Blog 10: Parent Involvement

Beyond the Bake Sale

I thought this was a great article for many reasons. I think it was important to look into what truly might be affecting parent involvement in schools and how much can it truly affect student achievement. I like what was chosen to be focused on- I think they are key aspects of what goes on with parents: “(1) an emphasis on relationship building among parents and between parents and educators, (2) a focus on the leadership development of parents, and (3) an effort to bridge the gap in culture and power between parents and educators. We contrast this community-based approach with more traditional, school-centric, and individualistic approaches to parent involvement.” I think that many people believe the issues exist between students and their parents, but I think the true issues are between parents and educators. Learning to work together and do what's best for the students (because that is, after all, the reason these people are even communicating to begin with). I would hope that all educators are interested in helping parents become more involved and take advantage of what can be learned from this study: “First, educators can benefit from taking a patient approach, building relationships over time. Second, schools may not be able to do parent engagement work alone; they can profit from the social capital expertise of community-based organizations. Finally, educators would benefit from understanding that communities bring different needs, aspirations, and desires to their children’s education. If educators collaborate with community partners and help to develop parent leadership, they can form initiatives that meet the interests, values, and capacities of any particular school community.” I think that having the specific cases can help us as educators to truly realize the simple things we can do to increase parent involvement. I like that “Camino Nuevo offers parents the opportunities to take paid positions that use their growing body of skills and knowledge. Parents are hired as paraprofessionals to work in the cafeteria, in the office, and as classroom aides.” I know that my mother worked in the office at my elementary school and also did some substitute teaching. It was something that I enjoyed her doing.

Urban Education

An aspect of parent involvement that we have been starting to pay much attention to is the fact that students want to be involved but encounter several issues that prevent them from being fully engaged. I can imagine how frustrating that might be. I always knew that parents would react to their children's education in similar ways to how they dealt with education when they themselves were in school, but I don't think I realized how big a role this actually played: “Parents’ educational histories powerfully shaped their aspirations and beliefs about their role. Most spoke bitterly of their lack of educational opportunity, in part due to parents who were obstacles or absent parties in their education.” I think it would be really hard as a parent to want to be involved in something that, from their personal experiences, could be impossible to achieve at. Educators need to help these parents especially realize they can do more and gain more by being active in their child's education.

On a side note, I was very interested in the cues that parents were taking from their children, and how this would affect most of their educational careers: “Across the sample, parents took their cue from their children’s invitations for involvement, that is, students’ academic performance, motivation, responsibility, and requests. The Supporters’ view of their children’s high academic ability and motivation reinforced their predisposition to be more hands off and to depend on students to navigate their own college pathways. The Advocates saw their academically borderline children as “needing that extra push” and thus took more hands-on, proactive steps. The Companions waited for their daughters to assert aspirations or ask for help rather than impose parental goals or initiate help.” For me personally, I never had too much trouble in school. I remember being proactive about asking for help when I needed it. It wasn't always accessible at home though. My brother was very smart and never needed help with anything academic, but there would be times when I would try to ask for help and my parents wouldn't be able to, because they were not used to having to help. I know if my child needed help with homework and I was unable to provide the needed help, I would be upset and somewhat embarrassed. This could be something that happens to students regularly. Their parents may want nothing to do with the homework that they don't understand, and now that student is on his or her own for that assignment. But instead of trying to find out why a student is not doing his or her homework, we give bad grades for incomplete assignments. Helping parents to not feel so separated from their child's education could make a world of a difference.

Blog 9: The DreamKeepers

The first chapter of this book was scary to take in as truth. I knew that segregation still existed, but not in the ways described here. And I certainly had no idea that places were considering re-segregating! But the arguments make sense. Things still aren't fair. African American male students spend more time getting in trouble than learning in their schools. There is a way out though: “only when individual classrooms are desegregated is there an improvement in the achievement levels of African American students.” (7). This strongly connects with the idea of multicultural education that we've been talking about in class. We need to have students of different backgrounds meeting and interacting in the actual classroom, and have them actually doing things together; just having it down on paper that a school is integrated means nothing.

The more I read about teachers struggling to teach in a diverse classroom, the more interesting it gets. A lot of current teachers feel as though they need to look at their classrooms and say, “Okay. My class is culturally and ethnically diverse. But I need to pretend it isn't. I need to pretend to not see the color differences.” Of course there are the teachers that aren't afraid to admit that they do see the color differences (like the teachers on pages 22-23) and tend to “feel sorry” for the black students that supposedly don't know how to behave or learn well enough. But what we're learning now is that yes, we do need to acknowledge that different races and cultures in our classrooms, and appreciate them for what they are, not feel bad for students because they are different. It connects to the expectations we have of all our students- we need to have high expectations if students are going to learn anything. No one should be left out of that. No one should be felt sorry for in this regard.

