  I was offended, because I felt like all my life we have been left out of the textbooks, and now in the year 2010 we are still left out.  Isn't there anyone who will see us or are we still the invisible man?  You can't properly and effectively teach students if you pretend not to notice their cultural differences.  There seems to be no Black program developers who will write programs for our children that will embrace their culture.  I know where this is going.  Somebody's got to do it Janet.  Why not you?  I'm working on it.  Really I am.  But until then, I think it is a crying shame that school systems pay million of dollars on reading programs that are not sentive to the culture of the populations they serve especially in the year of 2010.  What a low down dirty shame.