Check-In 10/29/14

Today's Weather:

• Today started off as a wonderfully sunny day: doing some chores around my mom's house, including setting up her internet, and getting her an online ID for cable. I'm her technician for anything technology-wise. 
• A few clouds passing over during the mid-day: found out my classroom is being moved to a little hut that is outside, that I will need to walk into school to pick up my students, then walk them back to class, cutting much needed time out of my instruction time, and there is no bathroom and possibly no wi-fi or printing abilities.
• Ending in a glorious sunset: great time catching up with my sister-in-law, via iMessage on our iPhones, its free and a great way to stay in-touch with my family in France and England.

Forecast for the rest of the week: It will be a great weekend, lots to look forward to.  My first time dressing up as a couple for Halloween, Friday night: Wayne and Garth and Saturday night: Jenny and Forrest.  My friend Margaret is celebrating her 30th birthday on Saturday night with a Halloween, costume party.

The Future Generations

The Flight from Conversation- Sherry Turkle
Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis- Michael Wesch

As I read both of the articles this week I thought about my own technology use and how it affected my life now.  I thought about how I like to always have my phone with in reach, how my iPad sits beside my bed, and my computer is always charged up waiting to be used.  I thought about the social media side of the equation. "Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be.  This means we can edit. And if we wish, we can delete. Or retouch: the voice, the flesh, the face, the body. Not too much, not too little - just right." (Turkle pg. 2)  I thought about how I present myself to others through social media. I am a pretty avid use of Instagram and Snapchat.  I love photos, and I love seeing what others are doing through photos and videos.  I still use Facebook for communication and organization of events. Do I use technology too much? Could I go a day, a week without my phone? Tablet?

I'm in awe of technology and also scared of what it might become.  I think that we use technology in so many wonderful ways and their have been amazing advancements because of technology.  But I also worry about people loosing their ability to communicate with each other.

Top 10 Reasons to Use Technology in Education are great examples of positive uses of technology in the classroom and Technology in Education: A Future Classroom  is a great example of what technology in the classroom might look like in the future.  I agree with Welsh that we need to help "students recognize their own importance in helping to shape the future of this increasingly global, interconnected society..." (pg. 7).  The internet and technology has done so many wonderful things for our society, creating a more global world.  I think it is important to incorporate technology into the classroom, because it is the way of the future, and it is important that we set our students up for success, but at the same time we need to make sure that our students are well rounded and still can carry on discussions and conversations with other people.

The Potential Weapon, Literacy

Literacy with an Attitude - Finn

I really enjoyed this reading.  I felt that it finally got at one of the biggest issues in education, economic status and how it affects students' education.  

As I read I broke up the classes into the three sections that Anyon did and I created this little table:

	Working Class	Middle Class	Upper Class
Comments about Knowledge	one student mentioned “think”	learn, remember, facts, study, smartness, intelligent, know, school, study, brains	open to discovery, think, figuring out stuff, you can make knowledge
Dominant Theme	resistance	possibility	excellence, individualism, humanitarianism
Work	follow direction, quiet	getting right answer from text or teacher	think for oneself, creativity, discovery
Learning	to follow directions, do mechanical, low-paying work,	follow orders and do the mental work that keeps society producing and running smoothly, cooperation	create products and art, negotiate from powerful position, masters of the universe

I thought about this in reference to the type of schooling I had, and the type of schools I have taught in.   I identified with the themes that Anyon found, and as Finn said are still present in education today.  I thought about this also in reference to our upcoming paper.  I recognized a lot of my middle-class background coming out in my teaching style.  "Knowledge in the middle-class was "more conceptual"... more a matter of gaining information and understanding from socially approved sources." (pg. 13).   When thinking about the type of questions I pose to my students or have been posed to me they are mostly questions that can be answered by looking in the text or referring to what the teacher has said.  "You got the right answer by following directions, but the directions allowed for some choice, some figuring, some decision making, and the teacher explained the purpose of assignments and why the directions would lead to the right answer." (pg. 13)  This quote really ties in with how math was taught, and how I was taught math.  You follow the steps that the teacher gives you, if you follow the step correctly you get the right answer.  Now, I do see a shift in math instruction, there is more reasoning abstractly, modeling and strategy that goes into it.  Students are now having to problem solve and discover the algorithm instead of just being told it.  Students are being asked why.  This is probably how students in elite schools have been learning for a while, and now we are asking all schools to teach this way with the Common Core.  I think that teachers are struggling because they think that their "lower" students can't handle mathematical reasoning. "the teacher in one working-class school commented that she skipped pages dealing with mathematical reasoning and inferences because they were too hard." (pg. 10).  This is probably the same issues that teachers and parents are dealing with when it comes to the Common Core.  But I think it is learned behavior,  if we create a culture of "anti-dialogue," (pg. 169) how can we expect our students to reason abstractly and make inferences when we have been shutting them down for so long.  Freire's method in Brazil was dialogue, get people invested and concerned through dialogue and they will strive for an education, they will strive for literacy because they will have something to say and they will want to be heard.

