Self Assessment Laura Nardozzi

After taking the self assessment test, it was not a big surprise to me that I scored a "Monocultural with a transition to multicultural". When I first began my undergraduate degree and the topic of diversity would come up, I always felt somewhat ashamed by my lack of experience as an adult with " the others". I finally went to one of my professors and shared with him my concern for my lack of knowledge. It was not until one of my professors said to me, "You know Laura, admitting that you are not diverse is the first step to becoming it!" Slightly worded like an anti-drug commercial, yet still very effective. Although I feel that I had a very diverse experience as a child living in Germany for three years, I still do not feel that I carried that experience fully into adult hood. It was almost as if I viewed the short time of living there as a long vacation where in the back of my mind I knew I would be returning to my "real" friends and my "reality". This is not to say that I did not experience a diverse group of people and I did not benefit from it, because I truly believe that it has helped form some of my major values. However, believing in diversity and experiencing it on a daily basis are two very different things. One can believe that diversity is a good thing and be completely excited about the idea of it, but may lack the experiences to claim diversity within their lifestyle.

                Although in retrospect my life is not very diverse, I do feel that my sense of intuition about others and how they are feeling is certainly stronger than most. I feel that this is what is going to make me an effective teacher simply because diversity is about learning about, understanding and accepting differences in others. I do not lack the desire to experience diversity, I simply lack the environment to seek it out. When I am in the classroom, my ability to interact with each child and truly attempt to relate to them and experience all the diversity they have to give is when I am the most content. That is how I know there is hope for me and maintaining a multicultural classroom. First I admitted that I have a problem, now I am learning how to help myself and my future students!