And he taught utilizing empowering education happily ever after....

Prompt 7:
Overall, my VIPs experience has been an experience that I will reflect on for my entire teaching career as the starting point of a journey. This journey is not only a journey about teaching, but it is equally about learning. I will never stop learning about new information, improved teaching methods, learning about other cultures than my own, the list is endless. FNED and my experience in my VIPS classroom have taught me immense amounts of knowledge that I will undoubtedly utilize within my classroom when I am a teacher.
There were several technical techniques that I learned while spending time in my VIPS classroom that I will undoubtedly utilize when I have a classroom of my own. These skills include how to accommodate for students who are having trouble with a certain subject while not getting frustrated. Another skill was how to maintain your composure when a student loses his cool. I learned this skill when one of the third graders in the classroom suddenly got extremely with the teacher, yelled, threw things, and even flipped his desk. The teacher’s response surprised me at first as she calmly maintained her composure but quickly sent the particular student to the principal’s office. I am glad that I got to observe the response of my teacher to a problem that disrupted the classroom so that I am more prepared if my own classroom every has a similar issue.
One of the key elements of my experience that I am especially glad I encountered was the opportunity to teach a group of students very different from the classes where I had been educated. As I have said in previous blogs, I was raised in the rural town of Burrillville. With a student population that is over 95 percent white, Burrillville has never been known for its diversity. My father had been an Columbian-American immigrant himself, and when I was raised, although I did not get exposed to diversity in my classroom, outside of class I had been raised to be accepting of all races.
Despite my prior exposure to different races, I had never considered the advantages that I have had growing up. For years, African-Americans have been marginalized in our culture. In a writing by Allan Johnson titled, “Our House is on Fire,” Johnson addresses the face that there are no inherit problems with differences among people. The problem in society today is that sections of society are established to attribute certain advantages to these differences, and this has created an oppressive system of privilege. Johnson references how whites dominate political groups, statistically make more money and have a higher life expectancy. The statistic that I found to be most astounding was that one out of every eight African-American males is currently in prison, and an estimated 28% of African-American males will spend time behind bars. Another statistic was that although 85 percent of drug users are white, the majority of prisoners in jail for drug-related incidents are people of color.
With such astounding statistics, it is our social responsibility as people to rectify these issues. As educators, it is not only our responsibility, but it should be our primary initiative to generate a society who grows up to be aware of the issues of the past, but willing to accept all people for who they are, regardless of their differences.