Diversity Event- RIC Drag Show

For my diversity event I went to something really different: a drag show! I didn't really know what to expect going in, but it definitely sounded like an event that would be fun. I brought my friend Courtney with me.

Going in I wasn't sure what a drag show was exactly. I knew that there would be people dressed in drag, but what did they do? Did they walk around and socialize? Did they preform? Did they just kind of do a walk down the catwalk and get judged on how well their drag looked, almost like a custom contest?

I was also thinking things like "if a man is dressed as a woman, would they prefer to be identified as a he or a she? Should I refer to a women dressed up as a man as "him" or "her"? It made me a little uncomfortable going in with out a clear knowledge of queer etiquette. I think the best way to describe it was that I was being put into a position that I wasn't familiar being in. I didn't know the codes of power when it came to gay, lesbian, and transgender people. I was also the minority in the group being a straight girl. I think it was a real Delpit moment for me.

I think it was a great experience to have because I found myself thinking things that I wouldn't normally expect myself to think. I was thinking "I wonder if people presume that my friend and I are gay because we're here" and then I thought "well, who cares if they do?" and then I thought "What if they think I'm straight and they're wondering why I'm here", almost as if I felt that I didn't have the right to be there because I was straight. It was all very strange.

The show itself was really cool. First they had an amateur drag contest and they had experienced drag performers judging. The performances were all done to songs with the drag queens and kings dancing. One of the perforers did an interesting thing. They started off dressed as a girl, and then during the dance she changed her clothes and appearance to make herself look like a man. It was clever because she used mascara to make her facial hair, turing something that females are encouraged to use to look beautiful and feminie and making into something that made her look masculine. And she did it to the song 'Be a Man' from Mulan.

After that they had performances by the experienced drag queens. All of the performers just had incredible energy and lots of personality and they made everyone laugh. I found myself thinking of them as the gender that they were dressed as, and so my question about whether or not I should address them as a "he" or a "she" became less important. I just didn't even think about it anymore.


I had a very unique experience. When I first sat down and my friend and I were waiting for the show to start, one of the girls came up to me and said "Hi, Shayla."

I smiled, unsure, and said hello back, then asked if I knew her. It was my childhood friend, Kevin, who lived one street over from me. I was really, really shocked, but at the same time I felt really happy to see him there. I can't really explain why, I think it's because he seemed so happy doing what he was doing and he doesn't have to hide who he is.

Overall I'm really glad that I went to the event. I think I have a better understanding about what transgender people are all about. They're not just a joke, they're people who are doing something that they love to do. They like to be able to be the sex that they identify with, even if it's just long enough to preform for a night.

What Can We Do? Becoming Part ofthe Solution

I think Johnson's 18 page chapter can be summed up as this: In order to change anything, we all need to start making different choices ourselves. I believe that Johnson's main point in everything that I've read of his is that WE need to change things. Right here and right now, we all need to start taking the harder road.


"This suggests that the simplest way to help others make different choices is to make them myself, and to do it openly."

The harder road has many faces. It could be taking openly about racial issues. It could be defending someone who is being demeaned. No matter what it is, it has to start with yourself. He thinks that if we all start making choices to avoid that "road of least resistance" than other people will see our new path as an option. Using the words is just a tool in this bigger goal. The words need to be used or else the issues are made invisible.


"Large numbers of people have sat on the sidelines and Seen themselves as neither part of the problem nor the solution. Beyond this shared trait, however, they are far from homogeneous, Everyone is aware of the whites, heterosexuals, and men who intentionally act out in oppressive ways. But there is less attention to the millions of people who know inequities exist and want to be part of the solution. Their silence and invisibility allow the trouble to continue."

Another point that he makes is that not enough people see issues like heterosexualism, racism, and sexist as their problem. When we don't see those kind of things as our problem, we distance ourselves from them and wait for someone else to fix it. The problem is that the people who think that it's not their problem are the people who need to take the most responsibility to try and fix it. The reason is because often they are the people who have the most influence in society.


"A key to the continued existence of every oppressive system is unawareness, because oppression contradicts so many basic human values that it invariably arouses opposition when people know about it."

I think that this is definitely true. I don't think that many people think about systems are prejudice. Whenever I heard people talking about how this was racist, or how that was sexist, I always felt like they were the kind of people who always needed to complain about something. Now I understand that I was probably the ignorant one. If we make choices that demonstrate our resistance to follwoing prejudiced systems, than more people will realize that those systems are unfair.


Overall, I think that Johnson came up with somewhat of a weak conclusion to what we should do. I think that he could have focused more on his idea of changing ourselves to start influencing others to change too. Intsead he talks about how the question of what to do is a tough question. It definitely is, but I think changing ourselves is definitely a good start.

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

Kliewer talks about how children with disabilities are excluded from the community when they are segragated in schools. He makes many good points about how segregation doesn't allow for children with disabilities to grown linguistically and socially. When "abnormal" children and "normal" children are separated, the "abnormal" children, all the children miss out. Special needs students feel defective, and "normal" children never get a good understanding of special needs people.

"Those who appear not to make use of these conditions (supposedly open to all), or who appear to lack the potential to accrue privileges, are systematically devalued as less than full citizens-charged as they are with having the differences that matter."

