all together??...Chapter 5 of Sleeter brings up a very important point that we have discussed before and I know that I have blogges about it as well, but it is definatly worth talking about some more. I think that cultural pluralism is something that needs to be incorporated in every class, hall, school, in some way and as often as it can be. This does mean, that teachers and others bring more than one culture into the same class and mix them with the cultures of other children in the rooms. I think if I was trying to find a way to do something fun with the children in addition to exposing them to the various cultures, I would have every child do some "research" on their family and background and present what they find to the class. I also think that they could bring in something that represents their culture and what it means to them. This could be any where from a certain food, to a artifact, or anything that can help to describe what they feel their families culture is. I think that this would be a good way to start out the school year so from the very beginning children are used to having a variety of cultures around them. This would also help because they would know that not everyone is the same, but by presenting it in a positive way and having everyone participate lets them know that it is a good thing to be yourself and have your beliefs in addition to realizing its ok to be open to those who come from a different background than you. I know that I was not necessarily exposed to this idea because the schools that I went to were all primarily white especially at the younger levels. As was mentioned in a previous blog, the young age of the children is what will really help them to be accepting of the differences because what is taught and learned from the young years is what the later years will be based around. These years are the perfect time to teach them what you want, which just shows how important these elementary years are the children and what they are going to believe for the rest of their lives. I have been very impressed with the teacher who I am observing and what she is doing with the kids to allow them to be themselves. When they are writing their essays, she will give them a broad topic which allows them to talk about what they want and have experienced more than giving a very specific topic where they are forced to talk about one thing. This allows for them to express themselves in a positive way and also helps the teacher to learn about her students and what they are thinking and feeling about certain areas of their life. Another example that relates to this topic, was also something that I witnessed when I was observing once. One student, who has not been doing work when they are supposed to and just sitting around, had had a CD taken away at one time and the teacher kept forgetting to return it since she was not quite sure where it was. However, she recently found it and was going to give it back to the child. But, instead of just giving it back she used the chance to motivate the boy to do the same thing as the rest of the class. She let this young man sit at her desk and put the disc into the drive and listen to the CD while he was working, but the deal was if he got off track and stopped doing the assignment, then the music would come off. I was amazed at how hard the boy worked so that he could listen to the music of his choice. I thought it was so cool how she thought of this idea and used what seemed like a bad situation of getting a CD taken away became positive and helped the student to accomplish a lot of work. This helps the student to bring his likes into the classroom and allows others to learn about him and the culture that he usually lives around when not in the class.