Today I had a new class called Learning Communities. It was an awesome class with a lot of good discussion about culture, diversity and had they affect learning communities. We started the class by introducing ourselves, telling a story about our name and giving two things we love. For the first time every I admitted that i use to lie about the origin of my name. there was no interesting story about how my name came about, so I would tell people that I was named after the Frankie Avolon Song " Diana".

After everyone was done sharing we started discussing culture in the United States. We talked about how everyone has at least one culture. Sometimes we are a combination of more then one culture. We talked about the importance of knowing the different cultures of the kids we serve in our schools. There was also discussion about diversity. Many people shared their ideas and opinions with fear of judgement. It was a rich open discussion that I feel I am not doing justice to.

The last thing of the day was watching a movie called Prom Night. The movie was about Charalston Mississippi. Untill 2008 Charalston had two proms. A white prom and a black prom. Morgan Freeman came to the school district in 2002 (I think) and offered to pay for one prom if they intergrated. He was turned down. So, again in 2008 he came to back and made the same offer, this time they took him up on the offer. The movie interveiws many of the kids, staff and parents about how they felt about one prom. A group of white familiews refused to let their children go to the prom so they put on a small white only prom. Only thirty-five kids went. Some kids went to both proms. The group of parents against one prom would not talk on camera. They hid behind an attourny. I just can't believe this kind of behavior still exists in our country in the year 2008, probely even 2010.