Hi everyone!
Growing up in public schools, I feel like there are more opportunities for social class, race, and gender to influence relationships between students. From as young as the kindergarten level, cliques and groups of students form based on similarities. These similarities might not develop over time, but are very visible within a classroom setting. In my kindergarten classroom, I began noticing a few weeks back that many of the girls were friends. However, there were two sets of friends. One "clique" consisted of mostly Hispanic girls, and the other of two or three Hispanic girls and the rest of different backgrounds such as Asian and African American. What I found interesting is how they only separate into these two cliques during Reading Time (however, I only observe them for a small amount of time so I do not know exactly if this is the only time they form these groups). Regardless, both groups do not necessarily associate with one another unless the Mrs. E notices this behavior. For the past 2 weeks, I have noticed this segregation but have yet to bring it up.
This formation of cliques reminding me of Lyn Mikel Brown's article, In the Bad or Good of Girlhood: Social Class, Schooling, and White Femininities. Most of the girls in the article formed groups based on social class. One group from working-class families, and the other from privileged, white, middle-, and in some cases upper-middle class culture. When viewed by outsiders and asked questions about the opposite group, the girls argued what they thought the girls were: "precocious, too sexual, threatening, etc." (p.149). I can't help but think that if these kindergarten girls have started forming these cliques at this age, one can only imagine their future with others girls in their schools. I hope to see an end to this because it will only get worse if they truly believe that segregating each other based on language and culture, or even grades is acceptable.
What I hope does not happen in the future, is that the girls feel as though these cliques are acceptable to be apart of. I hope to see this experience in my classroom some day, and be very forward about my action towards this. I would tell the girls (or boys) that whatever these groups are based on, whether it be social class, cultural background, language, etc., it is NOT acceptable to segregate people. By segregated each other, they are excluding and disapproving of a person's culture and background.
I hope that in time, Mrs. E will see the affect this could potentially have on her students, not only the girls but the boys as well. This issue should be addressed early on or else there will be problematic consequences.
1 comment:
Liana,
This is a great post, and I really like your clear connection to Brown. I do agree that public schools are usually more diverse, but for me, this was not the case. I went to Scituate High School, which was so segregated, it was ridiculous. Almost the entire school was white, middle class families. But even so, there were cliques everywhere, just like you mentioned. I do think it is worse, and much more obvious, with girls, too. In my school, there was the "rich" girls and the "regular" girls, kind of like in Brown's article. And what you said is certainly true, if these cliques are starting at a young age, what will happen when they enter middle or high school?
I think it's great that we are noticing this kind of segregation now, so that as teachers, we can work against them, since cliques only accept certain kinds of people and turn others away.
Great job!
Post a Comment