Brown Vs. Board

this case of fighting for the white kids and the African American kids to be in the same school, reminds me so much of the story of "The Little Rock Nine".
in the little rock nine, 9 black students went to an all white school, and every morning were tortured for it. they even had to go to school with the national guard next to them for protection because white parents were being outragous, obnoxious, ignorant, and threatful. these kids could have easily lost their lives just for having the courage to attend that school.

so i am glad that there have been others such as Oliver Brown to also fight for this cause.

Shor (connection)

Shor, is arguing that students need to question the education system. students need to question the teachers lessons, teachers perspective, the work being given and more.i feel that if students were to do so, most of them would get in trouble. because most teachers wont see that as open mind, they'll see it as ignorance and probably annoyance.

this relates to Kliewer in the sense that Ann was put in a job position without being asked what she wanted to do. she was put to work with kids and does not even like kids.

this relates to christensen in the sense that shes all about fighting oppression and standing up to the government.

this relates to delpit in the sense that kids not questioning their eucation, is living by the rules and codes of power.

reconceptualizing down syndrome (hyperlinks)

i personally think that people just want to make an issue out of something that does not need to exist. the segregation of special education and normal education is needed because REALISTICLY speaking, they show their academic differently. for example, a child with down syndrome will not show academic ability the same way a child who doesnt have down syndrome, would. their learning techniques are different.

ofcourse i think they deserve the same beneficial opportunities in life that a normal education child would have, but their abilities to show an understanding of something, or ability to learn something is more complex because it can be a little more challenging. they should get treated the same and have just as much rights but people should also be realistic. its not discriminating i think its actually a functional system.

Mary Ellen says in her column, click here, that the segregation is needed because the non-special education students are suffering because the special education children are using most of the teachers attention.

an article, click here, says that it is a way for students to recieve their educational differenece requirement.

Jeanny Oakes (Argument)

This auther, Jeanny Oakes, argues that "One fact about tracking is unequivocal: tracking leads to substantial differences in the day-to-day learning experiences students have at school."

this basically summarizes both parties arguments towards tracking and not tracking. One party feels that tracking is good because it helps teachers target students abilitys and it can help them learn. where the second party argues that tracking is bad because then alot of students get put into stereotypical classes known as "less able."

i feel that oake's argues that both are right, but her main point is that it causes students to feel and get treated differently. and that by doing so it causes many different experiences for students when it comes to learning whether it be positive or negative.

Click here!!!! this website includes different types of information of tracking

Promising Practices

i attended the workshop "if you're safe and you know it clap your hands" by Dr. August. She was a very nice person and she seemed like she put alot of effort into preparing for that workshop, but i didn't find it that interesting. i felt more like i was in class rather than a workshop. she tried to make it engaging but the topic was just pretty boring and it didnt catch my attention. But i know she tried to make it fun, and she seems lie a very nice professor.

i also attended the workshop that the group "youth in action" hosted. i lved it. it was extremely entertaining and fun and we, well i, learned and saw alot of new cool things. they even showed a video of them doing a test on professors at Roger Williams University, which was extremely funny.

i also presented on the topic of cultural competency, I was so nervous to present I didn't even read off my paper, yet i said everything that was on my paper. everyone told me i didn't i even look nervous which is good. i am glad i chose to present. i felt good after, proud, accomplished, and even though it wasn't anything out of this world, i sort of felt important. Especially since we also had to get all dressed up and stuff. click here for a website that is all about cultural competence

the youth in action workshop related to the text where, i forgot which author, you have to be able to say the words in order to start making a change. youth in action works with schools and community related things where there is poverty, or just ANY situation that needs attention. they are even trying to get bus passes for students who live less than 3miles away, because the district does not understand that even people who dont love 3 miles away, can still live far enough for it to be too long of a walk.

click here for youth in action website

i think my first workshop with Dr. August was more of a Delpit thing. where the workshop was about kids need to feel safe in order to learn. kids who idntify themselves as LGBT must need to also feel safe. click here

Immigration Obama VS Romney

i am a descendent of grandparents and parents who are immigrants. ofcourse now they are all U.S citizens because they did their citizenships a few years after they got here, but they once were immigrants to this land. that is why i care alot about immigration laws, because if my parents wouldn't have migrated from Dominican Republic to New York, they would have never met and i would not exist.