I liked the ideas in chapter four, about the classroom being a family. In the majority of cultures and families, children and students are always wanting to make their parents proud, or do something to impress their parents. Bringing that into the classroom, and having students become a family could be a life-changing thing. It probably wouldn't get rid of bullying, but it could significantly reduce it. Reducing bullying could make a world of a difference to those students who feel they are different because of their home-life: race, culture, etc.

This idea of culturally relevant teaching is so important, I think. It takes individual differences and cultural diversity into account, which are things generally overlooked in the classroom. We need to stop trying to make all students the same. We need to stop pretending that everyone learns the same way and that the same lessons will work year after year. Each new school year filled with new, diverse students is going to bring a new and exciting journey in our lives as teachers. We should be welcoming that. Keeping culture and society relevant to the classroom and our students will help to enhance their learning. So I go back to the beginning of my post. Is it a good idea for African American students to stay among their own in terms of education? I want to say no, but until we can desegregate our individual classrooms and make changes on a cultural level, we aren't going to see anything change.

Blog 8: Organization and Curriculum

Chapter 4: Structural and Organizational Issues in Classrooms and Schools

It was scary reading how many structural and organizational issues exist in our school system that seriously don't work. I know tracking has been questioned for awhile now but I don't think people are really thinking about it too much. "The messages children internalize because of grouping practices are probably more destructive than we realize and their effects more long-lasting than we care to admit. Students may develop enduring classroom personalities and attitudes. They may, for instance, begin to believe that their placement in these groups is natural and a true reflection of whether they are “smart,” “average,” or “dumb.” (111). This is one of the last things we want students feeling. So it makes perfect sense that there is a major issue with this "solution" but there are hug drawbacks. And what do we do? Continue doing the same thing. The same idea goes with retention. "Aside from a short-term benefit for some students – a benefit that has been found to have no lasting effects – there is no evidence that retention brings children up to grade level. Several decades of research that showed retention fails to improve achievement." (114). Another idea that apparently doesn't work at all yet it happens to thousands of students every year. And on top of it: "Children who are retained actually learn less than they would have had they been promoted." (114).

I still struggle to understand why we've come to make standardized testing so important. It's been used in so many wrong ways for years by men like Lewis Terman: “Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stock from which they came... Children of this group should be segregated in special classes... they cannot master abstractions, but they can often be made efficient workers.” (115). Is this what we've decided to keep standardized testing for? I think it's a decent way to look at what students are learning, but it's certainly not something that should be determining students' futures, especially in such a racist way. I hope this example is not something that is happening regularly.

I also liked what this chapter said about the curriculum: "The problem is that the curriculum is often presented as if it were the whole, unvarnished, and uncontested truth. Instead, we should think of curriculum as a decision-making process." (119). But what's being left out? Are these decisions being made based not on multicultural education, but on something much more narrow-minded?

This chapter was very informative about the recurring problems in our school system but was limited in solutions. Most of the offered solutions were temporary fixes or traced back to the fact that we need to adjust the entire system in this country. How do we start doing something like that?! That's what we need to focus on.

Chapter 10: Implications for teachers, schools, families, and communities

I really enjoyed this chapter in the sense that it encouraged teachers to invite other languages into the classroom. That alone can do many things for students who feel different or like outcasts because of their language (380). Teachers need to be more welcoming of the native languages students have when it's not English. I feel this intimidates most teachers if they don't understand that language. But getting them to use that language in the classroom and showing those students that it's okay sounds like it would greatly benefit the student and their families, knowing they can still use their native language at home and it's not going to have any negative effects on what is going on in school.

"All teachers can become role models for all students as long as they are caring and knowledgeable about their students. One way in which teachers can build substantial relationships with students is by offering help to those who do not seek their aid." (385). First generation college students generally have no on to give them prior experience so they kind of don't even know where to start looking, even though the answer may be simple to us. This chapter was a bit more helpful in coming up with newer ideas that can make a difference in the classroom, and I hope they do. I hope this becomes common practice in schools across the country. A serous change needs to be made.

