Social Justice Event

The social Event I chose to attend was on the 28th of October 2017. The event was on Power and Control: Domestic Violence In America. The film was about how women are targeted for domestic violence more than men are. This is a topic discussed a lot around campus. I remember having a sexual assault seminar for athletes, that was required by the NCAA. We also had a seminar about the green dot and what we could do to interfere with domestic violence as well.

This video discusses about how the main character, Kim Mosher, who is a white women with green eyes. She looks to be skinny and has pimples on her face. She has three daughters with her husband named Josh. They only reveal two of their daughters names, the oldest who is eight years old is Dakotah, and the middle child who is six years old is Debrah. Josh who is the husband of Kim, is a tall white man with gray eyes, who was a former football player, as well as a corrections officer.

He domestically abuses his family, whether it is punishing the kids or lashing out at his wife. His wife works at MacDonald’s and goes to school. She states that he tends to put her down because of that. She also stated how he never really helps her out around the house. She was talking about how it only took one swing at her that made her want to leave her house, even though he did not hit her she made the decision to leave. She had told him before this incident that if he ever tried to hit her, she would call the cops on him. His response was “Oh you going to threaten me?” So she preferred to leave the house while he was at work.

In the video they talked about how every eighteen seconds a women is domestically abused. One out of four women in the United States will experience domestic violence in their life. As stated in LiveYourDream.org “4,774,000 women in the U.S. experience physical violence by an intimate partner every year.” This is a huge number when it comes to the United States alone. Can you imagine how many women at Rhode Island College would be  impacted by domestic violence, due to the fact that there are more female students to attend Rhode Island College. Another fact they stated, “Each year, 2 million injuries and 1,300 injuries and 1,300 deaths are caused as a result of domestic violence. Three women are murdered every day by an intimate partner.”

Another source, NCAVD states “Women between the ages of 18-24 are most commonly abused by an intimate partner. Women abused by their intimate partners are more vulnerable to contracting HIV or other STI’s due to forced intercourse or prolonged exposure to stress.Physical, mental, and sexual and reproductive health effects have been linked with intimate partner violence including adolescent pregnancy, unintended pregnancy in general, miscarriage, stillbirth, intrauterine hemorrhage, nutritional deficiency, abdominal pain and other gastrointestinal problems, neurological disorders, chronic pain, disability, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as noncommunicable diseases such as hypertension, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Victims of domestic violence are also at higher risk for developing addictions to alcohol, tobacco, or drugs.”Not only does the abuse affect their relationship with each other but also the life of the abused persons body and future life. The abuser only cares about himself and do whatever he wants and does not think twice about doing it over and over again.

Before Kim had left Josh, he would always punish their children. Sometimes he would hit them very hard and leave marks on them. He would even put pressure on their shoulders to hurt them sometimes, he said it was because his mother did the same to him. In reality this did not give him the right to abuse his children like that, but this would be very hard to teach one not to do it when he had that done to him all his childhood. Another thing discussed in the video was about how men have to attend treatment programs. One white man states that he saw his father abuse his mother, which lead him to think that his actions was okay. So when he became a man he would do the same things his father did.

One thing about the video that I found interesting was that why did they add a police officer searching a man, who looks to be disabled. I did not really understand why they added this in the video.

An abusive relationship is when one spouse down grades another, and or takes over their entire life. Which was the case with Kim and Josh. Josh took control of her financial status, and monitored all her transactions. Another thing he did was make sure he was always able to control her and put her down for still going to school. At the Safe Haven battered women’s shelter, they had explained that if one women stayed only one night there, it was because she went back to the abuser. They think that just because times are tough and they are not able to be financially stable they will try to get back together with their abuser. Another way an abuser can lure back their abused partner is that they try to apologize and say it would never happen again.

In this case Kim found a house where she could live with her two daughters and had asked for a divorce. In early 2009 she had asked Josh to move in with her. The reason why she asked him to come was because she was sick and was unable to take care of her children and work. He said that he did not like helping her but he kept his mouth shut to show her that he has changed. I found it crazy to find out that his own children knew what he had done to them and his mother that they were yelling at him and telling him that they had wished he wasn’t their father.

I would relate this video to “Literacy with an Attitude” by Patrick J. Finn. This related to the article because it discusses on how the rich get more powerful literacy, when the poor gets the domestic literacy. This can relate to the video because it stated how the death of a famous person Nichole Brown Simpson was on the news about being abused by her partner. And they stated in the video how a regular United States women would not be in the news. Here we can see how being rich can help one be able to leave their partner, because they would not have to suffer financially.