Kliewer uses many examples from peolpe who have written about society and democracy and says that citizens who are unable to make full use of their rights as citizens and do not contribute to society as much as other citizens do are devalued. They are seen more as a burden to society and their community rather than an important part.

I think that some teachers feel that way about children with special needs, especially if they have inclusion in their classroom. I don't think anyone would deny that it's harder to have an inclusive classroom than a segragated one. It's going to be hard, because a lot of people don't have patience for people who have special needs and because the teacher always needs to think about ways to make all the children feel included. I think inclusion will be easier once more schools start making it a priority.


"Those students who exhibit the canonical mind are credited with understanding, even when real understanding is limited or absent; many people . .. can pass the test but fail other, perhaps more appropriate or probing measures of understanding. Less happily, many who are capable of exhibiting significant understanding appear deficient, simply because they cannot readily traffic in the commonly accepted coin of the educational realm."

This seems like it's a big flaw in the way that schools assess their students with special needs. Students with disabilities may have an understanding of what they're being tested on but fail a test on it. The same can be said about students without disabilities, they may be able to pass a test on a certain subject but don't understand it well.

Shayne Robbins did not hesitate in her response when asked why she devoted so much energy to creating a classroom community where all were afforded citizenship. "Don't think," she told me, "that those special needs kids drain anything. That class would not be half what it is if anyone of those kids got segregated. We're all together in there."

I really admire that teacher for all the work she does with her students in her inclusive classroom. When she was talking about how she had a special needs student in her class who loved the book Where the Wild Things Are, and how she had the class put on a play so that he could participate without feeling frustrated. But at the same time she sees the good that those kids with special needs are doing in her classroom.

I wish that I had gone to a school that had inclusive classrooms. To this day I still feel a little awkward around people with special needs. I think it's because the only experience I've ever had with a person who has special needs was when I was a kid. I met my friend's sister who was autistic and she had a sudden fit and she was screaming and thrasing and her dad had to hold her down.

It scared me a lot, and ever since I feel like I don't know how to act when I meet people with special needs. I think that it's definitely easy to see people with special needs as an "other". Maybe it's similar to how racially segragated schools were, kids were seperated so they saw each other as the "other" kids. This unease that I have tells me that I need more experience working with people with special needs. I think that I need to be able to see the humaness in them and look past their disability. Disibility shouldn't define who a person is.

Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

Jean Anyon claims that, after observing five 5th grade classrooms of different social class, that students are already being prepared to occupy specific jobs and have specific roles based on their social status.

I found the whole article to be very interesting. As Anyon says herself, it's no secret that schools in wealthy areas are better than schools in poor places. I didn't find it surprising that the wealthier kids were getting the better educations. I think the thing that I was surprised by is just how much students are being taught just enough to occupy the jobs that people in their neighborhoods would commonly occupy. It's ridiculous and it's obviously set up to keep poor families poor and rich families rich.

When students are given expectations just high enough to fit in with their social class, it leaves very little room for greater achievments. It leaves the rich families with more oppertunities if for no other reason than the fact that there's less competition for 100K+ jobs.

"One teacher explained to me, "Simple punctuation is all they'll ever use." Regarding punctuation, either a teacher or a ditto stated the rules for where, for example, to put commas."

That's such a horrible thing for that teacher to have said. How does that teacher know that one of their students won't go on to become a great writer, or a journalist, or go to an Ivory League college. They don't know, and the sad part is that many of their students probably don't even think of those options as possible for themselves because of the low expectations set for them. It's sad, really, when your teacher doesn't even believe that you can do it. A teacher's job is to TEACH, not to decide to skip the hard parts because their students won't amount to anything more than store clerks.

The point is that there is nothing wrong with growing up and being a store clerk, or a garbage disposal person, or a mail person. BUT, who has the right to tell you that that's all you CAN be. That those are the only positions open to you. The schools are saying just that through their actions. By having such low expectations for their students, they're giving them a below par education. Since those student have been given that below par education, they're already behind compared to their peers from higher social classes. Because of this, even if they want to be a doctor or a lawyer, they're already behind. They're going to be competing against students who had a rich education.

"In the middle-class school, work is getting the right answer. If one accumulates enough right answers, one gets a good grade. One must follow the directions in order to get the right answers, but the directions often call for some figuring, some choice, some decision making."

Well, at least these students are being asked to figure things out, right? I hated all classes where the main objective was to come up with the single correct answer. I think this may be one reason why I detest math so much but love literature. Instead of being told that there's one right answers, with one way to find it, and that's it, it's more valuable to be taught to think about WHY that answer is right. Why is there only one right answer? That's not what the middle class students are getting. Another issue is that when students are so focused with finding the right answers, they're less likely to be creative or to take chances. They'd rather have safe, correct opinions, than have risky opinions.

" A child hands the teacher his paper and she comments, "I'm not accepting this paper. Do a better design." To another child she says, "That's fantastic! But you'll never find the area. Why don't you draw a figure inside [the big one] and subtract to get the area?""

This sounds harsh, but I think it's so great! This is what I'm talking about, finally a classroom showing some expectations. This is what students need. They need to be taught that just drawing any design is not good enough, that they need to try their best the first time so that they don't have to repeat their work. If you start with high expectations in small things like homework assignments, than students feel important because you expect better from them. They're important enough for you to correct, and not just ignore their poor work and accept the paper and give them a C.

