Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community

Dennis Carlson
Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community

Dennis argues that these practices are increasingly hard to sustain. That public schools are being drawn into the battle brewing between "new right" fundamentalists and progressices in American culture as older forms of community and family are beginning to disappear and cultural diversity is increasing. Within this unsettling context, he wants to suggest that public schools may play an important role in helping build new democratic, muticultural community, one in which sexual identity is recognized, in which inequities are challeneged, and where dialogue across difference replaces silencing and invisibility practices.

"Throughout this century, one of the primary means of ensuring that gayness was an invisible presence in the school was through the dismissal of teachers who were found out to be homosexuals. Early in this century, the dismissal of gay teachers was legitimated as a way of keeping young people from being exposed to improper role models, lechery, and child molestation. "

- where Carlson talks about not allowing gay teachers to me is unfair. Gay were considered to be contagious. I think they shouldn't be labeled. Everyone has their way of teaching but i don't think just because someone's gay makes them not able to. Teaching is a passion, its what someone loves to do, if they're good at it. Any good teacher is a role model. Its not always child molestation, someone who's gay loves someone just like everyone else but its just with the same sex. I don't see the wrong in a gay person teaching.

"As a process of reconstructing the self, coming out also involves adopting a new way of being in the world and a new of way of knowing. Worldviews that normailzing the world and that define homosexual desire as bad or sick must be rejected in the precess. A politicized identity is promoted within the gay community through the use of visible gay icons and symbos such as the rainbow flag and banner, pink triangles and gay churchs, and the quilt of the names project, commemorating those who have deided of aids. "

-i like this part because some people don't realize that it helps people fit in. If someone sees another person who one of these symbols they feel that someone like them is around them and then there's a more comfortbale environment.

"A democratic multicultural education must become a dialogue in which all voices are heard and all truths are understood as partial and positioned. The objective of classroom discourse is thus not so much to achieve consensus on one true or objective depiction of reality but rather to clarify differences and agreements, work toward coalition-building across difference when possbile and build relationships based on caring and equity."

- when Carlson talks at the end of the article about what classrooms should be, I agree with him. Kids shouldn't judge, and they shouldn't be given one side by a parent or parents. Kids also get the wrong message when stoies are told to them. Some see no problem in being gay and others see what their parents believe. What are society should teach kids the truth and all voices to make it right and fair.


I think this was an easy read also. I see he does the What, So What, and Now What clarier then any other article so far. He names the what. He write abouts so what and in the end he says now what and how to fix it.

Aria / Teaching Multilingual Children

Richard Rodriguez

Aria

Virginia Collier

Teaching Multilingual Children

Rodriguez argues that bilingualists simplistically scorn the value and necessity of assimilation. He believes they do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized, so they also don't realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality.

Collier argues that language is enchanting, powerful, magical, useful, personal, natural, and all-important. She thinks the reason to use this whole range of activities in the classroom is to eliminate boredom, raise awareness, and make language teaching well as learning as culturally relevant as possible for students. She hopes that the learning process will not only enrich the life of the student, but also that of his or her teacher.

Rather than taking direct quotes I thought about doing it as a whole. These two articles offer very different perspectives about second language speakers. The first article was much easier to read. He describes his early schooling as an Hispanic student in an English-speaking Catholic School. His conclusion made me feel sad for him, but i know by his closing thought, that was not his intent. He writes about the result of the nuns visiting his parents and telling him to speak English in their home: "The silence at home, however, was finally more than a literal silence. Fewer words passed between parent and child, but more profound was the silence that resulted from my inattention to sounds of English in public." He goes on to say: "I would have been happier about my public success had i not sometimes recalled what it had been like earlier, when my family had conveyed in intimacy through a set of conveniently private sounds. Sometimes in public, hearing a stranger, I'd hark back to my past." As an ESL student, he felt cheated at home because of the pressure the nuns put on his parents to speak English. He is not totally against what they did to him, which is surprising to me. He feels like it helped him to assimilate into society. It makes me think.

