Personal Statement: Social Capital Differences

I attended the same small-town school district from kindergarten to graduation. My school was incredibly homogeneous. My graduating class was one hundred percent white, with very few students classified as economically disadvantaged. I did not get exposed to people from different backgrounds in any way until college. However, this homogeneity caused there to be only one type of person that was accepted. There was one set of political views and one set of extracurricular activities that made a student fit the mold that was expected of all of us. While these expectations may not have been explicitly told to students, those who wanted to go against the grain certainly felt it. It was a very conservative small town, and even something as simple …show more content…
Students that grew up in the country tended to have fewer experiences they could draw on during discussions or other things when compared to students from town. Familial capital and social capital seemed to have the greatest differences. Differences in familial capital included feelings of responsibility for younger siblings. One of my close friends from a rural background would go straight home after school and even sometimes miss school in order to care for younger siblings. Social capital differences were evident even in younger grades. When I first started school, I only knew some students that lived near me out in the country. Some of my classmates who grew up in town already knew half of the students in our class as well as most of the teachers in the building. While this capital may have evened out a bit as we got older, I don’t think the original disparity ever fully went away. I was lucky in the manner that, even though I grew up in the country, my parents offered me many different experiences that some of my classmates then, and students currently in the school system, might not have the ability to access. I gained aspirational capital through activities like piano lessons and sports practices, and I gained both linguistic and navigational capital from interacting with people much older than me at a young age. While these experiences are not the only …show more content…
I sometimes felt that my views were too different from other classmates to share in a large group. I want to be the type of teacher that allows all sorts of views in my classroom, whether these views fit my own or not. My classroom should be a safe space where anyone who needs to feel valued can come and find support, and this safe space should be felt throughout the building. I don’t want students to ever feel as though only one type of student is valued in the school. While it is important to give students the skills they need to succeed, they should also feel valued for who they already are and free to explore their interests. In school, I always had role models that I could identify with for a variety of reasons. I want to teach in a district with both a diverse student body and a diverse staff. Not only will this diversity allow students to have the same sort of role models as I had, it will give them something I did not have. I rarely got to interact with people from a different background than my own. I want my students to have all kinds of opportunities to interact with all kinds of