Empowering students

"Educators must understand fully the broader meaning of the use of students' language as a requisite for their empowerment" (377)
I think that what they are trying to say here is that we are constantly devaluing kids native languages by always saying they are wrong and correcting them with "proper" English. My co-op is always doing this to the kids in my class but she has never talked about what the difference is or that what they are saying isn't wrong, but isn't right in certain situations .In one of my other classes we are reading a book about grammar by Constance Weaver. In her book she talks about an activity that you can do with the kids in your classroom to help show them that it is not that they are wrong, but that for certain situations standard English is the correct thing to use. The activity talks about using formal and informal speech in order to show kids when it is appropriate to use standard English. In the activity she even incorporates a grammar lesson in Ebonics. I think that even by learning that the way they are speaking at home or with their friends isn't wrong and has its own grammatical rules and patterns, it will make it easier to understand that by teaching standard English we are not trying to say that their home language is wrong, but that there is a certain place for it and a certain place for using standard English.
I don’t think that the way that my cooperating teacher is trying to break her students of standard English grammatical errors would work for anything. When they say something wrong she just says, “you mean…” and then makes them say it the “proper” way. The thing is that the next day or even 20 min later they ask the same thing over again and she does the same thing as well. All she is really doing is telling them that their way of saying something is wrong and that only standard English is right. You think it would be obvious that this was not working with them.

Being White

"Fordham presents an analysis of the tension felt by some students between group identity and academic success...doing well in school is equated with "selling out" or becoming non-black" (259)
In chapter 17, Janie Ward talks about the difficulty that African Americans have in succeeding in school. I see this every day in my placement, students are conditioned to be "white" by basically saying that their tendencies (i.e. the way they talk, the way they dress, the music they listen to, etc) are wrong. This I think is the reason why they think that being smart or succeeding academically is "selling out". Teachers at my school are constantly telling students that the things that they say, Ebonics or slang, are wrong, but they aren't told why. If you don't explain to them that it isn't wrong, it just isn't appropriate for some situations then they are led to believe that society thinks that their way of life is wrong. It would be so easy in English classes especially to show students that their language isn't wrong, it is just a different way of speaking then what is necessary for school or jobs. You could do tons of different things to show the difference between informal and formal English. I think that by just correcting them constantly and telling them what they are saying is wrong is not the right approach. If you were to trying to teach ELL kids or someone trying to learn English for the first time you wouldn't tell them that everything that they say in their native language is wrong. So why do we do it with the kids that speak Ebonics? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Movie from Presentation

Just wanted to let you guys know if you are interested, the movie that we used in our presentation is called Chalk. It is basically a spoof documentary of high school teachers and administrators. It is a really funny movie and I recommend checking it out if you have a chance.

Transistion age

"These changes that occur during the period of transition from childhood to adolescence should be reflected, we believe, in a transitional school program." (p.165)
This transitional school that Alexander talks about does not exist in the MPS school district, while at least not at the school that I am currently at. They treat these kids as though they are still children and then wonder why they do not act like adults. The kids in my school are not allowed to be in the hallways in between classes without supervision. They actually are walked to their next class in a line by my cooperating teacher. They are given 20 minutes for lunch in which they are required to sit at their table and not allowed to get up until the teacher tells them that they can dump their trays and then line up in order to be escorted back to class again. I think it is funny when I hear the teachers talk about how the kids want to be treated like adults, but they don't act like adults. Of course they are not going to start acting like adults when you are constantly treating them like children and not giving them the opportunity to actually become adults. I mean even in the classroom they are constantly yelled at for every little thing. I taught a vocab lesson the other day that was supposed to be fun and active, but my cooperating teacher started to yell at them because they were being too loud and were not in their assigned seats. I don't know if the rest of the schools are like this, but I feel that my school is grooming these kids to be kids for the rest of their lives and not giving them the tools that they need to become a functioning part of an adult society.

Media

I honestly was shocked after reading this. I never knew that half of these things were not true. I remember hearing all of these things on the news or at school growing up and never thinking twice about it. I guess that the media does a good job of blowing these things out of proportion. I can believe that they would though because our society has always needed some group to blame things on and I guess teenagers fit the bill. I mean if you think about it, they aren't going to do anything about the stereotype put on them, because most of them probably think that it is true. I know that when I was in middle school and high school I was told most of these things, like the high rate of suicide, the transmittal of sexual deceases, the use of drugs, the pregnancy, etc. and I believed that it was all true. I mean if you think about it they have found the perfect group to target as well as make money off of. It actually is quite sick if you really think about it that they are utilizing a group of impressionable kids into thinking these things about themselves.

The problems of youth

"Such debate also would challenge the extent to which youth have been blamed for social ills instead of addressing broader structural inequalities. This would also ideally mean that adults take responsibility for social problems, and identify sources of problems in social structures rather than projecting them onto the youth...And debating what adolescence means grows out of the recognition that social, political, and economic conditions made adolescence what is has become today."(Saltman 20)
I have been in my student placement for the last two days and I can already see what the author is talking about here through the teachers/ administrators conversations about the students. I mean some comments just show that they blame the child for all their issues and that they have just completely given up on them all together. I am actually in shock by how jaded most of these teachers are towards the children that they are supposedly teacher. For instance my co-op has two classes that I have sat in on. The first class of the day has most of her ED students and the second class has a large group of students that she had taught the previous year in 6th grade. The behavior of the two classes is somewhat comparable, chatty, random outbursts, talking back, not always doing what they are told, but the way she behaves towards them is completely night and day. With her first class she stays on top of them for a couple of minutes and then really just doesn't seem to care anymore but with the second class she is always involved and on top pf their behavior. I just cant believe that by the third week of school she has already in her mind labeled her first group of students as unmanageable and has basically gave up on them.
I feel that going into MPS you must look at the things that are going on outside of school in these children's lives and realize that they are not going to be little angels right off the bat. However, I think that society as a whole does put a lot of stresses onto its youth and them blames them when they act out for it. As a teacher, and especially in MPS, you should be more compassionate towards what these children are dealing with before you decide that they are just trouble makers and worthies cases that you cant wait to get rid of at the end of the year.

Terms

In the Kevin Kumashiro article he talks about the terms that he uses on the second page. Honestly, his explanation for the use of the word "queer" in his article irked me. I guess that I don't find his reasoning to be valid. It seems to me he thinks that because the gay community has reclaimed this word as their own it would be a good word to use in an essay on changing oppression. I don't feel that his reasoning is good because I am pretty sure that there is not anyone out there that would use the word "nigger" in order to refer to the African American group, however, they also as a group reclaimed that term as their own. Because this issue came up in the beginning of the essay I had a hard time reading the rest not only because I dislike the tediousness of working your way through all the academic filler of these types of articles, but it just kind of made me dislike the author as well. I am sure that there are a lot of different opinions on the word "queer", but if you are not part of that group or using it with friends that are members of that group than I don't think that it is an appropriate word to use when talking about the LGBT group.