Blog 7: Caring in the Classroom

Valenzuela: Teacher-Student Relations and the Politics of Caring & Rolon-Dow: A Color(full) Analysis of Care Narratives in the Schooling Experiences of Puerto Rican Girls

I always knew that caring was important in the classroom, but I don't think I really acknowledged how crucial it could be to some students and how much of a difference it could truly make. Looking into the predominantly Latino student body with the predominantly non-Latino teaching staff in Valenzuela's article was interesting: the "teaching staff sees students as not sufficiently caring about school, while students see teachers as not sufficiently caring for them" (61). Well, if we have both groups blaming each other and neither one wanting to budge, we're never going to get anywhere. There was also some information from Noddings: "Noddings argues that teacher's ultimate goal of apprehending their students' subjective reality is best acheieved through engrossment in their students' welfare and emotional displacement. That is, authentically caring teachers are seized by their students and energy flows toward their projects and needs." (61). It certainly sounds like understanding the cultures, lifestyles, and backgrounds of students would help teachers a lot. The examples of what was going on in the classroom was really blowing my mind. I know their are moments when teachers have to demonstrate their "power" but it is not supposed to be in such a way that makes the teacher look like a tyrant. Mr. Johnson made himself sound absolutely terrible simply to impress the observer in his classroom: "The main problem with these kids is their attitude. They’re immature and they challenge authority. Look at them, they’re not going anywhere. I can tell you right now, a full quarter of these students will drop out of school come May.” And then what he says to the student who is kind of trying to make him shut up? “Joel, stop thinking, you know it might hurt you, cause you some damage upstairs.” So I'm assuming he's mentioning out loud in front of the entire class that this student has a learning disability or something of the sort. No one want to work or learn in an environment that is so verbally abusive. I think that's the worst thing a teacher can do, is to verbally abuse students because you can't tell when the students are getting hurt by it. The Rolon-Dow article connected with this article really well. It took what we were learning and went further with it. It really made it clear that good teacher-student relations go back to the neighborhood and family life of the students. It feels to me like teachers believe they try to reach out to students in one way, and when that doesn't work, they stop and say the student is not interested in school. What they don't realize is that, even though it might drive us as teachers crazy, those students want and need to be pushed to new levels. They need to be understood for who they are, not what they cannot do. It's interesting to me because it's like everyone knows there is a problem but no one is really DOING anything about it.

Dance: On Being "Hardcore," a "Hardcore Wannabe," or "Hardcore Enough"
 Trying to understand why students want to be considered "hardcore" is beyond me and I'm not sure why. It doesn't make sense to me and I feel like it should be something insignificant to most people. I mean, I get that people want a reputation, but wanting to be considered hardcore seems like way to much hard work and suffering. Yet students work very hard to achieve this status. "The stereotypical hardcore inner-city youth is a ruthless gangerlike Black (or other ethnic minority) male from a desolate, low-income urban area who carries a gun and participates in drive-by shootings and other senseless acts of violence without fear or remorse." (55). These acts of violence are life altering things, yet according to these students, they see it as just playing a role and that they need to hold in and hide all emotions that go along with it. "People will look at you and think you have no heart." (56). Students who have this kind of thing going on in the background are obviously not focusing or caring at all about what is going on in school. These students can't be ignored. These are the students that need our undivided attention. One interview says exactly that: "A couple of teachers at my old school use to push me to work. (now at his new school) They don't show no support. If nobody's gunna show no support at a school... why would you wanna work?" This same student is one who gets in fights and wants to prove to everyone that he is tough, yet here he is, wishing that teacher would push him to graduate and make something of his life. This tells me that students want to be interested in school and that it's up to teachers to be as involved as they can be in their students' lives to really and truly understand them. I know it makes the job much harder, but it seems like the best way to achieve the most in the classroom.

Blog 6: Ableism

Hehir
I can relate a lot to the Hehir article. I have a twin sister who is severely disabled. When we were born her brain was not fully developed. When we were two months old, we both developed spinal meningitis; I was viral and she was bacterial. This did a lot of damage to her and is mostly to blame for the way she is today. She cannot walk, talk, and is not completely blind. We use a wheelchair to help get her around but she is able to crawl around and interact with things she finds. She loves swimming and listening to music, especially Kelly Clarkson. She is also very strong, and knows enough to laugh when someone says, "Ow." She basically has the mentality of a 1 year old and is likely to be that way for the rest of her life. About a year and a half ago we were able to place her in a residential facility where a therapist is working on getting her walking again. She is able to walk if people are holding her hands. In elementary school she was able to walk by herself; unfortunately she took a nasty fall where she bumped her head and was set  back significantly.

