Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture....

This was an interesting article.  I think there were a lot of things in it that I had figured out for myself previous to reading but it was good to have research back me up.

The first thing that I made note of was when the author talks about using "multicultural texts featuring people of color as protagonist [is] in our experiences as students and educators, we witnessed practiced around these so-called 'multicultural' texts that were equally, if not more disempowering of students of color than more traditional and less diverse texts."  I think this will be something that will be good for me to remember, though I really don't feel like I would ever look for a Ethiopian protagonist book for my Ethiopian student. 

I think my favorite part was when the author talks about how learning and understanding Shakespeare or other academic texts is empowering to students.  It gives them confidence with other readings.  I truly understand and agree with that statement.  I think texts like Shakespeare are intimidating but when students have a grasp of them, the are ready for the next text.

Another one of my favorite parts was when it states that our jobs as educators is to "make students more critical consumers of all information that they encounter in their daily lives and to also give them the skills to become more capable producers of counterinformation; the goal is to make them slaves to a different (and more politically correct) ideology."  I really like the first part.  I think it is important that when a student leaves your classroom that they are aware of all information and that they have the tools to process that information. 

On a similar note I liked that in one of the examples where the teacher states that she will be grading on skills that are no longer emphasized in many classrooms such as working well with classmates, presenting one's ideas orally, and engaging in respectful, yet critical conversations with teachers and classmates. 

I won't take time to talk about the examples that I liked but instead mention them.  I loved that those high school students became activist for themselves and wanted to make a change in their school.  Once they realized that some schools had more than enough and they weren't able to have their own math book to take home, they wanted change.  The other example was using hip hop in the classroom.  That is a great way to get students interested in what they are learning!

The Critical Pedagogy Reader

This was powerful!  It means nothing to teach students what year the Cold War ended.  It is important to teach students about the world.  It is important to give students an understanding of what is really going on.  This way they can become informed adults and make opinions that are based on what they really thing and not what they have been told.  But unfortunately that is about all I got out of this article.  I don't know if it was because of the examples that I couldn't relate to or the wording, or even the length but this was tough for me.  I actually find myself looking to other blogs of classmates to see if they had a grip of what this was about. 

I do understand the cultural battle of power and wealth and how there is always struggle.  I do like the example of how American's think of themselves as the leaders in freedom and we excel in promoting freedoms.  But really we are a "terrorist regime." 

Ideology was a section that I thought was common sense, and the author uses that exact word to describe what ideology is.  We are all born with ideology and it is what our world revolves around. But it is also a negative in our lives with others. 

The section on hidden curriculum was weird to me.  I assume there are studies to back up their facts but I have never thought of this or recognized it. 

Reading the rest of the article was like looking into the sun while cutting onions, it hurt!

 

paulo freire

This article is my high school!  I am the student that was taught by this teacher!  I always had teachers that taught students like they were getting shot at with a dart gun; sometimes the dart sticks and sometimes it doesn't.  And really after hit by the dart gun all I knew is that I was hit and didn't know why.  I left classes able to memorize facts that were needed for the test, and if that was all we needed to know I didn't see a reason to learn anything else.  Things don't change in college level classes either.  Anyone who has taken a class in the EWU history dept. can tell you that the professors know everything there is to know and students are hardly able to spell their names.  The saddest part about this style is that there is no creativity and we don't learn from each other from discussions.  A teacher may have read 4 books on Serbia but there could be a student in a class that grew up in Serbia and could add to the classes knowledge of the wars that were going on there.  I don’t think that student’s learn best in this way.  They aren’t fully emerged in the information and digesting it.  Instead it is just going in one ear and out the other ear right after the test.  I have taken plenty of History classes that I have left and remember nothing from.  It would help to get the information in lecture form and do something with the material.  Not only would you be hearing it, but also using it to “build” something else.  That way you are using the information in several ways and the information has several chances to stick in your head for more than a quarter. 

common cores

I have to be honest... This was not a fun article/ story/ summary to read.  It is useful but to just sit down on a Sunday afternoon for some light reading, I struggled to get through this.  Through each grade level it is the same goal with just something a little more specific added.  At the end of each grade level there is a section that summarizes range of reading and complexity and for each grade it just states at ex. 12th grade level, which is interesting to me.  It is a plus also that if you know the standards for one grade, the same standard will be the same content but more complex or less complex depending on the grade. The standards are good at letting a teacher know what skills a certain age should be able to accomplish but doesn't spell out what exactly they want.  I think they are a great guide on what to include in lessons but there is still a lot of flexibility left for the teachers to interpret the guidelines.  I guess this helps each school set its own curriculum and different materials they want to use.  They are just needing to use their selected material to reach the goals.  It is also funny that not all states have adopted the CCSS.  And the one of the states that didn’t was Texas.  Some of the states are ahead of Washington and have been using these standards previous.  I do wish, for my legalistic personality, that the CCSS were more exact.  I wish they said, by grade ten students will be able to read and analyze a poem.  Or by tenth grade history students will learn about the civil war and be able to identify the two sides, and what they wanted.  I just want to be told what to do. 

Democratic Society

When I was first reading and making judgement as I went along, I came across the line, "All participants in a democratic discussion have the opportunity to voice a strongly felt view and the obligation to devote every ounce of their attention to each speaker's words."  I was thinking that I know people during re-elections know the democratic or republican stance so well, but they know nothing about the other side or what they do know is false.  They haven't taken the time to listen what the other has to say but only hear their own voice.  How can I expect young students to follow this "democratic society?"   But as I kept reading I found out that they author knows the complications involved in this, and that he or she knows that listening is much more complicated than speaking.  At the end of the end of the article he addresses some of the problems with discussion in the classroom.  

To have a successful discussion everyone needs to attentively listen to others first.  The act of speaking isn't valued as much as the listening.  One of the most important things I got from this was that doing these discussions will not only help a person learn the other side of an opinion but will help the listener to evaluate their own opinion.  It is so likely that a young person has an opinion because that is what they know or what they have been taught, but once they take time to think outside their own thoughts and listen to someone else's opinion they can reaffirm what they thought or develop a new opinion.  To me it is important to have young people thinking and developing their own opinion.  It is a struggle to get people to think outside what they know but is so beneficial to all parts of our life.  

About ME!

I am a student in English 493 as well as a teacher candidate at Eastern Washington University.   I have been placed in Reardan Washington in a 10th and 11th grade English class as well as 7th grade history.  I am excited to become a teacher and work with young adults.  I feel that I relate well students and can understand them well.  I am passionate about history and English and can't wait to show students how fun both subjects can be.  There is one thing that I do worry about when it comes to me teaching...

I really hate reading out loud!  I love to read and I am a good reader.  I understand what I am reading when I read to myself but when I am asked to read out loud I have no idea what I am saying and I am thinking about everything but the text I'm reading.  The weird thing is that I have no issues with public speaking and I'm not shy; I just hate reading out loud.  I have hated reading out loud as long as I can remember.  I feel like the letters are moving around and I have to focus so much more to read the words, but I am focused on everything but reading.

My goal for this class is to get a better repertoire of secondary level reading materials.  I have read some books but I feel like I lack in this area.  I don't recall reading many books in my past for classes.