Shor "Empowering Education" : Quotes

When I read this article by Ira Shor I thought many of the points brought up were good and I agreed with them 100 percent. I think that students should learn by participatory learning because they are bound to retain more information if they are participating and not just being talked at by a teacher. Just like in our class we all share stories and opinions during the class and Dr. Bogad does not just talk at us the whole timem and most of us all have agreed that we retain the most information from this class than any of our other classes. I found a few quotes in the reading that back up what Ira Shor has to say.

"Participation is the most important place to begin because student involvment is low in traditional classrooms and because action is essential to gain knowledge and develope intelligence"

This quote shows Shors main idea about participatory classrooms because he is saying that in order for students to gain the most knowledge they need to be involved in the classroom. I agree with this because most of the time if a student is not engaged in the discussion during the class they are not listening and if they are not listening then they are not learning anything. Also, Shor is saying that action is a big part of how students learn in a classroom. If a student never participates or raises their hand they probably will learn less than someone who is more active in the class and puts their opinion in more than others.

"Knowledge is derived from action...To know is therefore to assimulate reality into structures of transformation and these are the structures that intelligence constructs as a direct extension of our actions"

Piaget backs up Shor's idea by saying this. He is saying that the best way to learn is to be active in the classroom and relate what you are learning back to personal experience. I think this works really well because many times in this class people have used stories about themselves and I have remembered them better than I have remembered anything in any of my other classes.

Dewey says that "participation is an educational and political means for students to gain knowledge and to develope as citizens. Only by active learning could students develop scientific method and democratic habits rather than becoming passive pupils waiting to be told what things mean and what to do."

Dewey says that learning in a participatory way helps students to identify themselves as citizens. He says that in order to learn in a good way you have to be active rather than passive because when you are active you are doing what you need to learn rather than being told what you need to learn. He believed that learning and the government were related and if you learned in a participatory manner then you would develop as a citizen and learn democratic habits in a better way. I think that Dewey is right about participatory learning and that it helps students to learn in better ways rather than just being talked at for a whole class. 

During class I hope to talk more about ways that participartory learning is beneficial to students and how we can help incorporate it into the more traditional classrooms today.

Promising Practices

I got to the Conference around 8 in the morning and was thrilled to see what this might be like and what kind of things I would learn and hear at the conference. When I got all settled in I sat down and looked through the folder that they gave me. I found many interesting things inside the folder that could be beneficial for me today and in the future. I was very intrigued as to what was to come in the conference just from seeing what was inside the folder I received.

My first session that I took was called “Students with Special Needs.” I picked this because I want to do my concentration in special needs to I figured that it would be very beneficial to me in the future. The first thing that we ended up doing was we looked at pictures of students and tried to identify their disability if they had one. I thought this activity was alright but I thought that the point of it was going to be for something more than just showing us how students with special needs look the same as non-disability children. I feel like we could have spent the time on something better than realizing sometimes you cannot tell if a child has a disability or not. After that we did many other activities to show us what it would be like to be a student with a disability. We did a listening activity that we had to listen really carefully to in order to figure out a puzzle that we were supposed to make. We had to listen to the recording and do what it was saying in order to make a picture out of shapes. This was really difficult and gave me good insight on what it might be like to be a student who has a difficult time listening and following directions. Although we did many other activities like the ones I mentioned above I wish that we had learned a little bit more about special needs and the ways we can help the students learn rather than understanding how they feel. I think understanding how they feel when they are having trouble with something is important too but helping the student find ways to work through the trouble is the most important part as a whole. I feel like the main message that the speaker was trying to send was to start small with a child and work your way up. She used examples like color coding questions and the answers in readings so the child can identify they match up. She also used reading lower level stories at first and working your way up to the correct level as an example. I agree with her and think it is good to start small but not too small because I feel as though some children take it differently than how the teacher might want them to take it.

This relates to the story we just read about in class recently about children with disabilities and how they are separated from other students because they are considered a student with “disabilities.” I think sometimes teachers need to evaluate students more than they do and try to think of what might be best for them and if staying in a segregated class is what is good for them then so be it but if going into a general education class will benefit that child more, then that is where that student should be.

