"How come there are no brothers on that list?"

Kathy Jervis's article, "How Come There are No Brothers on That List?" reminded me very much of the environment of the classroom I was in for my field experience for Currins 100. I was paired with the teacher of my college night class and had an amazing experience because he was so concerned with the issue of race and getting his students to talk about it. He never shied away from it with his own 4th grade students (even though he was white and they were all black) and forced the issue at night when the college students got together. He was able to have these discussions because no ones opinion's were considered right or wrong so long as what everyone said came from a good place. As long as no one was intentionally trying to offend someone their voices were allowed to be heard. Of course, things were said that others thought may have been ignorant, but the person wasn't faulted for these views simply because they hadn't had the opportunity to expand their world view and see things from a different perspective. Having these discussions allowed us all to expand the way in which we thought about the issue of race and hear many voices different from our own from people who have had vastly different experiences from ours. This article helped to reinforce the lessons I learned in Currins 100: that students want to talk about race and it is definitely a conversation worth having.

Education as a social activity

In chapter 28, McLaren talks about education and knowledge in terms of social functions and social constructions. This reminded me a lot of the issues we talk about very often in my English Education classes. Specifically we are always talking about how reading is a social interaction. Many people would think reading is an activity to be done alone and in isolation, but we have discovered that reading is very social especially when discussion takes place around a text by many people who have read it. I can see how many people would think knowledge and education in general are things that reflect individual pursuits. Besides being social in terms of friendships and peers, schools and education can be a social pursuit by a group of many people seeking a common goal.

While I think the focus of the article, how we have socially constructed ideas about education and knowledge, is a worthy focus, I get a little tired or reading and talking about it only in these terms (although this again is worthy if we are to challenge the status quo). It is draining on my mind and sometimes very depressing to think about how our schools are run currently and how they really should be run and the amount of time/work it is going to take to get us to a better place. Again, it is texts like these that will help us challenge the status quo and tackle these issues when we get out into the real world and in real teaching positions. If many people read and buy into these theories we will change the educational system and that is very exciting.

Shades of Gray

One thing that bothers me about the way that, frankly, most conservatives speak is that they tend to view issues and the world in black and white without being able to see any shades of gray. They seem more likely to generalize and this affects the kind of policy and world view they are likely to put forth. I was reminded of this when reading Chapter 25 in the text. When Macedo quotes the passage from Lukas about the racism that African-American students faced in Boston Public Schools, I was disgusted and depressed. Still, conservatives aren't likely to put much weight on this part of the story and would rather focus on the fact that many African-American students drop out of school and see a lower level of success when compared to their white, suburban counterparts. These issues all seem to be about which part of the story to you give the most attention and relevance. Conservatives tend to look at the symptoms of problems rather than the cause (this is an idea I stole from an earlier section of this book). Instead of thinking about WHY some kids may be dropping out of school, they only look at the fact that kids are dropping out of school. (From the earlier section of the text) Instead of thinking that someone may be driven to steal because they are poor, they would rather say there is something inherently wrong with a specific group of people. In this conservative mindset there are no shades of gray and people can only be judged by generalizations or the actions of sometimes a small, isolated few. It frustrates me that people aren't willing to dig deeper when discussing and debating these issues and would rather allow a story they saw on local news make up their opinion of an entire group of people.

Structuring Children

"School rules govern and regulate children's bodily, linguistic, and emotional expression" (pg. 311). I couldn't agree with this statement more, and to be frank, I think it sucks. In my student teaching placement, I am finding that middle schoolers are forced to act and behave a certain way and it is all very authoritarian. For example, when they're in the lunch line it must be silent and they must be reading the book they are forced to carry with them. No noise, in the hallway or the classroom, is permitted. I think this practice goes against everything we know about the way children develop and need to act socially. Teachers have a tendency to want to subdue every physical or verbal emotion that children of this age need to express and that is a bad habit to get into. Middle schoolers need to move, talk, and interact amongst their peers and keeping them in a military-like, highly structured environment is simply bad for their development. Why do we feel a need to project adult and corporate behavior on children? Why not let them be kids while they still can be? I think, as future teachers, we all need to remember what we were like at this age and cut kids a little slack. If we do, we will be more likely to form sincere bonds with our students and have a better chance of engaging them with the academic stuff we'd like them to be interested in.

Embracing Differences and Identity

Saltman quotes Hall in the beginning of hie essay when he is trying to set up a definition of what Identity both means and entails as a concept. The line that struck me the most profoundly was "Identities are constructed through, not outside difference. . . this entails the radically disturbing recognition that it is only through the relation to the Other, the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks, to what has been called its constitutive outside that the 'positive' meaning of any term -- this its 'identity' -- can be constructed" (p. 237). What I liked about this quote was that it points out that our differences help us to form an identity of who we are, but also that there is a focus on this being a 'positive' thing we should embrace to help us form a positive image of our identity in relation to other's identities. This reminded me also of a quote I heard Barack Obama say in the past. On the topic of whether we should seek a "colorblind" nation he said, that the goal shouldn't be a society in which we don't see color, but rather a society in which we find beauty, respect, and appreciation in each other's cultures and differences. I also found it interesting that the idea of identity was discussed in terms of outside influences (history, institutions, the Other) that inform what our identity is or will become. When we think of identity we think of this formation as something that takes place only inside of ourselves, but in reality there is a multitude of things that can shape it from the outside in and not the other way around. This discussion of identity helps me situate myself in other people's shoes better in order to understand how their identity is being formed or will be formed by outside influences that affect myself too.

