A mile away from their home was a school, but not just any school, an American public school. Where appearances mattered and where like-minded and same ethnic individuals were taught to think inside the box. As educated Americans, we have all heard the story of 12 brave students and their families who defined the law and fight for equal education. The Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka was an extraordinary case where race and cultural differences came crashing forward. wikipedia.org, the United States Supreme Court ruled, “…state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.” This pivotal moment was to bring individuals of all shapes, color, and size to learn in a diverse community. Unfortunately, public schools still struggle to create diverse educational communities, but because students have the options to choice, where they want to be educated. In some states, public education is the thing of the past. In an article on npr.org The End of Neighborhood Schools published September 2, 2014 describes how parents in New Orleans fight and wait for four plus hours to acquire a ticket just to be in a pool for a chance at a charter school education because an equal public school is the thing of the past. In addition, the article follows a dedicated grandmother who is fighting for the chance for her grandchildren to receive a fair and equal education. …show more content…
In the textbook edited by Geneva Gay Becoming Multicultural Educators: Personal Journey Toward Professional Agency is about multicultural educators who describe their paths of creating an educational community full of diversity, independent thinking learners. One story by Audra L. Gray chapter four titled Conversations with Transformative Encounters states, “Individuals shape their environment as much as the environments shape them” (Gay, 2003, p. 75). Single human beings create a community and a community creates a society. Individual ideas and experiences produce who they are in a diverse society. What individuals feel and believe impacts the public education system and the world around them. Although two individuals come from the same family and a major of their experiences are the same, those individuals will possess different ideas and thought. As a result, experiences and education are individually base. Individual environments are influence by other individual experiences differently. In addition, American educators must understand who they are as individuals to create an effective learning environment. For example, John Armbrosio We Make the Road by Walking (Gay, 2003) describes how his multicultural journey was about understanding and acknowledging your ethical past. Armbrosio writes, “…knowing my own and my students’ cultures can help me create conditions for more