Promising Practice Workshops

Workshop Number 1

My first workshop was about "Hearing Empathy" which honestly I could not even tell you what I learned. He was going on and on and on about things that I could not even articulate because he was ALL over the place. I sat there with Taylor and Alex from class and the three of us were just like excuse me what is happening. He was trying to talk to us about simulations but honestly I do not know where he was going with the talk. He did a stimulation on one person who was listening to people saying negative things while the speaker of the workshop was asking him questions that he had to answer. This was to show us that when people are talking down to you it is hard to understand and think of answers to questions you are being asked. 

Out of this workshop I understood from that stimulation that when students are having a tough time understand things that are going on that instead of yelling at them you need to talk to them nicely and try to get them to understand everything that is happening. 


This relates to Delpit in a way because without knowing that you should not yell at your students to get them to do better than you're going to run a terrible classroom. Also this relates to August because when a student does not feel like they are in a safe environment they are not going to perform well in the classroom. 

Workshop Number 2

My second workshop was better than my first but still kind of boring. It was called "Youth Action of All Abilities" this workshop was about youth and the actions that they take to try and include students and youth with disabilities and to just get youth in general involved with things as well. They did focus a lot about the history that went along with disabilities which was in a way a little bit boring but I still thought it was interesting to see how much respect and support these students and even people with disabilities have now that they did not have back in the past. They also discusses different events that happen for students with disabilities and the things that go on around here that we could get involved in. They really just discussed the ways that people can get out there along with getting the youth more involved as well. They just went into detail about different situations that disabled people have to deal with and they really just want more people to get involved and help out as much as they can and they want people to learn.

I did enjoy this workshop because I want to be a special education teacher so for me this was interesting to learn about. Obviously I wish they did talk more about the organizations and events than the actual history of disabilities but either way I was able to learn a lot and walk away with new information. For me being a teacher for children with disabilities I can try to get them involved with as many things as possible so that they get the experience as other kids and this way the other kids can get experience meeting there peers who may have a disability.

I think that August would support this workshop because they are trying to create a safe environment for both students with and without disabilities and they want to include everyone to come together. They are encouraging the youth to learn more about students with disabilities and they want to include them to help out as much as they can. They are trying to make a place where all youth can feel included and apart of something. 

Kliewer

"Schools have traditionally taken a narrow position when defining and judging students intellect (Gardner, 1983). The presence of a thoughtful mind has been linked to patterns of behavioral and communicative conformity associated with competence in logical-mathmatical thinking and linguistic skills."

This quote explains how children with special needs have a small chance of learning things the way other students do because of the ways that schools are set up. This quote shows how a "thoughtful mind" grows and thinks and this happens to those students who are more willing to learn and able to learn in a "normal" way. The schools support this because most schools keep the students with disabilities separated from the other students and that is how my school was as well. They have the students with disabilities completely separated from the other students in the regular classrooms. 

"Acknowledging students with Down Syndrome as thoughtful, creative, and interested learners with personal identities that distinguish them from all other people suggest and individual value that enhances any context containing the child."

This quote explains that teachers need to realize that students who may have a disability still are an individual that wants to learn and who has all of these characteristics. Just because a students has a disability should not hold them back from being thoughtful and being themselves and trying to learn. Although they may have a harder time doing this things they should still have every right to try and have the access to those teachers who are willing to help them accomplish these things. 

"Educating all children together reconfigures the representation of Down syndrome from burden toward citizenship."

I agree with this quote every strongly because I believe that we should teach more in schools about students with disabilities because when children see these people who may have a disability they stare or point. They are not educated enough on how people are different. I understand that this is a way for children to seem interesting and they want to learn more so I feel like a big step would be to teach about these things in school and make it more own. This way people with disabilities can feel more connected and feel like citizens instead of a burden.

