Lost in a Free Land: A Personal Narrative
Start Date
16-10-2020 11:00 AM
End Date
16-10-2020 11:50 AM
Document Type
Presentation
Abstract
The purpose of this presentation is to inform and demonstrate how educators can be culturally sensitive to student differences. Through the sharing of my own personal story, my intention is to heighten participants’ awareness and increase empathy for student diversity. As a child of an immigrant and a first-generation college graduate, I have navigated two diverse cultures for the past 50 years of my life. I have dealt with a population that cannot pronounce my last name to having no connection to my heritage and family across the ocean. The intended outcome of this presentation is not just to share my personal narrative, but to bring an awareness to teachers’ active, intentional, and on-going engagement with diversity so that their students never feel lost, underrepresented, or alone throughout their educational journeys. How they can foster an inclusive environment through simple changes to their approach to students which might be as simple as learning how to correctly pronounce names, an appreciation for different ethnic groups, and never making assumptions. I hope to illustrate these in my online presentation for the annual “Together We Rise: Reaching Inclusivity for Student Excellence” 2020 virtual conference.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Lost in a Free Land: A Personal Narrative
The purpose of this presentation is to inform and demonstrate how educators can be culturally sensitive to student differences. Through the sharing of my own personal story, my intention is to heighten participants’ awareness and increase empathy for student diversity. As a child of an immigrant and a first-generation college graduate, I have navigated two diverse cultures for the past 50 years of my life. I have dealt with a population that cannot pronounce my last name to having no connection to my heritage and family across the ocean. The intended outcome of this presentation is not just to share my personal narrative, but to bring an awareness to teachers’ active, intentional, and on-going engagement with diversity so that their students never feel lost, underrepresented, or alone throughout their educational journeys. How they can foster an inclusive environment through simple changes to their approach to students which might be as simple as learning how to correctly pronounce names, an appreciation for different ethnic groups, and never making assumptions. I hope to illustrate these in my online presentation for the annual “Together We Rise: Reaching Inclusivity for Student Excellence” 2020 virtual conference.
Speaker Information
Amy Davis, PhD
Assistant Professor, Elementary Literacy,Teaching, Learning, and Foundations, Eastern Illinois University, SelectedWorks