Final Project

http://questgarden.com/65/25/8/080427192543/

Here is a link to the website I created based on the information we talked about this semester. It still may change slightly as I get feedback from the Student Volunteer Center as to what they need from it.

Good luck

p.s. Greg, icampus is severely impaired at the moment so I will email this to you once I find it up and running. Thanks again.

A day with 7th graders at Eli Whitney

Share your reflections on our visit to the Little Village community and our day with the 7th graders at Eli Whitney.

Dr. Pedro Noguera on equity and education

Share your reactions to the talk by Dr. Pedro Noguera, "What It Takes to Leave No Child Behind: Creating Conditions that Promote Achievement and Child Development."

"The White Method: Cheating"

So I don't know how many of you like the show South Park, but it is one of my favorite shows of all time. Tonight (Wed 4/8) was a new episode of its 12th season and it couldn't be more relevant for our class. The episode has 2 stories going on at once but the one I'm talking about is a complete parody of the movie "Stand and Deliver." Eric Cartman (the fat one) takes the role of Mr. Escalante and goes to teach in a inner-city school in Denver. He dresses like him and pulls a fake Latino accent and teaches them the meaning of being white, to cheat. I urge you to go on http://www.southparkstudios.com/ and search the South Park episodes (its Season 12 named "Eek a Penis!" the title is from the other story, as you probably could guess) to be able to fully understand what I'm talking about. (You may have to wait a day for the video to be on the internet, you could also search YouTube.com)

The short version is Cartman does well taking over his class mates and lets the students find Mr. Garrison's (the teacher) answers to the test. The principal is impressed by the class's scores on the test (that they cheated on) and asks Cartman to go to Denver to teach and "reach these kids" as best as he can. So he goes to Denver and teaches in your stereotypical urban school classroom. And he teaches them how he taught his classmates, to cheat. They make fun of him reaching to the one boy that resists the teacher in the movie and persuading the one girl to keep up with her education (or cheating) like the movie. The students end up cheating on their Standardized and Advanced Placement test for college. They monitor them to make sure they don't cheat, but Cartman has taught them so well that they are able to cheat on the big test and succeed. (All 24 scored 100% on the test) And they praise Cartman by teaching them the White Method: which was to cheat.

Overall, the episode is VERY controversial. If you want to watch I urge you to watch with an open mind.

Disclaimer:
This episode not only has coarse language and controversial views but the 2nd story that is happening within the episode is about a trans-gender teacher and his/her search to become a man again. (Hence the name of the episode)

Race and representation

Following up our conversation about race and representation from last class, Amanda A. posted a response in which she connected the historical images of African American and Native American people we viewed in class to the current controversy over the Vogue magazine cover with LeBron James and model Giselle Bundchen.


Many have criticized the cover for perpetuating, or reviving, stereotypical representations of Black males -- the image of a wild, dangerous, "animal" who is a threat to white women. Dismissing such ideas, a spokesperson for Vogue said, "We think LeBron and Giselle look beautiful together and we are honored to have them on the cover." But several writers have pointed out what seem to be intentional echoes of old posters -- one an ad for the U.S. Army (above), one a poster for the movie King Kong (below). What do you think? Is the image of LeBron problematic? Is it racist?

Teachers' Pets

While going through the Sunday Trib's magazine, I came across an interesting I found incredibly interesting/ inspiring:

At the Michael Faraday School on the city's West Side, volunteers from the Sit Stay Read! program come to listen to the 2nd grade children read. Participants of the program are blind, and they bring their seeing eye dogs along on their visits. Since the volunteers are blind, they cannot correct the young readers; they simply listen and enjoy the stories. The article states that on average, a child growing up in a middle-class family will experience as many as 1,700 hours of one-on-one reading, before he or she enters school; compared to a child from a lower-class family who enters school with 25 hours. The goal of this program is to help students become more comfortable in their reading and to gain confidence. How cool!!



Sound interesting? Check out the article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/magazine/chi-080330kogan-col,1,4602652.column

Personally, I think this article is awesome! I would love to have something like this in my classroom someday! What a great confidence builder! I think this is a great way for students who might not have the opportunity to read aloud to work on their reading skills and improve fluency. It makes sense to me that children would be more comfortable reading aloud to someone who is unable to catch their mistakes. Also, I think it would make students look forward to reading! Plus, I think that it is a great way to help students learn to accept people who are different from them at an early age, and I'm sure that the volunteers feel great about being able to help these kids as well. As far as I can tell it's a win win for everyone involved!

This week's reading

What do these images have to do with this week's reading?

CPS students rally for tougher gun laws

Here's a follow-up of sorts to the story I posted a few days ago about the number of Chicago Public School students killed by guns this year. This past weekend another student, 17-year-old Chavez Clarke, was shot and killed, prompting his classmates and other Chicago teens to organize a rally to raise awareness and to push for tougher gun laws in Illinois. Read the Chicago Tribune's account here.

"Addiction" to Illegal Immigrants

Happy Monday, everyone! I came across this article while surfing on cnn.com today. I thought it was interesting in light of the exercise we did on immigration/immigrant students. See everyone Thursday, have a good week!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/31/navarrette.opinion/index.html

A new rise in violence -- what can be done?

This school year, 20 Chicago Public School students have been killed -- 18 by guns. Last year, more than 30 CPS students were killed, 24 by guns. This story from msnbc provides some of the details but not a lot of additional context. One important point that it does note, however, is that none of the students have been killed at school. Indeed, schools are still seen by many students as a safe space.

