Reflection: In this article, Shor suggests that learning and
teaching should come from outside the classroom rather than being standard
teaching. I have to agree with this statement. I've had teachers and professors
who are very boring and really seem like they don't want to help their students
succeed at all. These are the classes I didn't do as well in because I either
was afraid to ask for help or the teacher's teaching styles just didn't click
with me. This is why I believe that teacher should always incorporate different
activities that are fun and click for all different children. This is one of the reasons why I love our FNED
class so much. The professor doesn't lecture while we take notes and we don't
do dittos. The whole class seems to get along really well and we always try to
give each other advice when something goes wrong. I've never had a class before
where I was comfortable enough to speak to the class and not feel like they
were going to judge me or make fun of me. The blogs are another great way to help
us learn. If I am ever having trouble with one of the articles, I can look at
someone else's and their perspective can sometimes help me understand it
better. Personally, I agree with Shor in saying that we
should try to incorporate more from outside the classroom to help teach our
students. When doing this, it gives all the students an opportunity to learn in
ways they know they will understand.
When I read Vanessa's blog, I felt like she had a lot of great ideas that I seemed to agree with as well. She also had some great articles and videos. I also went to a school like Vanessa where the special needs likds were placed in a different classroom from everyone else. To me, I feel like it is beneficial for them because they are getting the help they need and deserve rather than in a regular classroom where they get no or minimal help. As a child who was put into a separate classroom for needs that weren't found in a regular classroom, I feel like it depends on the individual child whether or not they will benefit from being in the separate classroom. Every child is different even if they may be diagnosed with the same problem. Vanessa posted an article to her blog which I really seemed to enjoy. It talked about how in Europe, they separate the students based on what services they need. I think this is a great idea and its how it should be everywhere. Children deserve to be given the types of services they need and with the way it was done at my high school, although they felt they were doing it right, it should have been done much differently. One thing I really enjoyed about Vanessa's blog was the video about the young girl named Lily with down syndrome. This video was a great example of why it is important to realize that every child is different. In the video, it talks about two different children with down syndrome, but however one is placed in a special needs school and the other in a mainstream school. The great thing was that both children really got what they needed and were able to develop normally. This really shows that it does depend on the child and their specific needs rather than just putting all children with the same problems in the same classes with the same services.
I really like this video about children with down syndrome because it shows that they are just as capable of doing things as people without down syndrome are. Check it out
On November 3rd, I went to the Promising Practices meeting and I have to say I really learned a lot and enjoyed going. The first session I went to was called Wake Up and Smell the Environmental Racism. It was about how minorities are being put into areas where it is unsafe to live because of the air quality. I was surprised to learn that African Americans and Latinos actually have the highest percentage of people with asthma. It's sad because those people have to live in these areas because they can't really afford anywhere else. Also, I learned that the state will put dumpsters or sewage plants near these people because they can't afford to sue or do anything about it. This reminds me of the Tim Wise video. As much as people want to believe racism is dead, it's really not. Although this isn't done purposely, it is absolutly important to realize that it's happening. Just as the title says, people need to "wake up" and realize what's happening right in front of them. What I thought was really cool was that the kids in this club to help the environment have a bus that they drive around in and go visit places to talk about their issues. When they found out that the bus only runs on diesel, they decided they would have it run on vegetable oil because diesel is bad for the environment. I never knew someone could even do this. While they were telling us the process they had to go through in order to make the vegetable oil work for the bus, I kept thinking to myself, "This seems like a lot of work just to get a bus going." After I thought about it, I realized, if they really care about something so much and they go through all that trouble, they obviously really love what they're doing. One thing that really impressed me with this session was the fact that the kids presenting it were only in high school. I was going in expecting all the presenters to be adults who really knew what they were talking about. I was really surprised with how much information they knew. It showed that they really cared about the issue. They really kept the session interesting too. For example, the two instructors were dancing when I first walked in so it made me feel a little more comfortable in knowing they wouldn't be really boring or serious. The next session I attended was called Preventing Transgender Bullying Before Children age 6 or 7 or 8. The instructor was so nice and really seemed to care about what she was talking about. I have always been a huge advocate for anti-bullying in general. I feel that going to this session just gave me more ideas of how to deal with kids who bully others. I was really glad to see how many books there were that included transgender children. Everyone wants to feel included and accepted especially at that age and reading books about others who are "different" is a great way of trying to get them accepted by others. This session reminded me a lot of the GLSEN article we read for class. The article talked about how children as young as five years old are exhibiting bias, bullying and homophobic feelings towards others. I feel that this has to do with the media telling us what is right and wrong, aka boys are masculine and girls are feminine. A great example the instructor used in the session of transgender people was a movie called Call Me Kadeabout a girl who really felt like a boy inside and all the struggles she went through to become who she really wanted to be. After watching this movie, you really get the feeling that children know if they are transgender when they are very young. Kade's mother in the movie even says she felt her daughter was different from when she was about two years old. It's amazing to hear that children that young already know how they feel about themselves. This was a great session to go to and I recommend it to anyone who has the calling to become a teacher.
