Empowering Education

(Argument)

In shore article he talks about how school should be focusing on socialization of the students in the classroom. and that it is good for they to participate because otherwise they become withdrawn.   The students become what he calls endullment. there brains become dull from lack of participation.  And I think that true. Working with each other encourages growth both education wise but also that as friendship wise.  If people work together they are able to interact. 

The video I chose is going to seem a little crazy like what does teaching kids to drive have to do with participation and socialization in classrooms but it really does. The children are playing and working together to learn the rules of the road.

In class I would like to talk about the pros and cons of participation in the classroom and also Shore idea of endullment.

Promising practices cofereance paper

The conference was good. I liked it a lot. It was a early day for me I would never have gotten up that early on a weekend unless I had to. But that was ok. Umm it was a little confusing in the beginning when they could not find my folder because they gave it to someone else with the same last name just one less r. It was kind of funny though we got it sorted out.  I'm quite in general so for the first half hour or so I sat by myself going through and reading the materials. I like the magazine that was in the folder I ready some of the articles one that caught my eye was called Monsters, Devils and Mary Poppins it was about a teacher in California who taught  English to Immigrant students and most of the story was about Halloween and the fun the kids had. There was one  girl who loved her teacher and stayed after school and helped her cleaned the desks and the chalkboards. near Christmas time the child asked the teacher when was her Christmas or all saints days and the told her she didn't have one because she  was Jewish. "The child recoiled as I were suddenly transformed from Mary Poppins to a cruel, monstrous beast. I inadvertently touched my head as if I had grown horns. The pain in Marie Elena's face was real, and she would not allow me to comfort her. Tears welled in her eyes and in mine too. The world is a scary place, with ghosts and monsters lurking where we least expect them to be."  In the end the girl gave the teacher a Christmas present which showed that even though it has taken a while the child was able to overcome her fear of something she did not know. I liked it because it just showed even though ignorance still exist if we as teachers are patient and teach about these difference why there a good thing then we can scare off some of those ghost and monsters that reere there ugly heads when ignorance is present. After that I head to my first workshop called Students with Special needs with Dubrule which talked about how to help kids with special needs and how to make there life easier in the class room. My second workshop was  Destination Fun with Thompson  the workshop was about how to integrate geography into everyday classes wither it math or history.  After the workshop I walked around the career fair. I was not really look for anything in particular but when I went to the education book table I came across a Kozol book which look good so I bought for a bit of light reading. One of the kids from the class saw and when I told her it was just for fun she just shook her head and laughed. I think the most helpful booth was the Sherlock center.  It was great to talk to them and I liked how they brought sample of some of the books they converted so that anyone can read them.  I liked the keynote speaker I will agree he was kind of all over the place but I also think he had a central message. which was that even when a teacher feels like the pressure coming from above is to much and they are all alone there really not. There are other teachers in the same situation and if you reach out you will find a helping hand when you need it.  In the special education workshop I learned different tech to help kids in the classroom. Such as if they are reading a story you can highly difference section so it is easier  for them to find the information. Though I think this is helpful I think it makes the job to easy for those who know what they are doing. It reminded me of Delpit in a negative way. She always says to teach children the rules of the games so that they can learn to survive in this world. But if your doing everything for them and not challenging them to figure out for themselves how can they every learn the rules of the game.  It would be ok if you taught them the rules in a way that worked for them but by basically giving them the answer  they are not learning the rules delpit wants them to learn.  But one thing I liked was she talked about ways of working with "normal" classroom teachers and how to come up with ways so that they will succeed in the classroom. like leaving the homework on the board for more that five seconds because some kids are slower writes than others. This reminds me of the article we just read by Kliewer he talks about total immersion of children with special needs into a general education classroom were the special education teacher and the general education teacher work together to make the classroom assessable for everyone. some of Dubrule suggestions would help accomplish this. "Remember that not all students are the same-what works for one may not work for all-and that's why students have individualized programs." "Many special education students need help with organization-provide check-ins, use assignments books, use note cards and personalized schedules. " "Ask for help when you need it-nobody is expected to do everything! There are many people who can help with your students." these strategies will help you not only help kids with disabilities but also general education students also. These three simple suggestions can make the immersion presses be easier for both teacher and student. The first article I found was a study done by the Vanderbilt Peabody college were they worked with 25 schools in Virgina  which had at least one separate special education classroom but they also have general education classrooms were kids with sever behavioral problems are in the general education classroom and they noticed that teachers attention is usually on these kids and that they think the best solution so that  will help keep order in the classroom is to get the kid out of the room. So this study teaches teacher strategies on how to deal with these children so that they can remain in the general education classroom because once these children are pulled out and placed in the special education room it is really hard for them to ever go back into the general education classroom. The second thing I found was I goggled Dennis Shirley and came across a sight called Mindful teacher. com and it basically brakes down  what he talked about at the conference but in much more detail. One of the thing is the core values.  In the core values they name the seven synergies for mindful teacher which are (1) open-mindfulness (2) caring (3)stopping (4) expertise (5)authentic alignment (6) integration (7) collective responsibilities.   I like the website because it takes what Dr.Shirley talked about at the conference about how we sometimes feel alone like no one understand but in reality your not alone at all you just have to learn to reach to others. This website talks about that and much more of what he said in greater detail.  The third and final video I found really ties in with my second workshop I went to were we learned  different techniques of tying Geography into our everyday classroom lesson. This video is about a charter school which kids during there lunch time meet people from different parts of the world and learn about where they come from and some of there traditions from the contury they came from. I loved this video not only is it educational but it also just plan fun.

