Oakes Why Schools Need To Take Another Route

Hyperlinks

The article I decided to look at was "Why Schools Need To Take Another Route" by Oakes. This article does hit a lot of great points it made me think about how I was thought in school. Like how the teachers made me feel or where they enthusiastic or not. Looking back it kind of depends on the situation I was in. But, besides this article was a bit confusion to me. I had to read it a couple of times but this article represents how students classes are stereotyped and how some of these children are put into different groups. These groups range from higher placement to the lower ones. Oakes is explaining how the higher placement students classes are treated a lot differently academically and personally.

1. The gap between them and more successful students has grown wider  not only in achievements but in attitudes toward school and toward their own ability to succeed.
In this article Oakes talks about how now a day students are being tracked so based on their social class they are placed in schools with fewer learning opportunities. For example, Oakes talks about how in school with higher placement will have more challenging classes like literature reading pieces that will help them for college-level exams and math. While with the lower placement classroom will only get a basic reading assignment and basic math just to get them by. In the link above the article talks about how much this education gap has grown throughout time. One thing that caught my eye from this article was this "Even the best performers from disadvantaged backgrounds, who enter kindergarten reading as well as the smartest rich kids, fall behind over the course of their schooling." I feel like this quote does relate to what Oakes is talking about in his article about how social class has a big thing to do with education. This quote also reminded me of Kozol because when it does really depends on where you come from. That these students from the lower placement will have to try so much harder to make it somewhere higher.

2.  Creating opportunities for all kids alike.


In the Link above it discussed about how class is now more important than race in school systems. Harder in ways that students who go to private school have resources and extra subjects like music, foreign language way to future a child's education. In some public schools this does become a little harder to obtain. Here is a quote from this article that sums up how wage gaps affect students. "Income has become a much stronger predictor of how well kids do in school, Race is about as good a predictor as it was 30 years ago. It's more that income has gotten more important, not that race has gotten less important." Some of the ways that Oakes talks about making these opportunities available for everyone is making it inclusive for all students. Where lessons should be taught with meaning, lessons being relatable to real life, complex and something that the kids can take from. This is a way for students not to be held back from their ideas due to skill differences. While I was reading this part of the article reminded me of my high school. A majority of what we were taught was about the real world. Of course, we had academics in our curriculum but what I learned in the internship that I obtained over the years taught me so much more about how the world works. It is something that is different from the usual school but it was complex. Some of the things that happened at my internships made me learn to think outside of the box.

Points to share/ Discuss: Why is it that this type of situations are still happening in 2016 I just find it strange we are such a devolped country. What are some steps to take to make this gap smaller? What if students were all granted the same education no matter what social class they fall in? How would we be able to accomplish that?

Social Justice Event

Sex Positivity, Feminism and Health Implication

By Deirdre O Donnell

The event that I attended was Sex positivity, Feminism and Health Implication by Deirdre O Donnell on March 24th, 2016. Overall I really enjoyed this event because of the subjects she touched upon were some that I learned in FNED, not only that but some I had no idea that was going on. It made me look around at how women are treated in the United States, related to abortion, health issues, social , political and economic equality of the sexes. One of the first things we did was a true and false questions about feminine health. One of the questions that really surprised me was that only less than 1% of rapist see jail time. That crazy how low that percentage is because rape occurs ever 107 seconds. That is an average 293,066 victims (age 12 or older) sexual assault each year. There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year. Only 1 percent of these assaults are reported. So think about how many people that is who are getting assaulted. That just shocks me. Another thing that shocked me was that abortion is not available to women in every state. I know that recently Florida defunded planned parenthood but there are actually states where it is a law to not have an abortion. Women would have to drive thousands of miles to another state to be able to have an abortion. It is just unfair because these resources should be available for everyone. It just bothers me because we have made it so far when it comes to women health but now we are just backtracking because of laws like this. 

So overall what is Feminism ? Feminism is the support of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.A few of the most famous feminists are suffragist, Betty Friedan, Oprah Winfrey and a lot more who molded this society. One of the most iconic images of feminism is Rosie the Riveter. This is an empowering female symbol that still remains an icon to this day, reminding us of the incredible female efforts during the '40s. Feminist have molded the world and broke so many boundaries not only for women but people from different ethnicities as well. Feminist has broken barriers for little girls to do something bigger like become president or more, earned them the right to vote, they call out rape culture, and fought legal discrimination again genders. These people have done so much.

Connections to authors: While I was sitting at this presentation I thought of SWAMMP, Delpit, and August. SWAMMP because while in this presentation it was not only talking about women rights but also the treatment of colored women as well. Which would connect to SWAAMP because whiteness and maleness are valued in this society. August also played a role in this presentation. Deirdre talked about her experience with the LGBT community and also broke down what LGBT meant. Which a lot of us already knew because we discussed this in class. Deirdre also wanted us to explain what sex meant. A lot of the answers were towards heterosexual couples like penis goes into vagina ext. She continued to explain that there is not a right answer to this because everyone performs sex differently. Whatever floats your boat is not a wrong way with a man or a female. Lastly, despite because growing up as a female, we are thought the rules and codes of power of how to dress. In life, we are thought to respect our bodies and not to show much skin. We are thought these rules so others will not think badly of oneself. Even though it is our body and we can do whatever we want with it but since we are thought so young we come to develop this bit of self-hatred. If too much skin is showing,you're automatically accused of being a slut or a whore. 

