Education is Politics:

"What kind of educational system do we have? What kind do we need? How do we get from one to the other? Can education develop students as critical thinkers, skilled workers, and active citizens? Can it promote democracy and serve all students equitably?" (Shor 11) In this article written by Ira Shor there were many quotes that struck thoughts in my mind about my own education over the years. It said, "You must arouse children's curiosity and make them think about school. For example, it's very important to begin the school year with a discussion of why we go to school." (Shor 11) …

Looking back on all of my years in elementary, middle, and high school I never once had that "talk" of why we all go to school. I went to a school in a suburban community. Every house looked the same, all of the students looked the same, and there was ONE African American teacher in my entire academic life. I have never once heard such a conversation until I went to my assigned school from this class, this year. One morning I arrived at my school early, and I was able to hear the morning announcements. The principal asked the children, "Why did we all come to school today children?" and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE STUDENTS responded with, "to go to college!" It was said not only in this reading to arouse children's curiosity on learning, but it is also important to show that you trust a students intelligence and that they indeed are good enough.

My schooling was quite different, I always did well in each of my classes and was never a student that received low grades. But like others, getting out of bed to go to school for six hours a day was the most dreadful thing I had to do, and it still is. I was taught to dread school because I have had so many teachers that made me do so. Elementary school was different, I could tell you each and every one of my teachers names in Hope Highlands Elementary School and something great I did in their classroom. The first year of middle school was fine too. But as I neared closer and closer to high school, it was the longest four years of my life. Every day, they same dreadful homeroom, with the same students. Don't get me wrong, I did have some amazing times in my high school years, but it was no longer "fun". A lot of teachers did not believe in students and it seemed almost impossible to graduate. But something changed that made my last year in high school amazing.

The first day of my senior year aka "the best year of my life" we were introduced to our new principal. He was the most caring, intelligent, and spirited principal I had ever met. I had his wife as a teacher, whom I loved as well. He taught us to love our school again, love our classmates, and love the education we were getting. He brought us together, and almost all of us walked the stage at graduation.

Even the teachers were motivated to teach us and make the school day fun, knowing he was going to walk into each and every classroom every day and talk to us and even get in on the lessons. My high school faced a lot of adversity over the years and he brought the entire school back to life. It is principals and educators like him that change the schooling system for the better, the only bad part was that I was only able to have him as a principal for one year. He made us want to be better, do better, and achieve better. Like he said, "Falcons fly together!"

Social Justice Event: Whitney Dow

For my Social Justice Event I watched, "The Whiteness Project" which is a film and an interview by filmmaker Whitney Dow. The documentary and discussion is about white people exploring their personal relationship with their race. Whitney Dow has spent most of his career creating documentary films that deal with race. Whitney, like many people believe that we live in a world we live in is a white-supremacist society. The purpose of Whitney's documentaries is that white people need to confront all stereotypes and talk openly about their whiteness.

It is true, that white people and black people think of race in completely different perspectives. Dow wants to be able to show that race is directly linked to privilege. Dow interviewed all people from Buffalo, New York. He wanted to change peoples stereotype that all racism issues lie in the south. When in reality Buffalo is still one of the most racially segregated areas in the United States. He said that the point of this project was, "Essentially to give permission to discuss this. And I believe there is a huge hunger in this country to engage this topic." This project was actually 18 years in the making.

The many voices of "The Whiteness Project" vary by age, gender, income, and education. They talk about what it is like to be white in our society. Whitney talked about how he wanted to show white people and give them the same experience that children gave him. He was shown that he had the most powerful racial identity in America.

When the backlash started online, it was brutal. The people were so angry about the videos that they were posting mean comments on every form of social media. He said that this was expected, but not to this extent. Whitney doesn't see the problem with speaking the truth in society. But the craziest part about the backlash was that a lot of it came from Caucasians.

Whitney states in an interview that we as humans are all a bit racist towards something. It is just in us as humans to feel differently about things were are unfamiliar with. Some of the people really did blow my mind when watching this documentary. It is sad to see that the world we live in today when there should be so much change, some people still remain the same. A lot of people in the world today are still very racist and this documentary brought that to life for me.

There were many cases during this documentary that I was put in uncomfortable situations. The people that were speaking did come off as very racist. I have not been around racism my entire life, my family was very open and honest with me when I asked them any questions. My family that was older, i.e my grandparents and great grandparents were much more old school and could come off as racist at times. Now at my internships, I have seen racism in schools in such different ways. The teachers can be very racist and group the children as a whole rather than looking at the individuals. The children know that they are not being treated fairly like many of the other students, which in turn causes them to lash out. They see how the smarter, more well behaved, and white children are spoken to in class and then a lot of the time, they just get yelled at for small things. I think I don't have many connections to this article personally because I have not seen a lot of racism throughout my life. I have been raised what I see as the right way. I look at everyone on the same playing field.

