Mirrors For My Daughter's Bookshelf Summary

After reading the article, “Mirrors for my Daughter’s Bookshelf,” I feel a little embarrassed when I think about diversity at my school in Washington Heights. As many New Yorkers know, many of the residents in Washington Heights are immigrants (i.e. first, second, or third generation immigrants) from the Dominican Republic. Thus, the vast majority of my students are from the Dominican Republic, and they can speak both English and Spanish. Each day, I learn something new about the Dominican culture, and how this culture is similar and different from the other Caribbean islands like the one I come from, Jamaica. However, as I am becoming more diverse with my exposure to my students, I’m afraid that apart from their exposure to me, the students are not being given a diverse education. For one, when you look at the libraries in each classroom, you’ll notice that the main characters from most of these books are white children or adults, and less than five percent of the books (from my observations) include main characters that are Hispanic. What is even more shocking is the number of books where the main character is of Dominican heritage: less than …show more content…
For example, after teaching the students about the Irish culture and the Irish Potato Famine, my cooperating teacher assigned the students a project in which they created a presentation about their own culture. In this presentation, the students described the food, the music, the religious practice, and holidays that they celebrate. This was a very successful assignment for all the students were able to present something about their culture. For example, though some of the information was repetitive, since the majority of my students are from the Dominican Republic, most students were elated to share their culture with their