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

(Reflection) 

As I read the article it hit home more than others that we have read. Maybe it's because I worked with kids with disabilities or maybe it's because I've experienced what they have been through. I have always had to work harder than everyone else to get the same grades and to prove my worth.

As I read this at times I got mad at the ignorance of people or how they lump these kids together because they have the same disability. Just because they all have the same diagnosis does not mean it effects them in the same way.  Kliewer keeps talking about a teacher named Shayne who teaches special education and three of her kids have Down Syndrome. But what I love about her when I read what he writes about her is that she sees beyond the label and sees the child within. 

"It's not like they came here to be labeled, or to believe the label. We're all here--kids, teachers, parents, whoever--it's about all of us working together, playing together, being together, and that's what learning is. Don't tell me any of these kids are being set up to fail."

If you allow them to try, these kids can be amazingly smart.  They can do whatever they want in life.  Them may not look like you and me they may not even speak like we speak but that does not mean they're not human. Don't they have two eyes.  Don't they have two hands. Don't they have a heart. Don't they have a brain? On the inside they're just like us. They can think, they can learn, it may just be different than you. In the paper he talks about a little boy named Isaac who has Down Syndrome. He can't speak a conherent word, he just babbles but when you read to him she says he starts to dance and to act out the story.  He understand everything that going on it just in different way than us.

This is very long because I'm very passionate on this issue because I've also had people tell me you can't do it you're aiming to high just because I don't learn like them. My answer was always yes I can you don't know what your talking about and to prove them wrong which I did.

My name is Anne Marie Morreira and in third Grade I was diagnosed with a learning disability called: Nonverbal Learning  disability or NLD for short. The definition of NLD according to www.nlda.org is

"NLD is a neurological disorder which originates in the right hemisphere of the brain. Reception of nonverbal or performance-based information governed by this hemisphere is impaired in varying degrees, causing problems with visual-spatial, intuitive, organizational, evaluative, and holistic processing functions.
The syndrome of Nonverbal Learning Disorders (NLD) consists of specific assets and deficits.
The assets include:

• Early speech and vocabulary development
• Remarkable rote memory skills
• Attention to detail
• Early development of reading skills and excellent spelling skills
• Eloquent verbal ability
• Strong auditory retention

The three categories of deficits are:

• Motoric: lack of coordination, problems with balance and graphomotor skills
• Visual-spatial-organizational: lack of image, poor visual recall, faulty spatial perception, and difficulty with spatial relations
• Social: inability to comprehend nonverbal communication, difficulty adjusting to transitions and novel situations, and deficits in social judgment

