Parents and Teachers, Bridging the Gap

This weeks readings were very interesting for me to go through because of the connection they have to my Community Study Project. While reading the Tan and Collignon article I could really make connections to the Asian families they talked about. In our research for the Asian Immigrant group we found a lot of information on "Tiger Moms" and other parenting issues that were faced in the education system, like the lack of communication because of language barriers. Because of the push on English language fluency, there is a struggle to connect with parents who cannot speak the language very well. This also becomes a problem for students because they have to translate for both parties. Then there is always the issue of students who have English as a second language, who are understanding the material, but cannot express it.

Another thing that I found interesting in Beyond the Bake Sale was the way the schools worked with the communities to make parents feel more supported in their relationship with the school, teachers, and their children. This reminded me of the phrase, "it takes a village to raise a child." Support, from anywhere, is always a great thing to have, whether it's extended family or neighbors and friends, or the community. One thing I wasn't so sure of was the school that required parents to volunteer to enroll their children in the school. There are some parents out there that want the best education for their child, but they might not have the ability to volunteer. I understand that different schools can create policies if they wish, but I wasn't sure how much I agreed with that one.

The final thing that I really enjoyed about these articles was how much they lend to the idea of building parent teacher relationships. In our Adolescent Development class on Tuesdays we have done some fake parent teacher meetings and I was really nervous to go through with my own. I felt like that was going to be the most intimidating part of teaching, dealing with parents. Once I had finished my fake meeting though, I was much less nervous for this aspect of teaching. Parents just want to see their child doing well whether they can or cannot help. These articles gave many different insights on how to involved and engage parents in their child's learning and I thought they were extremely helpful and something I would refer back to in my future as a teacher.

It really shouldn't matter what we are

I had never experienced the presentation of sex while I was in school. Going to a Catholic school my entire life, Sex Ed was not in the cards for me. Although this was my school environment I was lucky enough to have a home environment that was very open and loving. I had “the birds and the bees” talk with my mom when I asked her what sex was and they always taught me that love was love, it did not matter who it was between. I have gay and lesbian friends who I love very much and I recognized some of them in these readings.

            Like in Anderson’s article, a close friend of mine, who I grew up with, struggled with an identity crisis. He had a wicked temper when we were young and it always looked as if he was having an internal debate whenever we did something, even just playing outside. Years later we talked about it and he knew that those years were his toughest. He knew that he was fighting with the fact that he was, “joining to a stigmatized group” and he had no idea what to do about it (Anderson, 2005, p. 4). When we were young I just thought he was being annoying and that he would get out of his funk eventually, I never imagined it was something so important for him. Now I am glad I was able to be there for his experiences and learn from him and what he went through.

            One of my roommates is someone else I have learned a great deal from. She is a lesbian, and as she likes to call herself “boyish.” She is more comfortable with short hair and looser clothing, but that is not who she is. I watch as people give her a questioning look at school or out somewhere, but she does not even give those people the time of day. She has overcome so much adversity in her life that she does not worry about the looks. And there are many people out there that have to deal with this struggle of judgment, not just gays or lesbians, but from being around my friends I see how much it can be a nuisance. Students need to learn about all different types of love, I feel, because if they do not, they will be the ones starring. We cannot change everyone’s mind, but I feel that we owe it to students to make the world a little more caring and a little less judgmental.

            I also really liked a point that Fine and McEllend made, that desire is everywhere (Fine &McEllend, 2006). She mentions different social medias and television channels that plaster adolescent desire as the main focus. Students cannot escape the fact that sex sells and that it is becoming a large part of society. Sadly, they can “’Google’ for information about the average young woman’s age of ‘sexual debut,’ if she used a condom, got pregnant, the number of partners she had, if she aborted or gave birth, and what the baby weighed” (Fine & McEllend, 2006, p. 4).  It is not just Google that is becoming a problem, but young adults these days do not understand the idea of privacy (I know I sound like I’m old, but really!). Girls will post pregnancy photos on social media websites and apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Boys will talk about the “girl they smashed” last night. There are no boundaries anymore for adolescents and someday they might wish they never put that out there for everyone to find.