The second session that I went to was about social skills and different activities that we could do to help a student develop better social skills. We played a game where everyone got a number 1-7 and you did not know what number you had. You then were not allowed to talk to anyone with a lower number than you had. Because no one knew what number they had it made it clear who had higher numbers and who had lower numbers because the ones with lower numbers were alone not talking to anyone and the ones with higher numbers were being ambushed by people. I liked this activity because it shows students who are less shy the others what it might be like to be ignored if they have a lower number and it also helps students talk to others even if they do not know that person. One thing that I did learn during this session was that even the smartest students might not have any social skills. The speaker showed us a video of a boy who had won the spelling bee recently. He was being interviewed but he had no social skills at all and said things that most people would not say back to someone who was interviewing them. I thought that was very interesting to watch.

This topic relates to the theme of tracking in schools because even if you are smart you could have no social skills. What I mean is that tracking is to separate students into groups based on their ability in school. How can you put a student in an honors class when they have no social skills and are not able to hold a conversation with another person? I think tracking is a difficult thing to have when it comes down to situations like this one where the boy is extremely smart but just cannot talk to someone normally. I wish the speaker would have explained more about this topic and how we would solve issues like this one.

I really did not enjoy the keynote speaker at the end of the conference because I thought he was boring to listen to and should have used more examples of things instead of listing everything and talking in such technical terms. Most of what he was saying I just did not get and I thought he never got a main point in his speech where he told us what his point was. The one thing that I remember the most about his speech was at the end he said it should be about the kids and he showed a picture of a various amount of students of different races. I agree with him that it is about the kids and we need to do what is best for them as teachers to educate them in the right ways.

I thought the conference was a great experience even though I did not get as much as I would have liked to get out of it. I will definitely be attending many more in the future in hope to gain many strategies to educate students the right way.

Kliewer: "Citizenship in School:Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome" Connections

 I found this article to be very similar to the last one we read about tracking. Kliewer writes in his article about making students with down syndrome or other disabilities feel like they are just as equal as the other nondisabled students in the school. He mentions that students with disabilities should be able to be in the same classroom as nondisabled students and not in special education classes. He says this because he thinks that students in special education classes are denied certain classes and activities that a student with down syndrome might want to take because they are considered disabled and put into a special education class it limits what they can and cannot do even if they are capable of certain things they might be denied. This is similar to tracking because the school is seperating children into different classrooms due to their ability in school. For instance, students who are really smart are put into a different classroom than students who might have more difficulty learning than others. Just like the students with down syndrome are put into special education classes instead of a class with nondisabled students. I think that if we all want everyone to feel equal or all have a fair opportunity in school then no matter what abilities or disabilities you have in school you should be able to participate in certain activities in school. I think children in special needs classrooms sometimes are missing out on things in school when they could be experiencing school to the fullest if they are capable of doing so.

I also think this article is similar to the article by Dennis Carlson called, "Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community." This article is about treating people the same and not using a persons sexuality or race against them in an Educational setting. Just like Kliewers article this article is another way of sterotyping people because of the way they look or what they choose to like or dislike. Many nondisability students end up making fun of or sterotyping students with disabilities because they are limited in certain areas of learning or do different acts because of their disabliltiy that they might not be able to control. The truth about all of this I think is that no one knows what its like to be gay, a person of a different raise, or have a disability until they walk in that persons shoes. Just as Kliewer says, "How absurd to be judged by others at all, especially by those who have never experienced a disability..." This is true for not just people with disabilitys but also people of different raises and also homosexuals. The connection between these two articles is that there are so many stereotypes today in the world and we are trying to find ways to get rid of the sterotypeing and have more acceptance and support for people of all kinds.

In class I hope to discuss more about chilren with disabilities and what it might like to be like them because like Kliewer says some of us do not know what it really is like because we do not have disabilities. I also hope to discuss ways that we can help to try to get rid of sterotyping.