People with NLD can be affected in varied levels of severity in each of the categories, so that each person with NLD presents a unique clinical, behavioral, and educational picture. People with NLD can be helped by many forms of therapy, but their world is filled with confusing sensory stimuli. For some, their physical endurance is challenged by generally low muscle tone. Some need support throughout life with cognitive and organizational skills, motor skill development, pragmatics and social skills.
Children with NLD have advanced verbal and auditory memory. Some are precocious readers with advanced vocabularies. Nevertheless, NLD is a problem of language. People with NLD have rote language skills but when it comes to functional daily use of language, they have difficulties with tone of voice, inference, written expression, facial expression, gestures, and other areas of pragmatic speech.
People with NLD have difficulty understanding patterns and lining up columns of numbers. Spoken instructions can be troublesome due to difficulty picturing consecutive directions and poor visual memory. NLD can also affect coordination, causing clumsiness, poor balance and a tendency to fall. Many people with NLD have poor safety judgment.
We are not sure what causes NLD, but we know that the earlier the intervention, the better the prognosis."
That the scientific definition and if you could not completely understand all that mumbo jumbo, let me break it down for you. Basically it means I learn by hearing that I'm not really  a visual person. If you gave me a text book and told me to learn all the info in it without any out loud teaching, I probably would look at you with a blank stare. Oh I have no doubt I could do it eventually. It just would take me a really really long time. Another major thing that over the years I have become better at doing is making eye contact.  You may notice sometimes I will be talking in class and I will look at the ceiling or just off in space. I'm not trying to be mean or rude I just have a hard time making eye contact. I could go on and on about all the little things I do and understand or don't understand that someone who is "Normal" would. But why should I. I can't change the fact I have a learning disability There  is no magic potion I can drink to make it go away. I have it and it's always going to be there. So what I do instead of dwelling on the fact that I have it is to find ways to make my life easier to live with it like learning to understand sarcasm or to tell the difference when someone joking or not. To learn how to read and project and understand body language and keeping eye contact with people. Now if I don't tell someone I have a learning disbilty they could never tell but that's because I've worked so hard on the things that could be considered flaws. I graduated high school with A's and B's and was in the Rhode Island Honor Society and now I am a second year college student going for Early Ed and special education. I live by the saying "Dont judge a book by it cover." the part I always add is judge it by it first hundred pages. Whether the child has a severe disability like Autism or Down Syndrome or a learning disability like mine we are all normal in our own way.
I learn by hearing, you learn by sight. Our differences is what makes us human and you can be sure as long as we walk on two feet and have a heart and a brain we're human. It our differences that make us special and allows us to have this diverse and beautiful world we like in. Get below the surface and get to know a person and you may realize that you have a best friend in someone despite how they look and act. If you take nothing else from this,just know we're all human in the end.

I found this video which interviews three kids who have down syndrome and other disabilities and how in college they are teaching them how to survive on their own and also be able to get an education and a degree they want.

In class I would like to talk about what are good ways of dealing with kids with disabiltes and how to treat them like everyone else and how not to talk down to them.  They are human too and should be treated like everyone else in school.

Literacy in schools according to Oak and Finn

(Argument)

In the articles Literacy  with an Attitude by Patrick J.Finn and Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route By Jeannie Oakes the authors are different but share a concept. In Oakes article  he talks about how we are separating the kids into groups based on there ability to learn and because this kids who are "High preforming" get better materials than those in the middle or lower preforming groups. He uses John Goodlad and his book A place called school he uses as a example to prove his point that kids are not equal in the example Goodlad uses literature as his focus for showing this.

" students in high-ability English classes were more likely to be taught classic and modern literature, provided instruction in expository writing and library research, and expected to learn vocabulary that would eventually boost their scores on college  entrance exams...... students in the low-ability classes were likely to have little contact with the knowledge and skills that would allow them to move inot higher classes or to be successful if they got there."


Oaks argument is that this is wrong and that by grouping people by levels but others at a disadvantage just because they may be slower. what he thinks the teachers should do is not give up on there standers but let the kids figure things out for themselves it ok if they struggle that how they learn. "To be successful, heterogeneous classroom probably need to lean toward placing students more in charge of their own understanding and asking for and providing feedback.  This is what happens naturally when students are engaged in complex tasks and have lots of intereaction."

