Think before you speak. Don't say "That's So Gay."
I just saw this video on the Disney channel. I definitely thought it was worth sharing on my blog.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Providence School Board approves 5 school closures
Providence School Board approves 5 school closures: "The city will shut down five elementary schools to save money."
Click on the link to see the story of the school board voting to close 5 Providence schools despite strong opposition from the community and very little thorough data from the school department to show that any of this was thought out very well.
Click on the link to see the story of the school board voting to close 5 Providence schools despite strong opposition from the community and very little thorough data from the school department to show that any of this was thought out very well.
Wear Clean Draws
This is one of my favorite songs. It's written by the radical hip hop group, The Coup, and the lyricist Boots Riley. It deals with a lot of the issues we've been discussing in this class like gender equality, systems of power, and stereotypes.
I think that overall it's got a great message of empowerment for young girls written as an ode by Riley to his daughter.
It's got some bad language, but it's definitely not excessive. I hope it's appropriate, and I hope you like it.
I think that overall it's got a great message of empowerment for young girls written as an ode by Riley to his daughter.
It's got some bad language, but it's definitely not excessive. I hope it's appropriate, and I hope you like it.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Talking points on Shor's, "Empowering Education."
"All forms of education are political because they can enable or inhibit the questioning habits of students, thus developing or disabling their critical relation to knowledge, schooling, and society." (12-13)
I agree with this sentiment. I believe that many of our students' are silenced in our nation's schools. To me, it is really a disservice to students to "inhibit [their] questioning habits." The well-known bumper sticker reads; "Question Authority", but as John Cougar Mellencamp sang; "I fight authority, authority always wins." It seems to me that students do, indeed, learn pretty early on that you can't really fight authority. Those who do, as Shor puts it, "drop out or withdraw into passivity or silence in the classroom. Some become self-educated; some sabotage the curriculum by misbehaving." (14) In turn, these students get seen as problems in the classroom. They get blamed for not learning appropriately within the context of the way the educational system is set up. These become the lost children in our classrooms. Tragically, too often, we look at students who are not served by the education system as, to borrow a phrase from Johnathan Kozol, "Other People's Children."
"Moreover, testing policies are political choices, whether to use student-centered, multicultural, and portfolio assessments, or to use teacher-centered tests or standardized exams in which women and minorities have traditionally scored lower than men and whites." (15)
The policy of testing is obviously a very large issue in today's schools. The subject of standardized testing dominates much of the discussion surrounding public education today.
The story that Dr. Stevos published on her blog about Hope High School is a good example of how the results of standardized tests don't necessarily reflect what kind of learning is taking place. I was at many of the school board meetings where students, teachers, and parents made the convincing case that the system in place at Hope was working. The school may not have been perfect, but one got the strong sense that there was a community there that had embraced the block scheduling and the way it effected the interactions between teachers and students.
However, this is a case where the goals and concerns of the members of the school community itself were ignored. The tests said that the school was a failure, despite the fact that the members of the school community insisted that there was success happening. So, the changes that seemed to be working were dropped, saving the city some money, and using test scores as a justification. It is now likely that Hope High School, instead of continuing to grow on the successes that it had established, will continue to sink into a state of further despair. Hope High School "fought authority, and authority won."
"Education is experienced by students as something done to them, not something they do." (20)
This quote nicely encapsulates the theme of the sense of disengagement that many students feel with the education system. We need to find ways to engage students in education from an early age, and to keep them engaged throughout their school careers. The motivation for learning should not be to get a high mark on a standardized test so your school won't be closed, but rather all children should be encouraged to become active, cognizant, citizens with the ability to learn, to question, and to think critically about issues that affect them.
Education is political. Unfortunately, I feel that to a large extent, education in our country still works towards maintaining a power structure that is inequitable for many of our students. Yes, many children come to school equipped to receive the knowledge that is given to them in our educational institutions. Many of those students succeed academically to the extent that the system expects them to. Afterall, we are all sitting in a college classroom, which to some degree means that we are academic success stories.
