Empowering Education

Dewey argued, participation in school and society is crucial to learning and In democracy.

It was interesting to see this happen right in front of me or the fact that I was apart this empowering education. For a teacher to let her/his students take control of the classroom or lesson is amazing. I believe student learn so more when being able to speak freely, because your learning from others peers of the same groups, so you're learning from their point of view or experiences. In a classroom settings, my teacher I volunteer for lets her class help one another with problems. She lets them teach each other different ways of solving problems.

Dewey empathized participation as the point at which democracy and

learning meet in the classroom. For him, participation was an educational

and political means for students to gain knowledge and to develop

as citizens. Only by active learning could students develop

scientific method and democracy habits rather than becoming passive

pupils waiting to he told what things mean and what to do. 

Seeing this take place in a classroom where a teacher have deadlines and standards that the school demands. Seeing, my teacher supervise these lessons where the students are the teachers, teaching them a lesson, or testing them can be very stressing when there's paper works that needs to meet, grades, reviews, and with datelines. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2053660010/empowering-education-a-global-study

Becoming Something Diferent

This article remind of hunger of Memory. Both were from Latino background but Richard Rodriguez family conformed to what the school wanted. In this article is explaining the struggles these children really have, they're so many obstacles they have to face to succeed in education. Some of these students are first generation in English speaking schools or being here in this country. I have worked with students like this and its hard because some of them don't speak English and we had start with the basics for translating so they can learn how to speak. And i know this hard because who is there to help with homework when there's no who can read or write in English. And it can be harder on children who are older, it may take them a longer time then it would a second grader. This are behind in understanding the language or getting help on homework if their parents don't speak English. And Most of the time parents of working-class or working poor homes don't have time because they're working more then one job to support the family.
 And I understand this on a personal level as well. even thou I'm a second generation, I was raised by my grand parents who needed help speaking to teachers or helping with homework, report cards, etc. like esme parents, they tried to supported with the limits and time they had. I thought it was interesting that esme had no confident in her answers or knowledge or even the wrong that her answer could be wrong and taking a chance because i believe this true with many students. i know i was one of them, in class we watched a ted video about the fear of frailer. we need to teach student its okay to be wrong or make mistakes because thats how we learn, improve and grow.
At Leviton students are encourage to speak and learn in both English and Spanish. i think it helps both kind of language speaking student because if a student answers in Spanish another student will translate so they are learning the material as well as language, having confidence to speak.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/javiermoreno/lost-in-translation

Social Justice Event

Now, because I missed so much of the first social justice event but I did learn that it's okay to fail. In class we watched a TED video about this and it was motion in Becoming Something Different. As teachers need to teach student it's okay to make a mistake. Whats more then worrying about frailer is learning from them. We fear to make a mistake and worry about perfection or the highest grade level instead of what are we learning from the assignment. It's okay to fail, it helps us to improve, to grow, to think outside of the box. When a student learns how to not be afraid of frailer, they can learn to use critical thinking.
 Because I missed so much of the first social event, I wanted to join a second one. This event was called From belly dancer to burqas: media representations of Muslim women.  The speaker was Dr. Afshan Jafar and opened up the presentation with us writing the first three words that comes to mind, when thinking of a Muslim women. And when she read them out loud, she wanted us to notice which words were repeated, to see the pattern. Some of the words that were repeated to the question, "Muslim women are?' Strong, Covered Up, Misunderstood, Not Equal, Hidden. What i learned by the question is that people have similar opinion of Muslim. Also, that it's not a valid question, it's a generalized question because Muslims women are different from different countries, religion, culture. Dr. Afshan Jafar also made some points that in each culture it's different, it's up to them of how covered up they feel that they should be.
What people don't realize that your home is home no matter others may feel. I think she said it was a quote "where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face, it's barbaric but it's home." and if you take the bias away from your thought you would understand that this is true. Example: if you're from the ghetto, where there's always killings, robbery's, and crimes. You'll always call it home because it's where you're from, you grow up there. Don't judge a book by it's cover. We as people are always quick to judge someone who is different, instead of getting to know someone. Dr. Jafar showed this image

It was interesting, to see that they both felt the same way and that it's was a negative reaction. Why they couldn't ask questions like, ' oh, I wonder whats her name? or "why do you were that?" why can't we try to respect and understand one another. "choice is never free" interesting because of social pressure. Sexy can mean many things to different society. The approval can be oppressive, example: what kind of body type needs to be in a bathing suit to be approved by society. Is it social or is it men oppressed? If I had a choice, I'm not sure which I'd choose? These are more then just questions, why choose? because of the clothing or of the appearance. We don't think about who these people under the clothing as women.
Dr. Jafar also showed us a popular picture from National Geographic. And the man who took this picture title it "Haunted eyes of an Afghan Refugee's fear's" in 1985. What's crazy is that he never tried to even ask her for her name or even asked permission to take the picture. I think that bizarre. While after 911, they paid him to find the woman in this picture to write a article on her. In 2002, he found her and this was the cover:

Dr. Jafar said in western civilization consider not being able to see someone face that they don't have a identity.
The reading connection I thought of was A Indian Father's Plea because his plead was trying to get the community and school to understand their culture, that his son shouldn't feel isolated or ashamed of who he is. This culture is so misunderstood and prejudged without even attempting to learn from them or questions. Another connection was Unlearning the Myths that Blinds Us because how the media plays such a big role on the prejudgment we as society have on these women and culture, especially after 911.