When connecting it to course readings of course I of course connected this to our readings White Privilege, The Silenced Dialogue, and Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us. While watching this documentary "The Whiteness Project" the first thing that came to mind was White Privilege. That reading discussed how people that are white do not even realize they are stuck in an oppressive mindset because that is how they have been brought up. People look at whites as superior and better than others. There was a quote in this reading that stuck out to me that I connected with "The Whiteness Project" as well, "If you don't believe in White Privilege then congratulations you're enjoying the benefits from it." Me being brought up in a predominantly white community, I connected this to my Social Justice Event because many of the people were speaking in a way of showing racism and discrimination towards anything but white. When connecting it to The Silenced Dialogue I took it in a different way, in that reading the student was not able to be heard and was silenced because of his race. In "The Whiteness Project" the people in the documentary were able to speak what they felt no matter what the repercussions were. They faced a lot of backlash for what they did, but they did it anyways. When connecting it to Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us, there was a quote in this reading that stated, "the impact of racism begins early. We are exposed to misinformation about people different from ourselves." It talked about how Whiteness was shown more than blackness. It was seen as "better" than any other races.

When taking a deeper look into White Privilege I found a website called Teaching Tolerance which took all that I knew about White Privilege and added to it. It discusses the many perks of being a privileged white person as opposed to being a different race. Things as small as having only white pantyhose at the store as opposed to a darker shade. These are things we do not ever think about. I remember I said in my blog when reading White Privilege during the semester I talked about how I have literally NEVER seen a bandaid any other color than flesh tone or tan. Another article I came across was The Limits of Talking About Privilege to Teenagers it states that the only way to teach children about privilege is having them talk about it with others. It it apart of the learning process that we look into ourselves and our lives and dig deeper into all that we have and what we have more than others do not.

Check out a few of the videos and let me know what you think: The Whiteness Project

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

"I started to notice I didn't like the classed I was taking called special education. I had to go through special ed. almost all of my life. I wanted to take other classes that interested me. I had never felt so mad, I wanted to cry" (Peterson, 1994, pg. 6). While reading this article, I thought to myself of the time I went on my internship in high school at Crayons at the Trudeau Center in Warwick working with classrooms of special education. When working with those children it was a lot different than other classrooms I have been in. The teachers were different, the classroom setup was different, and the children were looked at as different. The difference between this classroom was that in was integrated. There were students that had special needs, and there were ones that did not.

The two children that I babysit are considered "special needs" but instead of keeping them in a classroom they take them out of their room and bring them with a special education teacher and a resource specialist. The children always talk about how they "hate going with that stupid teacher because she treats them like they are babies."

In my high school as well we had a classroom special for children with down syndrome, special needs, behavioral needs, physical problems, etc. The children were with us throughout our entire high school career and we got very close to each and every one of them. They were even able to walk the stage with us at our graduation and it was such a great feeling not only for them, but for us as well.

When learning a little more about each of the students in Shayne's classroom, Issac had down syndrome. She did not let that hold him back in any way and did what she could to help him succeed. She even let the entire class act out his favorite book, "Where the Wild Things Are". She had 6 students in her classroom that were considered clinically identified as disabled and three of them had down syndrome.

It was said in this article that Shayne focused on individual goals rather that goals as a classroom. Which I think in a classroom like that, it is a very good thing. It is good to focus in on each individual child because they need that little extra push that teachers with a large classroom cannot necessarily give. Teachers need to be able to treat children in a way that is respectful, caring, and helpful to each and every student. Regardless of their academic achievements, race, family background, and religion. Each student should be able to walk into each classroom every morning with a feeling of excitement that they will be told they did something "good" today.

Follow this link to read more about inclusion in the school system:
Implementing Inclusion in Schools

Literacy with an Attitude

When reading the article "Literacy with an Attitude" by Patrick Finn, the first thing that I connected it to was to the movie we are watching in class Freedom Writers. The article touches upon topics such as inequality in the classroom and how many people do not pay attention to all of these inequalities and brush them under the rug. Those children in the movie, just like in the reading knew of the injustices that they faced every day but they said nothing about it and keep living in the way that they do. We as people, do what we do best and pretend the problems cease to exist.

This reading stated that working class students have the expectation that they do not want to succeed in life and will skate by doing the bare minimum in school. This article touched upon the facts that teachers in fact dump lower learning students off on teachers that work with special education students, and students with learning disabilities. I have heard this first hand with the children that I babysit, both of them have learning disabilities and their mother tells me that the teachers do not give the children the attention that they deserve because they simply cannot keep up and just dump them on the resource teacher. Finn states that, "The reality was that as the year wore on there were spaces available in "lower" classes to dump troublesome students from "higher" classes. And so by Christmas there were likely to be more than twenty in the 8-14s and 8-15s (lower levels)" (Finn 3).

Finn spoke about how he had made such a difference in the children's lives that he taught, just like in Freedom Writers how Ms. Gruwell changed the lives of her students every day she stood at the front of the classroom. She made them feel like THEY mattered. When the entire world was telling them that they were worthless, they had a sense of being in that room. She taught them things they never would have learned outside of that classroom because many other teachers had expectations that were in place for how those types of children would act.

