bad kids....

After reading 31 I dont know why but I kept thinking back to a class I had here at UWM about inclusion in the classroom and I know that may not have been Derek's case that he had special needs or was dyslexic or had add but did anyone ever ask him what was wrong and why he couldn't behave? In my inclusion class, our teacher showed us a clip of a speaker named Jonathon Mooney and I tried all night to find this movie so I could attach it but I just couldn't find it anywhere. Anyways, he was always told he was a bad student and how he'll never amount to anything besides for working at McDonalds, just because his habits that he had (that actually made it easier for him to concentrate) were annoying the teacher and then the teacher would get upset that he was disobediant when really he was tapping his pen and figeting because he was actually tryign to concentrate. I think we as teachers need to think of kids like Jonathon when coming to decisions such as expelsion and suspension. Are these kids really "bad" or do they just have different habits? Obviously something is wrong, we just need to take the time out to help them instead of writing these kids off as "bad goods."

Standards Smandards

I really don't believe that anyone benefits from the standards being set with standardized testing. The test are biased and so unrelated to the kids' lives that it's tough for the teacher to make this type of "teaching to the test" interesting in any manner for the students and then the students suffer because they are being asked to learn terms in such a non-related, unintersting way. It's ridiculous when it comes down to the fact that this test determines how much funding the school gets and how "smart" the students are when most of the questions are skewed themselves. For instance a vocab word would be imbedded in a question about golf. Well, not many inner city kids ever got a chance to learn what a "putter" is or what "the green" is. So there's one wrong on the test, not because they didn't know what the vocab word meant, but rather they didn't understand the context it was being used in. This is just another example of the "hidden curriculum" that's emerging slowly to teachers' attention. In my other class, a student teacher witnessed her students feeling so unmotivated to do good in these tests because the students know how boring and how unsatisfactory these tests. Another reason was because the co-op teacher was demanding them to practise taking other tests very similar to the standardized test in order to become familiar with the structure hoping they would in turn do well on the actual test. However, this backfired and the students just became fed up and frustrated. How else can we determine if our kids across the states are learning without having to hand out and complete these nonsense tests that are just a burden on the learning/ teaching process?

classroom questions

It seems like the readings were basically bombarded with the message that sometimes "being yourself" is not as easy as it sounds especially when you're in a high school and especially when you are of a minority. If you are Asian-American, it almost seems as if you are expected to be smart - the typical stereotype: good with computers, quiet, quick, and sneaky. In one of my old English classes on literary theories, there was one called Orientalism. Orientalism is when a person of Asian background is over exoticised in order to draw mystery or some other kind of attention to that character. It's almost as if schools have taken this very same theory and connected it to real life - assuming that every Asian is alike and they are all very smart. In my placement - my co-op teacher always (and still does) mix up the Asian boys (there are only two) and constantly asks me which is which - it's kind of embarrassing. Even worse is the assumption that if you are Black and you are getting good grades then you are trying to act white and be a wimp. It's ridiculous to think about but when you're in school - reputations make all the difference. So what may be a question to think about is what if you are Asian and you cannot make good grades for the life of you - how do you fit in with your other smart, well adjusting Asian friends? Are these kids the ones that get depressed because they don't feel like they belong? How do you as a white teacher teach "white privilege" or even teach real life experiences to interest the kids when you, yourself has never had these kinds of experiences because you grew up in a safer part of town? How do you get rid of stereotypes in your classroom without drawing attention to certain students and making them feel humiliated?