"It was about empowering the powerless as a class so they can stand up for themselves." (pg. 172).  

There is a game here as Johnson said, and we need to empower the powerless so they can take a place within this game.

Voices of Students

Empowering Education- Ira Shor

I will admit it right off the bat, this was the hardest reading for me so far.  It wasn't just the length or small hard to read text.  I found this reading to be very word, without it needing to be, with many examples that did not differ much from each other.  Also, as a math teacher I am alway looking out for great ideas to bring back into my classroom but it always seems that articles, or PD sessions or example lessons always tie into English or social studies history classes.  

I want to empower education, I completely agree with Shor's list of empowering pedagogy: "Partcipation, Affective, Problem-posing, Situated, Multicultural, Dialogic, Desocializing, Deomacratic, Researching, Interdisciplinary and Activist." So I began to think how I could empower through participation and problem posing.  Problem-posing empowering really keys into the problem solving side of math and the new Common Core Math Practices.  But I couldn't see how I could start my school year off asking a bunch of middle school students: What do you want to learn in math?  My fear would be that they would say NOTHING.  In this day and age I feel that we do not need some of the same math skills that we have needed in the past, because there is so much access to technology.  But then I began to think of more high school math topics and how we could really get students involved in money and money management.  So many students go off to college and have to get loans, with out really knowing what they are getting their selves into, or get a credit card for the first time.  So why don't we teach students about these type of problems.  It is hard being a teacher sometimes and students ask you "what do I need to know this for?"  Sometimes I don't have an answer, here is an article about 5 Math Lessons You Don't Really Need (but are still taught).  

While I continued to research this topic of Problem-posing math issues I came across a neat website has "Real-world lessons from Mathalicious help middle and high school teachers address the Common Core Standards while challenging their students to think critically about the world."  It has lessons about increasing the horse power of an engine, how the urban population has change over time and how we will all fit on this planet.  I would love to be able to have my students pose questions that they have and see if we can find ways to mathematically solve them.  

I have enjoyed reading your comments, here are just a few other interesting link/videos that I have found.

** Food for Thought:

When did you choose to be STRAIGHT?- See how people respond to the question that is often asked of gay people

30+ Examples of Heterosexual Privilege- "If you are straight (or in some cases, perceived to be), you can live without ever having to think twice, face, confront, engage, or cope with anything listed below. These privileges are granted to you, and many of them are things you’ve likely taken for granted.  (Otherwise known as the “Why it’s easier to be straight” list.)"

Queering Schools

RethinkingSchool.org Reading

Queering Schools  by the editors of Rethinking Schools

Last week while trying to pick a week to lead discussion there were two topics that I was very interested in.  I was interested in the Nov. 5th topic Seeing Queerly and the Nov. 19th topic The Politics of Inclusion.  Both these topics are something that I feel passionate about.  We have talked so much about the power of privilege and these two groups are at the bottom of the power pyramid in todays culture, but I can see the growth that they have had in my lifetime.  We have talked about the campaign "Spread the Word to End the Word" and I have heard about "To B GLAD" day (Transgender, Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian Awareness Day).  In the end I chose the topic The Politics of Inclusion, but I still wanted to do more research on Queering Schools.  So whomever did pic the topic here is a jumping off point for you. 

