Parental engagement

Parental engagement in schools is something I never really thought about before this week's readings and class. When I was in school my parents were very engaged and did their best to attend any kind of school event my sisters or I may have been involved in. It wasn't always easy for my parents to make it to everything. They are divorced. My mom worked during the day and my dad worked at night. Two sisters and I are a year apart, so there was always some kind of overlapped. But we knew that our parents cared about our education and what/how we were doing in school. I guess it is naive, but when I was in school I never really thought about what it would be like to have parents who were not actively engaged in the school community for whatever reason.

In the article Finding Ways In: Community-Based Perspectives on Southeast Asian Family Involvment with School in  a New England State Collingnon notes that "for members of the Southeast Asian communities,  family involvement with school is a new concept" (p.32). This provides an extra challenge for us as educators. There is already a possibilty that language will hinder our attempts to communicate with some of our students' parents/guardians. Then there is the fact that it may part of their culture not to be involved in the school community. So how do you get these parents to come to events or volunteer to help in class. This does not mean that the parents don't care about their kids, they just don't know that this is how American schools work. That here parents are encouraged to participate.

The readings and the panels  from this week really made me understand how important it is for us a teachers to do everything we can to reach out to parents and encourage them to come to events. Just as I think it is important for teachers to make appearances at events that students patrticipate in, it is equally, if not more, important that parents or any family member is there as well. The encouragement and confidence that students get from seeing family members in the crowd or in their classroom is immeaasurable and can do wonder for students.

Sexuality Education and Desire: Still Missing after All These Years

I found reading about the abstinence only until marriage (AOUM) education very interesting. It made me think about the two health classes I can remember taking. The first was in sixth grade and it was part of the FACS (which I think stood for family and consumer sciences) classes. There we were taught mainly about abstinence as a form of birth control. We were all about eleven years old, and I think that kind of message was appropriate for students of our age. I think most people can agree that eleven is still pretty young for kids to be thinking about having sex. Looking back at that health class I feel like we were properly informed about sex education for our age.

The second time I had a health class was as a freshman in high school. There the program was different. abstinence was not the only form of birth control that we were taught about. In this class we learned about a wide array of birth control options along with abstinence. I think my high school clearly understood that they were not going to be sucessful in stopping all of its students from having sex. We had a couple teenage pregancies a year at my school. Clearly not all of the students there were taking chasity vows. So in our health classes my fellow students and I received what I preceive to be a pretty comprehensive sexual education. Because of this, I was semi-surprised to read this article and to see that most schools do not seem to do the same as my high school did. I guess I was a bit naive in my thinking.

I guess some people would look at the pregnancy rate at my high school and say that the comprehensive education isn't working and that the students need to be taught along the AOUM lines. I would disagree with that. I think there is a time and a place for that kind of sexual education. I think it was fitting in my middle school class. As for high schools I think educators need to understand what teenagers are going through bioloically at that age. I think we need to realize that teenagers today are not all going to successfully remain abstinant until marriage. We should be providing them with a comprehensive education, not only about what they are biologically experiencing, but also all the ways that they can prevent an unwanted pregnancy.

In a Different Voice

I was pretty struck by the idea that the norm is a male norm and that being female means you are essentially going against the norm. It is not something I ever really thought about because growing up I never felt like I was being judged by male norms, but once I read about it here I thought it was interesting. I mean we do live in a whole that has been dominated by men for centuries. It has only been a relatively small amount of time that women have been been seen with a level of equality as men. It seems obvious now that the norm would be male.

Chodorow's analysis that girls identify themselves in terms of relationships while boys see themselves as more differentiated is based one how our mothers view and treat us in our early development is interesting. It makes me wonder what would happen/does happen when the larger influence for a child is his/her father. Does this switch? Do girls become more individual because they see the differences in gender at a young age and boys become relationship orientated because they are the same as and a continuation of their fathers?

As an aspiring teacher Gillgan's book made me really think about gender differences. When we think about diversity in the classroom, I don't think we typically consider gender as a diversity issue, but the book really reminded me that it needs to be a consideration and that I have to not only be aware of ethnical/racial differences but gender differences as well.

Week Two Response

As I read through Children of Immigration I marked pages that I wanted to revisit, so my response may jump around a bit as, like some of the others in class, I won't be focusing on just one chapter.

