"Double-Edged Issues", Two Sides of the Same Coin, Etc.

                I believe that knowing both sides of an issue is very important so that we can better understand the issue at hand.  Personally I can't come up with many ideas that really contradict my own train of thought because I may get fixated on a certain way of thinking, I'm bias like that.  In our "discussion" or "debate" in class about School Choice, Bilingual Education, and State Testing, some of my peers came up with interesting ideas I hadn't thought about, but I can't say that I was on one side or the other, I mean at least for School Choice or State Testing.  Bilingual Education on the other hand was a topic I definitely have a fixed way of thinking, a personal bias of sorts.  I believe that there should be bilingual education and in all forms we can possibly think of because knowing more than one language benefits anyone in this era of globalization.  For that reason it never crossed my mind that bilingual education could hinder a children's learning because he or she might tune out instruction in the language he or she doesn't understand and so as some classmates suggested the students might be "missing opportunities".  I can definitely see how it might encourage some students to tune out instruction of the material and that is certainly not something I would want any student doing, but it doesn't mean everyone will do this.

                I think that understanding an issues two sides will help us as teachers in the classroom.  For example, not everyone is the same and not everyone learns the same way, so we have to be able to see how some students learn best and why that is.  We may need to adapt our lessons so that a student who is more hands on learning has an equal opportunity to learn the material as those who can simply learn it by hearing it during lecture.  In addition, having the ability to communicate and understand others' viewpoints is a valuable trait, especially when we are working with students with different languages and cultures.  I'm not very familiar with cultures outside of the Latino cultures, and for that reason when approaching children such as from Asia or the Middle East I have to have an open mind so that I can understand why they might do or say certain things in class.  For instance these students might mention something that is completely relevant to their culture, but I may see it as wrong or offensive even though they do not mean to offend anyone or they think they are right.  I have to have the ability to question them and see if I can understand why they said what they said.  For example, in our class discussion today about the "Summer is Santa" skit, the girl in that scenario could have been from the southern hemisphere and so for her associating summer with Santa Claus is perfectly normal, and that's just part of her culture.  Of course that is a very easy example to see that, but it could be that we face an incident in which we hear or see things that we may not understand and that doesn't mean that the student is wrong it means we don't understand because we don't have the same language or culture, and this is where understanding their perspective comes in handy as we are enlightened by their viewpoint.