Overall, I really enjoyed going to this meeting. At first, I wasn't sure how I felt. I thought it was going to be really boring and I was upset that I had to get up early on a Saturday, but I think it was really important for all of us as future teachers to go to this. It gives us a different perspective on what goes into being a teacher. I think now that we've all gone, everyone in the class would agree with me in saying that we enjoyed going especially since we all tried our best to be able to sit at two tables near each other and really engaged with each other. It shows how close this whole class has gotten over the semester.
Reading this article reminded me so much of my service learning placement. First of all, the kids at the school are from lower-class families and won't get the same opportunities as upper-class just like was said in the article. Also, there was a piece of the article where Finn talked about making sure the students were always busy so then he would have no reason to be asking questions or to be yelling at them for doing the wrong thing. It seems like with the teacher in my service learning placement, that's all she ever does. The students seem to listen when she does yell but she never gives them chances and to me that's not being a very good teacher. I feel like the students are afraid of her and don't feel comfortable in the classroom. Another piece that reminded me of my service learning was the story about teachers not believeing their students can do the work. My service learning teacher tells me about how her students always fail the tests she gives them and how they're not smart at all. In my opinion, she should be doing everything in her power to be helping these kids achieve their goals in school or she's not really doing her job. In other ways, I really enjoyed reading this article because it made me realize what kind of teacher I want to be. One thing I don't plan on doing as a teacher is taking too long to correct papers. It may not seem like an important thing to do but to the kids, when you grade their papers on time, it makes them feel like what their doing matters and you actually care about your work. Another thing that always drove me crazy about teachers was when they forced their students to do the work only one way which in their opinion was the "right" way and even if a student got the right answer with a different method, it was still wrong. Personally, I think that if a student has found another way to do a problem a teacher has given them, let them do it. It makes the student feel better about themselves because then they feel like they are teaching the teacher and they feel more confident in their work. In all honesty, I'm still on the fence about this article. It makes me feel hate towards the teachers who really don't care about their students or their job. But at the same time it gives me a clear idea of what kind of teacher I don't want to be. It also really opened my eyes to how badly lower-class schools have it compared to upper-class schools and how they won't get the same opportunities just because of where they live.
Argument: Tim Wise, author of Between Barack and a Hard Place, argues that America is no where near a post-racial society. Whites still believe that African Americans aren't as smart as whites which is why they need to work twice as hard to get the same kind of recognition as whites. For example, in the interview, they mentioned that although George was not intelligent at all, because he was still white, he therefore was easily voted into office. However, with Barack Obama, he needed to be very successful and really show how intelligent he was in order to be taken seriously.
Another point that was brought up in this interview was the problem with many minority students living in the poorer schools with not as many opportunities as white schools. In the Brown v. Board of Education trial, African American students were no longer allowed to be segregated from whites in the public school system. Without even realizing it, that is exactly what is happening today, even though we consider ourselves a "post-racial society." We are obviously not putting these students here on purpose, it just has to do with the kinds of services that African Americans are allowed like the kinds of places they can afford to live and that "white privilage backpack" that whites always seem to be wearing.
In my opinion, it is unfortunate that this still goes on in our society. We like to think that we no longer discriminate against other races and that everyone is equal in our country, but unfortunately that is not the case. As a future teacher, I want every student to get the same opportunities as every other student and it's sad to think that depending on what school you go to or where you come from will determine your success. Especially since now I am in my service learning and I can see that all those kids deserve success and they are capable of it, but just because of where they come from and the school they go to, they won't be given the same opportunities.