Oakes "Tracking, Why Schools need to take another route" : Extended Comments

I was reading Caiti's blog and I agreed with her points and what she had to say about Oakes and how he disagreed with tracking. I think that she is right about how we should not be having teachers in schools teaching children just for the job and not caring about how the students are doing in the classes. The quote that Caiti used fits perfectly, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". It really does not make any sense for us to favor the children who are doing well more than the "less abled" children. I think in a way this is like treating Men and Women different when there really is no difference just the fact that one is a male and the other is a women. Just because some kids are doing better than others in school does not mean they should be more privaledged than the other kids. I agree with Caiti that the children who need help should be able to get that help that they deserve not be ignored and expected to do bad for the rest of their lives.

I also think that the quote she picked to connect Oakes article and Finn works out really well. I think it is a great example of a classroom where the teachers under estimate the ability of the children and just teach them to keep a steady job. I do not know what I would do if I grew up in a school where  my teachers did not encourage me to do well or succeed in life. I think this is a huge part of a teachers job and for someone to neglect to encourage a student to do well blows my mind. I think Caiti did a great job explaining the points that Oakes put into his reading and she put good evidence from Finn to back it up.

Gender and Education : Hyperlink

I do not know why my video did not post so here is the link for it.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL-kivrTM20

Gender and Education : Hyperlink

There is much controversy today about gender and education. Do boys get more attention than girls in class? Do girls get called on to answer questions more than boys? or do teacher evenly submit their attention to both boys and girls? These questions are the first things that I think about when talking about gender and education.

I googled gender and education and found a really good website that talks about the differences that girls and boys go through in school and how teachers teach them to be treated differently and that woman are "unequal" to men. This startled me because why are woman unequal to men? There is no doubt in my mind that we are different than men because even woman are different from each other but that does not mean we can not do the same types of activities. In the article it says teachers, lessons teachers teach, and textbooks are all guilty of gender bias and focus their material on one gender rather than the other. I do not agree with doing this because the students will grow up thinking the wrong things about who we are as people. They will start to develop stereotypes for each other like the popular girls are the ones who are pretty and nice and have lots of friends or the jock boys are all the ones with huge muscles and can get the girls. If we start to develop stereotypes for these students at a young age than we might always have the problem of gender favoritism in schools. I think that teachers should be teaching the students we are equal and always treat us equally rather than favoring one gender over another.

Here is the article that I read....http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/genderbias.html

I also found this YouTube video that has to do with gender bias in young children's first books.

Tim Wise "Between Barack and a Hard Place." : Reflection/Hyperlink

In the video's Wise seems to think that rascism still exist today and he is right it does. Even though Brown vs. Board of education did not get rid of rascism totally it was still a huge step in the right direction and Wise says that it will take time to get rid of it completely. I think that he is right about this and it will just take time for things to settle down and for people not to be rascist. You can see the progression step by step every day.

Another interesting idea that Wise said was that Black people have less opportunities than White people. He said that some people have less job opportunities than others and even are treated differently in many ways. I agree with him in so ways that Black people are distadvantaged because of the sterio type that exists in todays society.

In class, I hope to talk about the ways that we can help more White people accept Black people and also create more opportuntiies for them as well.


 http://brownvboard.org/summary/  More background information about brown vs. board of education

Disney you tube video (extra blog post)

I thought you guys would like to see this you tube video. It goes along with the class we talked about Disney in! I hope you all enjoy it :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWMCt35oFY

Kahne and Westheimer "In the Service of What?" : Argument

In the article by Kahne and Westheimer argue that service learning is a way to improve the community and provide opportunities to educate other people doing the service learning.

In my opinion, I think that service learning has its ups and downs. I agree with Kahne and Westheimer in some ways but I also disagree in some ways. I think that service learning is a way to improve the community in some ways because you are there to help the less fortunate people in america. One example they give in the article is giving survival kits to the homeless. I think this is one way of service learning to help improve the community. Or is it just community service?

I also think that it means not only helping people in need but you benefitting from helping those people. For example going to the classroom you are helping the students who are less fortunate to go to a better school but you are also learning how to be a teacher while your helping other people. Unlike the example I gave above where you are just helping people by giving them the survival kit but you are not benefitting from this because you are not learning anything. This is where I disagree with Kahne and Westheimer because I think service learning is where both parties benefit. The first example above I think is a better example of community service because just one party is benefitting from the help you give.

