Bronx Masquerade Discussion

Last week in class my group had a great discussion about the text, Bronx Masquerade. The question that was posed to our group was along the lines of, do you think it is the teachers responsibility to intervene when it comes to cliques in their classroom/school. To discuss this question we all shared our experiences with different cliques. For the most part we all had similar experiences when it came to cliques and how each group was treated by everyone else in the school. So when we shared our thoughts about if teachers should intervene at all, there were some good points that were brought up by my peers. I feel that a teacher should intervene in the classroom if it is making it hard for the students to work together. For example, if there is a certain clique in the classroom that would never work with other members of the class for whatever reasons. Then I feel that it is the teachers responsibility to make it a point to mix and match the students when doing group work. So instead of having the students pick their own groups the teacher would already have groups picked. The teacher should also tell the students at the beginning of the year that the classroom is seen as a community of learners and that everyone is to work with one another and respect each other. I feel that there isn't much the teacher can do when it comes to the children outside of the classroom but hopefully making the children work with one another would make them see a different side to their peers.
I really enjoyed this discussion with my group. I feel we all had really good points to bring up and it was interesting to hear everyone else's experiences in high school. We also shared some of the poems that we liked a lot in the book and it was neat to hear everyone's explanations to their specific poems.