Kahne & Westheimer, "In The Service of What?"

I honestly don't know if any of my community service programs count as service learning, or more like at the time did I learn anything from them?

I have worked in cleaning up community parks. This is probably lower level learning. we cleaned up parks over the summer. Keeping them clean for children so, they can have somewhere to play that wasn't invested with used needles that they can get stabbed or hurt with.We picked up trash, we also did the up keep of the grass. Also some adults like to come and play hand ball, basketball, or even workout. Everyone wants their neighborhood to look nice an clean. It felt good when we saw children play with smiles.

The other community service I did was at a school during the summer. Helping with the school lunch program. And at the time I was young and I thought volunteering was a cool thing to do, to be around people, meeting new ones, and being around friends. I have always liked children so I felt this was easy for me. I helped with servicing the lunches, making sure everyone got one, making sure children behaved, and then cleaning. At the time I didn't realized how important it was. Now, that I'm older i know they are children who go hungry everyday and when there's no during the summer this is a good way to help with those issues during the summer. A lot of these have no where to go and this helps even if it's for a few hours. I don't know if it's everywhere but in some places instead of the kids going to schools for lunch, the people go to the parks where these children play at and provide them with lunches there. I think this is pretty cool because they're being watched by the volunteers at the park and by the person that's giving lunch to them while playing with other children.

Now as an adult in college, apart of my education i volunteer in schools so i can learn in my future career field. I'm working with children and learning how to work with them to help with their education and my own. I'm learning about diversity in public schools. What I should be aware of in the classroom, learning of technology being used in schools today, learning how to deal with situations that may or may not come up in a classroom.

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

I found it difficult to decide what kind of Cinderella I would be. I didn’t want to be
completely feminine because they see loads of very feminine fairy tale characters all the
time and yet they also seem to think that all lesbians look like men so I wanted to
challenge that in them too. So I decided to be definitely female but not pink and pretty. I
wore boots and a sparkly wig and a skirt and a leather jacket.
I thought this was interesting because she give her class a visual experience and not a stereotype of what a lesbian should be. I also found it interesting how the children were more accepting of the story king and king, but maybe because of the happy ending. I think it's a good idea to teach children of people of LGBT. So, they can be more accepting of others who are different and maybe it also would be easier for parents as well. Having educators who may have the knowledge or have done maybe work shops for this topic can express, educate, and maybe give the correct information to these children. I also think parents should help out as well. This is such a touchy subject because of beliefs, fears, and just trying to protect children. I believe all schools should have education on racism and on LGBT so we can have a future generation who are more accepting of others.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/07/28/nyc-to-open-high-school-for-gays/

Unlearning The Myths that Blinds Us

I like she opened up this article by describing herself, to us know she no Disney princess herself. I think this is the article that tied everything together for me. I saw the connections before but this is so eye opening. It connects to the first article Johnson because they make you think of what you see everyday but never actually seen it for what it was. I never even noticed how I felt as a child how I felt of the fact there wasn't any female cartoon characters in shows like bugs bunny, until space jams came out and I was so excited because she was a female and not a male pretending to be one and that she could play basketball, than I could relate to her. I didn't look up to Disney princess like my cousins growing up because I wasn't girly. Where was my connection? I never believed in man should be my hero. I think there should more characters out in the media for all little girls to connect to. The only one I can think of now is the movie brave because she felt she should take her destiny in her own hands and not be married, she wanted independents. There are so many different little kids out there so they should have characters like them in books, cartoons, movies, etc. I teach my daughter that a woman can do whatever a man can do. and this is for little boys too. Growing up i used hate when the men in family use to say to my brother, "Man up" or "Act like a Man", like what is that suppose to mean? because he was a quite little boy. I used to defend him. Like what do they want from a six years old child? fight, be angry? I just didn't understand. Gender roles shouldn't be pressured on a child. Children are smart, they learn by seeing, hearing, an experiencing things for themselves. Let them be who they want to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VqsbvG40Ww

Hunger of Memory the education of Richard Rodriguez

I do disagree with the fact that the parents listened to nuns and let their children speak only English. I can relate with Richard because I'm a Latina who was born in America. And as time goes by without speaking Spanish to another person, the worst my Spanish get's. I think it's because mentally we start processing information in English. Which makes it harder to speak  Spanish because you have to say it backwards from English, it's spoken in opposite. 

When his uncle and other family members comes to visit and they get so angry with the children because they don't speak their native language. this is so true because our elders are proud of their culture. they get mad in this situation because language is apart of the culture your from and its in embarrassing when the younger generation is letting all that history die. They probably feel that if they let that die then whats next? the history? Us younger generation who struggles with speaking our culture language, most of the time it isn't that we want that its just harder for to practice it, so we forget. As for me I'm one of them but I wont let my culture or traditions die out. I'm very proud of my history. So I try to keep alive by learning, cooking, celebrating traditions.