The second article that relates to this video is “Speaking the unspeakable in forbidden places’ addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the primary school” by Allan, Atkinson, Brace, DePalma and Hemingway. This is because we never really tend to hear about how LGBT people being impacted by domestic abuse. Stated in the Center for American Progress “Domestic violence in same-sex families does occur, however. Studies have found that domestic violence occurs among same-sex couples at comparable rates to straight couples: One out of four to one out of three same-sex relationships has experienced domestic violence. By comparison, one in every four heterosexual women experiences domestic violence in her lifetime.” As we can see is that it is the same ratio as women who are being impacted by domestic abuse

The last reading I will be connecting to is “Unlearning the myths that Blind Us: Critiquing Cartoons and Society” by Christensen. This is because in some television shows they are shown to represent domestic violence in a dark way. They use dark humor for a topic like this. Such like in family guide, the whole family seems to hate Meg Griffin. She is always picked on and is downgraded by the family. In some episodes we can see her father even hits her sometimes.

http://act.liveyourdream.org/domestic-violence-facts-and-figures-cpc/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAjO_QBRC4ARIsAD2FsXN6pc1nbvrNyFGDh-cBv8AtKBA8sG182HQ4qBuKVc-S2xCKVot9mYUaAiO2EALw_wcB

https://ncadv.org/statistics

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2011/06/14/9850/domestic-violence-in-the-lgbt-community/

 

Empowering Education

The article that was assigned to read this week is, “Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change” by Ira Shor. This article discusses the schooling and the policies of socialization. In the begging of the chapter it discusses a few questions usually asked when thinking about what makes “Great schools” better than others. This article also discusses how being taught about socialization is better for the students.

Blenheim states in the article “He urged teachers to encourage students to question their experi­ence in school: “You must arouse children’s curiosity and make them think about school. For example, it’s very important to begin the school year with a discussion of why we go to school. Why does the government force us to go to school? This would set a questioning tone and show the children that you trust them and that they are intelligent enough. at their own level, to investigate and come up with answers”(11). This is very interesting to me due to the fact that if I was asked this question it would definitely get me thinking about why school is important, why school is very meaningful to me, and why I should stay in school.

Another quote that stood out to me was when he stated in the Values for Empowerment, “Human beings do not invent the themselves in a vacuum, and society cannot be made unless people create it together. The goal, of this pedagogy are to relate personal growth to public life, by developing strong skills, academic knowledge, habits or inquiry. and critical curiosity about society, power, inequality, and change”(16). This discusses why schooling is very important to children. This is were our future lies in, whatever we teach the students now will impact the future of humanity.

When thinking about our future I remember my teachers talking about whether or not we would be using the material learned in the class rooms in our future. Some students did not see how learning stuff like algebra, science, etc. would help us in the future. Stated in the article by the author, Shor states, “This does not mean that students have nothing to learn from biology or ,mathematics or engineering as they now exist. Neither does it mean that students reinvent subject matter each time they study it or that the academic expertise of the teacher has no role in the classroom”(35). This is important because the author talks about the importance that teachers have in the classrooms. They should be able to put their own ideas in what they are teaching to relate it to the students.

This article relates to “Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome” by Christopher Kliewer. This is because they both are connected to how the future in teaching is very important to the future of humanity. They both discuss on how important the teachers are to the student, and how they can actually help more if they put their own ideas in their teachings.

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

The article I choose to write about this week is, “Citizenship in school: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome” by Christopher Kliewer. Now this topic impacts me a lot, due to the fact that back in high school I was in a class called Partners Program. In this class I was able to work with kids with many disabilities. I grew close with one student in particular, he had down syndrome. He was one of the smartest and happiest person I know. In the article it discusses how students are being segregated from the others due to their disability.

Mia stated, “I started to notice that I didn’t like the classes I was taking called special education. I had to go through special ed. almost all my life. I wanted to take other classes that interested me. I had never felt so mad, I wanted to cry”(1 Kliewer). This quote really got me thinking because in the partners classroom I don’t think this was discussed much with the kids, or the students never really said anything about the classes they were taking. They usually listened to the teachers that helped them. I wonder what classes students would pick if they were given the opportunity to pick their classes.

Jason stated “Now we know that people with disabilities can learn and have full, rich life. The challenge is to erase negative attitudes about people with developmental disabilities, get rid of the stereotypes and break the barriers for people with disabilities (1 Kliewer). This is true, I remember the first time I even got into the partners class, I though that some of the students needed a lot of help with their school work. But that totally changed the first day of class. I witnessed first hand how smart they are. Mostly when I worked with my friend who had down syndrome, he was able to do a lot more than I expected.

