Ira Shore. Last blog post for the semester.

Things I had to look up:

Bettelheim: He is a phycologist. I just thought it was weird that they talked about him like I ready knew him. That confused me a bit. But looking up his name did give me more information about what he did and why Shor included him in the introduction. 

Pedagogy

Argument

What I got from Shor was that education is controlled by politics and standards that all students should follow by. In a lot of classrooms, there is a lack of curiosity, imagination and leadership opportunities so this makes it hard for students to grow. Us as humans we are naturally born curious and leaders but if schools do not reinforce that then we just stay in one place instead of moving forward.  We live in a country run by democracy which is driving by freedom of speech, critical thinking and a lot of institutions don't go by this. This is crazy because this should be the case for a lot of schools. 

Also, while reading this Shor was talking about questioning students schooling and that made me think. Was my high school challenging? Was I able to speak what was on my mind? Was I free to express how I felt? A lot of these questions popped into my head. To be honest I did feel like I was challenged at my Highschool. Like getting out to get internships, public speaking and  learning how to be professional was all really hard! The one thing I can say that I did lack on was learning how to improve my writing, math, and science. It is weird because at The Met since it is mainly internship based there really was not much room for students to learn science. So if you really wanted to learn you kind of have to go out of your way to go learn it. Which personally is a bit of a bummer. 

As for speaking my mind yes I felt like that was highly embraced at The Met. The only thing that made it difficult was actually saying the words. (Johnson) This eventually took time for me and my peers a bit to overcome. Eventually, it did happen but being able to learn how to say how we felt is a grat feeling.

Overall, I really enjoyed this piece it was a good way to connect everything together into one. 

Points to share: What were some things that challenged you in your high school? What are some things you wish your high school would do differently academically?

Kliewer

Quotes

Reading this article it did take a bit of time because of how dense the information was. I had to reread it a couple of times to actually get the material. I did get lost a lot when it came to the stories that were being told, it just got really jumpy for me. What I got from the article was students with disabilities are being looked down upon because people automatically assume that they are not able to do tasks compared to other students.

"Mendocino is what ]ohn needed-it's what he never had in North Hollywood, what he calls a "safe space." Like a lot of people in Mendocino,he's accepted for what he is, not what he isn't. He can concentrate on what he can do, instead of being shown or being told what he can't do."
Reading this quote, the first thing that popped out to me was August, Safe Spaces. Safe spaces should be created for everyone in a community. For the LGBT community, race, religion, disability ext everyone should be able to feel safe especially in a learning environment. "Classrooms lay the foundations for an inclusive and safe society: a just community where common interest and individual differences coexist." Safe Space 83. In the classroom, this is where students spend most of their time and hear valuable lessons can be learned not only academically but also about life. How our differences do not define us but shape us into something special and unique.

"So what, if you don't fit exactly where you're supposed to? You know, it's not like I fit many people's ideas of what teacher's are supposed to be like."
This reminded me of SWAAMP because they are the categories that define people as privileged. But either way, we are our own person and should not be labeled because of how we look, race, socioeconomics, and disabilities. What I got from this quote was that to embrace that we are different in every way. Do not let those labels define you.

Personal thought: When I was in high school I was in a program to get my teacher assistant certification. While in this program, we went on a trip to a school called the Meeting Street school. In this school, there were classrooms that were inclusive and noninclusive. I went to observe the inclusive classroom that had students with and without disabilities. While in this classroom, I saw that there were a lot of resources around, there were multiple teachers, a lot of materials like blocks and manipulatives for students that had ADHD and every student had a different schedule. Some students would go meet with speech coaches, rehabilitation coaches and would go to play rooms to release some energy. While I was walking around there was something that caught my eye the most, there was a pool in the school.  I wondered why there was a pool in the school so I asked our tour guide about it and he said it was for students who needed physical rehabilitation. I was amazed by how many resources there were in this school and how the students were with their peers as well. They never excluded students with disabilities in the classroom, they did everything like a community. It was a good experience for me to be able to experience something like this.

I am posting up this video, it talks about a student named Thasya Lumingkewas who is 8 years old and she has autism. In this video, it shows how she is becoming social and is now able to interact with students with the help of teachers and technology. This video touched my heart. The video is the third one down, it would not let me link the single video. Sorry about that. Hope you enjoy.

Video

Something to look at

I should be doing my homework for this class right now but, I stumbled across this article and this basically explains everything we talked about. This article is really freaking good because people sometimes judge by our skin color and just assume privilege by race. A lot of the time that is really not the case but this article breaks it all down. We are all privileged in one or more ways and sometimes we forget to notice it but Gina Crosley-Corcoran the writter of this article explains this in a diffrent light.

Link to the article. 

Pecha Kucha

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nmhvT1ILUdbETSD16e2dg1vzzQxWh9KpPHHQi2wX-vE/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=20000

Map The Authors

My Map! 

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.