All in all service learning is when you help someone less fortunate than you (service) and you benefit from doing it and learn something new to further your education (learning).

Christensen "Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us" : Extended Comments

I read Ann's Blog and I decided to do mine based on her. I agree with her totally that disney tends to focus on one particular type of person in their films. In many of the  movies the higher class white folks are the main focus. For example all of the princess movies have to do with a white royal family which is very a typical of the American society. I think disney has tried to make movies with people of other ethnic backgrounds as the main leads like Ann had said in her blog and she used Mulan as an example. But, I still think that it is all mainly focused on white Americans which to me is not the right thing that we should be teaching our children as they grow up. I also noticed in many disney movies that color is not the only thing they choose to avoid but also women. In a lot of the movies they tend to kill off the mother and they just have the Dad. The disney movies are a great way of showing the how powerful the culture of power really is.

I really like the hyperlink that Ann chose because it shows a how children notice black people are not in disney movies. One girl even says," I have never seen a black person in a disney movie." I think the best part of the hyperlink is the part about Aladdin. I liked this because it shows just how allowable it is for Disney to be rascist. In the Aladdin problem, there was a big controversy over it and someone wrote in a news paper that it was rascist but it did not matter because it was disney. I think this is the wrong way to teach children about cultures and races because it could be part of the reason why we have so many racial issues today.

In class I hope to discuss, Do other people think that the disney movies teach children the wrong things about race? I also would like to discuss other movies in America and if they are interratial or portray the culture of power.

Carlson "Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community" : Hyperlink

When I think about gay orientation the only thing I think about is oh they are interested in girls and I am interested in guys, what is the big deal in that. But in today's society there are so many controversies over gay rights it is crazy. When I think about other people being gay I think to myself before I decide to make fun of them or accept who they are as a person. I put myself in their shoes and say if I was a lesbian would I want to be made fun of just because I am interested in woman rather than men and I do not follow the "culture of power." as Delpit would say. These are the many issues in todays society because gay marriage and gay orientation goes against religions and its just not the "ideal" way of life.

Recently, at Rutgers College two freshman boys had got paired up to live in the same dorm room. One of the boys just happened to be gay. One day, the boy had brought back another boy to his room and they started making out in the room while they were alone. Little did they know the roommate had hid a camera in the room to video tape them and then put it all over the internet. The gay boy ended up committing suicide after this whole incident and the roommate is being charged with his murder. Many people seem to think his suicide had to do with the lack of acceptance gay orientation has in the world. When I heard this story I thought about how many other people probably feel unaccepted just like the boy who committed suicide did and how many other people will committ suicide just like he did. This is a terrible thing when we should not care about what people look like or who they choose to have an intimate relationship with. I hope to discuss this more in class and see what other people have to say about gay orientation and the role it plays in the world today.

Here is the link to the New York Times news article for the roommates at Rutgers I discussed above.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/nyregion/02suicide.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=gay%20roommate%20suicide&st=cse

