race

"Teachers are in an ideal position... to attempt to get all of the issues on the table in order to initiate true dialogue. This can only be done, however, by seeking out those whose perspectives may differ most, be learning to give their words complete attention, by understanding one's own power, even if that power stems merely from being in the majority..."

this quote by Lisa Delpit really caught my attention and psyched me up for the chapter. I have often said that teachers have such a huge impression on children especially in middle and high school just when they are beginning to understand who they are and where they stand in our society. In many cases we as educators spend more awake hours with our children then any other person, including the parent. So therefore we must concentrate fully on what opinions we share with our students and the topics we discuss.

I was so interested in this chapter because coming from a conservative high school education i sometimes felt that teachers left their own personal views guide their teaching and their interactions with their students. Yet I had one teacher, who was very liberal, that the first day of school she flat out told us her politics, who she was voting for in the democratic primary and he views on the world. Even though she declared her politics, every student regardless of where they sat on the political spectrum appreciated her and looked up to her. She made an effort to always show both sides, to point out holes in someone else's argument whether she agreed with them or not and more than anything she made her classroom a safe place to talk about anything. As a future educator, she is the model for the sort of teacher I want to be. Yet I always find myself asking if it is a good idea to blatantly share my political views with my students.

It amazed me in a school that was so centered on being multicultural could not actively talk about race. Their classroom was what society looked like and they spent so much time insuring that there would be black and latino students that succeed by didn't think about talking about racial implications.

Gay youth

The take-away point I got from the article on homosexual adolescents is that they need someone in their corner battling for them. Or at least someone who is open and willing to listen and reserve judgment. This is the perfect time for teachers to step in. As we have discussed before this is a time where students look more to their teachers and don't necessarily see their teacher as the enemy.

I had a teacher in high school that worked so hard to combat things that were mentioned in the article. We had a Day of Silence where students could choose not to speak for a day to symbolize the silence that LGBT individuals feel in our society. She tried to bring in a gay litigator to show exactly what the text said gay adolescents are lacking, "another difficulty that gay and lesbian teenagers have in dealing with their homosexuality in adaptive ways in the abscence of postivtive role models. Gay and lesbian teens do not see the same diversity of adults with whom to identify as heterosexual adolscents do," (340). It's hard because I know not everyone agrees with homosexuality but these students need real help. In high school, we also had a White Ribbon day symbolizing that LGBT teens have the highest suicide rate of any teenage group. So this is more than just people's position on what some consider a moral matter; in many cases this is between life and death.

The interesting thing about the Stacy Lee article is the locally we aren’t seeing Asian Americans as so silent. With the recent immigration of many Hmong people there has been a lot of local opposition to it, especially in more rural communities. A lot of this has to do with schools in small communities that have never really encountered ELL students are now suddenly faced with ELL students and a lot of budget constraints.

I have seen personally seen the effects of the stereotype of Asian Americans as the smart kid. Last year the Valedictorian at South Division High School was Hmong. Yet while he was giving his speech at graduation, people were heckling him on stage and were telling him “to learn English or get off the stage.” This poor kid was being held down by both stereotypes of Asian-Americans, that he was smart and that he had also just gotten off the boat.

Disparity

Knowing the suburban and urban schools are different is by no stretch of the imagination a new concept for me; I witnessed a lot of that both in my own education and further work in schools. I just never cease to be amazed at the vast difference in schools. In Enora R. Brown's article I actually had to go back and read about the Mountainview school because it was hard to believe that it was actually a public school.

This concept of militarism is something that worries me quite a bit. When I was in high school I worked with students from Bradley Tech high school in Milwaukee and was shocked when they told me they have a full time military recruiter in their school. And obviously, my suburban school still had a military recruiter in our lunch room several times a year, having push up contests to try to drum up interest in the military; but to think that they have someone in their school everyday pushing for students to join the military. There are obvious racial targeting for the military and it really sickens me; if you go to any of the world festivals at the Summerfest grounds over the summer you will notice that the only two that have a large military recruitment presence are African World Festival and Mexican Fiesta. Meanwhile, John Kerry gets chastised a couple of years ago for saying:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

This is the hiring practices of the military, as well as recruiting people of color, yet when anyone in the mainstream media says anything he's labeled as unpatriotic. Now, I understand that the military is an option and it gives opportunity to many people that otherwise couldn't afford to go to school, but when schools are treating students like they're soldiers from the time they are very young, like they do at the school that I work at, then its time for someone to say something.