Still, the number of school-aged children being killed is alarming. As much as I want us to see beyond the stereotypes of urban schools and neighborhoods (and I hope you feel we've tried to do that), I think it's important not to ignore realities like this one. But I wonder what "outsiders" will think when they read this msnbc story. Will they be saddened? Angered? Or will they simply shake their heads and think, "Yeah, that's how those kids are?"

I think we need to move past our initial reactions to really think about what some of the root causes of youth violence might be. Why are so many kids in Chicago being killed? Where is the violence concentrated, and what does that say about other social conditions that may give rise to it? Can anything at all be done about it? Can schools and teacher play a role? If you were a teacher in Chicago, would you try to address this issue with your students, or is it too risky?

Chicago Public BOARDING Schools

I read this article over Spring Break and was going to post it earlier, but I totally forgot until now. Anway, I thought this was pretty interesting. Although there aren't too many details about the boarding schools, they explain some of the options such as how they will be run... through districts or outside angencies. I was wondering what everyone thought about the article - the idea of boarding schools in the city of Chicago. What do you think parents will say or think about it? What will urban students think about it?

I hope this link works... If not, you can Google 'Chicago Tribune', then search Chicago Public Schools, and the date was March 14.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-boarding-schools_14mar14,0,2694026.story

"Demography is Not Destiny"

Once I would have agreed with the heading of this post. I admit it was a much more optimistic and happy part of my life. However, that was before my philosophy became engrossed with the belief that there is no positive value. Linguistically, "No Positive Value" according to Saussure (an early 20th century Swiss philosopher) refers to the way that culture structures meaning through language. It states that there is no natural essence to any object. There is nothing about a chair that makes it a chair. Nothing about a person that makes it a person. An object is labeled and used in the way associated with "chair" because that is how our society constructs it. This is proven because if there were an essence or undeniable truth to any object languages would be easily translated back and forth. Because this is not possible, defining of objects must be a social action.

This makes any label for any object completely irrelevant. A frog is only a frog because we call it "frog". A bottle is only a bottle because we label it "bottle" and use it as a container for liquids. A person is only a person because that is how we conceive of people.

This means that any object not being referred to is, in essence, a blank slate. It is nothing until it is referred to and constructed in the social mind. If this extension is made to people, then people are also nothing until they are subjected to the rules, ideologies and beliefs of society. Though this flies in the face of Christian sensibilities, it is a philosophical restructuring of the self not as an individual, but as a sum of different societal parts put together in a distinct way.

The evidence of this is in our concept of individuality. In my younger and more impressionable years I considered myself quite the non-conformist. The perpetual joke was that I was not conforming just like all my friends. the truth in this is that my non-conformism was truly only a choice of ways in which I could conform. I was really only conforming in a different way that was still allowed by society. I was deviating from the norm, but ONLY as far as i was allowed by the culture at large. I contest that all individuality is in some way either a construction of different societal regulations, or a deviation from societal norms within the prescribed alloted boundaries (though...there are instances where societal norms can be and are broken, but the repercussions of these actions are huge: ostracizing, condemnation, damnation, prison).

So if people are only summation and constructions of the concepts and ideas that society puts into them, they can only possibly structure reality in ways that society has allowed them. For example, I cannot see the world through the eyes of a 8th century Chinese Emperor because my world has been defined, structured and explained in a completely different way. I contest that this happens in ways that are just as drastic as in our American society.

Here then, is the problem with arguing that "Demography is Not Destiny." As people we are only what we know, we cannot possibly be more than what we know. We can learn and know more, but we cannot escape what it is that we know. And the lessons that we learn early/first are the most impossible to destruct. We are bound to understand and see the world as we are taught both implicitly and explicitly.

Here is the primary argument I wish to present. I believe that lessons that teach impoverished children to balance check books are valuable; however, I feel that they (and lessons of this nature along with the vast majority of lessons serving impoverished children) are perpetuating the problem. This extends not only to lessons in school, but also to lessons in life outside of school. Though the intent is to help them succeed in life, is this truly the outcome? Or is it more that they are succeeding in poverty. The lesson that should be being taught is how to escape poverty, NOT HOW TO THRIVE IN IT. (I apologize for yelling...I am a passionate man). Our school systems, for the vast majority of students, FORCE children into whatever social position they came from (or lower, as is the case with many students from middle-class backgrounds). This only proves to me that Demography is Destiny.

Our school system, as it exists right now, accepts that "Demography Is Destiny." We perpetuate the roles of the under-class in educating the poor children of the world. We are teaching them to be successful poor people.

If we truly lived in a world where "Demography is Not Destiny" then every single child in every single school would have the same opportunities to succeed AND fail. To reach the highest or the lowest rung of society. If this was true there would and could be no true perpetuating upper class. There will and always will be a class system in America; right now, however, we live in a caste system.

Now for my concession. I believe that individuals can escape this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad cycle. I truly do. This is not why I teach, but for many it is why they teach. I think it is an honorable and noble reason and I deeply love and respect anyone who teaches and follows the "Demography is Not Destiny" credo. It is a difficult role to fill, and I admire and cherish all who fill it.

I teach for massive educational reform. I teach to help children and for my love of children, but I also teach for myself. I teach so that I can move up the ladder. I teach so that I can get into the masters and doctoral programs that I want. I wish to attack the system. I wish to work with others to re-build an educational system that actually does follow the "Demography is Not Destiny" credo. To analytically destruct the system and rebuild it is the only way to achieve a system in which students are all treated as they deserve to be treated. That all students in America are inherently the same. We live in a caste system, the education system perpetuates it. I will fight against a caste system for my entire life, and I will begin working one child at a time in a classroom.

I just acknowledge that that can only go so far. I don't want to stop at one child at a time.
Right now believing that "Demography is Not Destiny" only acknowledges single extraordinary children.

It is a fallacy to define a system by an outlier.