Shor Revisited

After discussing Shor in class I decided to go back and see if I could connect this reading to another reading we have done in class. I found
a quote that connected Safe Spaces and Empowering Education and it is something that I have seen in my Service Learning classroom. "The difference between empowering and traditional pedagogy has to do with the positive or negative feelings students can develop for the learning process. In traditional classrooms, negative emotions are provoked in students by teacher - centered politics. Unilateral teacher authority in a passive curriculum arouses in many students a variety or negative emotions: self - doubt, hostility, resentment, boredom, indignation, cynicism, disrespect, frustration, the desire to escape" (23). I have students that do not understand what they are doing and they automatically want to give up. A lot of them give up while they are doing worksheets and when I really looked at them it didn't look like they were learning anything. This type of learning environment was not healthy for them.

One girl kept saying, "I quit" during one of the assignments that my teacher wanted me to oversee. She didn't want to be there and she was just writing random stuff. I sat down with the group and I tried to help make it more fun and tried to have her put more effort into the assignment. She kept repeating the same thing and I told her that I don't want her to have that negative attitude. I said that you can't give up when things get hard you have to push through and keep going
and the outcome will be worthwhile. What I said didn't help that much because she said it a few more times but she soon stopped.

The students in the lower reading level seem to be the most bored and frustrated. I think part of it is because the material is a little hard for them, but I also think that they don't want to be learning from worksheets and that's what frustrates them the most. If students are feeling this way, it isn't creating a safe space for them. Students should feel engaged in learning and should be active participants, but these students do not seem to be comfortable in their classroom setting.

Shor "Empowering Education"

Quotes/Reflection:

For this blog post, I decided to use quotes that I felt pertained to my education in high school and college and the education of my students at my service learning placement.

While reading this article, I found myself constantly comparing what Shor wrote to my education throughout the years. "He urged teachers to encourage students to question their experience in school: 'You must arouse children's curiosity and make them think about school. For example, it's very important to begin the school year with a discussion of why we go to school. Why does the government force us to go to school? This would set a questioning tone and show the children that you trust them and that they are intelligent enough at their own level, to investigate and come up with answers'" (11). In my service learning placement, my teacher is always asking the students to think. She always allows them time to participate, to have their thoughts heard. The last time I was there, they were reading a book about Thanksgiving and she was always asking them different things about the book asking them to think about what the Pilgrims went through on their journey over. She let the students say what they wanted and even if an answer wasn't totally correct she helped lead them to the right answer but only by guiding them. I feel that as I reached middle school and high school, my teachers started just making me memorize the material. 

The next quote that Shor wrote was one that I felt I could relate to. Shor said, "This kind of critical education is not more political than the curriculum which emphasizes taking in and fitting in. Not encouraging students to question knowledge, society, and experience tacitly endorses and supports the status quo. A curriculum that does not challenge the standard syllabus and conditions in society informs students that knowledge and the world are fixed and are fine the way they are, with no role for students to play in transforming them, and no need for change" (12). This connects to Kozol because the people in Mott Haven were confined to the poverty stricken neighborhood they lived in. They couldn't rise up in society and that is what this quote is saying, by not challenging knowledge you'll still be where you started. I was never taught to question what I was learning or why I would do it. In some of my classes I was answering questions on worksheets where the answers came right from the text and I never questioned it. In my FNED class we did the same thing and had to answer true and false questions, questions like who is the author and question where one word answers came right from the text. These are similar to questions that  I answered in high school and I did it because I was told to do it. These types of questions don't challenge students and they seem like dumb questions for people who aren't that smart. Some of my English teachers would tell us what certain things meant and they didn't want to hear contradicting theories. They believed that they were right and on tests and quizzes I found myself writing their perspective not mine. I wasn't learning in these classes I was just trying to get by, I didn't bother thinking for myself because I knew whatever I thought would be considered wrong. 

"Participation is the most important place to begin because student involvement is low in traditional classrooms and because action is essential to gain knowledge and develop intelligence" (17).  I took a criminal justice class at RIC and no one in my class participated. Our grades came from our exams and it was all memorization. He would put the information we needed on the board and we had to memorize it all for the exam. I definitely couldn't wait for the class to be over and if you asked me about any of the material from the class I couldn't give you a right answer. In high school my calculus  teacher would always have us participate. We would go up to the board with questions we had on the homework and other people in the class would put the work and the answer on the board and teach the class how they solved the problem. It helped not only the people with questions but the people who presented the problems. The people presenting it got more participation points and they explained the problem which helped the process sink into their head. That in turn also helped the people who had questions because sometimes it is easier to understand something if it is taught by other students. 

I found this article that quotes Shor who explains the reasons why we should opt out or state testing. State testing sets this standard that all students have to be in even if the students aren't strong in the typical testing areas. This quote by Einstein perfectly describes state testing: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Every person succeeds in their own way. While not every student will understand the material, teachers should at least have these students questioning why the need to go to school so that they are still thinking and being critical. 