The nest article, "Teaching Multilingual Children was much more factual. I learned a couple of things when reading this article. The first thing I learned from the article was about the two kinds of language ESL students need to learn.The author talks about learning casual language for conversation. In addition, however, they talk about Academic language: the language of learning in schools. They explain the difference: "The critical distinction to maintain is between how children acquire the capacity to converse causally in a second language, and how they learn to become proficient students using second language. These are two entirely different progresses." I think i am observing this in my placement in Central Falls. I am observing a first grade ESL class and a fifth grade ESL class. There are new speakers in both classes, but the fifth graders need a lot more support because the academic language is so much more difficult.

Collier goes on to describe the idea way for ESL students to become literate. She states: "The more successful long-term academic achievement occurs when the students' primary language is the initial language of literacy. First at the initial stage of instruction, using the home language for literacy builds the self-worth of language minority students. Further, literacy research states that first language literacy favorably influences subsequent second language settings." This is interesting to me because in school where I am observing almost 25% of the population are ESL students, and there is no instruction taking place in Spanish. When I think about the first article, I don't think Rodriguez would have a problem with this.

School Context Assignment

School Context Assignment

Veterans Memorial Elementary School is the largest elementary school in the center of the smallest, poorest community in Rhode Island. As I approach the school I am struck by a feeling of being “crowded in.” Parking is difficult in this small city. The streets are lined with old tenement houses, many of which are in need of repair. Veterans School appears to be a huge building built on a small lot. The playground seems inadequate in size; however it is attractive and well cared for. I learned that the parents and teachers worked together to raise funds and then built it together. 89% of the children who attend this school are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Because of the overwhelming poverty in Central Falls, the district decided to offer universal free lunch and free breakfast daily. As I enter the school I am greeted by freshly painted purple walls in the corridors. The students at Veterans are predominantly Hispanic (74%) combined with an African American population (15%) and White population (11%). During my time at Veterans I have not met any teachers who were Hispanic or African American. I have however, seen some teacher assistants from these populations.
My time at this school has been divided between two classrooms: first and fifth grade ESL classes. This school had an unusually high numbers of students that receive special education services: 21% with an additional 23% of the students receiving English as a Second Language services. Surprisingly enough, this school did not meet their improvement requirements under the “No Child Left Behind” testing and has been placed into corrective action by the state. They do not yet know what the consequences of this will be.
I enter the first grade classroom, I see two posters talking about peace are displayed. I later learn they are the result of a violent spree in Central Falls two months ago that hit this school hard. There were two murders: one victim has a brother in the third grade and the sibling of an accused shooter in the second murder also attends the school. The words on the posters, written by the children, with their own illustrations and spellings were striking: “If you have a problimm tolk about it – don’t hert your frends.” His quote relates to Johnson, when Johnson talks about "We can't talk about it, if we can't use the words." Johnson talks about, "you can't deal with a problem if you don't name it, once you name it, you can think, talk, and write about it. You can make sense of it by seeing how it;s connected to other things that explain it and point towards solutions." On the other side of the door leading into the classroom is a profile of the class student of the month: “May Student of the Month: Anthony is 6 years old. He lives with his mom, dad, big brother Steven, and hermanito Matthew. Green is his favorite color. Pizza is his favorite food. He is an expert at toy cars. He wants to be a race car driver.”
Desks are clustered together into teams. There is no teacher desk, only a messy counter where she puts her things. Later I learn that these are groups of children with different abilities. The students on the team work together to earn tallies for helping each other, completing tasks, and doing good things. The team that gets the most tallies gets to eat lunch with the teacher in the classroom once a week. They get their lunch in the cafeteria and then eat with the teacher. She says this rewards the team for their positive behaviors and helps the classroom run effectively. It also helps her to learn more about each student. The behavior system in this classroom is built on Responsive Classroom (http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/) Each day they begin with a “meeting and greeting,” which sets the tone for the day. Students, the teacher, and any visitors are invited by the leader (which rotates weekly) to gather in a circle. The leader gets to choose how the greeting will be passed around the circle. One day the students greeted each other with the “Red Sox greeting.” Each person receives the greeting then passes it on to the next person. The class then does some calendar things and reads a letter from the teacher on the easel. It is nice to see the little children lead all of this with the teacher.
A lot of the children’s work is hanging on the walls. There is a door full of pictures with magnets. It has the pictures of all the kids in the class as well as all of their teachers. The class rules are hanging up. They have been written by the students. I notice there are only three rules and they are all positive: 1. We are all learners. 2. We take care of ourselves, our friends, and our materials. 3. If we make a mistake, we fix it.
On this particular day, after the message, the teacher showed the students a picture of a soldier. She told them that it was the janitor’s son and that he was in Iraq. He had called his mother yesterday during lunch in the cafeteria and the janitor asked if the students would make cards for him. This was their writing lesson for the day. After introducing the lesson, one child from each team passed out papers. The children were encouraged to use their little word books or the words hanging up on the word wall to help them. Most of all they were encouraged to say the word they wanted to write slowly, and then write the sounds that they hear. They had little alphabet cards with pictures to help them do this. The teacher said it wasn’t important at this time that they spelled every word correctly because it is more important for them to connect sounds to letter. As they finished their letters, they came to me for help stapling it onto construction paper that they could decorate. I noticed some of the students were sent back with some ideas and encouraged to write more. Other students had less writing but it took them longer and they needed a lot of help. In this classroom of 16, five children have special needs.
Later the students were called up, a few at a time to read with the teacher. She read different books with each group. Some students read alone and others read together while they waited for a turn to be called for reading group. This class doesn’t have a lot of papers to do. During literacy time the students know they all have to be reading or writing. The white board has pictures of things that the students can do during this time. They include doing a reading program on the computer, work with magnetic letter to make words, and listening to books on tapes. During this time I am surprised to see some children laying on the floor, some children sitting at desks, some on the computer, some working alone and some working together. They all seem happy and involved in learning. Later I learn that they spend the first month of school learning how to do these activities. She believes that it is important for them to have choices about learning and to be actively involved rather than sitting quietly and doing papers.