One of the first parts that caught my interest was an excerpt from a Human Rights Watch report that noted that "each year thousands of children enter the United States illegally... most come alone" (32). It's hard to imagine having to leave my own country on my own as a child to go somewhere where I don't know the language and culture. The report goes onto to say that many of these children who arrive in the country by themselves are arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and detained. Of course the book notes that the majority of immigrants enter the country legally. However, this part started to make me think about the pressure, stress and burdens children of immigration feel. For the children who enter the US illegally, whether they come with a family member or not, they have to carry the fear and worry that they will be apprehended and detained and deported. As an American citizen this is not something I ever had to worry about. Yet for these kids it is probably constantly on their mind and it is a worry they bring into the classroom.

The next part I wanted to comment on is in the "Rethinking Immigration" chapter. There is a section here where the Suarez-Orozco's write about assimilation and the challenges children of immigration face when trying to assimilate into the culture of the US. They talk about how the immigrant children typically become more Americanized than their parents and the struggles the children face because of this. Then the Suarez-Orozco's talks about the comfort immigrants find in being around their own culture. This was something I found I could relate to. For most of the aspects discussed in the book I had a tough time relating, because as I said I am a white American and I have not had to face these kinds of struggle. Is that white privilege? Maybe. Yet, I could relate to this feeling. When I studied abroad in Spain it was a lot easier to hang out with the other American students and to speak English with them. We knew how to interact with each other and it was more comfortable to be with the familiar than to go out and speak Spanish with natives when you knew that your language abilities were not quite up to par. My grandmother always complain that immigrants are unwilling to speak English. I don't agree with this. Working in retail I have come across many ELLs and they do put an effort into speaking English. Having my experience living in Spain though, I can understand not wanting to speak the native language because you are self conscious about your abilities.

In all what I took away from the book was that as teachers we have to be mindful of the baggage children of immigration carry with them into the classroom. Immigration is a stressful experience and these students bring with them that stress, emotional issues, in some cases PTSD, high expectations and a lot of other things. Going to school and trying to learn can be tough for any student at times and its a teacher's job to understand that there are all kinds of stressors for students and be mindful of them.

Introduction
              So this is my first blog. I have never been very good about writing daily about things. When I studied abroad last year everyone told me I had to write in a journal everyday so I wouldn't forget anything and I put in a valiant effort at the start, but pretty quickly my entries started saying things like, "Just got back from Rome, I'll write more later."
              An introduction about me is that I just graduated with my Bachelor's in History from UMass Lowell. I'm pretty excited to start this program and take the next step in my education and towards my goal of becoming a teacher. I'm a pretty laid back and quiet person. I said in our first class that I was a huge geek in high school and I remain so. If you want to get me talking just bring up Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings and you'll have a hard time getting me to stop.

First Reponse
                Going into reading “White Privilege” I must have been thinking with my history goggles on, because I was expecting something different from it. I think I was equating white privilege with white supremacy. I thought it was going to be about white people who see themselves as better and more privileged than other races. I did not think I was going to find myself reflecting a lot about myself, because I know I am not a white supremacist. Of course the article is not about supremacy, but about privileges built into our society that favor the white race. They are things that many people, like myself, do not think about or even recognize as privileges.  Even reading the beginning of the article I thought well, this isn’t too surprising. It is not particularly shocking that our society favors its white population, but growing up in this generation you like to believe that things have been changing.

                What was enlightening about the article was the level these privileges reach in our day to day lives. Number four in McIntosh’s list “of the daily effects of white privilege in [her] life” (2) is about how she doesn’t need to worry about being followed while shopping. I have worked in retail for the past 5-6 years and I have had plenty of experiences where my managers have asked me to keep an eye on a shopper.  Some of these people were white and I was usually asked to watch them because they were known shop lifters. But it was typically non-whites who I had to follow and they were usually not known customers. My managers would usually qualify their request with a “not to be racist” or “this is not because this person is (insert ethnicity).”

                The next effect is about white representation in the media: on tv and in the paper. Her statement is about how the white race is widely represented in these areas. After I read this article I went to see a movie and one of the little previews before the trailers started was an animated ad aimed at kids and there was a black character that was nothing more than a black stereotype and I immediately thought back to this point McIntosh made. Not only are whites widely represented, but they are represented typically as the main character, the protagonist, the hero. In a good light. While characters of other races are often stereotypes, which can negatively affect how viewers see those races.

                A lot of the things on her list are things that I think I was aware of but not something I really knew about. Having them pointed out to me in that way was a bit eye opening to me. These are all things that I did not ask for and there things I take for granted because I did not really acknowledge as privileges. In terms of being an educator I think it is important to remember these and think about them when interacting with all students. In this class I assume we are going to focus a lot on disadvantages different races and ethnic groups face in the classroom, but we have to keep in mind these inherent privileges our white students have as well and the effects they have on the white students and the non-white students they interact with.