Ethnicity and Race Regarding Education

While reading my Educational Psychology text, I found that many of the terms and what was being talked about pertained directly to this class.  The chapter that we were working on described the diversity of schools and how it is expected within the upcoming years that U.S. schools will become even more diverse than they are now.  Though the students in these schools come from many different races, one eye boggling fact I never even thought of before is that 91% of teachers are white. Though the students vary in races, they most always see the same type of teacher rather than the students being allowed diversity as well.  The predictions that schools will have more diversity in upcoming years is said to be primarily because of immigration.  They speak of how the immigrant children come into this new school in this new country and are automatically expected to become assimilated fairly quickly. These students are sent to these schools to learn the dominant language of the culture and become mainstream Americans in a small amount of time.  One immigrant student explained her anxiety about feeling like a foreigner because of the way she looked.  Upon watching MTV, this girl decided that she needed to dye her hair and get colored contacts in order to fit in with the "true Americans" in her school.  Lately I have become very aware of the many different types of students I will encounter and I realize that teachers must work with these students to not only incorporate them into American society so they feel like they fit it, but should also work to show them to be proud of who they are no matter where they come from. I find that this is a difficult task, but students shouldn't have to change or feel like they have to get rid of their entire history of being of a different race or ethnicity in order to feel like they fit in.