White Privilege/Data show racial bias persists in America

Peggy McIntosh
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Salim Muwakkil
Data show racial bias persists in America

McIntosh argues that she sees racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on her group. That white are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught to not to recognize male privilege.


(1) "I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhere more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, through the course of all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and line of work cannot count on more of these conditions."
(Lists of conditions)

-After reading her list, I found that they are true and that I can also relate to some. I feel that its hard to avoid these type of things. They happen and are real.


(2) "Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the US opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individuals acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems."

- I think that shes right when she says disapproving of the system won't be enough to change it unless people do something about it. I think white people open doors for other white people, yes that happens but we can also open doors for others as well.

(3) Rather than a quote from the article I want to take the whole thing into part. It was hard to understand for me just because it was confusing to understand all the different surveys. I do however understand that white people get more jobs faster than someone of color. Even a white people with bad resumes and white who have been in jail will get the job faster than someone who isn't white. As much as I don't agree with that, its true, it really is.

I think McIntosh wasn't arguing about issues rather than just telling us what she was taught and how she see things. I like how she writes because she she doesn't want to argue she just tells her own opinion. I thought the Data was true, but a little hard to understand.

Amazing Grace

Johathan Kozol
Amazing Grace; The lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation


Kozol argues that people in poverty are not in control of their circumstances because the system cheats them out of the opportunities to get out. He suggests that to break the cycle of poverty and ghettoization the culture/system of power needs to change the way of thinking, and do what they can to educate and create opportunities for those in the cycle.


(1) "St Ann's Church, on St. Ann's Avenue, is three blocks from the subway station. The children who come to this small Episcopal church for food and comfort and to play, and the mothers and fathers who come here for prayer, are said to be the poorest people in New York. "More than 95% are poor," the pastor says - "the poorest of the poor, poor by any standard I can think of.""

