Blog #9

 1. The first activity that stuck out to me was the quiz we did that was like two pages. When the test was over the discussion we had were we were told that a test like that should be an insult to us. 

2. Teaching bilingual learners was meaningful to me because I could relate so much to it. Not even in just the sense of education but loosing that identity and loosing your language and culture was so close to how I feel somedays. 

3. The Last thing that stuck with me was the list of what a good classroom should look like. I feel like this list will stick with me for a long time but can also be used in the future as a model for what my classroom should look like. 

Hehir - Toward Ending Ableism in Education - Argument

 In this article Hehir talks about ableist assumptions having negative impacts on the education of children with disabilities. My brother for example has autism. As a child my mom work extremely hard to make sure he had he services he needed while in school. While he was a kid it was easier for him to have the services he needed in school because he was in a group home where they had on sight schooling and it was an organization. As he got older and was placed back in home and then into another group home he needed to attend a regular high school. The high school let him take vocational classes for culinary until they decided it was too dangerous to have him around the knives and he didn't have the right motor skills to continue the program and asked him to pick another one. He eventually picked computer science but didn't finish because it wasn't the program he originally wanted. His handwriting was terrible and he used to have a keyboard to type everything for class and teachers would make a big fuss about him not writing on paper. My brother ended up not graduating he was depressed and blamed the school and bullying. Instead of my mom forcing him to stay in school she thought it was best for his mental health and safety to drop out. His case is extremely severe in how he dropped out but the school wouldn't work with him to better his education and help him finish. 

https://www.perkins.org/resource/tips-handling-academic-ableism-classroom/#:~:text=WHAT%20IS%20ACADEMIC%20ABLEISM%3F,Providing%20inaccessible%20classroom%20materials

Aria - Richard Rodrigues & Teaching Bilinguals Hyperlink

     In the reading Richard Rodrigues tells us about how he was a bilingual learner. He spoke Spanish at home with his family and was shy at school when speaking in English. The nuns went to his home and spoke with his parents about using English at home to make Richard more comfortable to speak at school. Richard explains that eventually he spoke up at school and became more confident but it came with a price. At home more English was spoken because his parents were told this was best for their children to succeed in school but it made him feel like his identity was being taken from him. He grew up speaking Spanish and when English was introduced his family dynamic changed. He would talk to his parents less and could see the change his siblings and parents went through to except this new culture. In the article I found on Harvards graduate school of education website is a story similar to his about a girl who is also a bilingual learner. Asia Yassine grew up in Texas and spoke Arabic. Growing up she was embarrassed in school because she struggled to learn English and needed extra help in class. She eventually learned to be comfortable in school and loved her environment until she grew up and realized that she had to change her identity to be successful in school. She felt stripped of her culture and explains that bilingual learners shouldn't have to loose there sense of identity to be bright in school and instead there culture should be celebrated and used as a tool to learn. 

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Literacy with an Attitude - Finn - Extended comment

 I looked at Megan's Blog and she made connections to both Delpit and Kohn. She first mentions how in Deplete it is said that teachers shouldn't be the only experts in the room. In the article the middle and working class teachers have similar styles of holding back the creativity of the students. In the working class kids are instructed to do exactly what the teacher does and that her way is the only way or even the "right way". In the middle class setting students are taught straight from the textbooks and are to gain the knowledge they are fed. While in the the upper classes kids are encouraged to be creative and are taught in a way that can have more room to grow. The second point she makes is that Kohn's "What to Look for in a Classroom" gives examples of how these classrooms are more worrisome than good. The middle class and working class again are the same where there is no freedom to learn and that there is a set routine and rules to follow. The kids are expected to have the right answers with little mistakes. Another example is the project the kids do where they made unique covers for their project but are not graded on the individuality but only on the information in the work itself. The middle and working class is taught in a way for no growth and this make the kids stuck in the same social classes. Where the upper class students are taught in a way to help them grow and expand on their learning to help them in the future. 

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-social-class-and-why-does-it-matter-3026375

Video Analyze

Precious Knowledge https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rVxLFksCC5N9VdWTq2dTvjXFevQkNTAav9yf-2B1QTc/edit?usp=sharing 

Teach Us All https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nMRmM8Rz2DHWHX6MI7DoOxH1jM7WgmWSiF71eOg8o-k/edit?usp=sharing 

Classroom Tour file:///var/folders/7v/pfsbpcbs1094m8v9g9bb3jsw0000gn/T/com.apple.Notes/galleryTempPDFFolder/0C9CF4AE-8BD1-4132-84BF-B78770A05F08/-62135769600/Video%20Analysis%20Template.pdf

Where White Privilege Comes From - Johnson - Argument

     "Everything is connected to and has the potential to affect everything else." Johnson explains that this privileged mindset was created thousands of years ago from our ancestors. Britain was a powerful nation long ago and they had an attitude that they were better than many people. An example being how they treated the Irish. They thought the Irish were savage people and that they were a whole separate species. This thought process made people think who groups of people were unlike them and nonhuman. As the British came to the Americas they brought this way of thinking and it led to forcing slavery. They knew they couldn't enslave anyone of British decent because they had the pride and same sense of rights and the Native could easily escape and blend into the Native population. So then black Africans were used as slaved because they could not hide among the population. The Constitution and Bill of Rights contradicted itself. It was written in a way that everyone had those rights but still the Africans did not. The term "colored" and "white" did not exist till the British came to America. They believed they were doing the colored a favor by making them slaves. Even in the 19th century is was thought it was better to be white and broke than be black and broke. They wanted the focus to still be about race. You may not be plangently racist but it's that these systems and ways of thinking have been carried down for generations and they are the easy way to live and the path of least resistance. We are taught this racist way of thinking without even being aware of it. 

Link- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09670889508455474?journalCode=cisr20 

Amazing Grace- Jonathan Kozol - Reflection

 
    In this chapter you get a sense of how terrible this neighborhood is and how the people there have become accustom to their environment. When my mom was a young child she lived in a terrible neighborhood and would tell me stories about how she would pick up glass tubes in the road and collect them because they were all different colors and she wanted to have all the colors of the rainbow. I came to find out that these glass tubes were really glass pipes that she would take home and keep in her yard. She went to a school that was half Spanish and half English so she wasn't learning much in school because of the time that would be wasted when she would have to sit through the Spanish half of class being only an English speaker. When she moved to another city she was held back because she didn't learn enough in the school she was in before and this district was too far ahead. This was my moms upbringing which was so different from mine. I lived in a safe neighborhood growing up surrounded by old people who retired to the beach town I lived in and other families of the students I went to school with. I could ride my bike and walk around my neighborhood at the age of 6 without a worry. I never heard of anyone being shot or stabbed or really much violence growing up. The beach town I lived in was quiet and not many people were even out in the off season and when it was warm the beach would fill up with people and tourist would come around to liven things up. My mom and me didn't have the same surrounds as kids and this makes up different in many ways but she got herself out of the bad neighborhood and to a place where I didn't have to go through what she did so you can only hope that some of those kids in the stories fin there way out too. 

https://propertyclub.nyc/article/most-dangerous-neighborhoods-in-nyc