Kliewer Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

Reflection:

Reading Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome by Christopher Kliewer, really made me think back to my time in elementary school through high school and it made reflect on what type of teacher I wanted to be.

In elementary school, there were a handful of students that had Down syndrome. One girl that I remember was integrated into the classroom and she did what every other student did. There was a special needs teacher in that room to help her, but she learned everything the class did. She went to elective with them but she remained inside for recess with a couple of students from her classroom. It was amazing to see the students volunteer to stay in for recess just to play with her and keep her company while everyone else was outside. Kliewer points out that, "educating all children together reconfigures the representation of Down syndrome from burden towards citizenship" (95). Instead of being an outcast, she was integrated into the classroom and she was able to become friends with her classmates who helped make the classroom a safe space for her. Including special needs students into classrooms is a benefit because there is "no 'one size fits all model''' (Romo). Every student is different, and not every student learns the same. With that being said special needs students SHOULD be in all classrooms with their classmates because no one fits in the cookie cutter model.

In middle school there was only one class I had with special needs students and that was in gym class. From what I can remember, they were in only in my class in the beginning while we were doing warm ups. I don't think special needs students were in the classrooms though.

When I looked back in my yearbooks their pictures were with their teams but they were never with their teams. They should have been included more because they weren't together with other students and during the holidays, they didn't get to watch movies and hang out.

In high school special needs students were kept to one hallway where only a couple classrooms were, and they never had classes with other students. The only times I felt they were included is when our school had special olympics or basketball games that were played by special needs students. I feel that our high school was not inclusive at all. I found this article that helps teach students with Down syndrome and one thing listed that stood out to me was self-esteem. Students with Down syndrome usually have a lower self esteem and I think she should be in places where they can have people around them that will higher their self esteem. The teachers who worked with the special needs students did not look pleasant so I wonder if they were doing everything they needed to make those students feel wanted and included. This does not seem like a safe space that August talked about. The special needs students should have been integrated into gym classes in high school like they did in middle school.

The one thing I did like is that students would volunteer to take time and work with the special needs students and they would go around to different classrooms to deliver the newspaper or take coffee orders for teachers and then go out and deliver the coffee. I believe that all students should be allowed to be in classrooms together so that everyone can be accepted and included.

My favorite quote from Citizenship in School is from Mia Peterson which I think ties in with what I was thinking that all students should be in the same classroom. She says, "I started to notice that I didn't like the classes I was taking called special education. I had to go through special ed. almost all my life. I wanted to take other classes that interested me. I had never felt so mad, I wanted to cry" (Kliewer 71). Why can't special needs students take classes that I took it doesn't seem fair that they don't have the same opportunities that I had.

Question: From my experiences I never really had classes with special needs students. Are there schools that have special needs students in classrooms all the way through high school? What are these schools doing to integrate students with special needs that my schools need to start doing?

Finn Literature with an Attitude

Extended Comments:

For this week's reading Literacy with an Attitude, by Patrick Finn, I found that I was looking at other blogs to help me understand the reading better. This week I decided to use Lindsey's blog as the focus of my blog.

Lindsey connected Literacy with an Attitude to Delpit, Kozol, and Collier in her blog. She starts with the quote, "They valued this more than knowledge taught by experience. For example, when a child said that the plural of mouse in not mouses because 'it wouldn't sound right,' the teacher said that was wrong reason. The right reason was that mouse is an irregular noun, as it says in the book" (13). These teachers are teaching based on what "curriculum experts" are telling them to teach. These experts are people who are clearly in the culture of power. I agree with Lindsey's point, instead of the teacher trying to help them understand that the word mouse is irregular, the teacher flat out told them you're wrong. In the article Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route, by Jeannie Oakes she provides both sides to show why tracking can be a good thing and a bad thing. The argument for the people opposing tracking is that, "they believe it locks most students into classes where they are stereotyped as 'less able,' and where they have fewer opportunities to learn. Many express particular concern about tracking's effects on poor and minority students" (178). This fits in with the culture of power. Students who are poor and/or a minority they will not succeed

like the white upperclass students will because those students will be placed in lower reading groups which puts them in lower level classes in middle school and high school. Lindsey's connection to Kozol was one I never thought to make, but I completely agree with it. She writes, "Unlike Kozol, who fought for the children and families in Mott Haven, Finn simply gave up. He says, 'I was pretty tuckered out after eight years of handling poor children' (6)." Finn gave up on teaching while Kozol kept caring about those families. These children need someone in their lives, a positive, strong role model, and he just gave up.

