ch. 31 likes and dislikes

I was very drawn to the Ch. 31 article. The initial description of the school, how small it was, how diverse the children were, etc. really intrigued me to read what would happen. One thing I questioned about the school was the four-pronged effort to achieve a fair and equitable school. The author suggests that they “recruited” Black and Latino students who were “academically proficient” to challenge the stereotype of white students being at the top of the class. For some reason I thought this was an odd first point for them to use. I think that they should have brought in minority students who were doing poorly and proved to those kids and society that they could succeed instead of brining in students who were already doing well.

Something I did like about the article was her use of the kids’ questions. I haven’t seen a lot of ‘scholarly work’ done that actually uses real world situations instead of theory. When the author explained a situation that probably happens in a dozen schools around the nation every day, I got a sense of legitimacy in her writing. It seems that her journaling what when on each day helped her reflect on what she and other staff members could have done differently. I think that journaling or keeping notes as a first year teacher in any school would be a really helpful and productive tool since, if I’m not mistaken, in our PDPs we will all have to reflect and explain what we want to achieve in the next years.

Symbolic interactionist

The quote, "To claim that knowledge is socially constructed usually means that the world we live in is constructed symbolically by the mind through social interaction with others and is heavily dependent on culture, context, custom and historical specificity. " (p. 409) really caught my attention. It describes, almost entirely, the symbolic interactionist theory of sociology. I have always been drawn to this theory because of exactly what our text said. The world is in the eye of the beholder. We each see different things from different points of view at every moment. It is impossible for two people to interpret a situation exactly the same because of this. We go through life and everything is a symbol, and each symbol has a different context based on our culture, customs, etc. It really is fascinating.

Media

Chapter 22 brought up an interesting point that "There is evidence that teenagers are now self-labeling at earlier ages than they did in the past..." The author goes on to suggest that this might be because of "secular changes in our society which allow more discussion of homosexuality, more public and media presentations of gay and lesbian persona, and more visibility of gay and lesbian people in all walks of life." (p.338) This all seems very correct from my point of view but I think that the media plays the most important role. It is not likely that grandparents and parents have become extremely open in discussing homosexuality (unless their child had come out to them). Teachers and schools are opening up to the discussion but also, there are some restrictions. Therefore the next greatest influence on adolescence would be the media. On the one hand, media displays of homosexuality is good for adolescence dealing with this issue but on the other hand, media is becoming (in my opinion) far too open about sexuality in general, both homosexual and heterosexual. There are FAR too many television programs that seem to allow if not advocate sexual promiscuity. Ad campaigns show half naked men and women oozing sexuality. I feel that adolescents are becoming desensitized to sexuality. They are bombarded with it in every aspect of life. As I explained above, this might be good for homosexuals going through an "identity crisis", but for morals in general I'm not sure this type of media is best for society.

Neutrality in teaching

As chapter 20 discussed, "rules are spoken about as inherently neutral, impartially exercised, and impervious to individual feelings and personal responses." (p. 313) I feel that school is in general talked about as a neutral thing. People often argue that everyone in American has an opportunity, that all children are given the right of education, but is that reality?

In public schools students are consciously or not divided into categories by their teachers, administrators, fellow peers, etc. To focus more on teachers as that is what we are all striving to be at this point, we can try to be as neutral as possible but it really can't be achieved. Every single person has had different life experiences that shape our thoughts and views. We were once cut off by a white woman driving while on her cell phone and inherently see a white mom on her cell phone drop her child off and think of her in a certain way. Maybe we were robbed by a young black male and that student looks kind of like him. It is impossible to be neutral! The main thing a teacher can do is strive to treat each student as an individual. As humans our brains generalize and categorize to save us time and energy but teachers need to consciously reverse this process. For example all football players cannot be categorized of as obnoxious and lazy in academics. It wont be easy, but it is something (among everything else we've talked about in this class) to keep in mind.

An "Aha" moment

A quote from the text that really struck me was in Erikson's piece but he was quoting William James.

"A man's character is discernible in the mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "This is the real me!" - William James p. 245

I really felt that this describes identity and how you feel when you realize your identity. I immediately thought of the "Aha moment" commercials. Mutual of Omaha is the "Official sponsor of the Aha moment". They are commercials where people explain their Aha moment when they realized who they were going to marry, what they wanted to be when they grew up, etc. Essentially James is describing this moment when you realize who you are and exactly what you are supposed to be doing.

Of course Mutual of Omaha is a bank who wants to appeal to the public and use this as an advertising campaign to make more money, but I think it is a very good lesson on identity.

To listen to some of these "Aha moments" heres the website:
http://www.ahamoment.com/?gclid=CPioypqXqJkCFQquGgodbBoJqQ

Presentation: Social Awareness

Our group's presentation is about social awareness in the classroom. My specific part of this project is exploring how to bring social awareness and students' outside culture into all disciplines within the school. For example, I read an article where 'at-risk' teen mothers brought hip hop into their English class. They reflected in journals first.
Ayanna said, "Hip hop is more than music. It's also about dress. And hip hop is a cultural dance that started among young African Americans who expressed their feelings through their body movements. Hip hop makes me feel inspired. When I was a kid I'd make up dances and it was so inspiring. I'd express myself in a hard core way that wasn't dangerous."
This got the students thinking about their lives and how hip hop in particular fits into their real lives outside the classroom. Then they created their own verses to a hip hop song like Eminmen's Stan and Usher's "Confessions". The author of the article believes this allowed them to look at their lives through a social lens and apply songs to their lives. They were able to "promote change in their own lives as well as change in society" by seeing what aspects of the lyrics they did and did not like.
An interesting aspect of the article was to allow students to draw "on their 'real' voice by writing". They were bridging the gap between their real lives outside the classroom and their structured lives inside the classroom. So often teachers try to encourage students to leave what is bothering them from their outside life at the door and focus on school work. That is hard for adults to do, let alone adolescents, especially middle schoolers. This was a great example of a way to bring life into the classroom and apply skills they are learning to real world examples. These teen mothers are going to need an outlet for frustration. They have a difficult life ahead of them and using these writing skills in a practical manner such as keeping a diary may help them get through some tough times.

