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.