Differentiated Instruction

Putting together our presentation on differentiation of instruction proved to be very helpful to the way I think about education. We read many articles that all confirmed the success this approach can allow students to have and read many strong and distinguished voiced on the subject. One person who kept popping up in our research was Carol Tomlinson who seems to be the leading voice on Differentiation. He passion to ensure EVERY single student learns and to the best of their ability was inspiring and it was comforting to know there are such great pioneers in the field out there. Some points about Differentiation that I found to be the most interesting were the fact that EVERYONE can benefit from it (not just L.D. or gifted students, but everyone in between), and that it engages students in more real world problems and critical thinking skills. On the first point that it benefits everyone, we found that when you implement differentiation into your lessons that the strategies end up being just good teaching skills and allow most students to learn more effectively than the standard teacher-driven lecture and typical test at the end of a unit. Usually individualizing instruction and anticipating ways that students will struggle and need extra help will benefit every student in you class, not just the ones you set out to differentiate for in the first place. On the second point about differentiation utilizing critical thinking skills, the approach is great to help relate material to students lives as they are actually lived. When you incorporate content that is a reflection of students lives, they will make a connection with it and be much more interested in doing learning. We all know that learning is cool and have sought out topics that interest us for further research, but some students won't grasp this concept unless we use content that they can relate to and show them the wealth of relevant information that is out there. I hope all of you enjoy our presentation on Monday and find the information as helpful as I have.

Violence and Poverty

Reading chapter 7 from our text this week made me incredible angry at politicians in general. The way Mike Males laid out his argument (that poverty is the root cause of violence) and backed it up with a wealth of evidence and statistics made me angry at the way the issue is being handled by politicians and portrayed by the media. I was also angered by the fact that so much violence and abuse committed against kids is done by adults who are supposed to be the ones in our society with the ability to act responsibly and act on good values. The fact that the media doesn't mention any of this and goes so far as to blame kids and their innate tendency towards violence and misbehavior disgusts me. In this day and age, I thought we were supposed to be a society that values correct information and scorns ignorance, but this article makes me think that people are willing to be force fed any information by a person or organization that seems to have authority over an issue. This article provides an example of a research driven insight into a very serious issue and it is a shame that it is not more widely available to the mass public. If everyone was able to read this article, I think they would share my anger and disgust and take the time to not only look into this one issue with more depth but a whole host of issues that are just as susceptible to misinformation and spin by the media and politicians. This article also makes me want to become more of an advocate for those in poverty because of how it leads to such a large amount of problems beyond those that are the most obvious.

The Social Construction of Adolescence

I thought this article went along very nicely with the Kumashiro article that we read for last week. Specifically, I enjoyed that the author advocated strongly for the rights and best interests of adolescence because it seems that they may be a group that does not have the ability to stand up for themselves and the issues that affect them directly. It was also interesting to me that he took a very close view at how the idea of adolescence was constructed by society and isn't a period of growth that can be simply viewed through a lense of phisiology or psychology. The notion that adults invented the period of development to help them deal with anxieties over sexual issues also intrigued me, especially when considering the fact that it seems adults project their problems onto adolescents instead of working through them on their own. On this point, the article also reminded me of Kumashiro because it called for everyone to rethink and reexamine the system in order to shake it up and benefit the group of people that are being adversely affected by old ways of thinking.

Education and Otherness

Kevin Kumashiro's article, "Toward a Theory of Anti-Oppressive Education", takes the closest look at the "Other", as he calls it, and the implications of the educational environment on the other that I have ever read. I thought this article was very dense in its amount of information (and I don't mean this in a bad way) and explores every possible consideration one may have when it comes to the concept of the "other" in an educational setting. Because this was the case, I ended up having to rethink or reexamine the ways I had previously viewed certain aspects of education. One point he made in particular really struck a chord with me and that is that when we use multicultural literature in a classroom, we should be using it not to have our students simply learn about another type of person's experience, but to use that reading to also deconstruct the hierarchy of power in place between normal and other. He also said that often times reading this multicultural literature and talking about these issues leads to empathy, but that empathy should not be the final goal. Again, it should be to deconstruct the partial knowledge that is in place surrounding those who are othered. Before reading this article, I think I was in the group of people Kumashiro was talking about that only have empathy in mind. I can't feel too bad about this, though, because empathy is a good trait, but, again, not the end all be all in this specific discussion. I now see that I, and we as educators, must go beyond even our good intentions and really seek fundamental change when it comes to how certain groups of people are treated and educated in our schools. And as this article points out, as we try to do this, we will keep coming across more and more considerations and obstacles, but we must not be deterred for the sake of each and every one of our students.