I think that Anyon did a good job giving us a peak inside each classroom. I do wonder if she was biased, if maybe the working class schools did do SOME things better than the higher class schools that she didn't give them credit for. Maybe that's not true though, but I have a hard time thinking that most teachers in the lower class schools care about their students less than the teachers in the upper class schools. But, it's obvious that there's a problem here. Students are NOT getting equal educations. I doubt that too many people, people who could actually change this on a big level, care though. As long as their kids are getting a great education, I don't think they care about the other kids.

Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route

Jeannie Oakes discusses the problem of tracking in class rooms. Although some people think that separating the gifted students from the slower learners is necessary to provide more challenging material for the fast learners, Oakes argues that there are ways that work well to get the most out of each student by intergating fast and slow learners.

"in John Goodlad's national study of schools, reported in the book A Place Called School, students in high-ability English classes were more likely to be taught classic and modem literature, provided instruction in expository writing and library researcb, and expected to leam vocabulary that would eventually boost their scores on college entrance exams."

This is a real example where seperating fast learners and slow learners create a huge disadvantage for those slower learners later on in their education. The teacher takes the time to teach the fast learners important vocabulary words and provides them with work that makes them think rather than worksheets. They learn how to research and use the library for that cause. The slower learning students don't get that information later. It's not offered. The problem is that faster learners are getting more from school. The slower learners learn less just because it takes them longer to learn. That's not an equal education, especially when you think about the different ways that these students are being asked to learn. The faster learners are being challenge while the slower learners are just being asked to keep up.

"In low-ability classes, for example, teacbers seem to be less encouraging and more punitive, placing more emphasis on discipline and 'behavior and less on academic learning. Compared to teachers in high-ability classes, they seem to be more concerned about getting students to follow directions, be on time, and sit quietly."

I noticed this a lot when I was in middle school. I was put into the lowest level classroom in 6th grade. Kids acted up all class. The teachers hated us. Sometimes they would try and control the class and sometimes they would just give up. Either way they got tired of getting interupted and would end up assigning book work to do all class.

I didn't learn very much.

but I saw what the highest level class was doing when I'd walk by. They were having discussions, even in middle school! I'd never really remembered an open discussion before high school. They were talking about things, they were behaving. They didn't even have to raise their hands half the time to voice their opinion. They did projects and worked in pairs. And they were learning, and I wished that I was doing those things instead of doing book work because book work was what made me hate school to begin with.


"Perhaps the most important and difficult task for those who would change tracking is to confront deeply held beliefs, such as the belief that academic ability is fixed very early and is largely unchangeable or that achievement differences can be largely accounted for by differences in ability."

So true! I wasn't a very good student at all in elementary and middle school. I didn't get things right away and I didn't have the patience to do half of the reading and book work assigned. But I changed. It's not impossible. "Stupid" kids aren't stupid unless you condemn them to be. They can learn, they can catch up, they can get straight A's without having to study twice as hard as fast learners.

I think it all comes down to expectations and interests. If students hate book work, which MOST do, then you NEED to change the way that you're teaching. Don't cut out book work entirely because it may be useful for students later on, but incoporate a variety of learning styles. Some teachers don't give the slower learners that variety. No wonder they're not interested, they're bored.

I still don't know how much I agree about completely getting rid of tracking. I see all the bad in it. At the same time, I know how distracting it was to be with kids who had no interest at ALL in school. Sometimes I wonder if they would have had interest if things were taught differently. I don't know. I also think that there should still be programs for gifted students just like other students need IEPs and resource classes. Why should you punish the fast learners?

I do think that classrooms should be mixed though, mixed but with programs for both students who need addition help and students who need more of a challenge. It's tough to say that because I can see the problem with slow learners not getting as much information as fast learners in school. At the same time, you can't deny fast learns the right to expand their knowledge. They shouldn't be punish, I really think that there's just some matieral that's IS too hard for slow learners. Matieral that IS too intimidating. Material that they're just not ready for yet, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.

I'm all for high expectations, but in my middle school some of the fast learners were learning math that would have made me want to cry. Every teacher should set high expectations for their students, but they need to be practical. I'm sure some of my current classmates could write a 80 page essay on World War II. Right now, I feel that something that big would be overwhelming and a ridiculous expectation of me. I haven't been prepared to write essays that long yet. I'm not ashamed of that, but if a student wants to take honors classes where they have to write an 80 page paper, why shouldn't they? Yes, I'm not learning that skill, but maybe I'm not ready for it yet. Maybe I'm still trying to perfect my 20 page papers.

Sexism

"Anita Hill is a boy"

In this article Orenstein argues that our school curriculum are male dominant and that more needs to be done to make classrooms more gender fair. She looks at a classroom where the teacher is trying hard to incorporated more women into the curriculum and to make boys more comfortable with learning about women while at the same time trying to build confidence in girls.

"Individually, teachers find that calling on students equitability, or simply waiting for a moment rather than recognizing the first child who raises his hand, encourages girls to participate more readily in class."

I can relate to this because growing up I was one of those girls. If a boy raised his hand first, I would keep mine down. If a girl raised her hand first, then I would raise mine if I had something to say. I know that if I really wanted to, no one was stopping me from raising my hand after the boy did, but I didn't want to compete with a boy. The fact that I was uncomfortable competing with a boy tells me now that I couldn't have been very confident that I was that boy's equal.