Currently, I work in a Catholic school, I am not Catholic, nor was I raised Catholic, or any religion in particular, though my family celebrated Christian traditions, I do not personally consider myself a Christian.  As I began to read the article I continued to think how would this conversation/lesson go at my school.  Would it even be allowed? (Stances of Faiths on LGBT Issues: Roman Catholic Church)  Though I may not push the boundaries at this school in my first month as a teacher there, I still think that the LGBTQ community needs a voice in our schools.  Just like the racial issues we've been discussing in class, this subject also needs to be bought up and discussed with students.  The article Queering Schools was about ways that we as teachers can begin to bring the topic of LGBTQ issues into our schools.  The editors quoted and excerpt from From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun, by Jacqueline Woodson, “Transsexuals, Teaching Your Children” (spring 2010), 

"What about enlarging a study of the Harlem Renaissance to explore the lives and impact of such LGBTQ poets, authors, and musicians as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Angelina Weld Grimké, Ethel Waters, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Josephine Baker? What about including the Lavender Scare in the study of the McCarthy era? Or the Stonewall Riots as part of the political foment of the late ’60s? Or considering implications of the campaign for LGBTQ acceptance in the military in the context of questioning current U.S. military strategy?"

The next quote reminded me so much of our discussion in class, and especially last weeks article by Armstrong and Wildman.  Again, these authors urge us to not sweep the issues under the rug, but find ways that we can openly talk about them.  

"This means a school filled with adults who are prepared to talk and listen to children talk about gender and sexuality, as well as other controversial and sensitive topics—adults who are willing to learn from youth as well as lead them. Community is built by working through differences, not sweeping them under the rug." 

I greatly enjoyed looking through the articles on ReThinkingSchools, and I cannot wait to see what each of us choose to read about.  

Color Insight

Colorblindness is the New Racism- Armstrong and Wildman and the Ferguson Syllabus

1) The Ferguson Syllabus:
As I read through the 8 articles on the Ferguson Syllabus, I though about what each of them implicated and what affect they had on my view of the interaction in Ferguson this summer.  I think of my self as someone who is aware of what is happening in the world.  I try to keep up with world and US news. So this summer when Michael Brown, an unarmed black youth was shot by a white police officer, I thought it would be another event like Trayvon Martin.  But this time I think it is different.  This time their have been riots and protests bigger then anything since the Rodney King riots of 1992.  I reviewed a few articles but I returned to the first article by Victor Rios, "Stealing a bag of Potato Chips and other Crimes of Resistance."  As I read this article I thought about Delpit and Johnson. Were the two boys in this article trying to find umbrellas to make it in the culture of power, were they trying to break the culture of power, or were they just trying to get by?  Rios says "In feeling excluded from a network of positive credentials, education, and employment opportunities, young people develop creative responses that provide them with the necessary tools to survive in an environment where they have been left behind and where they are consistently criminalized." (pg 50) These boys don't even have access to the lowest rungs in the culture of power.  

"The boys had grown up in an environment which had deprived them of the social and cultural capital they needed to progress in school and the labor market.  Therefore, they developed their own alternative social and cultural capital, which they used to survive poverty, persist in a violent and punitive social ecology, prevent violence, avoid incarceration, and attempt to fit into mainstream institutions." (pg 49)

2) Armstong and Wildman- Colorblindness
pg. 68 "Color insight recognizes that a racial status quo exists in which society attributes race to each member.  Whereas colorblindness urges us not to notice race, color insight says, "do not be afraid; notice your race and the race of others around you; racism and privilege still do affect peoples' lives, learn more about the racial dynamic."  

I think that this quote really embodies what I got from this article.  I think that if we are ever to improve the disparity with in  the culture of power then we need to put the issue on the table and discusses it opening with all parties involved.  I really enjoyed how this article actually had some concrete ways to bring these issues into the classroom and how to start the conversation.  pg 68 The Racial Observation Exercise.  I went in search of other people who had messages that went along with this theme of color insight.  Mellody Hobson is an American businesswoman who is the current Chairman of Dreamworks Animation, and she is black.  She spoke in March of 2014 on the topic of Color blind or Color Brave.  I really enjoyed how she backed up her position with valid points of personal experience but also true statistics in this current day.  

A Linguistic Celebrations - a great Spoken Word by Jamila Lyiscott about the 3 languages she speaks.  This more ties into last week but I enjoyed it, and thought I would share.