Literacy with an Attitude

Throughout Finn's article he discusses different literacy and how it connects to education and how that all has came together. Finn discusses this by including different classrooms because we learn it every single day. Literacy is sometimes challenging whereas other times not so challenging. Some students Finn was explaining would have complication trying to connect with their work and they had a hard time completing it. As a teacher I believe Finn wants people to realize that they need to make sure depending on what grade they teach they need to make their work accordingly. They need to make sure that the work the students are given is not to easy and also no so challenging because they do not receive anything out of that. There is always going to be a challenge with having to do this but Finn makes it known that it has to be done. Finn connected all of this to lower class, working class and higher class schools and in all of these they still have the same types of challenges. Finn also explains how sometimes with lower or working class school the teachers except that some of the students do not want to do well or really just do not care. This is not the case, in fact some of these students are either confused or completely lost on the things they need to do.

If I was to connect it to my service learning a lot of the students have Spanish speaking parents. This would become a problem if the students had homework that they did not understand if their parents could not help them because it is in English and may be confusing to them. When this happens and the students goes back into class the next way and the teacher is trying to go onto the next activity that student falls behind and now it seems like they don't care because they did not complete the homework.

This is where literacy is a huge problem, to some it comes easily but to others it is complicated. This is also where the teachers need to step up and make sure that they stay connected to their students and make sure that they are not falling behind and if they do fall behind they get the help that they need.

Project

Sorry I am a little late with posting this but,

Delpit: The students know that when they are coming back from there music and other classes that they get a chance to go to the bathroom get water and then they are to get in the classroom and sit down and take out there math books when the teachers tell them too.

August: The teacher last week was handing out little goodie bags to the students for halloween and inside they each got a pencil, a halloween easer and a little thing of candy. One little boy got a pink pencil and the little girls were telling him it was a girl color which at the time I did not realize. It was not until the little boy looked at me and asked me to come over to them and he said "do you think that pink is only a girl color?" and I said "no I believe that all colors are boy and girl colors." The little boy was so happy I had said that and the two little girls looked at me with confusing and couldn't believe I said that. After that I asked the girls why they thought pink was only a girl color and they told me that they see more girls wear it than boys do. When I asked if it was okay if boys wore pink they told me that they could wear it sometimes. I think it is interesting even at such a young age they realize that these things are the "norms".

Kahne and Westheimer: As of right now I believe that what we are doing for this service learning project it falls under the charity because it seems like we are not there enough to make a huge change on these kids lives. Although we want to and we are all trying our best to it seems like we are mainly going to change ourselves. We do not go into these schools expecting the children to be giving us back anything from us trying to help them out we go in there trying to gain experience.

Separate is not Equal

Reading and listening to these stories and articles really opened my eyes completely. Thinking about the way that I grew up these types of situations were never truly a problem, but after reading and listen they really are. There were black and white students in my school although most were white. Once I read the Hebert article things made sense. He was basically saying how highly profession teachers try to avoid the schools that black or latino students attend nothing due to the fact of their race but more to the fact that those are lower poverty schools. Therefore, the teachers who are not so well trained are teaching these students giving them a lower "student achievement rate." So it still kind of shows in our generation that segregation is still part of our culture but we are not fully aware because it is not as crucial as it once was.

The two listening pieces were a little different one spoke about the same things that Hebert was speaking about and how these students in the poor poverty schools are getting worse teachers than those students in better schools. Now the students in the lower schools are getting a worse education and lower test scores, now these students are behind. They spoke about there own lives as well and trying to discuss integration schools but no one wants to talk about it or make it happen. These were the problem that these people were facing and the schools were facing.

The second listening piece was basically speaking about how students and the environment that you're in makes you who you are. They speaking about "integration happening by accident." These students went to a school where no white students have never been in before. The students there were not mean but this happened to be the opposite students were interested in why they were there and asking questions. They kept speaking about how the environment that these schools are in like the location these changes the view of the schools.
These parents were talking about North Hartford and make it sound like it was a bad area. Some parents are nervous that they will be the only white people in these schools. Integration by accident. This happens because people are starting to change the norms.

