Journal #11: Semester Reflection!

The overall question for this semester review is: When you look at everything we have done this semester, what stands out to you as meaningful? 3 things I believe made the most impact on me in this class were the topic of Intersectionality, Kohn's What to Look for in a Classroom, and the woke read aloud.

1. Intersectionality - This topic really stood out to me because it made me look at my life and identity from an outside perspective. Doing the identity chart with privilege helped put this into perspective for me. I hadn't ever really thought about my identity so in depth before and this activity and class discussion brought it to fruition for me!

2. Kohn's What to Look for in a Classroom - This article/chart made an impact for me because I could easily see the good signs in a classroom around my service learning placement. My placement has just been so amazing and being able to experience that was so helpful in my journey to becoming a teacher. Kohn's article made me analyze my personal school experience against my clinical experience which was truly interesting.

3. The woke read aloud with Ki was really fun to watch! I loved how they spoke to their audience about pronouns and how we should consider people's feelings and what they identify as. I think everyone in our society should watch that video and use it in their everyday lives.

Overall, this class has been so interesting and I learned a lot!!

Journal #10: Ki and Woke Read Alouds - Reflection

In this video, Ki reads a book titled They, She, He Easy as ABC and discusses the topic of pronouns. I think this conversation is so wonderful to have with young children! In class, I spoke about trying to break the stigma in young children before it is formed. I think this holds true, especially here because I know so many people, including myself, who had to learn to adapt to people using pronouns that might not match what you would assume from looking at them. Luckily, I went to a high school who was accepting of this and had resources for students. It would have been incredible had I learned as a young child to ask for someone's pronouns before assuming (we all know what assuming makes you!). 

I really enjoyed watching this video and following Ki reading the story. They make it really easy for children (and adults) to understand the topic of the video, and they make it fun to pay attention to. I love when Ki brings up the fact that not everyone will look like what you assume their pronouns are. They also discuss how people can go by multiple pronouns if that's what makes their heart happy. This topic is so helpful for children as well as they grow and begin to figure out their identity and how they feel in their own body. 
Bringing this into my own personal classroom, I definitely want to make sure all of my students are as comfortable as can be and that my classroom is a safe space to all. With that being said, I think doing an activity such as the moo-in is a great way for students to think about this topic and begin to identify who they are. 
Linked here is Ki's video! I truly enjoyed watching this and love how Ki explains pronouns and identity.

Journal #9: Hehir - Quotes

Ableist Assumptions

"As Penny explains, 'She was aghast that I expected that Joe would one day be employed'. Another event added further clarification. At a workshop for parents of disabled kids, Penny was told that she had to go through a period of mourning the arrival of her disabled child. Deeply insulted, Penny's response was, 'I have lost a child at birth and I have had a disabled child. I know the difference. My son is a gift not a tragedy" (Hehir, 2).

Penny, Joe's mother, has every right to be upset with what the people at this workshop said to her! The stigma that disabled children are not a blessing to the world just as much as able-bodied people is so incredibly wrong. It is also stated in this section of the article that Penny had to fight for the same educational rights for her child that everyone else got no problem. The ableism that Hehir touches upon in just this first section is crazy and it's so amazing that there are now laws that protect students and their education, no matter what. 

Ableism and Schooling

"Applied to schooling and child development, ableist preferences become particularly apparent. From an ableist perspective, the devaluation of disability results in societal attitudes that uncritically assert that it is better for a child to walk than roll, speak than sign, read print than read Braille, spell independently than use a spell-check, and hang out with nondisabled kids as opposed to other disabled kids, etc. In short, in the eyes of many educators and society, it is preferable for disabled students to do things in the same manner as nondisabled kids" (Hehir, 3).

With these stigmas in place, it's incredibly hard for disabled students to feel like they belong and can use the resources that can help them. By using this ableist ideology, children are going to start feeling left out and resentful to the fact that they need to use different resources to help them in their lives. If we embrace resources such as Braille or Sign Language or all types of children spending time together, then we help to break the stigma. Things are changing but we as the next generation need to make sure things continue to get and be better by educating ourselves and others.

Education of the Deaf

"In the 1970s, important research in linguistics confirmed what many deaf people already knew: that ASL was a language with its own syntax and grammar, and that manual language developed naturally in deaf children similarly to the way oral language developed in hearing children" (Hehir, 7)

It's truly important for Deaf children to have access to the best resources for their communication. Nowadays, people have more access to learn sign language so Deaf and hearing people can learn and communicate with each other. I've personally taken ASL 101 at RIC and it has been so helpful because I can communicate with some of my regulars at the restaurant I work at so much better. Signing is such an amazing resource to use and gives access to people who need it.