"As the girls talk, I recall what a teacher at Weston once told me, that "boys perceive equality as a loss." Apparently, girls are uneasy with it, too. Even these girls, whose parents have placed them in this class ill part because of Ms. Logan's sensitivity to gender issues, have already become used to taking up less space, to feeling less worthy of attention than boys"

This whole issue makes me mad. I think it's because I get impatient with some men and their pride as it is, to think that seeing equality as a loss is what some of them think (even subconsciously) makes me frustrated. There's a lot of denial, or at least ignorance, of gender inequality. Any guy I've brought the issue up with have wanted nothing to do with it, or would just deny everything that I mentioned. I don't think that some men feel women have the right to complain. Even though women are treated as sexual objects in the media, and men enjoy it. Even though rape is still a huge problem, as is domestic violence. Women can vote and women can work, so they feel that women should feel content. But women are still not equal.

I think that girls are taught to behave. Or, at least, are taught to learn how to be out of the way. Almost as if the old idea that women should be seen but not heard hasn't faded away completely. I think that's why girls have trouble speaking up in class disscussions, why they take up less space, and why they feel comfortable not competing for attention. It makes me want to tell women to start changing their behavior. To try and be more outgoing. The problem is that no one tells girls that they're being passive. It's not realized.

"It is important to be explicit withnthese reassurances right away. Feminist teaching is not about allowing anwin/lose situation to develop hetween boys and girls."

I love this quote because I feel as if that's what's going on these days. Men feel like they're being attacked, like if they admit that there are gender biases than they'll lose and have to admit that they're wrong. That's not the way that it should be thought about though. This doesn't have to be a boys vs. girls situation. Honestly, I don't think that gender has to be as big of a factor in our society as it is. It shouldn't matter if a student is a boy or a girl. Boys shouldn't be disciplined more often than girls for the same behavior. Girls shouldn't look into a classroom and see not one female representation. If a girl can wear a skirt to school, then a boy should be able to wear one. The way that both girls and boys are treated unfairly aggravate me so much!

"Luis tells me that he chose to take this class because he was interested in the topic. "But I don't tell my friends," he says. "If I told them I was interested in women's history, they'd call me a fag. So I just take it and don't' talk about it."

This is the most important quote of all. This is the root of the problem. Boys are put under a huge pressure to be masculine. Things are put into categories. Masculine, Questionable, and Feminine for them. Football= Masculine. Enjoying cooking= Questionable. Enjoying women's studies= Feminine.

Not only does it limit men and boys in such a way that they're forced to cover up the things that they enjoy in fear of being singled out, they are also forced to see certain issues and things as not their problem. Some men don't want to learn how to cook because it's not their problem. It's not their problem because it is a woman's problem. It's a woman's problem because it's questionable for a man to like to cook.

It reminds me of a class that I took last semester, Critical Issues in Contemporary Africa. I was asked by people, on more than one occasion, why I was in that class. "You're not black" they'd say "why did you take that class?" And it felt like an accusation. It felt like I was being asked to defend myself. As if Africans only matter to black people. As though I had no business taking a class on Africa because it's not MY problem.

That's how Luis felt. Except I didn't expect to be questioned about my class choice and he was totally expecting that. So he didn't talk about it because he didn't want to have to defend his choice. He didn't want to have to explain why he was taking that class even though it wasn't HIS problem.

It ties in well to the things we've read about race and about how white people need to make racism their problem too. The hard part is always having to defend yourself.

The New Spongebob BK Commercial

So, Burger King made a new commercial promoting their Sponge Bob toys that they include in the kids meals.

And I guess they thought that measuring the butts of hot chicks was an appropriate way to do that.

Don't get me wrong, I can see some of the comedy in this, stupid comedy, but still somewhat amusing. But at the same time, kids are seeing the Burger King measuring girls butts as they dance around and have no meaning what so ever besides just dancing and showing off their square booties.

And the Burger King is "cool". Not cool in the way that kids have action figures and posters hanging of the Burger King, but the BK commercials and the video games they've sold all portray the King as a cool/funny guy.

I think the main problem with this commercial is that it's TARGETED towards kids using an adult theme. It's for kids meals, adults aren't going to care about Spongebob. But they're so clearly sending a sexist message to kids, they're not even trying to cover it up at all.

"One More River to Cross" Charles Lawrence

I'm not really certain about what Lawrence is arguing here. I think he's trying to say that while desegregation was a step, it was by no means the end to inequality that people who were anti segregation thought it would be.

From what I have gotten from this reading, Lawrence believes that just having black students learn in the same classrooms as white students do won't give them equal opportunities. More has to be done than just bringing students from different races together.

The problem of inequality, especially when it comes to in jobs and education, has a deep root. Segregation was just the stem of the problem. The root of it runs much deeper and it much harder to pin point.

“It is the thesis of this paper that the Brown decision fostered a way of thinking about segregation that has allowed both the judiciary and society at large to deny the reality of race in America, that the recognition of that reality is critical to the framing of any meaningful remedy-judicial or political-and that Brown may ultimately be labeled a success only insofar as we are able to make it stand for what it should have stood for in 1954.”