I completely agree with Lindsey's connection to Collier. She says, "The question he uses is , 'How would this work in my classroom?' ... Collier was one who was a strong believer in that the teacher or authority within the classroom had no right to change the languages being spoken by the students, but rather adapt to it. In discussing how it would work in your classroom, the teacher is finding a way to work around the students while adapting to them rather then changing them." She is right! Instead of changing how students learn or understand material, teachers need to adapt to the students. They need to understand how to deliver material that allows it to make sense to every student.

This video talks about the facts about illiteracy in the US.

Point to share: "I corrected and graded and returned every paper by the next class so the students felt that completing assignments mattered, or put an- other way, students were punished with a zero if they did not do their assignments. But, of course, that meant assignments had to be easily correctable, fill in the blanks, matching, one- or two-word answers on numbered lines on spelling paper" (4). I feel I can really connect to this because when I handed in assignments in high school, some teachers would hand it back right away and some wouldn't. In my classes where the assignments wouldn't be handed back right away, I found my self getting lazy because I didn't know what my grades were and I stopped trying to hard all the time. If I knew my grade I knew if I had to try harder and I also knew exactly what I had to work on in order to improve. 

Brown vs. Board of Education

Quotes:

While exploring the website Brown vs. the Board of Education and reading the article Separate and Unequal by Bob Herbert, the culture of power has never seemed so prevalent in history and in life today. Before Brown vs. the Board of Education the states in the south "created a dual educational system based on race. These separate schools were anything but equal." After Brown vs. the Board of Education students were able to get the same education in the same classroom. In the video Between Barack and a Hard Place with Tim Wise, he talks about how "we are no where near a post racial America" and this can be seen in the classroom. Herbert wrote, "Schools are no longer legally segregated, but because of residential patterns, housing discrimination, economic disparities and long-held custom, they most emphatically are in reality." In my elementary school most of the students were white and most elementary schools in Coventry were dominantly white. At Kennedy Elementary school, where I volunteer, most of the students are not white and are of a different race or ethnicity. In Providence, a lot of schools are this way, and it seems like these schools are still segregated because of the "economic disparities" that households experience. 

Jackie Robinson integrated into MLB in 1947

The fight that allowed all students to learn together took many years and now today students are not as integrated as they should be. In Hebert's article, he mentioned a student that "showed that low-income students who happened to be enrolled in affluent elementary schools did much better than similarly low-income students in higher-poverty schools in the county." Diverse students who learn together tend to do better because the students who live in higher income families tend to have parents who work with them as young children. The students who don't have that connection tend to do better if they are with students who do. Tim Wise mentions in his video that some black students feel that in order to succeed they need to "excel in basketball and hip hop." We need to change society so that everyone has an equal opportunity. These students shouldn't have to feel they have to identify with that stereotype in order to succeed. I think Johnson's piece of saying the words applies here because most people still believe in stereotypes. Whites generally classify blacks as "less intelligent, more aggressive, prone to criminality, less hardworking and just want to live on welfare and not work." We need to realize that we are part of the problem of segregation that is still prevalent today, and we also need to see that we are the solution to fix it. 

Wise also mentions that because the United States has a black president, we feel that we are heading towards a better place where segregation and racism don't exist. Racism is "still evident" in today's society. He brought up a point that I never realized before and it was the fact that white people are asked if is racism still present and their answers were generally no. They are not part of the ones

being targeted. The people who feel they are the victims should be asked that question and he mentions that "people still remain ignorant." Brown vs. Board of Education, the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, all took a lot of work to pass and there is "still so much work that needs to be done. Denial about the problems hasn't changed."

It seems like today we are falling back into segregated schools and it is one big circle. There needs to be a change that allow a racially diverse population in every school. If there is no change or no action are we ever going to be anywhere near a post racial America?

Point to Share: I didn't know much about Brown vs. Board of Education and for a while I thought about schools being diverse because I had black, Hispanic and Asian students in my schools. After going to Kennedy Elementary school and reading Hebert's article, I can now see that schools are anything but diverse. 

Lisa Delpit "The Silenced Dialogue" (Revisited)

In Lisa Delpit's "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children", she talks about how teachers should educate their students so that every child, whether they are white or of color, can understand. She also clearly comes up with the rules and codes of power that dictate how and what children learn while they are in the classroom or even out of the classroom. While I believe that the five rules and codes of power that Delpit has contracted are very important I only used three of the five as my main quotes. Delpit's five rules of power are:

1. Issues of power are in acted in classrooms.

2. There are codes or rules for participating in power, that is, there is a "culture of power."

3. The rules of the culture of peer are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power. 

4. If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier.

5. Those with power are frequently least aware of – or least willing to acknowledge – its existence. Those with less power and often most aware of its existence. (Delpit 24).