In his artical Finn talks about how if we keep high power literacy from the working class we are hindering them and that we must find a way for the upper-class and the working class to get along and allow the literacy to be able to be privilege for everyone.
"Contemporary social scientists believe that if we can understand
these mechanisms, we can change them and bring ourselves
to a different place, one where there is greater equity and justice.
That would require that both the rich and poor get empowering
education and powerful literacy." for this to work both groups have to work together so that everyone rich or poor can get a good education and  rise up in status.

I found this video that through different comics show the importance of literacy and why we should teach kids to read. Some you wont be able to understand seeing as there in either Spanish or French I'm not sure which. I hope you enjoy them I did.

In class I want to talk about why literacy is so important and school and what education would be like if books did not exist in school for us to learn from.

Gender and Education

(Hyperlinks)

While surfing the web for videos and articals about gender and education in 2010 I came across this artical called Girls think they are cleverer than boys from age four, study finds

Teachers' expectations may reinforce gender gap in school performance 

This study was done in the United Kingdom  the arical was published 1 September 2010. In the artical it showed that girls do better than boys in school because of their teacher belife in them and for the boys the lack there of so by age 7 or 8 they have come to believe this. So on tests the girls profrom better as statsics show. "The findings come just over a week after exam results revealed that the gap between boys and girls at GCSE is widening. This summer, the pass rate for girls was 72.6% at A* to C, compared with 65.4% for boys. Last year, the rate was 70.5% for girls and 63.6% for boys."

But as I countued to read the artical started to talk about a expariment silmlar to that of  the doll expariment. Except this time the children were give a picture of a girl and of a boy and asked who was clever. The girls always said the girls. At age four to seven the boys were evenly devided on who was clever but by age 7 and 8 the boys would agree with there female peers that girls were clever and more susseful.

I just found this astoudning and now there encourging teachers not to use phrases like "silly boy" or "schoolboy pranks." so the boys have a more even chance.

In class I would like to discuss ways for us to keep a gender nutral classroom and how to prevent this from happing. This just goes to show that it not just race we should be worring about but about how we speak to boys and girls in general.

Between Barack and a Hard Place

(Connections)

I thought the videos were interesting and I might read the book. I picked up on one thing Wise talked about which was because Bush was white he was more likly to be taken seriously. This reminded me  of  McIntosh article  White Privilege:Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack in the article she talks about  how being white is a privilege even if we don't know it. "I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks." in this she saying because that because she white it gives her privileges that she did not even know she had but made her life easier. The author makes a comment about how a African American president must work harder than that of a white president for one main reason the person is white. The author calls Bush a bafoon but he was white. I don't remember who said this but this quote has stuck in my head through out all these reading we have done. "My son knows how to be black. You need to teach him how to survive in a white man world." (Not word for word)  This just helps to show that even though we are equal and segregation is gone  it is still harder for African American  to find a job because of the clor of there skin.

In class I would like to talk about why it hared for a African  American person to get a job when there just ad highly qualified as that of a white person.
I found a article I thought was interesting it talks about the loss of jobs and how it might be harder for African Americans to find jobs again in the upturn of this job market.

In The Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning By Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

(Extended Comments)

In the Service of What? by Kahne and Westheimer

In Darlene's blog "In the Service of What? by Kahne and Westheimer" She talkes about the main arguments that they make which are "  here seem to be two main subjects to the argument, service learning for charity, or service learning to identify and respond (change)." I think she right as I read the article those were the two things that kept poping up.

" If we are doing it because we have to (charity) or that we are learning about how to live like other people and becoming more aware of social issues (change)." I think the two actually blend together.  you can do Charity work while being able to take a walk in another persons shoes and see what it like to live there life. and once you witness these issues  hopefully you will want to learn more about the issues at hand.

I think the idea of service learning is not a new idea in the into the author quotes two form presidents from two different decades. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. I think John F. Kennedy  famous quote from his inaugural address "... ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." I think this summons up service learning because in this quote he telling the people of the united States to be selfless and to help someone in need because it the right thing to do rather than be selfish and ask what a person can do for you.

In class I would like  to talk about what it means to participate in service learning and what are the benfits of it. But more importantly what the differences between now and say the 1960's when Kennedy was promoting this.

I found this video It about UCF students what it means to do service learning for the people doing it and the people befitting.