I think what Lawrence means by that is that desegregation made white people think that their responsibility to people of color was done with. Everyone was mixed together now, everything was “equal”, so racism must no longer exist. What Lawrence is saying, at least what I think he's saying, is that Brown Vs. Board might have done more harm than good because at the time it didn't stand for what it should have stood for. In other words, it was more about mixing races than it was about creating a real equality among them. This is a problem because now many people don't want to admit that there is still inequality. They think that just because society has been desegregated means that there is no longer barriers blocking students of color from getting the same quality of treatment, education, and then later on, jobs, that white students enjoy.

“The third is that the institution of segregation is organic and self-perpetuating. Once established it will not be eliminated by mere removal of public sanction but must be affirmatively destroyed.”

Here Lawrence shows that just by getting rid of segregation won't do the trick. The problem is that segregation labeled people of color as inferior. When the governement let black students attend an all white school, they weren't making the statement of “here are these black kids, they are now your equals!”

It was more along the lines of “They're here and there's nothing you can do about it so just tolerate them”.

That's definitely harmful because it teaches the idea of tolerance rather than believing that people are equal.

I really hate that word tolerance. Anyone else hate it too? I would hate to have someone say about me “Just tolerate her!”. How horrible, to be “tolerated” but not accepted. Not understood because people don't care to understand. Just tolerated because you're there and there's nothing that other people can do about it. I'd imagine that's how some of the first women in the armed forces must have felt. Hated but tolerated.

“The parent's immediate goal was largely fulfilled. The school was successful in engendering strong positive self-images among both children and parents, in creating an atmosphere in which children enjoyed learning, in expanding the school's role into a concern for the whole child and that child's family, and even in increasing scores on standardized tests. But there was little we could do to realize the parents' more long-range dreams. Even if we controlled the school we controlled little else. This became apparent as we began to talk about where our students would go when they left Highland Park. What were we preparing our children for? Would there be places for them to use what we were teaching them as fulfilled productive”

This part of the reading had confused me the first few times I read over it. At first I thought it had said that the students from the Highland Park school were all black, and that they did well because they were being taught by black teachers who they could look up and because they had access to the same materials that white kids had. But then I read it again and saw that this was a school that had white students in it too. And that the students did do better in school and had higher self esteem and test scores, but then parents were worried about what would become of them after school. Since the root of the problem runs much deeper than just a poor school system in city schools, but also prejudices when it comes to hiring people for jobs.


I'm still a little confused about this reading. I think I have the main idea of it, but I'm not positive. Right now I feel as if all I've written so far could be wrong. I think that talking about it in class will help me more.

Ahhh! The Ele Ed Admissions Portfolio Due Date Snuck Up On Me!

I don't know if anyone else is just realizing this as well, but the admissions portfolio for Ele Ed is due in 16 days!

Make sure you give your Supervisor Reference Form to your teachers if you're in the Eled Program soon. I almost forgot but I'm going to ask her to fill it our Friday so that she has a week to do so and I can get it from her on 4/3.

Is anyone else wondering about the career commitment essay? We get them back 4/10, but our portfolios are due on 4/9 the latest.

What the Hell are they doing with Dora?

Ok, well, I'm not a Dora fan. My little cousin is 5 and she really likes Dora, but I never really liked the show.

We talked about the gender roles in Dora and I don't like how the show does that. But this seems like a new step in the wrong direction.


Question: Are they trying to make Dora a sexual figure? They're going to be making a new Dora doll of Dora as a pre-teen, and it looks like the gender role image is still there. She's very girly with extra jewelery and all. Sure, she's fully dressed NOW, but hopefully she doesn't turn into a Bratz ripoff later on. She is going to sell well.






And look at this toy...



Maybe I just have my mind in the gutter but doesn't this look like an interesting shape for them to have chosen? The coloring too...




P.S.

I guess I'm not the only one who thought that toy was... interesting.

In The Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning

Ok... So, the main point that Kahne and Westheimer are making here is that as a society we're encouraging students to become involved with service learning, but we really don't have a clear goal on what kind of service learning we want to have students do.

As they explained, there are two different types of service learning. Charity and Change. I already knew this and have had to do a ton of service learning for different things. Some for school, some for church, and some for scholarships. I know the ropes.

And I like service learning. I really always have. For the most part my service learning has been in the hopes to change things, but I have also done something things that would be considered charity. I think that we need both of them.

All this seems so obvious to me that it's painful to write about now. I don't know why I'm having such a strong opposing attitude towards responding to this article. I guess I've just talked about it so many times before that it feels like someone giving me an assignment about healthy foods versus unhealthy foods. Just obvious things that feel silly to keep repeating because I know them all already.

Hey, I just thought of something though. Maybe an interesting analogy? I don't know, worth mentioning though.


Charity is sort of like junk food. It tastes good going down, you feel good for that minute or hour or day. But then you forget that you even ate that piece of cake or that bag of chips and you don't care about the last time that you did.



Change is like healthy food. It can be hard work to keep up with that good diet, but it's a long term good feeling. It's more work having to prepare a salad to bring for lunch than it is to grab a cheeseburger out of Donovan, but in 5 years, you're going to have made a difference (at least for your body).