It really hit home for me when the article was talking about the fact that Penny needed to prepare herself to fight for her son's rights for the rest of his life. My sister and I are turning 22 today, actually, and the fight is far from over. My sister lived at home until we moved her into the facility she is at now, and we did not have nurses coming in to take care of her. It was all on my parents. My dad had a good enough job that my mom was able to stay home and do what needed to be done for my sister. But it has been exhausting. I remember going to Mass General Hospital (or perhaps Mass. Eye and Ear) several times throughout my childhood because my sister needed surgery on her eyes. Her retinas kept detaching and they were doing whatever they could to save her vision. Sadly it was not enough. We were there so much I was placed with a "babysitter" so to speak while my mom stayed with my sister in surgery. I spent so much time with some of the staff there they framed one of my silly drawings and put it on the wall in the hallway.

My parents fought the school system, went to court hearings, filled out endless paper work, fought insurance companies, met with specialists; the list goes on and on. And it's not over. My sister is still having some issues in the residential community she is in. She is on many medications, she is still having seizures, and sometimes has trouble sleeping. Her body is a very sensitive thing, and her immune system is weak. She gets sick a lot, which makes it even harder for her. We have known for a long time that she will never be employed or simply be an independent human being. It's a tough thing to grasp and hold on to.

Gardner
What I liked about this article was this little note: "There is not, and never can be, a single irrefutable and universally accepted list of human intelligences." This article was a great introduction to what we can expect when we look further into what the multiple intelligences is all about. I also liked when he mentioned, "We fall in the habit of labeling ourselves but that's not all there is to it." When I've learned about Gardner in the past, I generally take a little quiz that tells me what categories I fall under, therefore labeling myself. So I think this kind of shows a misuse of this theory.

Cohen
What I really took away from this article was how to be the most effective educator I can be. "Effective teaching rests on our capacity to empathize with the student." I couldn't agree more. This goes right along with how well we know our students. The past can, and does, affect the future and the present, and the classroom is not immune to this. What I had overlooked was how important social and emotional development was for everybody in the school building. Students need it to learn in general. Teachers need it to better communicate with their students. If there is poor communication with a teacher and his/her students, the capacity for learning is very small. We want this capacity to be as large as it can be.

Blog 5: Sexuality & Sexual Education

Anderson's article, "Lesbian and Gay Adolescents: Social and Developmental Considerations" held many new and interesting facts for me, and it also supported some things I already knew. I feel that people today who don't understand gay and lesbian people really don't understand why gay and lesbian adolescents feel the way they do. I've heard people say, "They're too young to be thinking about that." But this article really disproves the idea of being too young to make that decision. "According to reports of adult lesbians and gay men, the onset of homosexual arousal, homosexual erotic imagery, and homosexual romantic attachment occurs during adolescence." I guess the "decision" part could still be up in the air, but I highly doubt people are just going with the flow of being gay or lesbian during these years because it's considered "cool." Another point that supports this idea: "The average age of first homosexual experiences was 13.1 years for the gay boys and 15.2 years for the lesbian girls." I do find this to be really young, no matter what your sexual orientation. But I think the young age here is partly due to the confusion felt my the adolescent. It was also interesting for me to read, "There is evidence that teenagers are now self-labeling at earlier ages." I hope what is meant here is that teenagers have made a decision about their sexuality and are not afraid to hide what they have discovered, and that is why they are self-labeling. If that is the case, I think it is easier to come out in this current society than it was a few decades ago. Not to say that it is easy to come out, but just that it is more common to see now.

I hear conversations all the time about whether or not someone is gay, followed by, "He can't be gay; he's married to a woman." Being a man who is married to a woman even though he is truly interested in men is something I believe to be quite common (the same goes for lesbians who are married to men). "Gay and lesbian teenagers frequently begin or continue heterosexual activity despite and awareness of their homosexual orientation." I believe this goes along with a point that Anderson makes later in the article about identity crisis in adolescence. "Homosexual adolescents initially make one of three choices in dealing with their newly acknowledged feelings: (a) try to change them; (b) continue to hide them; or (c) accept them." The adolescents who continue to engage in heterosexual relationships have not come to terms with their feelings and are hiding them by staying in these relationships.

This article was mostly informational, but I found it interesting to take in. Some people say that talk of sexual orientation does not belong in schools, but I think it's something that adolescents need at their age because for some, it's dominating their lives during this time. They can be left confused about their feelings or could spend more time hiding what they feel instead of paying attention to what is going on in the classroom.