When the author states “By the end of John’s first year in Mendocino he was holding down two part-time jobs; taking weekly voice, art, and guitar lessons; attending aerobics class five morning a week; occasionally reading stores to kids at the local preschool; helping his mother teach a class on self-esteem to a group of troubled adolescents… (89 Kliewer). I find this to be interesting because I know some students who leave the partners program after graduating high school are sent out to a specific school to help them gain skills to work. I know a few of the students I had interacted with went to work for the blue cross.

Taking this class was a big learning experience for me and I am happy I took the class.

Literacy with an Attitude

This week we were assigned to read “Tracking: Why Schools Need Another route”, “Detracked and Going Strong”, and “Literacy with an Attitude”, but my blog will touch upon, “Literacy with an Attitude” by Patrick J. Finn. This article discusses about how the rich tend to get powerful literacy and the working class get domesticating literacy.

This article made me think a lot about the two high schools that were located in Cranston, Cranston East and West. Jean Anyon studied five fifth grade classes, ranging from high class students to middle class. She stated, “First Anyon noted similarities among the schools. They were nearly all white. They were all located in northern New Jersey and subject to the same state requirements.” This was also the case in Cranston, in the west side of Cranston there were more white people, and in the east side you could find a wide variety of ethnicity.

Chapter 13 talks about how Aronwitz and Giroux talk about how education is more than just teaching from curriculum’s.  Finn states “Aronowitz and Giroux suggest that we must view teachers not primarily as technicians equipped to accomplish goals set for them by curriculum experts and administrators but as intellectuals, free women and men with special dedication to the values of the intellect and the enhancement of the critical powers of the young.” I think this is vert important for teachers to know, because being a teacher is more than just teaching kids what they should know about certain subjects, they should also teach their students about ways they can succeed in life.

In chapter 14 I found this quote really interesting, “By chance there was a strike at a local factory a few days later, and Peterson took six students armed with a tape recorder to the factory to interview the strikers. He believed these six students learned more in that half-hour than they had in years of social studies lessons. His class began to discuss their parents’ jobs-where they worked and whether they belonged to a union.” I find this really interesting because when I was in fifth grade, we learned about the Jewish holocaust, and I remember my teacher setting up a field trip for us to go to a museum where it was all about the holocaust. Going to the museum really made me get more interested in that topic and I remember learning a lot about how bad they were treated and seeing the people who died.

This relates to White Privilege by Peggy Melntosh, because this article discusses on how the rich, which in Literacy with an Attitude, are the white people tend to get a better education mostly when it comes to literacy.  We can see how white students even at the age of five get privileged to be taught better in classrooms, than colored middle class students.

 

Becoming something Different: Learning from Esme

The article Becoming something different: Learning from Esme by Fairbanks discusses how a Latina names Esme, who speaks Spanish, perspective is on school. they mainly focus on her when she was in sixth grade all the way to junior year of high school.

Colleen states in the beginning that Esme says “She also saw her- self as increasingly American (as opposed to Mexican, the cultural orientation of her parents).” See this has never happened to me when moving from a middle school in Providence to a middle school in Cranston. I have always kept my Mexican heritage with me and made sure I had Spanish friends to continue to communicate in Spanish with. This article relates to Rodriguez Hunger of Memory  here he discusses how he loses his Spanish speaking language after only using English around the house.

I do agree with Fairbanks when she states “Furthermore, other scholars argue that Latina/o students would experience greater success in school if their cultural and linguistic practices were considered valuable cultural resources.” I find this to be very true. Mostly because when I went to high school my friends introduced me to a Spanish kid who just came from Guatemala and he felt very comfortable around them because they were able to communicate in Spanish. Soon after he became one of my best friends and till this day we still communicate. Now he is able to speak both English and Spanish to me.

Another quote that stuck out to me was “She and her friends did not seem to want to be positioned as “school girls,” but they were associated with the characteristics that generally de ne school girls in middle school: girls that mostly do their work, that pay attention, that goes early to class and you know, we do get early to our classes but when we get there, we talk. It doesn’t mean we’re all like into the books.” This was very common at my school, girls would tend to want to go to class early just to have conversations with each other, they never really wanted to go to start working in class.

In Service of What?

The articles assigned to read was “In the Service of What? The Politics of Service Learning” by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer. This article discusses the topic of how important community and service learning impacts students is positive ways. Back in high school I attended Cranston high school East, there we were required to do 20 hours of community service in order to graduate. For some students they had to do more than 20 hours of community service. So in high school for community service I worked with a gym names Zuccolo in providence and the Guatemalan soccer recreation. While in college since I am an athlete we are required to attend a school in North Providence, and we work with the kids, help them do homework, play sports with them, and games.