Hmm, I think I like that analogy. Maybe it's flawed because the people you're serving aren't represented, but that's ok. Service learning isn't always about helping people anyways.


So we'll call Charity junk food, and we'll call change healthy food. We all need to grab junk food every now and then. Why? Well, because sometimes we really do just need a break from cutting up all those carrots for our salad. And other times we just need a quick fix of "Feel Good".

So we donate a dollar to a charity, or we go to volunteer at a soup kitchen for a night. We do this because we might not have time to do something that is going to change anything and we just want a quick fix of "I did something good today. Yay for me, I'm a good person".

Healthy food, a good diet, is doing something that's going to have a long term effect on the people (or things) you're helping.

Let's do a hypothetical situation. So, you help out at a school and teach kids how to plant trees and flowers and about the importance of preserving our environment. You do this for three years. In those three years you teach 300 students how to plant.

Then 100 of those students go on to plant trees and flowers in their community and inspire other people to help. They then teach those people how to plant trees and flowers and about preserving nature. Five years after you started teaching kids how to plant there are now 10 new gardens in your students communities and 70 trees planted.

If the cycle continues, that's change. It took three years of your life to get this movement started, but you managed to get other people motivated and now everyone's planting stuff all over the place and everything's looking beautiful. It's harder than just donating a buck to public parks, but it changed something.

"As Lawrence Cremin explains. these educators believed that. "by manipulating the school curriculum, they could ultimately change the world."

Change is also educational. Instead of just tossing a dollar in a jar that says "Help us plant trees! Donate today!" you're learning why we need to plant tress. What the benefits of gardens are in your community.

If school want students to do service learning, I think it should be because it's an education experience. Therefor, I think that service learning required for school should be focused on change.

Students have more free times than most adults do. They have opened minds, more so than many adults, and have energy. They can inspire other young people to help. They also have 13 years where they're stuck in school anyways, so why not have them spend the last 4 of those years working on changing something important?

"Students tutor. coach softball, paint playgrounds, and read to the elderly because they are interested in people, or because they want to learn a little about poverty and racism before they head out into the waiting corporate world .... We do not volunteer "to make a statement," or to use the people we work with to protest something." -William T. Grant

I think that statement is true to an extent. I do believe that some people do community service just because they want to present an image for themselves. I think it would be better to encourage change service learning rather than charity service learning because it makes the volunteer involved enough to give them a change to REALLY care. Charity seems to be easy for people to do quickly and without much passion, especially if it's required.

"If we focus on the "numerous values we share as a community," writes Amitai Etzioni, the founder of the cornmunitarian movement and a proponent of service learning, "our world would be radically improved. "32 While such rhetoric might allow this political scientist to be a trusted advisor to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, it will not resolve the dilemmas facing practitioners who need to think carefully about the many values that we do not share, about what a radically improved world might look like, and about the different ways one might pursue this goal."

I think this is a big issue when it comes to getting political support for volunteer work that promotes change! Some people are just not ready for these changes to happen. They're comfortable with certain people being oppressed, or certain life styles being better than others. Something like my planting trees example isn't a threat to the way that we live as people, but, something like promoting the hiring of women in high position jobs (both in business and politics) would add more competition for men who want those positions.

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us

Linda Christensen talks about the deeper meanings and messages behind cartoons and how they influence children. Christensen wants us to analyze the cartoons that we see on tv and the movies that children watch to find the racism, sexism, and the attitudes towards rich and poor people. Christensen wants people to come to terms with the way they have been manipulated, even as children, to accept social norms and common stereotypes.

“When we read children's books, we aren't just reading cute little stories, we are discovering the tools with which a young society is manipulated.”

I thought this was a powerful statement. Especially because at first glance it sounds completely paranoid. Youths being manipulated by literature? But, reading is good, right? We're supposed to read Sleeping Beauty to kids before bed. Thinking of children's stories as anything more than entertainment seems silly to some people.

It's when you take a closer look at some of the things that we've seen or read as children when things become kind of scary.

Reading this article automatically reminded me of Sunflower the Centaur from Fantasia. The scene featuring Sunflower is now banned, and was first removed during the editing for the re-release in the late 60's.

This is the YouTube Link where the video of Sunflower can be found. You only have to watch the first minute to see how she's portrayed.


“Kenneth noticed that people of color and poor people are either absent or servants to the rich, white, pretty people.”

The Pastoral Symphony is a short musical piece in the Fantasia collection which shows many pretty light skinned (and furred, I guess) centaurs just relaxing and getting pampered by cherubs. And one of the centaurs has a little black centaur, named Sunflower, as a servant to shine her hooves and puts flowers in her hair.



This is Sunflower. Need I say more? The exaggerated features are meant to be offensive, not to be a creative portrayal of a black centaur.


“Tyler pointed out that the roles of men are limited as well. Men must be virile and wield power or be old and the object of “good-natured” humor.”

Wow, right on the spot with this cartoon.

The cherubs see handsome, light skinned (furred) male centaurs coming and try to make the vain female centaurs even more beautiful by fixing their hair just right and adding things like fancy hats. The female centaurs are completely obsessed with how they look, you can tell just by the way that they act.

The male centaurs are handsome and confident and all handle themselves as if they could be prices or men of power. They all act the same, just like the females do. They're the same character painted different colors.

When the male centaurs come, another disturbing thing happens.