Personally, I don't believe that any children are unreachable. However, I believe that our educational system has yet to develop into one that works for all, or even a majority of, our country's students. For us to have an education system that accomplished the task of being able to effectively serve everyone, I feel that there needs to be more of a universal acknowledgment that there are systems of inequity in place in our society.
I agree with this sentiment. I believe that many of our students' are silenced in our nation's schools. To me, it is really a disservice to students to "inhibit [their] questioning habits." The well-known bumper sticker reads; "Question Authority", but as John Cougar Mellencamp sang; "I fight authority, authority always wins." It seems to me that students do, indeed, learn pretty early on that you can't really fight authority. Those who do, as Shor puts it, "drop out or withdraw into passivity or silence in the classroom. Some become self-educated; some sabotage the curriculum by misbehaving." (14) In turn, these students get seen as problems in the classroom. They get blamed for not learning appropriately within the context of the way the educational system is set up. These become the lost children in our classrooms. Tragically, too often, we look at students who are not served by the education system as, to borrow a phrase from Johnathan Kozol, "Other People's Children."
"Moreover, testing policies are political choices, whether to use student-centered, multicultural, and portfolio assessments, or to use teacher-centered tests or standardized exams in which women and minorities have traditionally scored lower than men and whites." (15)
The policy of testing is obviously a very large issue in today's schools. The subject of standardized testing dominates much of the discussion surrounding public education today.
The story that Dr. Stevos published on her blog about Hope High School is a good example of how the results of standardized tests don't necessarily reflect what kind of learning is taking place. I was at many of the school board meetings where students, teachers, and parents made the convincing case that the system in place at Hope was working. The school may not have been perfect, but one got the strong sense that there was a community there that had embraced the block scheduling and the way it effected the interactions between teachers and students.
However, this is a case where the goals and concerns of the members of the school community itself were ignored. The tests said that the school was a failure, despite the fact that the members of the school community insisted that there was success happening. So, the changes that seemed to be working were dropped, saving the city some money, and using test scores as a justification. It is now likely that Hope High School, instead of continuing to grow on the successes that it had established, will continue to sink into a state of further despair. Hope High School "fought authority, and authority won."
"Education is experienced by students as something done to them, not something they do." (20)
This quote nicely encapsulates the theme of the sense of disengagement that many students feel with the education system. We need to find ways to engage students in education from an early age, and to keep them engaged throughout their school careers. The motivation for learning should not be to get a high mark on a standardized test so your school won't be closed, but rather all children should be encouraged to become active, cognizant, citizens with the ability to learn, to question, and to think critically about issues that affect them.
Education is political. Unfortunately, I feel that to a large extent, education in our country still works towards maintaining a power structure that is inequitable for many of our students. Yes, many children come to school equipped to receive the knowledge that is given to them in our educational institutions. Many of those students succeed academically to the extent that the system expects them to. Afterall, we are all sitting in a college classroom, which to some degree means that we are academic success stories.
Personally, I don't believe that any children are unreachable. However, I believe that our educational system has yet to develop into one that works for all, or even a majority of, our country's students. For us to have an education system that accomplished the task of being able to effectively serve everyone, I feel that there needs to be more of a universal acknowledgment that there are systems of inequity in place in our society.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Talking Points on "Schooling Children with Down Syndrome," by Christopher Kliewer
"Humility, Friere (1993) agrees, is central to democracy. 'How can I dialogue,' Friere asks, 'if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own? How can I dialogue if I regard myself as a case apart from others--mere 'its' in whom I cannot recognize other 'I's' (p. 71)' (73)."
I think this is an important question to ask for the "reflective practitioner." As teachers, sure, the traditional model of education suggests that we are the ones with the knowledge, but I believe we will be more effective teachers if we recognize that we can learn from students as well. It can be very valuable to think of the relationship between the teacher and the student as a dialogue rather than as a one-way information transfer.