When Delpit explains what these codes of power mean it is then that I believe she stresses her most important point of “The Silenced Dialogue.” What children learn comes from “the power of the publishers of textbooks and of the developers of the curriculum to determine the view of the world presented; the power of the state in enforcing compulsory schooling; and the power of an individual or group to determine another’s intelligence of ‘normalcy’” (24). This was the explanation Delpit provided for her first rule. Outside forces are determining what children need to learn and how it should be taught. These children need to be in the culture of power in order to succeed.

The second code of power is the one that I can relate to the most of my time spent at Kennedy Elementary School. She explains, “The codes or rules I’m speaking of relate to linguistic forms, communication strategies, and presentation of self; that is, ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting” (25). Some of the students went into school not knowing how to write a single letter so they are constantly being taught how to write so that they can be apart of the culture of power.

 

My third quote is from her fourth code of power, which I find most relatable. “I have found it unquestionably easier, psychologically and pragmatically, when some kind soul has directly informed me about such matters as appropriate dress, interactional styles, embedded meanings, and taboo words of actions” (26). In class we did an activity where each group had a different set of rules to play the same game. The winner of the group moved up and the loser moved down and there was no talking allowed. When people changed groups the game became hard to play because everyone did not know the same rules. If we were able to explicitly say this is how you play we all would have been in the culture of power, but we couldn’t so some we left out and felt stupid. Another quote that helps convey the message of this activity is, “in some instances adherents of process approaches to writing create situations in which students ultimately find themselves held accountable for knowing a set out rules about which no one has ever directly informed them” (31). Without being explicitly told the rules and codes of power the students are left in the dark and forced to figure it out themselves which leads to them falling behind.

The last quote I chose has changed my view about how I think of students and how they learn. Delpit states, “However, to bring this student into the program and pass her through without attending to obvious deficits in the codes needed for her to function effectively as a teacher is equally criminal – for though we may assuage our own consciences for not participating in victim blaming, she will surely be accused and convicted as soon as she leaves the university” (38). Before I would say that it was the students fault for not understanding something but if that student was never explicitly taught the correct way to do something they will remain to continue the same mistakes. In the long run they would be blamed for not knowing how to correctly do something when they could have been taught from the start.

Lisa Delpits main ideas are mainly about telling people the rules and codes of power so that they can be a part of it. Here is an interview with Delpit about teaching other people's children. 

Kahne and Westheimer "In the Service of What"

Reflection:

“Currently, the most broadly supported (and therefore most politically tenable) goal for service learning acitivities is to convey to students the importance of charity.” This line is the one that stood out to me while I read “In the Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning” by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer. It is so important to give back to your community and I love that some high schools make service learning a graduation requirement because there are so many positive outcomes.

In my high school the closest thing we had to a service learning project was Capstone. Some projects were fundraisers and some job shadowing. My Capstone project was on becoming a teacher and I shadowed a third grade teacher in Coventry where I sometimes taught my own lessons. I learned so much while I was there , only from my teacher, but also from my students. I would always get so excited when I was about to see them because I loved working with them, and it was a great way to learn what it would be like to be a teacher. In the text Kahne and Westheimer talk about Mr. Johnson’s class and their service learning projects. “Their grade depended primarily on the number of hours they volunteered. Thirty hours for an A, 20 for a B and 10 for a C.” I did not agree with his grading method for their projects. I don’t think the amount of hours spent volunteering should dictate the grade they receive. A student could complete 20 hours of volunteer work and learn nothing from it.

Backpacks donated for Bags of Dignity

A boy in my school, whose family took in foster children, created Bags of Dignity for children who were abruptly taken from their families and moved into a new home. He described stories of children who were brought carrying a garbage bag with their belonging and he said it was so sad and degrading. He put together a fundraiser to collect backpacks with toothbrushes, toothpaste and other items that children would need so that they could show up to houses with a backpack that was theirs rather than a garbage bag. To me that is service learning. He not only was charitable but he created a change to help the children that needed a positive identity.  

When I student taught at Tiogue Elementary School, the student population was not diverse. My class was all white students and I rarely saw any students of a different race or color. Volunteering at Kennedy Elementary School has been a different experience but still has been a great experience for me. Most of my students are Black or Hispanic and I have never worked with a diverse group before. My classroom could perfectly be described by Lisa Delpit, in which the codes of power are seen in my classroom. “The upper and middle classes send their children to school with all the accoutrements of the culture of power; children from other kinds of families operate within perfectly wonderful and viable cultures but not cultures that carry the codes at rules of power“ (Delpit 25). The children I work with are always be taught the rules of power, some were aware others were not. One student does not know how to write, but she is being frequently taught so that she can be a part of the culture of power.

Point to Share: I think all students should be a part of service learning. It is such an enthralling experience working with others to help them, and it offers a sense of purpose for everyone involved. Volunteering may seem like a job to some people but if you find a place where you truly feel comfortable and at home, volunteering can be the best experience of your life.

Here's the link to the Facebook page for Bags of Dignity in case you want to learn more!