- One day when I went to my moms' class. The activity she was doing with the kids was to classify buildings according to what their function was. One little girl in the class put the church with the school, and a little boy in the class told her she was wrong. He showed her his picture and he had the school with the library because he said the church is for when you have to pray, and the school is for when you learn so that goes with the library. The little girl said to him, "when your mom got no money, you need to eat here."

(2) "There are children in the poorest, most abandoned places who, despite the miseries and poisons that the world has pumped into their lives, seem, when you first meet them, to be cheerful anyways. Cliffie, as we set out onto St. Ann's Avenue, seems about as buoyant, ans as lively, and as charmingly mysterious, as seven-year old anywhere. He also seems to feel no shyness and no hesitation about filling the role of guide that he has been assigned."

-Reading this part made me think of this one little boy in my moms class named Brian. He's my favorite in the class. My mom tells me stories about him, and I see how he is when I go on Thursdays for the service learning projects. He relates to Cliffie much. Hes not shy, he's willing to learn everything. He's mom speaks no English, and she has no literacy in English or Spanish. When a letter is sent home to Brian's mother, he has to explain it to her, and one day the mother had to come in and sign a paper, and she signed it like a 1st grader. So Brian tried to hard to teach his mom everything he knows. Hes charming, puts a smile on my face every time I go into the wrong. He loves learning. He's everything Cliffie is.

(3) "Her daughter, she tells me, lives on 141st St. in Mott Haven, very close to St. Ann's Church. "On a hot night like tonight, everyone there is outside on the stoop because nobody has a fan. You know it's dangerous to do it but you go to go outside. You either go outside and take your chance or else you roast inside the house."

-This also reminds my of Central Falls where my mom works. As the days get hotter, more families are outside hanging out on their pouches. Almost all the houses in Central Falls are apartment houses, and with the all the shooting that have happened it is very dangerous. After reading that, I couldn't agree anymore and I see that going to my mom's schools.


Before I read Kozol, my mom told me she read a lot of his stuff. His books are easy read. They interesting and agreeable. In the story, he makes them real so the reader can relate to also see it in the world today. This was my favorite so far. My mom was right it was very interesting and I got to relate it to so many things.

My Relationship to Culture of Power

Culture of Power

I apologize that my blogs aren't always on time, but I work most days right after class to 9 at night.

The culture of power relates to me in a few ways. When I was born, not only the fact that both my parents were very young but they both decided to do regretful things; drugs, alcohol, and had many other problems such as not having a job. Because of these problems they coundn't and didn't know how to take care of me so I was placed in a foster home. I don't know if it's true but I like to think, my mom decided that it wasn't fair to me and thought I needed a good life and not become what she was so whether or no she wanted to she put me up for adoption. I had many foster siblings. Some where white and others where colored but because I was white I was adopted before and faster than my Hispanic foster sister. And that was my culture of power that I didn't know about but it was there. Another reason why I have culture of power is becuase I was raised by a mother who graduated from college. She has 9 brothers and sisters who also graduated from college and 3 who went to college for at least one year. My family has money, so I'm able to get things I want and not just want I need. I went to a catholic elementary school and a catholic high school so I feel that I got the best education I could possilbe get, more so than if I wasn't adopted. A short story I have that didn't give me culture of power was when I was in the process of being adopted and because I came from a poor family I was poor and the state put my under medicad. I was not able to be put under my adopted moms medical plan yet becuase the adoption wasn't final. One night right before bed, I was sitting on the edge of the sink, and I don't remember what happened, but I fell and hit my head. It split open and I had to get stitches. Becuase I was poor and under medicad the hospital would take care of me but it would take longer and they would question child abuse rather than just an accident, so my mom decided to go to a local walk in.