Middle schools and big business

What I found most interesting about this section of readings was the connection between middle schools and big business corportations. At the very beginning on page 152 the author says, "As the opening quotes indicate this section also addresses the role of corporate interestgs in a changing economy and the institutionalized goals of public education." We all know that schools are a social institution but I never realized how influencial corporations are in public education. Businesses reflect the current economy and schools are meant to train students for the business world so the indirect tie would be the economy shapes what is taught in schools.
Along these same lines, Chapter 10 was an executive summary from the Carnegie Corporation's Turning Point report of 1989. Carnegie was one of the first steel monopolies of America and was famous for building towns around his factories. He wanted every day life to be lived in the shadow of and for the benefit of the company. Clearly here, the corporation wanted schools to be for the benefit on the company and the economy.
This is true that schools should teach students the skills required to be productive in the economy they will be entering, but should they teach more than that? Should the focus be more on 'real world' skills or abstract thought and arts?

Provocative Articles...

All of the articles were extremly provocative and I thought a lot about them. From first article about the media playing a role in the negative image most people have of teenagers, I agreed with the author almost wholeheartedly. I did have a question though, dispite the fact that teenage sexuality and violence is not statistically increasing, is it true that it is occuring at younger and younger ages? For one, my young cousins know way more about what to do with their boyfriends in middle school than I did in my first two years of high school. Second, I recently read the book "Our America" by two African American boys growing up in a southside ghetto of Chicago where an 11 year old threw a 5 year old boy out of a 14 story window. Both parties were children, young children at that.
In the article about poverty violence I wanted to point out that teenagers today can see the rich and famous and all of the material items they have on a daily basis. TV shows that focus on rich people and how they live put a view in teenagers mind of what they think they can accomplish or have. For the majority of the nation, this is grossly exaggerated. How can a teenager from a poor family in a poor neighborhood expect to get a Blackberry cell phone? By stealing it. They dont have the means to buy it legitimately so to live like the people they see on TV, they steal. Therefore, I completly believe the author and their point that poverty drives violence.
The third article about children in beauty pageants was over exagerated in my point of view. Yes, when parents take the pageants to a level where their child is physically hurt for not winning, we have a problem there. However I feel that things like pageants, dance recitals or any other form of performing arts only boosts the self esteem of young girls. Young boys can be pushed by their parents to be all-start 3-sport athletes and no one sees that as abuse? As for their self-esteem suffering from losing... that is something children today NEED to deal with. It seems that more and more 'participation ribbons' are handed out to every kid who participates in sports or academic competitions than ever before. We don't want to hurt the kid who didnt win, but then again are we really creating any incentive for kids to try their very best to actually win that first place trophey. To apply this to the larger world view, everyone says the US is falling behind other nations in technology and other advancements. If our kids have no incentive to strive for excellence because we don't want to hurt their self-esteem, how would our country ever produce leaders, inventors and overall advanced thinkers? I understand the idea of inclusion and making sure every child has the opportunity to attain sucess but saying that parents who sign their daughters up for pageants is abuse is taking it a little far. Again, parents who go overboard are different, but parents who want to introduce their daughters to feeling confident are not doing anything wrong in my book.

Adolescence Mirrors Society

As we all read, adolescence is a fairly new part of our life stages and is very much so socially constructed. I would agree that biology plays A role in adolescence but I believe the society kids grow up in is THE most determining factor. It is sort of the nature v. nurture debate often discussed in sociology and psychology. Were we born this way or have our life experiences made us this way? Along the same lines as the authors, I belive it is both working together. However, a clear way to show the influence of society is to look at how adolescence has changed throughout history.

For example, take a look at this picture of young boys working in a cigar box factory.

They are probably working to support their families who recently moved to the city.

Today, these young boys would probably be playing video games or doing a whole lot of nothing.

Because we have such a high standard of living adolescents do not need to spend their days working. They have the free time that most adults work to try and achieve.

Interestingly though, if our economy continues as it is right now for an extended period of time, we might see more adolescents helping to support their families. This again shows that adolescents reflect the "social, political and economic conditions" (text p. 20) of the time.

Anti-Opressive Education

This was an interesting article to say the least. The author poses an arguement and supports it but I don't think I necessarily agree to all of what he says. Kumashiro makes the argument that schools are "harmful spaces". I think that schools can be great spaces for building social relations, learning, playing sports, tons of things. They can be harmful of course but I don't think the author should have dramaticized it so much. Also, he suggests that there should be separate spaces for students who are the other. This sounds riddiculous to me. I imagine he meant separate classrooms with teachers who are willing to help students if they feel out of place, that theyve been bullied or anything like that. To me, this would just further the separation between these 'other kids' and everyone else. They should feel integrated in the school community, not that they need a separate place to brew in their depression. How to do that, I dont know.

I dont really know what I'm doing!

I'm not entirely sure how to use this thing but I'm sure we will all figure it out.

I just wanted to mention that my SWEET picture is from when I was in Hawaii a few weeks ago. My fiance and I went to Dog the Bounty Hunter's bail bonds store and got some awesome signed pictures!! (if you don't know who the Dog is... you are missing out!!) "Keep off ice brah"