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Schools in urban American cities often have a large communication barrier between teachers and students due to their respective backgrounds. What often occurs is that students will come from low-income backgrounds with specific social behaviors that branch from their neighborhoods. On the opposite side of this spectrum is the teacher who often comes from a privileged background with a high education and sophisticated communication habits. When a teacher from a different background enters these schools it becomes difficult for the students to relate or to accept the teacher’s presence in the classroom. This results in a multitude of miscommunications because both the students and the teachers misinterpret each others’ language and behavior due to their upbringings.

Sergio Diaz Luna

Multicultural Ed

Professor Cohen

1 March 2015

The Professor

I was born in New York City in 1995.  My father is a professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business and my mother is a family therapist.  Even though my mother was Protestant and father was Jewish, we celebrated Christmas with my mom’s side of the family and Passover and Hanukkah with my dad’s side.  I actually asked them at one point, “Dad, you’re Jewish, and Mom, you’re Christian.  So what does that make me?”  They responded, “Sweetie, you can choose whatever you want to be.”  Looking back that really meant a lot, because religion wasn’t a big role in our lives, and frankly I liked that.

           Over winter break, I spoke with my parents about white privilege. My family is white, and I believe has been benefiting from white privilege for many years. My father understood the concept, but contended that it did not apply to him because he is Jewish. He is an intelligent, thoughtful, and left-leaning person, and his refusal to acknowledge his white privilege irritated me greatly. During our conversation I learned a great deal about my father and his experiences as a white Jewish man. Over the past two months, I have slowly come to understand that his opinions are a product of the environment in which he was raised, and are heavily grounded in lessons and viewpoints taught to him by his parents.

In nature, the span of a tree’s branches is often limited by the span of it’s root system. In a classroom, the spread of the ideas that are discussed and developed is limited by the basis of knowledge that the students bring into the class. The directions this knowledge is spread and allowed to ‘grow,’ however, also depends on the way in which these students are being encouraged to think. It’s very important to consider interdisciplinary classes as a high priority because it is these classes that will allow the trees of each discipline to really flourish and become connected.

       The bluing of plants, people, their histories are intertwined with conflicts, multiple perspectives, and converging cultures. According to Jamaica Kincaid, history is erased, confused and embellished: “Americans are impatient with memory, which is one of the things order thrives on” (Kincaid  5). The story of plants is the story of colonization, destruction, slavery, and expansion. It is a rich, tinted, colorful story that must me examined by delving into its many shades. It is a bluing of ideas, a convergence the different uses of plants, and different cultures’ relationship to the environment. This a story of confusion, of the indigo plant, what seems to fade away. The indigo plant is a sturdy and long-lasting plant that dates back to ancient India, Persia, Egypt, and Peru.

Ecological Perceptions of the Latin American Migrant Worker