Response to "Engagement"

This section was a really interesting combination of uplifting stories and depressing, but motivating ones. Many of these stories involve students making some kind of breakthrough. One trend that I thought was interesting in this section was that it had a lot more focus on rural schools and the issues that come with that, rather than the urban stories which I generally think of with Erin Gruwell’s work. The section where the teacher worked with the white student with racial prejudice was a scenario that I think about a lot. I thought it was handled well in that the teacher didn’t merely lecture him as to why that was inappropriate – the teacher asked questions and made it a long-term goal to introduce new perspectives to compare with those proposed by his family. I think my favorite breakthroughs in the chapter were those in which a student decided to open up with either the teacher or the entire class. 

One section that I was uncomfortable with the teacher's behavior was Section 56, which dealt with a homophobic student who had made inappropriate statements of opinion. Although the teacher may not have intended to do so, the technique they used to deal with the student was not one that encouraged tolerance or explained why those statements were inappropriate - the teacher basically just embarrassed the student in front of everybody in the classroom. That was not the action of an impartial tolerant instructor - it pointed out ignorance without pointing the student in the right direction. Essentially, it was hating the sinner, and not the sin.