These four pieces that we had to read and listen too all connect to one another. For me I needed to listen and read all of these things because I never thought about any of these problems still being a problem. We know now that they still are though, even looking into the real world and the connection to all of our service learning experiences. Looking at their test scores compared to the average state test scores, like we had to do for our journals, I noticed the school I am at has very low percentages. Like I stated above the higher professional and educated teachers avoid the lower poverty schools. This then affects the students and I am able to connect this through my service learning experience. These pieces really opened my eyes in a way that I was not looking at the world before and that these scenarios are still problems in the world around us.

Kahne and Westheimer

"Serve learning makes students active participants in service projects that aim to respond to the needs of the community while furthering the academic goals of students." 

This quote explains how service learning is important because it helps students and teachers with having an extra hand in the classroom or just helping the community in general with whatever service learning they decide to go into. It also helps the actual student doing the service learning better themselves. It gives the student a better understanding of the things that they will experience when they actually go out into the field. This also helps the student because it helps them really decide if this is the path that they want to go down.


"By finding and engaging in community service activities, Mr. Johnson explained, students would interact with those less fortunate than themselves and would experience the excitement and joy of learning while using the community as a classroom." 

When this teacher explained that the students were going to help people that were less fortunate than they were, he explained that they are going to feel happy about doing this. By having the chance to use the "community as a classroom" just gives students a chance to explore their options and see how many opportunities are truly out there in the community.


"By engaging in meaningful service - whether tutoring children for whom English is a second language, helping patients in a hospital, doing difficult chores for the elderly, or supervising younger children's recreational activities - students will have opportunities to experience what David Hornbeck, former Maryland state superintendent, referred to as 'the joy of reaching out to others.'"

This quote is meaningful because it shows that there is joy when you each out to helps others. From something as little to helping a student solve a math problem to helping elderly people move from a chair to a bed any of those things can be so rewarding. When you find something that you love doing it just starts to naturally come to you and you feel that joy throughout the entire time you're engaged with it.

After doing our service learning for class and reading this article, I know that I get really excited when the students I work with get what they are working on after I helped them on it. It feels so rewarding to be able to help someone understand something especially when they are struggling. I also believe that these three quotes that I have picked to share express the true meaning of how you should feel when you find something you are truly inspired by.

Christensen;

Christensen's article really discusses how our world revolves around what we look like and how we all present ourselves and who we look up to. Mainly children and younger people. She brings up media and how movies and characters in those movies portray themselves. Children see that and keep in there mind how they are "supposed" to look.

"To help students uncover the values being planted by Disney, Mattel, and Nick, and to help them construct more just ones, I begin this 'unlearning and myths' unit with two objectives. First I want students to critique portrayals of hierarchy and inequality in  children's movies and cartoons. Then I want to enlist them to imagine a better world, characterized by relationships of respect and equality." 

Christensen wants students to realize that they are all beautiful in their own way. She wants them to realize that we are all equal no matter what we look like or what movies are cartoons display. We live in a world where beauty basically comes before most. Women go through plastic surgery all of the time to look "perfect." So many women are insure with themselves and they do these things to make themselves feel better. Christensen is explaining how at such a young age these things are exposed to young children. If we think about the Disney princesses, they "originally" princesses were all white. Until recently when the first black princesses was introduced. Many may not thing that this is a problem but when we think of princesses we think of beauty and power. When you are a young black girl growing up only seeing white princesses how do you think they feel?

I believe that Christensen is trying to prove a point in that fact that at a young age we need to try and expose children to knowing that it is not all about how you look. Movies and cartoons need to really start realizing that as well, and have more of a variety. As a young child they need to know that beauty comes in all different forms and make sure they they feel good about themselves everyday. Even though it is really hard to change the cultural norms of todays society and what is considered beautiful, hopefully this can change and hopefully movies and media are a start of this change.