Challenging cultural Biases

After reading the article I was again posed with the question of cultural diversity. How important is it for a teacher to be comfortable with this type of setting? Does the cultural background of a teacher influence the way they teach? In class we had discussions involving stereotypes and whether or not they are bad: some students said they were good while others countered the argument. While both sides had valid ideas it was evident that stereotypes do affect us to a certain degree.
This raises the question of whether or not stereotypes affect a teacher and to what extent; and by the same token, does a teacher attain these stereotypes due to interactions with different people, or better yet, from their own background? The article mentions on page 86 that “this involves acknowledging cultural biases and changing perceptions about diversity and teaching students who are culturally and linguistically different from the vast majority of teacher education candidates.” What this tells us is that contrary to what people like to do, which is go in with a “clean slate” per se, this is not the case. The article brings to point that people do hold biases and, especially from a teacher’s perspective, they must be removed to efficiently teach our students. If this is not resolved then we may, consciously or subconsciously, lower the standards for a student.
The article also mentions that many teachers are not necessarily comfortable with teaching students different than themselves, a theme all too common with many programs. The article says “she asserted that schools of education should offer teachers and prospective teacher’s courses and other experiences that focus on questions of equity and diversity that will challenge deficit notions about the capabilities of students of diverse backgrounds.” As many of you can clearly tell I am a proponent for bilingual inclusion and a multicultural classroom and have proclaimed this stance in many of my posts. Again I have to wave the hand of insecurities when it comes to our current curricula in the school of Ed with regards to diversity. To think we have had to go through so many classes that many people, myself included, considered a waste and now, after 3 years, we are offered classes on multiculturalism, it just blows me away. How relevant were the observations that we initially had to do? Would it not have been a better decision to observe say 2-3 classes but integrate multicultural facets of learning instead of just watching teachers teach; this way, at least, many people would be a little more comfortable to teach diverse students.
The article says that we should prepare teachers not for the monoculture, mythical, culturally homogeneous aggregation of students, but for real multicultural, heterogeneous classrooms. This is probably the best statement I have heard in an incredibly long time. In my current placement, contrary to this notion, it is almost the first of the two. I personally find it bland and uninteresting as each student is almost a copy of the other. Some teachers would love a setting such as this, but me, I prefer the diversity I have encountered in previous years. As teachers we need to be fully capable of teaching both scenarios, which means more training in multicultural settings as well as homogenous settings.
After completion of the article, again as with the other ones on multicultural diversity, I felt relieved to see other people with the same views. As I previously have said in my posts, we need to be prepared for everything aspect of teacher. Although this is a big goal it can be attained. The more we learn now the less we have to regret in the future, this is why myself and a few others have been loading up on multicultural classes this year, again considering we only had it offered at the end of our journey, sad but true.