Paolo Friere

I liked the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I had to read this book for a few other classes of mine and everytime I read it I find something new about it that I liked. He makes a valid arguement about the oppressed and the oppressors and makes it so everyone can relate to what he is saying. By reading this book, as teachers I feel it makes us all more aware of our classroom atmosphere and surroundings.

Kuma Chapter 13

In this chapter of the book, Kuma talks about monitoring teaching acts. The part that I am going to discuss is the part in the chapter where he talks about product-oriented models, vs. process-oriented models. In product oriented models, a description of the teachers behavior is necessary in order to build a classroom behavior profile of the teacher. The things that they would look for in these observations are if the teachers asks questions, their tone in voice, whether the teacher gives direction, etc. These models are good for a partial understanding of classroom activities. On the other hand in process-oriented models, the observations are based on the assumption that an interpretation of classroom acitivites is necessary in order to understand classroom processes and practices. They focus on classroom input as well as interaction. They treat the classroom as individuals and not as a collective mass. These types of models have strengthened our capacity to understand classroom events. I believe that both of these models are useful but in different ways. If I was to go into a classroom and observe the teacher and how she or he runs the classroom and what types of things they do to make the classroom run I would use a product-oriented approach to observing that classroom. If I wanted to understand the processes of the classroom and the fine tuning of how it was run and works together and look at specifics about the students I would use a process-oriented approach to observations. This part of the chapter was intriguing to me because I have been in the classroom plenty of times to observe and I always know what I will be looking for but I guess I really didnt know that there were specific models for the different types of observations you can do. It was news to me.

Kuma Chapter 11

This chapter of Kuma deals with Ensuring Social Relevance. Social relevance is real important in the education system. Kuma makes a point to tell us that a classroom isnt an island, it is part of a bigger picture which is the society it is in which influences it and is a reflection of the world around it. It talked a lot about language and how the languages in the society around the school influence highly what the students come to school speaking. This is not a bad thing, we have to embrace it and accept the differences of our students and tend to their needs no matter what because language is only one part of education. Also from other readings and hear say, I know it is important to make the children aware of their social surroundings because most of the politics in education is the society around them. If you can incorporate the society into the classroom it makes learning more meaningful for the students because they can see themselves in the learning and it can reflect their lives. A students social relevance to the society is an important part of their education. The microstrategies for this chapter were also very interesting and seem like something I could do with my own classroom.

Progress on the Final Project

To date, Tina and I have everything done that we can. We have our observations done, and our lesson plans are done and have been checked by Kasia. We set up the dates for our workshop, the first one is tomorrow. The next two are Nov 19th and Dec 3rd. Im excited to start doing the workshops because we have put a lot of hard work into everything so far the workshops are going to be such a reward to do.

Kuma Chapter 10

This chapter was entitled "Integrating Language Skills." In L2 learning and teaching we have to integrate the language domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Traditionally we did this through interactive scenarios, problem-solving tasks, content-based activities, project-based activities, whole-langauge activities, and experiential activities. These activities provide students with a degree of conceptual, communicative, and linguistic challenge that can be monitored and maintained on all levels of proficiency. This chapter was really interesting to me being that I am a bilingual major and integrating language skills into the classroom everyday is what I will be doing for the rest of my life. I also found the microstrategies for teaching very useful in this section of the book because they had some good examples such as describing some sort of text that they read, and what was most incredible to me was their idea of "reality TV" and see what they thought it was and explain and make a lesson out of it because Tina and I are kind of doing something similar at the ELI for our final project where we are putting on our own News Broadcast where everyones going to play a role and we will learn news broadcast dialogue and key words and phrases. It was cool to see that it was one of the examples but we had already been working on it all semester without even knowing this was an example of something you could do to incorporate the language skills in a lesson.

Waiting for "Superman" movie

LOVE LOVE LOVED this! Such a moving/thought provoking movie. I really liked the effort that was put forth in this movie and I thought it was done really well, but I didn't like how they put such an emphasis on charter schools and put them in a light that made public school systems look horrible because though public school systems arent the best, their are some that so work and do show good potential and have student's being successful in them. It's sad to think that there are schools that when children enter them they have this idea that they can't succeed and can't go to college just because they feel their educational system is going to disappoint them. The teachers in these schools need to be more confident and passionate about what they are doing to promote a better ideal of the school they're representing.
As far as the article goes, Shor's arguement is mainly about how this is a poor portrayal of the public school systems because it doesn't take into account the budget cuts and annual testing regimes that the charter schools don't have to worry about. It only shows the viewer what they want them to see to glamorize charter schools but not giving us the whole facts about why the public schools are failing and what feeds into that. I agree with what he says because these charter schools are very selective and take only children who are succeeding to begin with, they don't have to take any child that could be a "challenge" such as children with needs or children who speak other languages. The charter schools create their own success in results because they only allow students who can succeed more easily into their schools and if they fall behind, they can kick them out because they don't want their test scores to fall. Public schools on the other hand are required to accept all students no matter what kind of educational support they need. I liked this movie a lot and I thought it was well done for the purpose that they wanted but I felt that it left out a lot of main points and ideas to make public schools look way worse than they are.

Open Mic Poetry Night

AWESOME! I loved it and first want to comment on how hilarious the main speaker was, he kept me laughing. But on a more serious note, I really did enjoy this. They talked about some serious issues about identity and finding the who in who you are or want to become or be seen. It was really moving because since I am a Caucasian woman it was interesting to understand what others my age go through just because of the race they are. It ties into bell hooks chapters because she talked heavily about diversity and race and uses her own stories to portray how it was for her growing up in a prejudice neighborhood. These students are many years past hers and were in school after they desegregated the schools and still it almost seemed like some of there stories were like bell hooks. It is interesting because though we want to believe that racism is coming closer to an end, the truth is that it really is not. There is just as much racism and segregation now as there was before. I personally think that there is still a lot of segregation but instead of it being implemented through the government it is now implemented in the idea of feeling safe and accepted. Chicago is a major example of segregation because theres pilsen where its mostly hispanic, theres china town, an area where all the polish people reside, and parts that are heavily african american among other races who reside in other parts of the city. Segregation now a days is implemented through the people by means of where they choose to live. People most often will choose a neighborhood where their race is highly representative so though no one is telling them that it where they have to live they are segregating themselves by means of fitting in and trying to feel accepted among others. Though I feel this issue is not leaving us anytime soon I think there are ways we can work at it to make the situation better by becoming more accepting of others and differences we have. By promoting these differences and teaching students to accept others how they are earlier in life we can start to try to prevent early racisms or prejudices that people have.