Project Mulberry discussion

Today in class my group had a really good discussion about the text, Project Mulberry.
When I was reading this book it really brought a lot to my attention. The one thing that stuck out to me was the issue of racism. The issue of racism was directed towards Julia's mother. The author flat out told the reader that Julia's mother doesn't like black people. I thought this was so blatantly thrown out to the reader. As I thought about my question that I would pose for my QTT paper I knew I wanted to make it a point to bring up the issue of racism in the text and how it affected Julia. I thought of the fact that Mrs. Song had the bad experiences with the black soldiers during the Korean War and if this caused for her racist views towards black people. It is never said to the reader the real reason for her mother possibly being a racist. Julia contemplates during the book why her mother feels this way and she really doesn't understand the reasoning behind these views that her mother has. It is hard for a child to hear that their parent has such distorted views about another race, especially when Julia's favorite teacher was a black woman and the man helping she and Patrick with their mulberry project was a black man. This issue was one of the main problems that Julia dealt with during the book.
We also raised the question about the politically correct way to address someone's background/ethnicity. The example in the book was when Mr. Dixon asked Julia if Chinese people used a lot of peppers in their cooking. He automatically assumed that Julia was Chinese and he made a snap judgment about her ethnicity. What is the best way to ask someone about their background? Is there a way to do this without offending anyone? Our group thought that possibly asking someone the question of, "What is your background?" instead of asking them "Where are you from?" The last question assumes that they are not an American citizen which can be offending to the person.
Overall, the discussion that our group had was very productive. I thought that the book was well written and raised many issues that could be addressed to a class. The author said in her note at the end of the book that she raised the issue of racism because she was hoping that it would help in the healing process that racism can have on a group of people. Discussing the issue is better than just trying to ignore and hope that it goes away.

My Personal Philosophy

I chose to take this class because it was a requirement for my Language Arts degree and because I really enjoyed TE348 and I figured I would like this course just as much.
This course connects to my professional goals because it makes me become more aware of diverse literature for my own classroom one day. It has also made me analyze texts in a way that I had never done before. Analyzing texts can be very important because one has to be aware of what they or their children may be reading. I wouldn't want to give my children a book to read that was very stereotypical because I wouldn't want them to get the wrong impression of that particular ethnic group. This course has also opened my eyes to diverse literature that I may not have been aware of because I was not really around it when I was younger. Well, I may have been around it, but it was never emphasized when I was growing up. I hope to someday make the children in my classroom as well as my own children, aware of the necessity of diverse literature and to be aware of people who are different from yourself because you can learn so much from other people.
The role of issues of diversity play a huge part in literacy teaching and learning. This type of literature can be very helpful in engaging students to become more interested in different ethnic groups and to take a stand on what type of diverse literature they enjoy the most. It is also important to address some of the misconceptions that different ethnic groups have and try to get rid of these misconceptions from the children's thinking.
My personal philosophy about multicultural education is that it should be encouraged in classrooms. I feel that all students should be aware of the world around them and it should be encouraged by the teacher to enforce such learning. Children's literature for multicultural education would play a huge part in my personal philosophy. I think that it is easier for children to relate to a text, especially if it is about someone of their same age.
I feel that one challenge would be finding the right books to bring into the classroom. I would wants texts that the children would be able to relate to, as well as have a powerful statement. But the whole idea of bringing in such diverse literature is very interesting and exciting to me. I feel that with diverse literature comes a promising future for the classroom as a whole.