This project, overall, was a fun, interesting, and interactive way to get to know myself on a deeper level culturally in regards to my literacy practices and who I am as a teacher. Not only do these pictures and descriptions represent my life as a whole, but they also have helped me gain a better understanding of who I am as a person. By gaining more knowledge and a deeper understanding of who I am, my strengths, weaknesses, biases, and culture, will help better my future career as an educator in a diverse setting. 

 While conducting this project, I was able to get to know myself on a deeper level. It was an eye opener to me about the information that I learned about myself. I was able to recognize my strengths and weaknesses when teaching culturally diverse students. Although I am afraid of being seen as only “white” and nothing more and getting out of my comfort zone, I am now able to recognize those fears and move forward from them. The students in my class now are extremely diverse, to being from India to living in Georgia their whole lives, my students come from many different backgrounds. Needless to say, none of them see me as the “white” teacher. They love me for who I am and do not judge me based on my skin color. Now, my strengths are shining more because I have been able to put aside the fears that I have. After analyzing myself and getting to know myself, culturally, better, I am now able to be more cautious, considerate, and caring towards to group of students that I have.

 Not only was I able to get to know myself on a deeper level, after completing this project, my thoughts about literacy have broadened, and I have started to think about literacy in a whole new way. I would have never considered singing along to karaoke or reading a recipe as being apart of literacy until now. For the students who say that they do not “like to read”, I am now able to question them about what they like to do in their spare time or what they do at home. Majority of the girls in my class love to sing along to Disney songs, watch those “How To” YouTube videos, or bake with their moms/grandmas. I have been able to connect the hobbies that they have outside of school to literacy and how we can take those literacy practices and bring them into the classroom. It is important to make these cultural connections, or these home/school connections, for the students because it further guides their interest in literacy, as well as makes them want to keep coming to school. By taking into consideration who your students are, you are able to be a more culturally relevant teacher, and this allows each student to shine in their own way.

 Since every student that you have is culturally different, the students views on literacy and their own personal practices will vary from student to student. This can have students become frustrated when working with one another or become discouraged when their views don’t align with others. My character trait of being an optimist will allow me to break the barriers between my students. In this class, I have learned that I need to be more aware of what “good literacy” is. This also means that I need to be understanding and considerate about the differences my students have, and that I need to be more aware that these students learn and understand the material in different ways. Moving forward in my career, I plan on being more culturally relevant in the classroom by getting to know all of my students on a more deeper level, which is something that I believe is a strength of mine, but also by encouraging them to do their best at everything that they do.