This sort of dialogue is what the teacher's in these integrated classrooms described by Kliewer seemed to be understanding and engaging in. They did not see their Down syndrome students as "its" but rather as other "I's."
"Those students who exhibit the canonical mind are credited with understanding, even when real understanding is limited or absent; many people . . . can pass the test but fail other, perhaps more appropriate or probing measures of understanding. Less happily, many who are capable of exhibiting significant understanding appear deficient, simply because they cannot readily traffic in the commonly accepted coin of the educational realm. (Gardner, 1991, pp. 12-13) (80)."
Thomas Gardner's quotation given in this text is one of many examples by Kliewer that points towards how the movement to educate children with "intellectual disabilities" follows much in the same lines as similar movements about how to be effective in educating any children with some form of cultural disadvantage. The term "coin" is used where often one hears or reads this referred to as either Cultural "capital" or "currency." Of course, these all mean the same thing.
I find it interesting that the acquisition of cultural tools that allow for greater inclusion into the realm of knowledge and power is so often referred to in monetary terms. To extend the metaphor, money is really nothing more than a means for acquisition. It is not something that holds any inherent value on its own. Without the power to acquire goods or services, money is afterall nothing more than printed paper.
In the same way, cultural currency has no inherent value. However, within the larger context of society, this "coin" does allow children access to a system of personal power that traditionally has not been extended to everyone. Teachers like Shayne Robbins are trying to share the means of that access to those who have previously been denied it.
"Vygotsky found that the culture of segregation surrounding people with disabilities actually teaches underdevelopment of thinking through the isolation of children from socially valued opportunities (83)."
In reading this, I thought of the large mental health institutions which were the norm for people with severe learning disabilities up until the 1970s. I spent a couple of years working in a group home for developmentally delayed adults. Most of the people who lived in the home had grown up in such institutions. The conditions in these places were described as grim, prison-like, dehumanizing settings. I couldn't help but feel that the clients I was working for may have had much happier, fulfilled lives if they had not spent the better part of their childhoods in such an oppressive setting.
I enjoyed how this reading used a lot of the language and ideas that have been used to describe other marginalized groups and applied it to the discussion of children with developmental delays.
I was filled with admiration for teachers like Shayne Robbins. I feel that the work she does with the children she teaches represents a level kindness and understanding of social justice that is uncommon. It also seems that her talent for finding strengths where others are unable to constitutes a truly remarkable talent for teaching.
I think this is an important question to ask for the "reflective practitioner." As teachers, sure, the traditional model of education suggests that we are the ones with the knowledge, but I believe we will be more effective teachers if we recognize that we can learn from students as well. It can be very valuable to think of the relationship between the teacher and the student as a dialogue rather than as a one-way information transfer.
This sort of dialogue is what the teacher's in these integrated classrooms described by Kliewer seemed to be understanding and engaging in. They did not see their Down syndrome students as "its" but rather as other "I's."
"Those students who exhibit the canonical mind are credited with understanding, even when real understanding is limited or absent; many people . . . can pass the test but fail other, perhaps more appropriate or probing measures of understanding. Less happily, many who are capable of exhibiting significant understanding appear deficient, simply because they cannot readily traffic in the commonly accepted coin of the educational realm. (Gardner, 1991, pp. 12-13) (80)."
Thomas Gardner's quotation given in this text is one of many examples by Kliewer that points towards how the movement to educate children with "intellectual disabilities" follows much in the same lines as similar movements about how to be effective in educating any children with some form of cultural disadvantage. The term "coin" is used where often one hears or reads this referred to as either Cultural "capital" or "currency." Of course, these all mean the same thing.
I find it interesting that the acquisition of cultural tools that allow for greater inclusion into the realm of knowledge and power is so often referred to in monetary terms. To extend the metaphor, money is really nothing more than a means for acquisition. It is not something that holds any inherent value on its own. Without the power to acquire goods or services, money is afterall nothing more than printed paper.