“In addition to helping those they serve, such service learning activities seek to promote students’ self-esteem, to develop higher-order thinking skills, to make use of multiple abilities, and to provide authentic learning experiences—all goals of current curriculum reform efforts.” I can see how doing community service helps students with these abilities. With promoting students self-esteem this is due to them working with many different people, they are helping the community which makes them feel happy and a better human being. High-order of thinking makes the students have to figure out what they have to do in order to help people, whether it is working with homeless people or like me young athletes.

“While an additional emphasis on charity might lead to service learning activities that raise self-esteem, impel students into new experiences, and demonstrate the value of scholastic abilities in real-world contexts, educators who focus on a transformation vision would want to carry this work one step further.” Doing community service leads to new experiences for the everyone who does it. Whether a wealthy student helps homeless people they see how hard life is. the students also work on their real-world contexts because they have to communicate to many people they need to use their decision making skills and communication skills.

“As Lawrence Cremin explains, these educators believed that, “by manipulating the school curriculum, they could ultimately change the world.”5 Thus Dare the Schools Build a New
Social Order? was the aptly chosen title of George Counts’ widely read book.” Doing community service I believe depends on what service you do you can change the world. I can say that working with the soccer recreation helped better younger lives than it was working in the basketball recreation. I say this because for the recreation building I only made sure the kids were safe from getting hurt and made sure the gym was clean. Then for the soccer league I was able to help the young athletes become better soccer players.
This article relates to “In the Future, Diverse Approaches to Schooling” this is because in this article is discusses how the future shaping of schooling is. After a few years the students are being required to doing more and more community service.

 

Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us: Critiquing Cartoons and Society

The article assigned to us was “Unlearning the myths that Blind Us: Critiquing Cartoons and Society” by Christensen. This topic is discussed a lot in school. I find this topic also very interesting to me. Mostly because growing up many kids watch cartoons. I still till this day enjoy watching the cartoons I watched when I was a kid. But now it is different because i understand more.

Christensen stated “Our society’s culture industry colonizes their minds and teaches them how to act, live, and dream. This indoctrination hits young children especially hard.” (Christensen 1) This is true while growing up I learned a lot of how to act because of the cartoons. I thought the world was like the cartoons I saw. When I was young I loved watching Dragon Ball Z. This anime was about one man who was able to fly, instant transmission, turn super saiyan. He fought against many evil villeins to save the world. I remember changing my hair style to spiking it up due to me iodizing Goku.

“We are not only taught certain styles of violence, the latest fashions, and sex roles by TV, Movies magazines, and comic strips; we are also taught how to succeed, how to love, how to buy, how to conquer, how to forget the past and suppress the future. We are taught more than anything else, how not to rebel.” (Christensen) I agree so much when she says this because this is true I hear a lot of my friends who state a lot of lines from their cartoons. Cartoons like Family guide, American Dad, and Robot chicken are bad influences on children who watch them.

“They assure me that they make their own choices and the media has no power over them as they sit with Fubu, Nike, Timberland or whatever the latest fashion rage might be.” (Christensen) This is so true because while growing up my soccer teammates spent so much money on buying the best cleats. While in school many males wanted to get the new Jordans that come out. Even now I hear my younger cousins talk about how many pairs of Jordans I have. Even at my job Eblens where we sell shoes, many young and even adults come in talking about how they want the new Jordans that come out.

Over all I do believe that cartoons have a huge influence on children.

Speaking the unspeakable in forbidden places:Addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the primary school.

 

The article that was assigned to read was “Speaking the unspeakable in forbidden places’ addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the primary school” by Allan, Atkinson, Brace, DePalma and Hemingway. This article discusses how these researchers want to focus on three major points, the classrooms, staffrooms, and the school-based after-school art club. These three major points are being focused because they want to see how they are taught about LGBT community.

” The primary school is often thought of as a place of safety and innocence; a place where childhood is both nurtured and sheltered, and attempts to address what are seen as ‘adult’ issues are sometimes seen as intrusions into or threats to this safety zone.” (1) This is true mostly because when I was in school anything that had to be taught in a purity way. I remember never learning about LGBT in middle school and was briefly touched upon in high school.