            I just hope that eventually all students will have some understanding and appreciation for all types of people, whether you’re GLBTQ?, black, white, purple, or blue. There needs to be some level of caring between young adults so that they can learn from one another and carry what they learn with them into future experiences.

Anderson, D. (2005). Lesbian and Gay Adolescents: Social and Developmental

Considerations. In E.R. Brown & K.J. Saltman (Eds.). The Critical Middle School Reader. New York: Routledge, 338-344.  

Fine, M. & McClelland, S.I. (2006).  exuality Education and Desire: Still Missing After

All These Years. Harvard Educational Review, 76(3), 297-338.

Gilligan and Hehir Comments!

Sorry this is just getting onto my site, I had some set backs this weekend!

This weeks reading was interesting to me for a few different reasons. One of the first things that caught my attention was in Hehir’s article “Eliminating Ableism.” The definition of ableism that he first gives is, “Laura Rauscher and Mary McClintock (1996) define ableism as ‘a pervasive system of discrimination and exclusion that oppresses people who have mental, emotional, and physical disabilities… Deeply rooted beliefs about health, productivity, beauty, and the value of human life…” (Hehir, 2005, p. 12). One of the first times I had heard about this word was in my Deaf Studies class I took at Northern Essex Community College. The teacher was Deaf and he used ASL (American Sign Language) the entire three-hour period. Because we were beginners there were interpreters in the class the entire time. He talked to us about ableism and how it affected the Deaf community and him as a person. This was so eye opening because here was someone standing in front of me telling me about his life, you cannot get a more specific example than that.

In his life he had experienced many moments of ableism against him, one included a moment in a restaurant when the waitress did not think he was able to read a menu just because he was deaf. Moments like this are really insane to me, I cannot imagine someone doing this to me, and I think that is something else I learned from these readings and examples. I do not know what it is like to experience true ableism, but it is my job as a teacher to make sure it does not occur, ever. So the more I learn about this and hear about it, the better, because I will never know what it is like to have a disability on a more severe level. I mean that in no offence to anyone, but I know what it is like to be called “four eyes,” but I do not think this is nearly as bad as what some people go through every day.

Another thing that I took from the assigned reading is that women and men have different values when it comes to appearance and opinions. “Women not only judge themselves in a context of human relationship but also judge themselves in terms of their ability to care” (Gilligan, 1982, p. 17). In comparison to this, men are afraid to be seen as a weakling or afraid. These ideas have been around for ages and are not going to change over night. They need to be worked at and people need to see the advantages of each other’s ideas. Men do not hold relationships in high regard because of what they have learned from many years of society pressuring them.

Between Hehir and Gilligan I was pleasantly surprised to learn new things and refresh my mind on concepts that I have heard of before. I really think that over time we as teachers can help our future students to understand that they do not have to follow society’s ideas and values, they can make up their own as they grow and learn.

Works Cited.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hehir, T. (2005). Eliminating ableism in education. In L.1. Katzman, A. G. Gandhi, W. S. Harbour, J. D. LaRock. Special Education for a New Century. Cambridge, MA; Harvard Educational Review, 11-38.

Comments on "Unraveling the 'Model Minority' Stereotype"

The reading this week by Stacey J. Lee, “Unraveling the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype” was really interesting to me. As I read I learned a lot of new things that I hadn’t before about the students at Academic High, the different view that Korean-Asian’s had and even the reasoning for name changing. I really enjoyed Lee’s work here and I think it can enlighten its readers to the many changes and struggles that are going on with these different groups.