In the same way, cultural currency has no inherent value. However, within the larger context of society, this "coin" does allow children access to a system of personal power that traditionally has not been extended to everyone. Teachers like Shayne Robbins are trying to share the means of that access to those who have previously been denied it.
"Vygotsky found that the culture of segregation surrounding people with disabilities actually teaches underdevelopment of thinking through the isolation of children from socially valued opportunities (83)."
In reading this, I thought of the large mental health institutions which were the norm for people with severe learning disabilities up until the 1970s. I spent a couple of years working in a group home for developmentally delayed adults. Most of the people who lived in the home had grown up in such institutions. The conditions in these places were described as grim, prison-like, dehumanizing settings. I couldn't help but feel that the clients I was working for may have had much happier, fulfilled lives if they had not spent the better part of their childhoods in such an oppressive setting.
I enjoyed how this reading used a lot of the language and ideas that have been used to describe other marginalized groups and applied it to the discussion of children with developmental delays.
I was filled with admiration for teachers like Shayne Robbins. I feel that the work she does with the children she teaches represents a level kindness and understanding of social justice that is uncommon. It also seems that her talent for finding strengths where others are unable to constitutes a truly remarkable talent for teaching.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
"Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work," by Jean Anyon
"Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes (1)."
I believe this to be true. It seems that in this day of standardized testing, many of the reasons for the disparities in test scores between the middle and upper classes and those from lower socioeconomic groups are due in large part to the different ways different students are taught. Simply put, those students from working and poor families are not expected to learn the cultural language of academia in the same way as those of their more affluent peers. Terry Meier would suggest that this is primarily due to a lack of understanding of cultural differences. This reading, however, seems to imply that the problem is deeper than that. Possibly, it is not not only that cultural differences effect how kids learn, but also that there exists a class system that is perpetuated due to what positions in society students are expected to fill based on their background.
I thought of how this applies to the movie we watched and the piece we read about "tracking." In this case tracking is not occurring within the individual school. Rather, it occurs in separate schools. Basically, the working class schools can be seen as remedial or vocational track, the middle class school can be seen as representing a middle level "college bound" curriculum, while the affluent professional school and the executive elite school would represent an advanced placement program.
"The first two schools I will call working class schools. Most of the parents have blue-collar jobs. Less than a third of the fathers are skilled, while the majority are in unskilled or semiskilled jobs. During the period of study (1978-1979) approximately 15 percent of the fathers were unemployed. The large majority (85 percent) of the families are white (2)."
This was an interesting description for me. If we agree with SCWAMP, Delpit, and Johnson that whiteness in itself is a significant cultural privilege, then I can only wonder what Anyon's study would have found if, for example, this study was done with the population of the DelSesto Middle School in Providence. A category would have to be added before working class entitled something along the lines of poor and non-white. Of course, this study is somewhat dated, and a study done today would probably find some differences in teaching methodologies within urban, poor, majority non-white settings like the ones that our service learning occurs in. A study of this nature would likely show discrepancies in how children are taught from school to school and even from classroom to classroom.
"In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice (3)."
This description of teaching methodology made me think of Delpit's advice that children from certain cultural backgrounds learn better if they are taught "explicitly." Some might argue that this is simply what's going on in the classrooms mentioned in this study. The point might be made that this study was done in a time (the late '70s) when teachers and educators better understood how some children learn differently than others, and that those with less academic advantages entering school need more concrete, specific instruction to catch up with those who come to school with all the cultural trappings that make it easier to ensure academic success.
I would argue, however, that while this type of procedural instruction might make some more sense in the earlier grades like kindergarten and first grade, once children start to advance in grade levels, they need instruction that challenges their cognitive development more. I don't see being clear about the rules and challenging students to think more abstractly and analytically as being mutually exclusive in a classroom. I think the film on the integrated, non-tracked classrooms illustrated ways to accomplish this method of teaching quite effectively.
