Beliefs -Reflection 11

The thing that strikes me as most important while reading Beliefs, Values and Attitudes is the idea of values itself. Values help to determine a person’s behavior, thoughts and even conditions of being whether desirable or undesirable. Being a teacher, we would have to deal with these different values that each student brings to the classroom and we have to understand that each student isn’t going to have the same values even the ones that we believe to be the most generic. Values are decisions that help us to choose what is classified as good or appropriate behavior. Being that each student will have different values, not only will some opinions differ from my own, but they will also differ between each student. This may cause different situations in a classroom so as a teacher, I believe that we must learn to help our students with the acceptance that not everyone will think like them. The values that people have learned in their homes, families, and traditions will determine how they behave in public and assist them with making decisions in the classroom. Not only will their values be different, but also their attitudes and beliefs. Some children are brought up to believe stereotypical things about other cultures that differ from their own. Being a teacher in a diverse classroom will be a task in itself besides the idea of actually teaching them. I would have to say that the most important thing that I’ve learned after reading the article is that though we are raised with a set of instilled values and beliefs that determine our attitudes, we do not have to stay that way for the rest of our lives because a change can occur within our beliefs, values and attitudes which can allow us to reach multicultural awareness/ consciousness which is the state where everyone should strive to reach being that it would allow us to be enlightened individuals working towards the greater good of the society rather than working against everyone else in the society. Along with positive beliefs and values we also have negative ones that are instilled in us from within our culture and these beliefs are rooted in fear and ignorance. With a change in beliefs overall we would be uprooting the weeds of prejudicial actions and feelings that were once rooted and we can continue on the journey towards multicultural awareness/ consciousness
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