One of the things that I immediately noticed about my internship placement was the lack of racial diversity in the school. While not at all lacking in other areas of diversity, 89% of the student population is white. As a teacher, I believe that diversity is an important part of the learning experience and is necessary for students to get a truly well-rounded education. Because students at my placement high school are not automatically exposed to very much racial diversity on a day-to-day basis, I had to make a conscious effort to bring different perspective into the classroom whenever possible.

Such an opportunity presented itself when a foreign exchange student from Japan walked into my classroom on the first day of second semester. She was a bright, bubbly girl who was always more than willing to share stories of her life at home in Japan. Throughout the semester, as we covered topics in class such as WWII, this student helped me achieve my goal of bringing new racial perspectives into the discussion. While it would be typical for a high school class to analyze such topics from just the one perspective of American exceptionalism, having a student who had been taught these events in a very different way proved to be illuminating to both myself and her classmates.

One day during our study of WWII, this student brought in her older brother's history textbook. She had been using this textbook as a second source for information we learned in class since she was still learning to read English fluently and sometimes had a difficult time with the book we provided. Comparing our two textbooks was fascinating. Although most of the information was vastly different simply due to relevancy, the sections that covered World Wars and other common events between our countries looked just as different. Having this student translate sections of the book for us, we read excerpts on WWII from both the American and Japanese textbooks and students filled out a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the information they learned. This activity opened their eyes to the fact that not every person around the world interprets things in the same way, encouraging them to view history from a less ethnocentric standpoint.

As teachers, knowing our students as individuals, as people, is a responsibility we should want to take on. Every day we are blessed with seeing over 100 unique faces, and taking a genuine interest in each and every one of them is absolutely integral to creating a comfortable and welcoming learning environment.

At the start of the semester, I distributed this survey to each one of my students so that I could learn a bit more about them as people and their past experiences with social studies. Reading through student responses filled with me so much anticipation for the semester ahead, as I was already able to connect students both to myself and my peers through common interests. Knowing fun little details about the people I'm going to be spending every day with makes it easier to get students engaged with the content. Noticing that a lot of students listed music as one of their major interests, I included songs from the period of study in our primary source analyses. When I saw that most of my students were involved in sports, I did research in order to use more sports analogies in class.

Understanding and utilizing the array of backgrounds students bring to class every day allows me to be a better teacher because I have the information necessary to make learning personal. On top of valuing their interests outside of school, knowing their attitudes towards social studies content in general helps me to curate my lessons to be as engaging as possible. If I can manage to incorporate students' individual experiences into the classroom, our collective learning experience will be one of authenticity and growth.