Looking back at the semester!

5 tricks card game

• I felt like this game brought a lot of us closer as it was the first time we got put in the group setup of the desks and because of the way we had to be quiet and figure out what was going on with no words, we all bonded so quickly and laughed and became fast friends. It also was super eye opening because almost everyone had different ideas as to what was going on and personally, I just felt stupid because I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I think this game was super important to do because as we started connecting it to what we were talking about in class, it all made sense. 

Delpit culture of power

• Reading Delpit and learning about the culture and codes of power was really cool to me because it made me rethink all of my experiences in my schooling and how messed up the education system is. I think that the codes of power are basically just giving adults power over the children and taking their voice away. I then got to go back and think about it and compare it to my service learning and how I see the codes of power enacted in that classroom and how the teacher is always using her power over these kids. she has a desk at the front of the room and during morning rug time she sits on a chair while they are all on the rug as she's towering over them telling them what to do and what not to do.

Woke read alouds

• I felt this was a super important topic to go over and watch the woke read aloud but then when we got in class, I didn't feel so good about it anymore. I also went back and read some of my peers journals and I'm a bit shocked that they are going to be teachers one day. This is not a topic that you get to choose if you believe in, you don't get to tell their students if you believe in their identity. You will lose their trust and any hope of you creating a bond with them. I hope watching the read aloud with Ki changed some of their minds and opened up their eyes that this isn't just some kind of crazy "phase" and they WILL have students that use many different pronouns and have many different identities and they have no choice but accept them. 

Woke read alouds

 

Hyperlinks

https://www.wokekindergarten.org/

I had to include the website that Ki, the person who reads the woke read aloud's because it is part of a much bigger and amazing organization! Ki is an amazing abolitionist early educator, cultural organizer and creator currently innovating ways to resist, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy. The website includes many different tabs to click on and learn more about Ki and their organization. Some tabs include, teachable poems, workshops, the link to the woke read alouds and a woke word of the day. The second I went onto this website I felt so happy that something like this exists and I couldn't wait until I had my own kids and could play the woke read alouds for them and for the youth I work with one day.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/parents/identity

While google searching LGBTQ in schools this article from planned parenthood popped up and I thought is was just so nicely done. It is an article on how to talk to your child about identity and I think this is so important because it is not an easy topic for some parents or even some kids to approach their parent's about and if a child is showing that they may be a part of the LGBTQ community and a parent is lost at where to go next, this is a nice resource on how to help. One thing I really liked about it was how if you scroll down, it is broken up into 5 little categories that you can click on and it will take you to another page. The 5 categories are how to talk to you preschooler about identity, your elementary aged child, your middle schooler, your high schooler and then there was one on how to talk to all ages about identity. I loved this concept because you wouldn't approach talking about identity to a highs schooler as you would a preschooler and I also think it is so important that they even included preschool because some kids know they are transgender when they are 3,4 and 5 years old so opening up these conversations at an early age is immensely important. 

Ending Ableism in Education, Hehir

 

Argument

The author Thomas Hehir, argues that there is ableism in education and he pulls from his own experiences at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs, Associate Superintendent for the Chicago Public Schools, and Director of Special Education in the Boston Public Schools. He also argues that ableism assumptions are so common when it comes to education of children with disabilities reinforces the preconceptions of disabilities and does not help when it comes to these students educational and employment opportunities. 

https://inclusiveteach.com/2022/01/30/discussing-a-beginners-guide-to-ableism/

Rodriguez "Aria"

 

Hyperlinks

https://teachercertification.com/bilingual-education-importance-benefits-in-schools/

https://www2.ed.gov/documents/early-learning/talk-read-sing/bilingual-en.pdf

I chose these two links to share about this reading because this reading was very deep when it comes to talking about bilingual education and sense of self. Doing my service learning placement in PPSD has opened my eyes so much to the importance of respecting bilingual education. About 1/3 of the class I'm in right now are Spanish speakers and most do not speak English but are taught primarily in English. I am not sure how I feel about this because they are only in kindergarten but I feel like kindergarten is such a crucial year for learning and some of these kids are being taught by a teacher who only speaks English and an assistant teacher who has picked up a few words and phrases of Spanish so I'm not sure if they are benefitting from this. 

The first link dives deeper into what bilingual education is, the benefit of it in schools and what bilingual education may look like in a classroom.

The second link is a PDF from the US department of ed and it talks about how bilingual education is important for early childhood and how it benefits their cognitive development, social emotional development, and how it can lead to long term success in adulthood. 

Literacy With an Attitude

 

Reflection

• There is a certain paragraph in chapter 2 that got my attention because it sounded all too familiar to what I went through in my education. 
• On pages12-13 it says "Teachers in the middle-class school seemed to believe that their job was to teach the knowledge that was found in textbooks or dictated by curriculum experts. They valued this more than knowledge taught by experience". (Finn)
• This is not surprising to hear because in middle school, highs school and even the beginning of college I felt that my teachers were teaching straight from their curriculum books and if you didn't get it, then you didn't get it and oh well, you needed to find a way to catch up on your own. This was extremely frustrating because I always felt I didn't learn the same way as my peers and needed to be taught in many different ways but that was not done for me so I just silently struggled all the way through my first few years of college. 

http://www.educationalneuroscience.org.uk/resources/neuromyth-or-neurofact/children-have-different-learning-styles/

Johnson Where White Privilege Came From

 

Quotes

1. "In this, the British were inventing a concept of race that made it a path of least resistance to see other peoples as subhuman if not nonhuman, making it easier to objectify them and more difficult to feel empathy for them as members of their own kind, both integral to the exertion of control over others" (Johnson).

I chose this quote because it really stuck out to me in showing where racism and white privilege started because even way back in the 18th and 19th centuries, people were being seen as nonhuman because it made it easier for other to objectify them and basically just see them as a thing with no feelings so they didn't feel bad about treating them poorly. 

2. "The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its Bill of Rights clearly contradict practices such as genocide, conquest, forced migration, slavery, the buying and selling of human beings, and the denial of basic rights to dignity, self-determination, and freedom. To resolve the contradiction, the concept of race was invoked to create distinct cultural categories of ‘white’ and ‘nonwhite’ human beings" (Johnson).

 This quote means basically that racism became a thing to put people in two categories on whites and nonwhites so it would be easier to deny basic rights, sell humans and enforce slavery.

3. "In either case, there is no such thing, for as the model makes clear, systems and people exist only in relation to each other and everything we do and everything we experience is always in the context of something larger than ourselves"(Johnson).

This quote was interesting to me because I thought it was very dense and hard to understand but I chose it because it really struck me as something that needed to be pointed out. what does this really mean? what does it mean that everything we experience is bigger than ourselves? I interpreted it as that the things we do and the things we experience always mean something bigger.