1. 32, Joaquin’s dilemma

Third, teachers can find ways to incorporate information related to the history and culture of students into the curriculum. This is important in helping students understand what it means to be who they are, an essential aspect of the identity formation process for adolescents.

It was hard for me to choose just one mvp in the section “What can educators do?” in the chapter entitled Joaquin’s dilemma. “Understanding and debunking racial stereotypes, breaking down racial separations, and challenging the hidden curriculum” as Nogeura says, are overwhelming tasks as an educator, yet, his suggestions on how to promote positive racial identity development seemed implementable. Specifically, I saw Nogeura’s third point as being especially applicable to the foreign language classroom. The student body I’m currently student teaching at is, like the rest of New York, incredibly diverse. While it may be challenging to incorporate every students’ culture and history into the curriculum as the text suggests, in a foreign language classroom, there is room for cross cultural reflections. I’m currently teaching French for high schoolers, and I’ve noticed how my cooperating teacher makes an effort to get to know each of her 170 students’ background and culture from the firs day of school. In two weeks of school, she has already fostered an environment of cross-cultural communication by asking students about their own backgrounds via written and oral surveys. She frequently refers to her Hispanophone students when introducing a new vocabulary word, and she told me she made an effort to include Haiti in the curriculum this year, as several of our students’ families have Haitian ancestors.