O Nieto

After reading Nieto, I have come to several conclusions about teaching and myself.

While listening to class discussions, I had the mindset that mostly everyone was exposed to diversity and culture at some point in their lives, but I realized that this isnt always the case. I sometimes forget that people arent around diversity because it is usually a big part of my life. My family life, for example, is diverse just because my Dad is Polish and my mom is Puerto Rican. I also atteneded a very diverse high school and have been around diverse school environments my entire life. This all my sound a bit ridiculous, and it is something that is very simple, I had just never seen it from other points of view before. Thats one of the reasons I really enjoyed our class discussions. Just listening to everyones opions and experiences gives me so many new perspectives. This will definitely help me relate to my future students. I can use my life experiences to connect with them. Nieto gives actual examples how we as educators can make a difference in school systems. She puts a great emphasis on group collaboration, and I think this is something we have focused a lot on throughout the semester. Especially with our literature circles, we had to work together in order to present the information effectively. We also collaborate during our class discussions. We hear ideas and experiences from others that we can evetually use in our own lives.

I wish that we would have been able to view everyone portfolio. It would have been interesting to see different themes and learn for each other.