Overall, I enjoyed the essay, and like all of them, I found it thought provoking. I certainly didn't see it as a scientific study that really proved a case, however. Anyon, herself, admits that the data discussed only "offers tentative empirical support (1)." I also found it significant that this study is more than 30 years old. I would like to see more comprehensive studies like this done in today's classrooms. I do suspect that finding anything conclusive would be extremely difficult, as I would doubt that most classrooms fit as neatly into distinct categories as the ones described in Anyon's study. Having said all that, I still have little doubt, personally, that the way students are taught in our schools varies greatly according to a number of economic and cultural factors.
I believe this to be true. It seems that in this day of standardized testing, many of the reasons for the disparities in test scores between the middle and upper classes and those from lower socioeconomic groups are due in large part to the different ways different students are taught. Simply put, those students from working and poor families are not expected to learn the cultural language of academia in the same way as those of their more affluent peers. Terry Meier would suggest that this is primarily due to a lack of understanding of cultural differences. This reading, however, seems to imply that the problem is deeper than that. Possibly, it is not not only that cultural differences effect how kids learn, but also that there exists a class system that is perpetuated due to what positions in society students are expected to fill based on their background.
I thought of how this applies to the movie we watched and the piece we read about "tracking." In this case tracking is not occurring within the individual school. Rather, it occurs in separate schools. Basically, the working class schools can be seen as remedial or vocational track, the middle class school can be seen as representing a middle level "college bound" curriculum, while the affluent professional school and the executive elite school would represent an advanced placement program.
"The first two schools I will call working class schools. Most of the parents have blue-collar jobs. Less than a third of the fathers are skilled, while the majority are in unskilled or semiskilled jobs. During the period of study (1978-1979) approximately 15 percent of the fathers were unemployed. The large majority (85 percent) of the families are white (2)."
This was an interesting description for me. If we agree with SCWAMP, Delpit, and Johnson that whiteness in itself is a significant cultural privilege, then I can only wonder what Anyon's study would have found if, for example, this study was done with the population of the DelSesto Middle School in Providence. A category would have to be added before working class entitled something along the lines of poor and non-white. Of course, this study is somewhat dated, and a study done today would probably find some differences in teaching methodologies within urban, poor, majority non-white settings like the ones that our service learning occurs in. A study of this nature would likely show discrepancies in how children are taught from school to school and even from classroom to classroom.
"In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice (3)."
This description of teaching methodology made me think of Delpit's advice that children from certain cultural backgrounds learn better if they are taught "explicitly." Some might argue that this is simply what's going on in the classrooms mentioned in this study. The point might be made that this study was done in a time (the late '70s) when teachers and educators better understood how some children learn differently than others, and that those with less academic advantages entering school need more concrete, specific instruction to catch up with those who come to school with all the cultural trappings that make it easier to ensure academic success.
I would argue, however, that while this type of procedural instruction might make some more sense in the earlier grades like kindergarten and first grade, once children start to advance in grade levels, they need instruction that challenges their cognitive development more. I don't see being clear about the rules and challenging students to think more abstractly and analytically as being mutually exclusive in a classroom. I think the film on the integrated, non-tracked classrooms illustrated ways to accomplish this method of teaching quite effectively.
Overall, I enjoyed the essay, and like all of them, I found it thought provoking. I certainly didn't see it as a scientific study that really proved a case, however. Anyon, herself, admits that the data discussed only "offers tentative empirical support (1)." I also found it significant that this study is more than 30 years old. I would like to see more comprehensive studies like this done in today's classrooms. I do suspect that finding anything conclusive would be extremely difficult, as I would doubt that most classrooms fit as neatly into distinct categories as the ones described in Anyon's study. Having said all that, I still have little doubt, personally, that the way students are taught in our schools varies greatly according to a number of economic and cultural factors.
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