The centaurs pair up. Except, they don't just flirt and pair up and fall in love, the pinkish red male centaur goes after the pink female centaur. The blue male centaur goes after the blue female centaur, and the two centaurs with yellow hair get together. What does this tell kids? Well, it tells them that the best match is someone who looks the most like you. Which, if possible, makes the portrait of Sunflower even worse. They're not just saying that darker skinned people are beneath lighter skinned people, but also implying that there shouldn't be any romantic relations between people who are different.



Later in the cartoon, a fat drunken man is brought in by the centaurs. He acts very foolishly and flirts with the female centaurs. This just brings us back to the “old and the object of “good-natured” humor.” He isn't handsome or very young and he's fat, but he engages in humorous activities like chasing around the female centaurs and trying to dance with them.

I focused my response to the reading mainly on one example that I think is exactly the kind of message that Christensen wants people to be aware of. If you were to ask parents straight out

“Would you encourage teaching your child that black people are beneath white people, that beauty is the most valuable thing a woman can have, that men have to be powerful and strong in order to attract a pretty woman, that old fat men drink a lot and like to flirt with younger woman, and that dating should be strictly limited to the people who are the most like yourself?”

do you think they would support most of those ideas? Probably not. Any parent who does needs to take FNED 345 at RIC. I think that's what Christensen is trying to say. We don't support many of these messages verbally, so it's time to start finding the hidden messages that are being sent to children so that we can stop them.

I don't think that telling a little girl not to watch Cinderella is the right thing to do either. Let her watch it. Then TALK to her about it. Explain how people used to think about woman, and how she should think of herself. I think once every little girl is told that being a princess doesn't have to be their biggest wish, many more creative ideas will open up to them.

The same goes for all the little boys out there who were screamed at for even picking up a Barbie doll. It's ridiculous and poor little boys have it the worst. At least little girls can get away with playing with trucks if they want to, male children are so limited to the things that they're supposed to like that it's sickening.

Gayness, Multicultural Education, and Community

Carlson believes that the topic of homosexuality should be brought up in the classroom to teach students more about homosexuals. Knowing more about homosexuals and the queer community would benefit everyone. Students would have a better understanding about people who are not heterosexual. They would then have the information needed to decide for themselves what they think is right or wrong instead of just listening to what other people tell them. Carlson believes that being able to talk about homosexuality openly is the first step in being able to work past the prejudices against the queer community, just like Johnson believes that talking about race issues openly and using the words would help Americans improve interracial relations.


“Throughout much of this century, the dominant idea of community in America was represented by what I call the normalizing community. Within normalizing communities, some individuals and subject positions (i.e., white, middle class, male, heterosexual, ect.) get privileged and represented as “normal” while other individuals and subject positions (i.e., black, working class, female, homosexuality, ect.) are disempowered and represented as deviant, sick, neurotic, criminal, lazy, lacking in intelligence, and in other ways “abnormal”.

I thought this was especially important because, to me, it seems that the biggest reason why children grow up with prejudices against gay men and lesbians is because they're told that's not what's 'normal'. It's not what's accepted, but I'm sure that it feels normal to the people who are homosexuals. To grow up being told that the feelings you have inside aren't normal, and are morally wrong even, must be very difficult. Education about homosexuality would not only help people understand gay and lesbians, but it would also make growing up as a gay or questioning child easier, because your peers would be more likely to understand you.

“Sears found it was okay in many schools to condemn homosexuality if you are a teacher without facing any criticism.”

I believe that it's just wrong for a teacher to condemn a way of life in a classroom. It's one thing if they don't believe in homosexuality. They don't have to go out of their way to speak down about it to impressionable children. I know that some people might say that it's not the schools place to condemn sexuality, but it's also not their place to teach about it either.

I think that you can teach children about homosexuality and not put in your own opinion about it. In the same way that a religious teacher could teach the big bang theory and leave out the fact that they don't quite believe in it.


“The high levels of drug use, high dropout rates, and high suicide rates among gay youth, are at least partially understandable both as manifestations of alienation and as socially sanctioned self-destructive ways of 'being gay.'”

I've seen this myself. I had a few friends in high school who were gay and bisexual. At first I didn't know but by high school they had come out. Although I never connected their drug use to their sexual orientation, it did seem like they smoke more pot and experimented more than some of my other friends. When I read this sentence it made me wonder if their behaviors were partially caused by a feeling of alienation.


I agree with Carlson. I think that education about homosexuality has to start at school, because many parents aren't teaching their children that being gay is acceptable. Socially, it's still frowned on. Morally, it's most definitely frowned on. Society sometimes takes it's time with the acceptance of new ideas. Of course homosexuality isn't a new idea, but the new rights that gay Americans are fighting for most certainly are. Schools need to provide students with facts about homosexuality to try and squeeze the prejudices out of students from a young age.

"Aria" Teaching Bilingual Children

I found Richard Rodriguez's “Aria” to be very insightful. Hearing the personal experience from someone who actually went through the challenge of learning English as their primary language, from someone who had to give up the language that he was so comfortable with, really gave me some sense of understanding.

"What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right and the obligation-to speak the public language of los grillgos"

Rodriguez's argument is that assimilation must be pushed on bilingual children. Although it may be unpleasant and have some regretful consequences, he is clearly trying to show us that in order for him to be as successful with the English language as he is now, he had to be put in a situation where English became the only option.

