Intolerance - It's just easier
I’m not crazy about jargon and so, when a teacher applied the term “culture” to the classroom, I dismissed the idea. After all, wasn’t culture a concept that required a larger context like a nation or tribe or, in some cases, a race? And yet, the term has niggled me for years. Maybe the teacher was right. Maybe classrooms did have different cultures created by the different teachers who led them. I taught English and Social Studies with a classroom culture that was relaxed and on the edge of control more to the liking of the non-academic and gifted students than the mainstream students who prefer a more structured classroom environment with strict expectations and little room for creative thought. The school’s like a multicultural setting. Or it could be . . . or it couldn’t. Some administrators have more tolerance for different teaching styles than others. As a student teacher, I wasn’t liked by many cooperating teachers. A principal and a faculty consulta