Especially, after listening to John Mccain the other day state in the same debate that he said he wanted teachers to be held more accountable, that he wanted to support the troops to teachers movement. Yet, when he stated that, he made it sound like a way to get around pesky examinations and certifications. So let me get this straight, we train our black students to act like soldiers, then we send them to Iraq and when they come back they teach in our schools; sounds like a great way to keep an entire group of people from moving up in the world.

Behavior issuses

Our project is dealing with behavior issues in the classroom and involving parents, guidance counselors and social workers in dealing with behavior management. For my portion of the project I am planning on presenting some of the literature on classroom management that has been studied, either formally or anecdotaly. Then our group plans on presenting the information as a role playing of ways in which to deal with a certain situation. I'm really looking forward to addressing some of the things I have seen in schools that I've worked in (like support staff hitting children) and instead focus on more positive ways of dealing with classroom management. There are just so many ideas out there about ways to get students involved in class and getting through the school day productively. Hopefully we can all find something to take away from this presentation and we can work on taking away Milwaukee's title of having the most suspensions out of any school district in the country!

Do our students know how to think critically?

The ability to think critically is essential to higher education. I have a history professor who constantly told us she had to unteach us how to think and instead learn how to analyze. My question is, why didn't we just learn it that way to begin with. There are so many times in education where there are two roads a teacher can take, an easy road that may get the student through a task more quickly, or there is a road which while may be more difficult, leads to lifelong learning. So many times we see that education is made easier so that teachers can quickly move on to the next unit. In the school I work at the kids do Internet research, but they are told exactly what website to go to and what exact information is needed. Just like in the first article, this method of teaching never allows the student to become responsible for his/her own research and because of that when they sit down at a computer in high school they will be lost at what to do. I think it is so important for students to start thinking critically because the more practice they get at it the better they will be at it in college.

What goes hand in hand with the lack of critically thinking skills being taught is the amount of time being spent preparing students for standardized testing. I think NCLB would be hard pressed to find even one teacher that would go on record saying that he/she loves standardized testing. As a future social studies teacher I think about the effects of standardized testing all the time. Will I have a career after I graduate considering schools are shrinking their social studies department and reallocating resources to something that is tested on standardized tests. We given up on desiring our students to be well rounded, as long as they know exactly how to fill in those scantron sheets it doesn't matter if they don't have music or art or history. The author of The Future of Middle Level Education says that "as the obsession with standardized tests runs its course, America and her policymakers will come to realize the obvious limitations of current reform efforts and recognize that the full education needed by today's young adolescents requires much more than that which is assessed by tests," (184). I would really like to believe that, but on this subject I am still a bit of a pessimist.

Mike Male's article

Well I think I can finally take my jaw off the ground becuase for a while after reading Mike Male's articles I was so astounished that I kept sitting with my mouth agap (wonderful for everyone watching me in the cafeteria at work). What really caught my attention was this quote, "Today's media potrayals of teens employ the same sterotypes once openly applied to unpopular racial and ethnic groups: violent, reckless, hypersexed, welfare-draining, obnoxious, ignorant," (121). This made so much sense to me yet I had never thought of it in that context before. Which also begs the question, how much do teens of "unpopular ethnic groups" feel opression stemming from both racism and ageism. I continued to be asthonished by all of the lies made up about by the media about teens. I have always known that the media has not always taken a lot of time to highlight postivtives about teens but to blare so much wrong information about this age group is just horrible and perputates so many excuses. Did anyone else have the reaction that after reading this article you all of a sudden become more perceptive to the fact that everyone blames thing on the media. There was this old Greek woman at work today who was telling me that "in her day back in Greece no one would marry you if you weren't a virgin and we didn't even have TV until the 1960s." Yes, that's a great story and I would love to believe it, but I'm pretty sure that some of those GIs left with more than just souveniers from foriegn countries. I see that a major issuse this article has going aganist is that some many people have believed the same thing for such a long time and its so hard to go aganist that thinking. Especially as the article suggests, we would much rather blame tangible things as opposed to facing issuses like cracking down on child abuse.

Being aware of abuse is something that unforntunatly can also fall on the shoulders of educators. If the public is not concerned with the effect that abuse has on our students and our society than our educators can at least stand up and tell children from a young age about abuse and how to find help. Teachers also have to be a safe place for students to talk about difficult issuses as well as keeping a watchful eye out for warning signs. Sometimes it can be as easy as not unlocking the bathroom door; at the school I work at the bathroom doors are kept lock and one day a father came in to "talk" to his son after the teacher called about bad behavior. The father (while taking off his belt) asked the teacher if she would open the bathroom door for her. She did and then from my position tutoring in the hallway I could hear the child crying while being hit with the belt. While it is an uncomfortable situation unfortunatly teachers have a good view into the lives of their students and can go a long way to help stopping abuse.