Other People's Children

Lisa Delpit
Other People's Children; Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

Delpit argument is that schools have become very biased toward privileged power. She says, "Seldom are students encouraged to tackle the deep moral issues that they must tussle with in this complex time, nor are they led to think about themselves as agents responsible for a larger world. I cannot help but believe that the past decade's phenomenon of middle-class white students turning into assassins is connected to the emptiness of what many of our students call schooling." She believes that the key is to understand the variety of meanings available for any human interaction, and not to assume that the voices of the majority speak for all. To end her introduction she says, "I believe that the "open-classroom movement," depites its progressive intentions, faded in large part because it was no able to come to terms with the concerns of poor and minority communities. I truly hope that those who advocate other potentially important programs will do a better job."

(1) "Since the publication of Other People's Children, the country's educational system has become caught in the vise of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates more standardized testing of children than the country has ever seen, with more and more urban school districts adopting "teacher-proof" curricula to address low test scores, along with school consultants whose sole purpose is to police teachers' adherence to scripted lessons, mandated classroom management strategies, and strict instructional time lines that ignore the natural rhythms of teaching and learning."

- I wrote a research paper on the No Child Left Behind Act my junior year in high school. I came to the conclusion that this law was hurting the very population it was suppose to help.

(2) "Seldom are students encouraged to tackle the deep moral issues they must tussle with in this complex time, nor are they left to think about themselves as agents responsible for a larger world. I cannot help but believe that the past decade's phenomenon of middle-class white students turning assassins is connected to the emptiness of what many of our students call schooling."

- To me, this is a very powerful quote for the author to make. I do believe that schools aren't what they should be but I don't think it's fair to blame them for the assassinations.

(3) "I watched one eight-second clip of a few black residents taking non-survival items replayed over and over again, day and night, with the unstated implication that those left behind were not worthy of rescue. A picture described two white victims as "finding" bread and soda at a local grocery store, while a picture of black survivors, also carrying bread, was labeled as "looting."

- I agree that Katrina showed America's biased against Blacks. I remember the pictures of Walmart they showed on television. I also remember well the pictures of the terrible conditions of the convention center. This also reminds me of the news reports when a young boy dies in Barrington and a kid who dies in Central Falls or in South Providence. It seems to be a much sadder tragedy on the news for the Barrington family.

(4) "It is time to look closely at elements of our education system, particularly those elements we consider progressive; time to see whether there is minority involvement and support, and if not to ask why; time to reassess what are we doing in public schools and universities to include other voices, other experiences; time to seek the diversity in our educational movements that we talk about seeking in our classrooms."

- I think we have all these questions about minority involvement and what kind of job public schools are doing and I agree with the author it is time to look seriously at these answers.

(5) "1. Issues of power are enacted 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 power 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 make acquiring power easier. 5. Those with power are frequently least aware of- or least willing to acknowledge-its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence."
"These issues include: the power of the teacher over the students; the power of the publisher of textbooks and if the developers of the curriculum to determine the view of the world presented; the power of the state to enforcing compulsory schooling; and the power of an individual or group to determine an other's intelligence or "normalcy." Finally, if schooling prepares people for jobs, and the kind of job a person has determines his or her economic status and, therefore, power, than schooling is intimately related to that power."

- Number 5 is a sad statement but I think it is true. Lots of people think if you buckle down and work hard enough anyone can be successful. Often poor people and minorities have many obstacles that most of us couldn't possible know or understand.
For the second part I think what is missing here is the State/Federal Government's power. They write the test that determine whether or not a school is failing. But should one test determine this?

(6) "In her dissertation, Michelle Foster quotes one young black man describing such a teacher, "She is boring, boring. She could do something creative. Instead she just stands there. She can't control the class, she doesn't know how to control the class. She asked me what she was doing wrong. I told her she just stands there like she's meditating for all I know. She says that we're suppose to know what to do. I told her I don't know nothin' unless she tells me. She just can't control the class. I hope we don't have her next semester.""

- I don't completely disagree with this quote I think that teachers view students as the problem & students view the teacher as the problem.


So many pages were missing from this article that it made it extremely difficult to follow. With what I read I did have some thoughts about what I understood. Delpit makes some good points that I agree with and I am able to see her point of view, but she makes some bad points where I disagree.