Linked is an article discussing how ableism is created in this world and what we as a community can do to de-root it: #Ableism

Journal #8: Rodriguez - Reflection

 Immediately when I read this excerpt from Richard Rodriguez's Aria, I thought of my boyfriend and his family. His family immigrated to the United States from Guatemala and he's the only one from his family that was born here in the U.S. A lot of what Rodriguez said makes me think of his situation. His parents only speak Spanish and very little, broken English. Anthony, my boyfriend, however, speaks English as his first language and gets frustrated because of the language barrier between him and his parents. 

With this being stated and seeing it firsthand, it puts into perspective for me everything that Rodriguez was saying about no longer being able to communicate with his parents. "The family's quiet was partly due to the fact that, as we children learned more and more English, we shared fewer and fewer words with our parents" (Rodriguez, 37). The language barrier between yourself and your parents has got to be so difficult to live with and sad to see. Not having that clear communication between your family is incredibly hard to deal with everyday. Anthony gets frustrated when he will try to explain something and his parents don't understand, but he'll try to say it in Spanish and flub the words because he primarily learned English as a young child despite having Spanish speaking parents. 

I think it's incredibly important to integrate kids into society no matter what language they speak, but to embrace their other languages while also giving them English as a resource. The strategy that the nuns and his parents used with Rodriguez did help him learn English, but it also stripped away his Hispanic identity and brought him further away from his culture. Programs like ESL are incredibly helpful to this, but there's always more we can do! Here is an article with strategies and resources to use when needing to teach English, yet embrace their native language: 10 Ways to Teach English to Your Spanish Speaking Students

Journal #7: Finn - Reflection

 I think our discussion in class about this reading was very helpful to understanding and connecting it to my life. Looking back at my schooling and trying to make sense of it has been different as I progress through this program. I grew up in a middle class public school district and then switched to an upper class public school for high school. The influences and teachers that I have had definitely impacted my decision to be a teacher. In Finn's A Distinctly Un-American Idea, it says, "In the middle class school, about one-third of the teachers grew up in the neighborhood of the school. Most graduated from the local state teachers college, and many of them lived in the neighborhood of the school" (Finn, 12). I remember a lot of my teachers in middle school teaching at that same school that they had grown up in. Some of them even had some of their colleagues as teachers!

The buildings of my middle class schools were dreary and focused mostly on drilling information into our heads rather than being creative. After I transitioned to a higher class district, I saw many changes in my education. Again, a lot of my teachers actually went to Ponaganset themselves, but their learning styles were a lot different. We did more projects focused around creativity such as a blackout poetry project in US History or creating informational posters and pamphlets for health class. Because of this change, it changed my view on how children should be learning. Rather than preferring lecture based learning, I started to see education from a different approach and wanting to embrace creativity. 

One point I can bring to class is to talk about how we can change this system of believing you have to stay in the same class you were born into. A way we can break this habitual system is to offer more opportunities for all students to grow and learn so they can make any decisions they want to (going to college, trade school, etc.) and not being forced into anything because they don't have access. Below is an article giving examples from people about their personal experiences with class.

Has your class changed over the course of your lifetime?

Video Analysis Links - Teach Us All, Classroom Tour and Precious Knowledge

Maija Spence - Teach Us All

Maija Spence - Classroom Tour

Maija Spence - Precious Knowledge

I couldn't figure out how to upload them as images as well but the links should work!

Journal #6: Structural Racism - Extended Comments

 I am making extended comments on Sarah Kennedy's blog about Tricia Rose's How Structural Racism Works. Sarah's arguments all have wonderful points. Reading Sarah's blog truly reiterated, in a summarized form, Rose's points and the understanding of them. 

It has been a recurring idea in this class and the readings we've been provided that education, knowledge and awareness are necessary to make change in the world we know. Obviously, awareness is a necessity to making a change in social justice. Sarah makes a great point that educating our society, whether it directly affects you or doesn't affect you at all, is important to make a step forward and try to break the cycle. Doing research and combining all of the research that has been done is an excellent way to educate yourself and others, and to begin making that change that we all want to see. 

A really great idea that I read in Sarah's blog and watched in Rose's video was that a lot of people have the mindset that if it doesn't affect them, then they don't need to worry about it. That's definitely not the case at all! Sarah brought up a really great point that the Black Lives Matter movement brought a lot of attention and awareness to those matters. Personally, I didn't engage much in educating myself with social justice matters really until the BLM movement was so prominent. I knew there were issues but as a young teenager, I wasn't really aware of any of it. Since then, I've tried my best to stay educated and at least try to make people aware of social justice issues by reposting articles, talking about it with my peers and posting things on my Instagram stories. Even if you can't do a ton, making people aware can have almost a butterfly effect to make change. 

Overall, I think Sarah's blog was absolutely spectacular at summarizing and speaking to Tricia Rose's points in her argument. Great job Sarah, thank you for sharing!