I could also argue that this article relates to the White Privilege article that we read previously. The teachers did not want to deal with any students that are not like them, whether it be by race, gender, education level, etc. I see this every Friday at my Elementary School that I am at. The teacher will ALWAYS work with the students that grasp the material and are attentive. I however, always work with the students who are considered lower level, and not as behaved. I do not mind, because i know that every student in that classroom is capable of greatness. It just takes the right person to take it out of them. Whether it be Patrick Finn, Erin Gruwell, Dr. Stevos, or even me for that matter. It starts with one person. It is important to break the mold as children and students.

Becoming Something Different

When going through this reading it seemed to be the same story I had read before in other readings. It was talking about a child growing up and learning in a school system that did not appreciate the cultural differences that the child had. This reading immediately connected me to our former readings by Kozol and Rodriguez. All dealing with children that do not speak English as a first language. We are introduced to Esme Martinez who is learning the english language and developing to be proficient in her second language. She is unable to learn at the speed she wishes and finds herself constantly frustrated with the level of work she can do. But on the same token she is unable to express herself in the only way that she knows.

One of the differences that I saw in this rather than in the previous readings. Her parents were more understanding and did what they could in order to help and motivate her. While being in school she was trying more and more to let go of what she knew and try and learn new things about her American culture that she was trying to figure out in Middle School. She refers to herself as an American and tries to lose that Mexican heritage in school. She speaks as little Spanish as possible when she is outside of school and at home.

I think that schools truly make a difference in the way people act at home. If they have a teacher that will not give up on them and help them. I think that ESL classrooms always help students to better their learning. ESL classrooms let children be themselves while learning how to speak the language. In my elementary school that I visit weekly there are ESL classrooms and children in my room leave for about an hour a day just to go with the ESL teachers.

http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/advantages-pull-out-esl-classes-18279.html

Between Barack and a Hard Place

In the video "Between Barack and a Hard Place speaker Tim Wise discusses many topics such as racism, white privilege, and schooling systems that favor the white students. Wise being a very powerful speaker made me think while I was watching ever minute of this speech. He made a statement that I too have most likely said in my head, "I don't need to talk about racism, I have many black friends." People think in their head that if they have a few close friends that may not be of the same ethnicity as them then that is their way of being tolerant towards "all of them" as a whole. Tim stated that many people will just tell you what you want to hear and make you think that you are accepting and just tell you that they have african american friends when in fact, they do not.

In his discussion he stated that many people believe that Barack Obama being elected into office twice is going to end all racism in the United States. He argues that Obama's political success could instead "deepen the denial in which so much of the white public has been embedded for generations." Race always has been an "explosive issue" in the United States. He states that people point to Barack Obama as, "a validation of the American ideology that anyone can make it if they work hard and have an example of how institutional barriers against people of color have all vanished."

I believe that people have racist thoughts everyday still even this day in age because of how we are brought up as a society, how our families act, and how the country as a whole acts. Tim wise stated that he too has admitted to having racist thoughts as well. Wise touched upon research that he has done stating that people in different professions will not treat African Americans the same way they would treat someone white.

I see this all the time at my internship, the African American students all sit together, the spanish children all sit together, and the white children all sit together. They still keep them separated and ostracized from each other.

In the Service of What?

… "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" like the late John F. Kennedy once said, what can WE do to better the place in which we live? The choice is ours to make really. Service learning is a form of education that not only provides classroom time, but time spent out in the community doing service for others in need. Many school systems and teachers are trying to promote service learning in their communities because it is a great way to get students learning but out of the classroom doing good things for others. Service learning classrooms or projects can be done individually or as a group, the choice lies with the teacher. Service learning classrooms teach children how to give up their time and energy and help those who are in much more need of it than they are.

When in High School and all of my life growing up, my community was very "service based". We literally could not graduate without completing 30 hours of community service of our choice. We would always go to local soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and help fundraise by bringing in food, clothes, household needs, and any other things others might need. We would clean up the lakes near our school that would get covered in trash by all of the people driving by that would throw stuff out of their window and into the water. When it snowed, we would go and shovel out neighbors that may not have been able to do it themselves. I would even babysit family friends of mine that needed someone desperately to help out. Sometimes I would even volunteer at my grandmothers Nursing Home. Not everyone in this world understands what it is like to be unable to do something for their own or not able to have what others may have but if we give a little bit of time and dedication to something, we may be able to change the way someones day turns out.

I make sure every time I go to my classrooms at Harry Kizarian Elementary School I have a smile on my face and I am ready to help all of the children I am working with that day learn something new or help them perfect something that they may be having trouble with. Though I am not giving them something physical to hold in their hands, I am giving them something to help better their future. I think that is is important to be the person that wants change in this world, and if more people like us,  (because I know we are such a kind class) could help out in any way possible in their communities there would be a much stronger bond between each and every place in which we live. 

I think that more school systems and communities should have service based learning within their classrooms. It is the best way to teach students in the classroom and have them actually doing what you are teaching them while they are learning it.