I don't know if I entirely believe in that. I think his view may be a little harsh, although he knows more about it than I suppose I do right now. I do think that every American citizen should at least try to learn English. I think that denying that English isn't America's primary language is foolish. It almost seems to tie into the Codes of Power that Delpit talks about. If you keep telling bilingual children that learning English isn't something that's as important as preserving their own culture, you're going to set them up for failure.

"At last, seven years old, I came to believe what had been technically true since my birth: I was an American citizen."

The truth is that most people in America are going to need the English language. It's probably the most powerful tool that any one can really have. It provides access to information, a means for communicating exactly what you mean, and also an easier path to employment. Preserving your families culture is important, and I think it's what makes America an exciting place, BUT learning English is equally as important.

"Today I hear bilingual educators say that children lose a degree of 'individuality'
by becoming assimilated into public society."

I'm not sure what schools should do. I'm not sure what the “best”way to teach bilingual children is. I do believe that allowing them to remain bilingual is much more beneficial to them than trying to eliminate the first language. Allow them to have their private identity at home but allow them to perfect their public identity in school. People who know how to express their thoughts in more than one language have an advantage. They can think about things in many different ways, using many different phrases, but English has to be learned.

Because I'm positive that in my future teaching career I will have bilingual children in my classroom, I really hope to learn what's best for most children in their situation. I think it's important, not only for them educationally, but as Rodriguez says, having a “public identity” is important as well. Confidence can make a world of difference.

Laurel Hill Ave Elementary school- Mrs. Mancini's classroom

Today I arrived in the classroom while the kids were still in Health class. I thought it was a good opportunity to take some pictures of the classroom. It's colorful even though the rest of the building is a little rough around the edges. Mrs. Mancini does a good job of incorporating art into her classroom.




The class has a schedule in the front of the room letting them know what they'll be doing today.



They have some computers in the room with learning software for reading and math.



This is where they do a lot of their reading, including reading the play that they're working on. The kids get to sit on the carpet and they seem to really enjoy being able to get out of their regular seats.



They have tons and tons of books. Most of them are in these bins and labeled according to reading level and subject (like African/African American, Asian/Asian American, Math, Science, ect.)






There's many posters like this that have instructions on how to do certain things.


It's nice to have some good space for one on one work with the students.



I like how Mrs. Mancini hangs the students art work up. They're very proud of their pictures.



It's nice that the room is sunny and that they have windows. The rest of the school is a bit darker.

White Privilege and Not So Equal Opportunity Employers

In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, McIntosh explains how she was never taught to see her race, or even think of Whiteness as a race. She talks about how privilege towards specific groups of people can be destructive when it's ignored by the people enjoying that privilege.

I thought that her list of ways in which she is privileged solely because of the color of her skin was interesting. I also think that they are all true. Things that white people don't have to think much about. McIntosh thinks that “whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege” and she also says "I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group." I think both those things are true, because racism has always meant to me the action of discrimination based on a person's race. McIntosh recognizes that there is racism in more than just people's actions, and White people probably don't recognize that kind of racism very much at all.

"I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race."

I think this says a lot. It's the easiest way to see the truth about these privileges. When you go into a super market or even a department store you can see the absence of diversity. When you go down the toy isle, even though there are a couple black dolls, where are the Asian dolls? Where are the Native American dolls? Where are the Latino dolls? I don't see any much of the time, and if there is one, then that's usually it. There's one non white doll for every ten white dolls. America isn't made up of White people. It's not as if we live in a country that is almost completely white. So there's no excuse for that.

I understand what she's saying, I just don't know what can be done about it. We've read a lot about how we should recognize our race and how we should realize that some people are born with certain privileges that other people aren't, but what can we DO about it? Besides write about it, and discussing it, can anything be done? That's something that I'm interested in hearing other people's opinion's about. How do we give up privilege so that the less privileged can be treated equally? It just seems like such a big issue, where do you start?

In the article “Data show racial bias persists in America” by Salim Muwakkil, one aspect of the invisible knapsack is really focused on. The privilege of employment. In the article, a study where job applications with black and white names are sent out to employers is done, and in that study “applicants with white names were 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with black names”.

If this isn't proof that such an invisible knapsack exists, then I don't really know what is. When two people with identical resumes are considered for the same position, and the deciding factor comes down to how White their name's sound, that's not fair.

The fact that “white applicants with prison records were still more likely to be hired than black men without them” is another sad thing. Something that I just don't understand. Or maybe I do understand, and the truth is just so ugly to look at. There is no such thing as equal opportunity employment. Not for the most part, anyways. Hopefully some day.

About Me

Hi everyone,

My name is Shayla and this is my second semester at Rhode Island College. I started out at CCRI two years ago and got most of my general education courses out of the way. I've wanted to be a teacher since I was in elementary school myself, so I'm excited to see how this class will turn out.


I don't have much time during the school year to do as many fun things as I would like. Between work and school I'm busy seven days a week, but I still make sure to find time for the important things in life.

In my free time I like to read, spend time with my friends, family, and boyfriend, and play video games :)

I'm very happy to see Obama as our future president, and now I'm off to go watch his inauguration!


-Shayla