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?)