Race and/or Ethnicity

I believe as an educator, it is very important to educate yourself about the community that you plan to teach in. By community, I mean the school community and the neighborhood community because it informs you about who you will be working with and educating. If I do not make myself aware of this then it makes it very difficult to address the societal roles and issues that will impact me and my community (school and neighborhood). In many ways my awareness of the background of my students greatly impacts how I plan out my lesson plans because it is important for me to find a way to draw my students into the issues that they are faced with as young people who have layers upon layers of identities. I have found that race and/or ethnicity has been an important aspect of identity. It shapes the student experience in all aspects of his/her life and to ignore it or not address it does not help the student at all. I have also found that it is very difficult to keep biases and xenophobia out of the conversation. So my question is how do we facilitate conversations that address student concerns without turning the classroom into a scary or hostile place?

Problem Based Learning

After reading the article, I thought the reading was really great at illustrating how successful PBL can be in the classroom for some situations. However, as a content teacher in a high school that has block scheduling, I can see it having a lot of possibilities but I have found myself trying to figure out where to fit it into the classroom. I feel as though PBL takes a lot of time because students are learning through the process of solving and it helps them become creative people solvers. Therefore, I feel that teachers really need to teach students how to do PBL by giving them a strong foundation to work with because the end result can be mixed. Something that I do have a question for the writer is did the standardize tests improve due to the teachers teaching the students to transfer the knowledge of PBL skills to the test or did this naturally occur as a result of the PBL lessons?

As I read this both articles, it made me think that both groups of students have one thing in common—they feel alienated. The conflict is society’s notion of what it means to be identified as American. If students do not fit in those boxes then they are left out or end up growing up with some very messed up identities. Therefore, as future educators we must and should create environments within our classrooms that facilitate dialogues and lessons that illustrate many peoples and their identities. By providing students will complete information about LGBTQI and bilingual speakers. The information only should include be provided to students so that they have knowledge that is not distorted or incorrect. As educators, we should advocate for our students and teach them how to advocate for themselves. I admit that it can be a scary thing but it’s a skill that students should learn. Not only are they learning about the complexity of identify but empathy, too.

Schools

I wasn't shocked or surprised about this week's reading. In some ways I'm glad that there is research that is being done about the treatment of urban youth that challenges the way that mainstream society has treated urban youths, in particular young men. The reading illustrates that there needs to be more research to be done about urban youth. In addition, we need to teach students that as they become adults, they will encounter a set of "rules" that are hidden. These rules impact urban youth as well as English Language Learners, too and it is an invisible divide that separates the knowing or privileged from the unprivileged. Therefore, as educators I believe it is our job to make it visible or transparent for these youth to understand that these rules exists. Otherwise, they will have a difficult time navigating each separate system or institution such as the educational system. It definately is messed up because it means that they need to know when to turn on and turn off certain things that are acceptable and not acceptable from society. Is this right?

Identity

After reading all of the articles, I was reminded again that although I know that power and privilege exists in institutions, as someone who will be working in it, it is my duty/job/responsibility to work to educate the students about it. This is often times easier said and done since students tend to view individual acts of injustices as having more impact on them than institutional acts of injustices---that is not to say that these individual acts of injustices are not important but it is also equally important to illustrate that when this happens from institutions they may not even be aware that it is occurring. As it relates to identity and adolescence, I believe that know that we as educators are either reminded or educated about this it is our opportunity to work against these forces and say how do we as individuals and communities work to stop or questions these injustices. Because it is having an impact socially and individually to the creation of our youths identities.

Within my group I have been researching information about classroom community and in particular, I have been researching information about ELL (English Language Learners), which I found out is the new pc term for the formerly and still used ESL students. The article that I read recently discusses how the University of Nebraska collaborated with ten local k-12 schools with a three year training on their ELL, who were from various Spanish speaking backgrounds. It discussed how the educators in the school district where "assign[ing] [the] responsibility for this problem (ELL), as well as responsibility for its resolution, to Latino students and parents" Which to some degree I feel that still happens today when ELL are all of a sudden placed in regular classrooms. It's a sink or swim mentality because after they have completed ESL then they are placed in the classroom expecting to perform at the same level as the other students. The research also addresses the personal and institutional factors that influence ELL success in k-12 and post-secondary education. Essentially, the article illustrates the need for k-12 teachers lack of knowledge and/or resources to provide ELL with accessible ways to get at the curriculum. However, after the training teachers felt they were more prepared to teach ELL. As a student teacher, I felt that this article was important for me to read since I am currently teaching a bilingual classroom even though I am not certified to be a bilingual teacher. Although, I know the language and culture I feel that I lack the resources to provide students with good content area information that they can read independently and get that practice of thinking critically after they have completed a reading. It's something that I think about and struggle with everyday. I believe that it's important to provide students with the knowledge but in addition, I want to give the students some higher level thinking opportunities, too.

Chapter 7 & 8

As someone who worked in youth development, the reading about youth violence did not surprise me at all. What I mean by that is that often times young people are blamed or portrayed in society negatively. However, as someone who worked in youth development, I was able to see young people who were leaders within their communities and who do positive things. Some of these youth would be stereotyped by their peers due to the community that they came from as "bad" and I saw how hurtful it was to some of youth that I worked with. I remember a girl said that she had met another girl at a conference and the girl asked her where she was from. She answered "Cabrini Green", which is a well known projects area in Chicago and the other girl said "you don't speak like someone from Cabrini Green". The girl from Cabrini Green was very upset and told me about it later. When I read about articles like these, it makes me think about my past work experience and the work the I want to continue to do which is to illustrate to other young people that they can and are people who can create difference in a positive way.

The second reading about beauty pageants made me think about and A&E show that was created a couple of years ago about beauty pageant. I remember watching the promos and having very mixed feelings. I know that the little girls that do participate in them may say yes in the beginning but I don't believe many of them have the capability to fully understand the long hours of work it takes. And of course it makes for great television when you see the child and parent become upset at each other. Which I think is another way that society is exploiting the child again. I have known some people who have participated in beauty pageants and because I know them, I've seem them change their personality completely just so that they can win it. It's usually by stifling who they really are and creating this who persona of the "yes woman". This meaning that they will do anything or please anyone to win. In the end, it's the girls and women who are exploited.