homophobia

While reading the chapter on Lesbian and Gay Adolscents I became more aware of what was happening right in my own placement. The sixth graders are constantly fearful of being called "gay" or "homo" and it I just cringe when I hear it. "Particulary painful moments of many gay or lesbian adolescents are hearing an antihomosexual joke or seeing another individual being ridiculed or called some epithet which is commonly applied to homosexual persons" (341). Along with called other students "gay" is the most popular term: "retard." Not many students are aware that their choice of words and slanders can pertain to someone nearby them - in other words, it seems that many of my sixth graders think that everyone around them is exactly like them and so therefore they should'nt be offending anyone other than the student they are "ripping on." It's to the point where in one of my lessons where I was using the etymology of words to teach what synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms mean - I skipped breaking down "homonyms" altogether. After I put the word "synonym" on the board I put a line between the syn(m) and the onym and asked my students to tell me what each part meant and to come up with some more words with the root in it - the students did a GREAT job coming up with symmetrical, antonym (which we covered next in the same way), and so on. When I came to homonym - I just explained and demonstrated what it was because I already heard snickers and laughter about the root "homo." In retrospect - I should have gone over the word "homonym" in the same manner because now it sort of looks like I'm the homophobic one when in actuality I didn't want to get on the topic with my immature students who would take the root word - "homo" and start using it not to come up with more words that contain this root but to use the root to start making insults with one another - which would make anyone who is homosexual in the room, very uncomfortable and embarrassed. So my question then is: when do you avoid the subject to keep from hurting anyone's feelings and when do you confront it and put up with all of the inappropriate comments just to make a point? (I suppose I could have suggested the word "homophobia" and gone over that but would my sixth graders have labeled themselves as such and made this lesson turn even more for the worse?)

Identity in Curriculum

After reading these chapters about students and their multiple identities (racial, sexual, etc) it's no wonder some students totally shut down. No one has ever shown them how to react to the world and the things they may or may not understand. Being a future English teacher, I am lucky that I will have the opportunity to use the curriculum like "The Bluest Eye" to discuss identities and hopefully the characters' identities will reflect on my students. And hopefully, I will develop a safe environment where my students and I can feel free to talk about these issues (possibly using border theory and concentrating on the "outsider") The one quote that expresses all of these goals I envision can be found on page 269 (chapter 17) "Teachers and administrators seeking to be supportive of this venture toward identity development and self-understanding can help students make sense of who they are and where they are going." When students can see someone (even if it is a character in a book) that they can connect to or identify with, then they can become a more confident, independent thinker - just the kind of student we are looking for in our classrooms.

Why our groups' topic is so important!

This following quote really made me realize that the issue we are presenting in class on Monday is very important and WILL pertain to all teachers.
“Salary aside, the number one reason teachers leave their school divisions or the teaching profession is a lack of administrative support, both at the district and the school level”
Imagine leaving the profession altogether! After working in college for five years, you finally get your "dream job" and you quit - not because you don't like or care for the kids in your classes but because you feel that the principal or other people in the administrative position are not helping you with what you need in order to get your job done. This will msot likely be an occurence with at least one of us (if not all of us) and it's important to find out how you can change your situation without getting so frustrated and discouraged that you simply quit! I can't wait to do our presentation and see all the others! Good luck everyone! :)

Communties

In chapter ten, there was great emphasis on what we can do to ensure our teachers and schools are the best for the future generations. This chapter describes adolescence development and what they need to best make their transition from childhood to adulthood. In the many lists and explanations that were provided the one that interested me the most was the concept of community. It suggests in chapter ten that in order to transform our middle grade schools we need to "create small communities for learning," "reengage families in the education of young adolescents," and "connect schools with communities." (171) There were others listed but the concept of community seems to be so important because we as teachers only get our kids for 8 hours out of the day. The rest of the day, and every Saturday and Sunday, our kids may not be in such a safe environment or they may not be getting the influence and role models they so desperately need at this age. Therefore, the idea to reinforce the sense of community as an environment that cooperates and reinforces the importance of education can really have a great effect on our future students. (Especially the future students who go to school in an urban setting.) You always hear older people say things like "that would never fly when I was in school" or "I was more afraid to get my punishment at home when I got in trouble at school." I think that this is true, and it's not that we should enforce the idea of kids being afraid of going home after they get in trouble at school, but maybe if they understood that people cared...or rather...adults cared outside of the school walls, in their community, they would take their lives and their schooling more seriously. For instance, when my mom went to school, the police officers in the area knew the students and their families, so if someone ever skipped school and was seen around the area, they better have permission from their parents. I think that if more schools communicated with and established a relationship with the surrounding community then students would have a better time staying on task and realizing how their education directly affects the world around them and their future. My question is, how do we get our communities to want to be involved and want to help our schools when some people in the surrounding community don't have kids in school or don't think they are responsible for helping our middle schools?

