Action #8 Practice Democratic Principles

I've always thought of myself as having a certain group of friends, but then again; I have so many friends from other groups that sometimes I don't like labeling myself to one specific group. My closest friends consist of five girls and I basically tell them everything, but I definitely have a couple close friends that are male. There is a larger ratio of females in my group of friends, but I still have a lot of friends that are male as well.



As far as my group being balanced in diversity, I have several friends from different ethnic backgrounds and from a homosexual lifestyle. They are definitely the minority in my group of friends, but they aren't treated that way at all. I don't see myself as racist or homophobic at all,
so I don't appreciate racist and homophobic comments. I do usually speak up when someone makes those comments because it really bothers me. They are rude and disrespectful and I don't like sitting back and letting those people think it's okay to make those comments.


Because of this assignment, I've started to speak up more often and to people I wouldn't normally speak up to. I can see a huge difference in their reactions and I can tell that they realize that it bothers me. In some cases, after I speak up about a comment someone made; I can tell that they realize that their comment was indeed rude and disrespectful. In other cases, the person just makes fun of me for speaking up and tries to say that I can't take a joke. It all depends on who the person is that I speak up to and the people that are around at the time.

I am very open in group settings and I'm not afraid to speak up in a conversation. But that all depends on who the group of people is. Within my close group of friends, I find myself dominating the conversation or at least being highly involved in the conversation. If I am in a group setting where I don't know a lot of the people or where I am not comfortable, I usually sit back and let other people dominate the conversation. No matter which situation I am in, I never cut people off because I know what it feels like to be cut off and I wouldn't want to do that to someone else.

As a future teacher, I must be able to practice good democratic principles within my personal life and my life at school. It is very important as a teacher to not discriminate against different ethnicities. There will be many different types of students in my classroom and I can't show favoritism to any certain type of student. I should also become comfortable in large group settings that I'm not used to because there will be many instances where I will have to sit down in front a large group of parents and be the center of attention. That does not sound like a comfortable situation to me.