Sexuality Education and Desire: Still Missing after All These Years
What absolutely blew my mind about this article was how much money is spent on teaching kids about abstinence, and about how it's the only method that works. At this point in our society, I'm pretty sure that the more money spent on teaching ONLY abstinence, the more money is spent on abortions or treating teens for STDs. Clearly teens are not interested in not having sex. Fine also makes an interesting point about promoting abstinence only until marriage. "This educational crusade has been unleashed through public institutions and laws advocating the virtues of abstinence, the dangers of unmarried sex, and the promised safety of heterosexual marriage." The fact that she called it a crusade is interesting. It's nothing more than a push for something people don't actually want, and I'll repeat that it's a waste of money. When I started reading through the numbers my mind instantly jumped to all the other things we could be spending that money on.
 

Blog 4: Masculinity as Homophobia

I found this to be an interesting read for a few reasons. Kimmel brought up excellent points and ideas about masculinity in American society. I was pretty interested in the Marketplace Man. The Heroic Artisan and the Genteel Patriarch seem like nice guys; Marketplace Man seems to have some priorities out of order. The article said he was generally, "an absentee landlord at home and an absent father with his children, devoting himself to his work in an increasingly homosocial environment- a male-only world in which he pits himself against other men" (123). There's no denying this, I feel like. If we look at the successful business men we know, this is true for a lot of them. I think this also sheds some negativity onto these men too when it might not always be the case. When I see the absent father bit, that makes me think those guys don't give a damn about their families. But then I stopped to think. My dad worked in Boston while his family lived in Dracut, which meant about three hours of travel a day because he took the train into the city from Lowell. He had been doing that for 32 years even though he had three kids at home, one of them severely disabled. It's not that he didn't want to be home or didn't care about his family, but he did what needed to be done in order to continue being successful. If you ever asked me if my father did all this in order to impress other men, I probably would have laughed. But now, I'm not so sure.

Psychologist Robert Brannon has four phrases (125-126) that he believes make up the definition of manhood. They are all so true. It's like every boy on his ten birthday gets sat down and explained these rules by the Manhood Monster and is threatened to follow them for the rest of his life. The one that bugs me the most is the one where boys aren't supposed to show emotion and not cry. I keep thinking that someday most guys will get over this but I am really starting to doubt it. Sure they might break down when no one else is looking, but if another guy is around, forget. It's too bad because it's really not healthy to keep things bottled up. They are so set on not letting emotions show and not talking about them they don't realize that there is a way around the pain. But the biggest issue is the first rule, that expressed men should not be at all feminine. For some reason this is the most important. But this also brings up an interesting point: "This notion of anti-femininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical conceptions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is" (126). Simply, manhood is not feminine. Any ounce of feminine means you are not masculine. I always thought that when people ask me to describe myself or someone else, you talk about what  IS, not what is NOT. I feel like this almost takes away from the person that male is because we're so focused on making sure he's not what he's not supposed to be.

I was really interested in this statement: "We become masculine by identifying with our oppressor" (130). This was following the segment about Freud's opinion on the topic. I never thought of the son being afraid of the father and identifying with him as an oppressor. This really shakes up the family ideals a lot of us have. I'm not sure if I want to believe Freud on this one, but anything could be possible.

I identified with this one a lot: "Our fears are the sources of our silences, and men's silence is what keeps the system running. This might help to explain why women often complain that their male friends or partners are often so understanding when they are alone and yet laugh at sexist jokes or even make those jokes themselves when they are out with a group" (131). This drives me absolutely crazy. Yeah, sure. Some sexist jokes are funny. But when they spew out of a guy's mouth nonstop and they generally get more and more offensive, it's time to stop. I don't take offense to most jokes because I know they do not pertain to me. However, that certainly doesn't mean I like hearing them. They get old real fast and become annoying. When people I know take things too far I always try to ask: who are you trying to impress? It never occurred to me how much guys want to impress each other. Perhaps it goes along with maturity. They say that women mature faster than men. Speaking for myself, I generally don't care the opinions people have of me. Of course there are moments when I care a lot and do things I wouldn't ordinarily do. But there are boundaries I will stay in. For guys, there are no boundaries. They will do whatever whenever (for the most part) to impress and fit in with other dudes.

This article was based on masculinity in American society. So I am walking away with a question. What about masculinity in other societies that treat non-males poorly? Will those men shoot a young girl in the head because she wants to be educated all to impress so other male higher up? I understand that some men view these acts of terror almost as a job or they do it because someone important told them to. But it's still unclear to me.