Perhaps the gravest error I made in allowing my own opinions and attitudes to come into the classroom was my forgetting what Duplass calls the "shared culture of the classroom, (Duplass, 2008). As a teacher of social studies it is my job to help students to understand the importance of past and present events and how those events relate to them. In other words improve their cultural literacy. E.D Hirsch says of this, "Knowledge is central to a shared culture," (Hirsch, 1988). Where I now see I must be careful is in relation to the shared cultural outside of the classroom. For example while every student in the class has the same knowledge of the Civil War (names, dates, and key events) each student may possess a different mindset as why those events matter. Each student has a various level of as Duplass calls it cultural literacy, (Duplass, 2008).

The Duplass article pointed out several things that prior to reading it I never considered. things such as political ideology and the concept of indoctrination ( Duplass, 2008). In the current political scene with endless debates, as well as the upcoming primaries and general election it is difficult to teach the students the importance of the political process. In doing so however, it is important that as a teacher you do not allow your own ideology to …show more content…
That one day it will be my classroom. Up until now whenever I envisioned my classroom it has been in basic generic terms. Whenever I was asked what kind of classroom I wanted to create, I described the room in context of content and subject not by climate. After reading the Duplass article from now on I will describe my future classroom as a democratic classroom, (Duplass, 2008). I wish to have a classroom that values all ideas and where no student is afraid to his or her mind, and where we uphold as Duplass states, "the ideas we believe are necessary for the general good of a democratic society," (Duplass,