On the site. click here, Obama's view on immigration is positive. he is going to try and make the transition from being illegal to legal in the United states easier.

Luckily by what people are writing so is Romney. here is a website, click here, that has quotes of what romney has said about immigration.
and on this website, click here, Romney talks about how he will NOT abolish the laws Obama has put towards illegal parents with citizen children. Which is that they could get a 2 year visa to work and live here legally if they meet certain criteria.

this makes me happy to know that both candidates are on the same page on this.

service of what (extended comment)

i will be doing my extended comment blog on Lucy's blog.

Lucy says that her first quote,
Quote #1: "Educators and legislators alike maintain that service learning can improve the community and invigorate the classroom, providing rich educational experiences for students at all levels of schooling."
is something she agrees with because she has gotten alot out of doing service learning. i also have to agree because doing my service learning has helped understand that not everyone is at the same level. it will take some students more practice to learn than others, some students learn one way and others feel more comfortable learning in another way. it helps you see all kinds of diversities.

Lucy says that her second quote,
Quote #2: "For Thanksgiving this year my stepmother helped serve the seniors their Thanksgiving dinner. This was a very rewarding experience helping others in need. It seemed that the dinner was something special to them; it was a chance for them to get together with their peers."
is something she likes because its someone taking their service learning in a positive way. this quote actually reminds me of a time that i did volunteering for a christmas party at wiggins village. i basically helped raise money to provide gifts and food for the children of the village who were of low income families. in doing so i had so much fun with the kids and it opened my eyes more to many different families, situations and diversity.

Lucy says that her third quote,
Quote #3: "After they returned, the students' perspectives on these elementary school children had changed. They were 'surprised at the children's responsiveness and their attentiveness,' they found the children to be 'extremely polite and surprisingly friendly,' and they discovered that they 'listened well and had excellent behavior."
is something that caught her eye because she experienced this as well. i cant count the number of people that just assume that little kids are out of control and are hard to handle. where i think, even though that may be the case with some students, it is mostly the case with secondary students, because thats when they're finding themselves and becoming rebellious.

Click here for a page that i found why service learning is important

Cinderella ate my daughter (argument)

Orenstein argues that the princesses from disney channel influence girls in a poisonous way, no matter their economic status.

on page 16-17, she says that princesses make girls to only think about their beauty, and that when they get older to be high school or college students, it affects their self-esteem and makes them less capable of insisting that their sex partners use condoms.
she even sayds that it is not only girls who go through poverty that experience, but all girls.

click here for a pg similar to this.

Myths that Bind Us (quotes)

this is not the first time i encounter this project, so i was pretty much aware of what was going in the text, and how cartons affect children.

before anything there is this website i found that also talks about (click on->) how cartons affect children, check it out.

 

"according to the novels I readmy thick ankles doomed me to be cast as rhe peasant woman reaping hay while the heroine swept by with her handsome heroic man in hot pursuit."

to me this is how cartoons portray that skinny girls are the only beautiful girls. i dont remember seeing a cartoon with a thick princess. in fact i do remember watching a disney movie where a little girl was cursed when she was little to be ugly until a man loves her for who she is. during the "ugly" curse, she was thick, with a big nose and when the curse was lifted she was "beautiful", she was skinny with a small nose. so that tells kids, being thick or having a big nose is something to be ashamed about

 

"Children's cartoons, movies, and literature are perhaps the most Influentia] genre "read." Young people, unprotected by any intellectual armor, hear or watch these stories again and again. often from the warmth of their mother's or father's lap"

 

kids watch this cartoons without knowing realisticly about the real world. they have no foundational education, they have no logic or anything. so when they watch these cartoons and receive these messages, that becomes their blueprint to any future education or knowledge on these topics expressed in the cartoons.