"Aria" By: Richard Rodriguez Reflection

When I first started out reading this piece by Richard Rodriguez I was not sure to expect. I was shocked by the second sentence of the reading that stated that children not being taught their family’s language are a “social disadvantaged child.” I have never thought about learning another language of a social disadvantage. When I think about learning another language I picture it to be an advantage because now you can talk to people of all different languages instead of just your native language.  As I read on about the disadvantages the narrator had I began to understand why he started out saying it is a social disadvantage to the children. After the teachers had come to the narrators house to explain to his parents that they needed to encourage their children to use more English at home I could not believe the changes that could occur in a house just because of the different languages being spoken. The narrator explains that at first the family just thought of learning to speak English as a joke and they would always have that Spanish language connection in the family and learning English would not change that. Little did they know it was going to change their family life drastically. One part of the reading that really said something to me was when he was unsure of what to call his Mother and Father. He no longer wanted to call them mama and papa because it reminded him of home much his life had changed but he did not want to call them by the generic names Americans called their parents. He tells us that he just did not call them anything and hoped to get their attention by eye contact. I felt like he was almost confused about what to call his parents due to the two different languages he had learned because one was no longer existent to him but the other one his parents could barely speak. I never thought about how this could affect bilingual children in a negative way. I could not even imagine not knowing what to call my parents or having to just look at them to try to get their attention. One more part that I really liked reading about was when he explains how much his family dinners had changed because his siblings and him no longer spoke to his parents due to the difference in language. I thought this was awful because I know in my family when I come home from school I enjoy having family dinners and talking to my parents about everything in my life. I think it is really unfortunate that some children have to go through the struggles learning to speak English come with. I think the reading really sent a message that something needs to be done to eliminate the cons of being lingual and illuminate the pros of speaking two languages. I really liked Richards’s message in his reading and the way he wrote what he wanted to say by telling a story.

Jonathan Kozol " Amazing Grace" : Argument

I thought that Amazing Grace by Kozol was really easy to read and very interesting and eye opening. I think everybody has an idea of how each class lives. Poor people are less fortunate than middle class and middle class less fortunate than wealthy people. But, I think no one seems to stop and think about what kind of lives each class really leads. The stereotype that is perceived for wealthy people is that they are happy and they have all the money they need and more and nothing else could be wrong in their life. In reality, their lives might not be perfect. I think we do not know unless we talk to someone from that class or experience being in that class. As Kozol gives us many examples of what it is like to live in the South Bronx it really starts to open my eyes about what kind of things go on and it is a lot worse than I had imagined. One part that really stood out to me was when Cliffe was taking him around town and he asks if he wants to go down a certain street. Kozol asks what is down there and the boy responds and says, "That is where they burn people." When they walk down the street we come to find out that the incarcerator is not really there to burn people but other things. When the boy and the narrator get back to the house and the narrator tells the mother about the incarcerator and what the mother said I felt like her response to what her son had said almost sent the message like anything could happen here and burning bodies there is a possibility. Another part that really blew my mind was when he is talking to the Pastor and the Pastor tells him about the Children’s Park. I found it crazy that volunteers bring condoms and clean needles to adults with their children who are addicted to drugs. I think this is very thoughtful to try to help these people but I just never knew something like this happened and it really showed me how different of a life I have from other people in the world.

One Quote from the article that really said something to me was, "The point is that they put a lot of things into our neighborhood that no one wants. The waste incinerator is just one more way of showing their affection." I liked this quote because this woman is living here because she is cannot afford as much as others but, at the same time our society is making it worse by adding things like the incinerator and other trashy things around town. I got the impression that it is offensive to the people who live there because there is no reason to put a bunch of trashy things all over there town just because they are less fortunate than other people. I think the society/institutions add to the problems in the poor areas by adding more areas that are trashy and unsafe to be around. I think this article by Kozol is very well written and eye opening to people like me who really do not know what life in the Bronx might be like because in my mind I had a totally different image than I have now after reading Kozol's piece.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/amazing-grace-by-jonathan-kozol-8545

This link is a little bit about Kozol and another perspective on his piece "Amazing Grace."

Me :)

Hello everyone,

My name is Kathryn Foos and I am a sophmore here at Rhode Island College. My major is Elementary Education with a concentration in Special Education. I am from Mansfield Mass. and I love to play basketball it is my favorite sport. In my free time i like to hang out with my friends or watch my all time favorite show on tv, Jershey Shore. I also have two jobs. I work at the Comcast Center in Mansfield which is a Concert venue and I also work at Hollister. I enjoy working at both of my jobs but they both have pros and cons. My favorite concert that I got to work at through out my experience at Comcast Center was New Kids on the Block. Everyone always makes fun of me for it but they were the most entertaining that I have seen so far, although, KISS comes pretty close behind New Kids on the Block. I am really looking forward to this class and going to the first grade class that I was assigned too since first grade is what I would like to teach in the future. I hope to learn many new things in my experience as well as helping the students that I work with.