Stop the discrimination!

I felt that in chapter 7 and 8, we were bombarded by tons of statistics and even though I realized some of them were very old and outdated, I still got very angry at what I learned. I believe the whole point these chapters were trying to make is that adolescents and teens really aren’t all that bad and most of the stereotypes are ones created for them, or ones put on them through the way society is set up. More times than one, it was mentioned that the discrimination against teens is much like the discrimination against a group of minorities based on their race, religion, gender, or social/economical status. And the more I thought about it, the more I started to remember what it felt like to be an adolescent – always told what to do, always told what’s wrong with “our generation,” always looked at as if I was trouble. I’m not saying that all people saw me and my friends like that but the instances that do stick out are very profound. For example, I remember being told in the grocery store when me and my friends were buying candy that we couldn’t check out in the full service line because we only had 4 or 5 things, we were supposed to check out in the express lane (which had more people in line than the full service lane). I couldn’t help but think “I wonder if I was 70 years old and with a cane, if the cashier would have yelled at me for something as stupid and as unimportant as this.” Another fear me and my friends had were the police – not because we were bad kids or doing bad things, only because we’ve had experiences and we’ve heard of people our age with experience that cops pull over young people because they automatically suspect we are up to no good. And I have gotten guns pulled out on me because I was double parked with my blinkers on waiting for my friend to come out of his house so we could go to a movie. Their excuse: “we thought she was trying to get away from us!” (I hadn’t moved the gear out of Park). Another instance I’m reminded of happened in Franklin when three high school guys went around caroling with their guitars during the Christmas season last year, the Franklin cops took all three of them to jail because they accused them of having drugs, even though they searched their car and body searched them and couldn’t find any. The three of them said that they will no longer be Christmas caroling because of the humiliating experience they had that year. I just don’t see why people can buy into the “fact” that all teens are just bad people who have sex, get drunk, and do drugs. After all, it can’t just be teenagers – what happens when you turn twenty? Do these shameful adolescents all of a sudden grow up overnight and stop all of these bad habits? Of course not! If all teenagers were bad people, then that means that we have a lot of bad people as products from the bad teenagers and I believe most people will agree that not all people are drug, sex, and alcohol addicts. Even if people see teens as a problematic group of people, then (like Mike Males suggests) we should look at the cause for this and the cause for this effect is just how society shapes our teens and adolescents. How can we help society so future teenagers won’t have to go through the humiliating and undeserved discrimination we all had to go through when we were teenagers?

Chapter 2

The second chapter concentrates a lot on the physical happenings of adolescents and the transition from child to adult. Thinking about this makes me wonder how comfortable my classroom is going to be with all of these emotional and physical concerns going on in each student’s mind. After all, we (as teachers) sometimes are so focused on our curriculum and what we plan on teaching and the learning we are interested in seeing, that we sometimes forget that these students have lives and complicated lives at that. I’m thankful that I, as an English teacher, have the opportunity to provide resourceful literature that may be of help during this sensitive/imperative time. Besides for literature, how would you as a teacher help make your students feel welcome and comfortable when they do not even feel comfortable in their own bodies at this time in their lives?

Anti-Oppressive Challenges

I'm so glad that an article like Kevin K. Kumashiro's is out. I had a critical theory literature class in college that concentrated on the "Other" theory and it was eye-opening and interesting for both us and the teacher. We got to ask questions that would normally be "taboo" and it brought us closer together as a class getting past the tensions and uneasiness of the subject material and our different viewpoints and opinions on that matter. And while I was thinking of my good experience with this theory in practice, I was wondering why I didn't get this knowledge (or rather the opportunity to "unlearn") sooner in high school... or even grade school! However, I think it has to do much with maturity levels. I don't know how I would react as a teacher if my sixth grade student, who was raised by heavily racist parents, comes into my class not wanting and not willing to look at something through a different viewpoint other than his own. Afterall, you cannot force someone to "unlearn" something or even learn something opposite of what they have been told all of their lives. I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how we as teachers might deal with these types of situations which might occur more often than we think.