 

 

"The "secret education," as Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman dubs it, delivered by children's books and movies, instructs young people to accept the world as it is portrayed in these social blueprints"

 

to me this is saying that cartoons teach kids what is acceptable for males to do and females to do. females must be girly and boys have to be tough and pretty violent. boys cant show weakness and girls are not suppose to be tough.

 

here is a video also supporting that arguement

 

 

GLSEN

Reflection
 
on the tools, i chose the "ready, set, respect" toolkit. this tool is helping students to have  respectful attitudes and respectful behaviors towards one another so every student could feel respected and safe. this makes me think about all the students who bully others and the students who get bullied.
 
i have a cousin that in elementary school was always getting bullied until one day he came home with a bruise on his leg and my aunt went to the school and made them do something about it. if it wasnt for that then he would have gotten bullied the rest of the school year. my cousin probably hated going to school because of this and probably never felt safe or respected. i cant imagine what it would be like having to go to a school where you never feel comfortable and are always looking over your shoulder.
 
so this tool, i find it very useful and think it is a good thing what GLSEN is trying to do here. and i like that the logo has its not only for straight people, because i think homosexual people sometimes feel isolated or not part of what goes in, and this logo says, "no, even the gay and lesbian people are helpful"

Aria by Rodriguez (Reflection)

i think this article is talking about, how when children have a first language that is not english, when they do learn english, their communication with their parents start to decline.i agree with this becuase i have seen it happen in my family plenty of times and i hear many stories like it too.
 i have heard many stories where students, around middle school mostly, have parents who dont speak english, and the student has either forgotten their native language or just started lacking the skills. so communication with their parents is a problem because when either the parent or child speaks, both sides have trouble understanding eachother.
 in my family, all the grown ups were born in the Dominican Republic, and my generation was born in new york. but there are only a few of the grown ups who actually learned english. alot of my cousins parents dont speak english, and have a hard time communicating with eachother. one of my uncles wife, is always complaining about how my 5 year old cousin talks to her, and she never understands him.
this article reminded me alot of my family.

 the point is that when parents only speak their native language, and their children start using a second language with them, that causes a barrier between relationships. the child can feel aggravated that their mom/dad doesnt ever understand them, and the parent can feel aggravated  because they dont understand the child and feel bad.

White Privilege Knapsack

Page 1, "I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets...."
 This author, Peggy McIntosh says that white people have this invisible knapsack full of beneficial stuff. By this, to me, her point is that white people have all these privileges only because they are white. white people are looked at differently than non-white people. And that most white people are looked at highly. I agree because, not all cases, but i have heard many stories of where a white person was favored over a non-white person. For example, by the stories i have heard, i feel that when a white person and a non-white person apply to a job, people see the white person and assume that person is more qualified, responsible or overall fit for the job. even if the person didn't make that judgement on purpose, it is just a natural reaction because it is the dominant culture in our society.
 
Page 1, "As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage."
This sort of reminds me of the article Privilege, Power and Difference by Johnson. where Johnson says that the privileged need to realize that they are privileged in ordr for there to be a difference. White people take racism as harm to people who experience it and my realize how it affects them, but they don't realize how it affects themselves as well, even though to the white people it may not affect them in a negative way. alot of people do not realize that they probably only got the job because of the fact that they are white, and not because they are more qualified.

Page 2, "2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford and in which I would want to live.
                3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in a such location will be neutral or pleasant to me."
I have an uncle in the army that is constantly being move to different states and countries. he said to me that people in alabama and where he currently lives, are so racist that he rents apartments in gated complexes and is constantly getting stared at by white people. and that in Alabama alot of stores would not accept him to buy things because they did not want non-white money. now my uncle is a light skinned man, but you can tell that he is not white. this is where white people are privileged because they would not have this problem. because even when my uncle is in uniform he gets treated different in certain places.

Point to share:
i agree with this article, because even though i personally have not experienced white privilege more than a few times, i know how often it is happening. there is a white privilege whether people notice it or not, or do it on purpose or not.