One idea that really resonated with me was the idea of these subcategories within students’ ethnicities. As Lee points out there are Korean-identified, Asian-identified, Asian new wave-identified, and Asian American-identified (Lee, 2009, p. 26). Although they are all Asian, each group has specific traits and characteristics that make them uniquely different. This reminds me of when I was in high school and my school had a large population of Black students. There was a huge assumption that they were all Haitian, but that was not true at all and once I talked to one of my friends about it I learned that they, as a group, would rather be called Black because they are not all Haitian. I had just assumed because of what I had heard, but once I went looking for the information I wanted I learned something new about my classmates. It is fascinating to see how many different ethnicities are really there rather than lumping them all together as one. As the book talked about this, and how Korean’s thought that they were above other Asian groups I thought back on my days in high school and was able to make that connection of the different subcategories.

Another topic that Lee mentions is the fact that many Asian students will change their name to something more westernized. This was interesting to me because I was just thinking about this after my classroom observation last week. As I sat watching a freshman English class, one of the international students was named Joe. That may have very well been his real name, but coming from another country it did not seem likely to me. This could be the explanation, he may have changed his name so that it was not made fun of or butchered or any number of reasons. I wish I had the chance to ask him about it. I understand the reasoning for it, but it really is too bad that students feel like they should change their name. It is too bad that so many other students would make fun of someone for their name. I think because my name is important to me, for small reasons, I feel like everyone should be proud of their name. These students may be very proud of their given name, but just find it easier to give another so that they do not have to deal with all the explanations. I guess it just depends on the person and what they want to do.

Overall this reading was really insightful and (at least for me and my group) will be very helpful on the group project. I really like Lee’s approach and her different ideas on the topic. I feel as though this is a book that many can learn from because there is so much that people don’t know about these stereotypes and the issues they can bring up.

RACE: Recruit And Change Everyone ('s minds).

Hi I'm Rae, and I am weaseling my way into the Graduate Program here at UMass Lowell. I just graduated this spring with a BA in English (Literature) and a minor in Education. I have always known that I wanted to teach from a young age. Playing "school" was my favorite thing as a child, whether I was the teacher or the student. I decided to teach high school English after having an amazing high school English teacher my Sophomore year, who really made reading and learning fun in the school setting. I also am a very avid reader; I can thank my parents for instilling that love in me before I could even read myself. I will read anything, although sometimes I hate being told I have to read something J

            Looking at the different articles we had to read for the week, I noticed one that I have certainly heard of before. McIntosh’s article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack” was something that I have certainly read before and in my previous class, we actually made our own backpacks (I cannot quite remember exactly what was in mine annoyingly enough). I really enjoy this article (except for the grammar) because McIntosh brings so many different ideas to light that many people, especially me, don’t think of, down to the Band-Aid!

When I thought about how this would affect my classroom someday, I thought back to my own experiences in school. I was the minority in my high school. In my graduating class of thirty (15 girls and 15 boys) there was only 5 “white” girls, but I don’t think it mattered that we were the minority, there was still racism going on when I look back on it. As Omni and Winnant mention in their article, “the absence of a clear ‘common sense’ understanding of what racism means has become a significant obstacle to efforts aimed at challenging it” (135). Teachers and students alike may not have been openly favoring certain students, but it was there because of the avoidance of the topic. It was there because we were taught to ignore “white privilege” as McIntosh puts it (1). The fact that there is no definitive definition as to what is racist or what it should be understood to be makes it hard for people to change their thoughts and actions.

I think all of these articles on race confirm my background knowledge, that it is a touchy topic and that it is something that is going to take a lot of hard work and elbow grease to figure out, but we need to be willing and ready to put in that effort for an answer to this problem. No one should be tiptoeing around the issue it is all around us. Look at the government; it took many many years to swear in our first African American president and even then there were thousands of people against it. When we look at political leaders, majority of them are white and male. I feel as though change needs to be made on a large scale, but the best place for us to start is in our schools and classrooms. As cheesy as it may sound, our kids are our future; we need to help them become the future of this country for the better.