Overall, I really liked this event definitely opened my eyes to some of the injustice we have in this country. Our voices do make a difference so sometimes we just need to stand up and say something. I will be looking more into these problems related to women. This event was very informative and engaging as well because these problems do affect me in some way.

The Problem We All Live With 562/563

Vocabulary

Elated - Extremely happy and excited; delighted; pleased

Conduit- A person or organization that acts as a channel for the transmission of something.

I really enjoyed hearing these articles it was definitely something different. Hearing the people who were part of these situations made it a lot more interesting. These people were personally interviewed to talk about this situation so a lot of this is their side of the story and how they felt. A lot of emotion can also be heard throughout the audio which really made me sympathize with the speaker. Nobody should ever have to feel like they are not good enough for a school that is mainly caucasian students. Also,  automatically bring stuff them in a box full of hateful stereotypes because of the color of your skin. Definitely really liked the podcast though I am thinking about whenever I have a chance listening to more stories like this on my free time.

Quotes

"I think that children can overcome the stigma of poverty. I think children can overcome the stigma of their ethnicity. But what they cannot overcome is the stigma of separation. That is like a damned spot in their being, in their self-image. And that's what segregation does to children. They see themselves as apart and separate because of the language they speak, because of the color of their skin, the origin of their parents." -  563: Part Two

I personally really like this quote because what the teacher stated is completely true. People of color can look over these things but looking at the bigger picture of how segregated schools are it ultimately goes back to where they come from. This reminded me of the text Kristof, Land of Limitation because these students are getting a poor education because of the location they are in. In that location, it is mainly African American and latinos. Kristof states "I keep thinking of his prodigious talents that were never fully deployed because, in the United States, too often the best predictor of where we end up is where we start." The Normandy school district had less to offer and in one case a reported follows an AP students from class to class and it was crazy what the reported saw. She saw that there were 4 periods of music, 3 classes of academics, one of the classes the teacher actually taught. Nobody in the Normandy is being pushed to their fullest potential because there is not challenge. These students are just left to figure it out on their own. While in Francis Howell one student who came from Normandy had a completely different experience. She was involved in sports, also in honor classes but was definitely being challenged academically. While the AP student in Normandy was receiving worksheets that looked like it was middle school leveled. It eventually depends on where you come from.

"In the schools where white families chose to stay, test scores for black transfer students rose. They were more likely to graduate and go to college. After years of resistance, Saint Louis had created the largest and most successful metro-wide desegregation program in the country. And then state officials killed it."

These are reasons why interaction is such an important thing for all students. African American students in the Francis Howell school district had better test scores, and most likely going to go to college. While in their former district, it was about half of the African American boys who did not graduate. Having these kids intergrade in a school that has more resources, funding, and benefits the students from Normandy will have the same opportunity. The students have greater educational needs and if they can not receive them then they are stuck. They have a bunch of disadvantages in the Normandy district.

Connections- While I was listening to part 1 of The Problem We Live With the part when the parents were outraged about the African American students coming into their school it reminded me of the Little Rock Crisis in 1957. In 1953, the supreme court declared public schools segregation to be unconstitutional because of the Brown V Board of Education case. Despite having a law to integrate students schools tried to find ways to resist it. In 1957, there were 9 African American students who were accepted in Little Rock High School which was an all-white high school. From this day on they are known as the Little Rock 9. On the first day of school, the students were greeted by a mob of angry white students, parents, and government officials. These students were not allowed to enter the school. It went so far that the governor of Arkansas had their National Guard block the entrance so the students could not enter. Eventually, 3 weeks later the president at the time Dwight Eisenhower sent troops to have the kids escorted safely into the school. These were some of the first steps to having school become integrated. How far we have come in history and we should not be backtracking now. Moving forward and try and having schools like in Hartford Connecticut which is 50 percent integrated.

Little Rock 9 Video

In The Service of What?

Words that I needed to look up to help me out.

Implementation
Altruism

Extended Comments

 For this blog, I decided that I will be writing extending comments on Ashley's blog on In The Service Of What? (Kahne & Westheimer).

In Ashley's blog, she is talking about The Met high school in Providence being related to the article which is completely true. Ashley has a sentence that basically describes The Met which is "In this article, the authors argues that the service learning experience improves communities and enriches classrooms withing the moral, political and intellectual domains." I personally agree with this because this is The Mets motto. The whole point of internships is about making a difference in the community but also having the students learn more about their passions and themselves. When I attended The Met high school at the end of each year there had to be an LTI project. LTI means Learning Through Interest so this project had to benefit the community the location that the student was interning at or the school.  An example of a LTI project I did was creating a zine about self-harm and depression. My internship was at an art studio in Providence called AS220 there I learned how to used an offset printer and the steps of how to make zines. This became my LTI project because it was a way for me to inform the students in my building to be aware of self-harm and how to pervent it and or ways of getting out of depression. This was how I was giving back to my community also giving a presentation in front of my whole building about depression. Depression is definitely something that is very serious with young adults and teens and this was a way to impact my peers that these issues need to be discussed. From that project, the environment did become a lot more open with students emotions and if there was ever an issue there was always someone and a counselor to talk to. 

This was some of the reasons I really enjoyed this article because these concepts of service learning are something that really do benefit both parties the people being helped and the ones who are helping.

Connections: This article does make connections with Johnson writing piece. If people of privilege have the resources to help the unfortunate it can really make a difference in someone's life. This is what service learning is mainly about sharing knowledge and helping others out. Being able to make a positive change.