There was this one quote that stuck out to me it was when Cindy said “That felt horrible but I couldn’t avoid it, seeing as I was perfectly happy about answering all the other questions and I was doing this for the very reason I was aware that we hadn’t spoken much about lesbians … so I wanted to present a positive lesbian to them who was comfortable about being a lesbian.”(3) This is because I remember in elementary school and some parts of middle school where I was never taught the difference between lesbian and gay. I knew that lesbians can only be for women and gay for guys. But I remember most of my fellow classmates used Gay a whole lot more than lesbian. Sometimes in the community I hear kids say, “Oh that’s gay” to mean that they don’t like something.

Lastly this last quote that impacted me was “Of course, there is a large body of literature that acknowledges the way in which childhood has been viewed as a time of ‘presumed sexual innocence’ – a time where children are presumed to remain untouched and untroubled by the cares of the adult sexual world to come (Jackson 1982; Piper 2000; Renold 2002; Kehily and Montgomery 2004).2 As Jackson (1982) suggests, discussions of children and sex remain controversial (especially in schools); children are defined by adults as a special category of people deserving adult protection and sympathy.” This is because right now I am in a course called Human Sexuality, in this class we discuss topics about sex. Just last week we had one of our professor’s good friends come into class to discuss about LGBT. There I learned a lot about LGBT.  After that class we discussed as to when it was a good time to teach kids about the topic, and we said around preschool. Why is this? Because that is when kids ask many questions about life. And starting them young would make sure they are well educated about the topic.

“Why can’t she remember that?”

The article “Why can’t she remember that?” The importance of storybook reading in multilingual, multicultural classrooms by Terry Meier discusses teachers in counters with how bad students reading experiences are when they enter preschool or kindergarten. The introduction discusses how states like New Mexico, Florida, California, and Texas are growing with immigrant migration.

In Children using language in powerful ways, the author states “…. Marisa’s father teased her by offering her with a taco with chile, even though he knew that Marisa didn’t like chile.”(Meier 2) During this interaction we can see that a father is joking around with his child, simply with food. The author continues to discuss how the daughter tells the father that she doesn’t like chile and that she is going to hit him. The father then gets serious and tells her with an angry voice “A quien le vas a pegar?” (Who are you going to hit?) and she is quick to change the subject and make it a joke. She does this by changing quickly her attitude towards her dads question and sings all her family members who she would hit. This relates to me because I am also Mexican and I remember when my father did the same to me. He knew I was not used to eating a chile but had me try one. I remember biting into the chile and burning my mouth. I was so mad because as soon as i told him it burned really bad he tells me not to eat the seeds. He thought that I had already knew that. This quote also reminds me of while growing up my two sisters used to use their changing in behavior to blame me for everything they did bad.

In Not necessarily so… the author states “Not so for Marisa and Lem, who do not hear stories read to them by adults. In this respect, they are like many children in urban multilingual, multicultural classrooms.”(Meier 3) Throughout my childhood I actually remember my mom reading to my sister and I Spanish books. I also do remember having older cousins read to me English books. I was very fortunate to have those relatives who spoke English and helped me be able to understand and have good experiences with books. I have a little sister who I also read book to her when she was young and now she enjoins reading them.

I agree when the author states “Many children who are unused to book and being read to find it difficult to sit still for the time it takes the teacher to read even a fairly short picture book.”(Meier 4) This is true because when a preschool or kindergartner comes to school and they have never been read too it takes them a while to get used to sitting still. This is due to them not understanding that it is reading time and because they do not see the importance of reading books.

The Silenced dialogue

The article I will be discussing about is “The Silenced Dialogue”, by Lisa Delpit. In this article it discusses how there are many debates about how students are being educated. This is also a topic discussed when it comes to teaching students with other first languages, other than English, as to how it is best to teach them. When teaching young kids it takes time and effort from teachers in order to achieve their growth in class. Every year the students have to be better with writing and speaking English, as well as math. These are things that are going to take time for students to learn, no matter what race you are. The only thing teachers need to focus on is how students best learn these things.

I remember while in school we had classes like ESL where they sent all the non native language speakers were sent to. There they were taught how to write and speak English. I have a cousin who was in ESL with English being her second language, she went to Classical High school. She was in all Honors courses and had good grades. Then when it was time to graduate from high school, she had many offers from Colleges/Universities. She was not only good in school but also a very good soccer player. Being a good student and athlete, she was given a full ride scholarship to the University of Rhode Island.  She is now in her senior year and is due to graduate in 2017 with a degree in Accountant. So from that experience I can see that some teachers know how to educate students with Spanish being their second language.

Sometimes I tend to forget English words due to me having Spanish as my first language. This is because when I think of words sometimes Spanish comes into mind, and also when we make sentences we tend to say the opposite in English. I even still have trouble sometimes spelling things due to this also.