Week Nine Update

For some reason I am having a harder time keeping up with this blog than my other ones. Anyway, we had a great class last week discussing Nieto's Chapter 7 and learning about many theories that attempt to explain educational underachievement. There is just sooooo much to discuss and that I want to share with you that I frequently run out of time. . .All of the videos that I have shown you from the "Eyes on the Prize" series can be found on the second floor of the library and watched there for free.

Please don't forget that class on March 19 will be in ACD211 as we will learn how to do some research on the schools for our school diversity project! Also, the reading for the week was Neito, ch 9(don't worry about the case studies!). . .we will not read the Spring book as the weekly reading, you will be presenting the book in small groups!

There is also the possiblilty that the NCATE team will visit our class tomorrow. The NCATE, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, team will be on campus Tues and Wed!

CFA Strike Update

Just to let everyone know there will be class on Monday. . .there will be no impact on us from the strike until the beginning of April at the earliest!! Please tell everyone you know. See you Monday.

Structural Inequalities & Approaches to Multicultural Education

Wow, we are already through six weeks of class. . . almost half way.

Last week we focused on learning different methods or approaches to multicultural education. In the Grant & Sleeter article, we were able to see the importance of affirming class, race, gender, and ability in our classrooms. The posters you created were reflective and showed a connection with the text.

As we ran out of time, I left the analysis of Nieto's chapter 4 to the discussion board. It's Sunday and I noticed that not every group member responded to her prompt. . .but there are some great postings and thoughtful comments offered by a number of you. Thanks.

This week we will be looking at chapter 5 of Nieto and the Ladson-Billings chapter (that you will print and bring to class). I hope to also be able to show a piece of the PBS series "Eyes on the Prize" that will discuss breaking down the color barrier in our nation's high schools and universities.

Breaking the Silence=Consent Paradigm

I believe we had a very informative and interesting class on Monday. It was so nice to have Dr. Elsbree come to speak on a topic in which she could be considered an expert. I appreciate everyone's participation. I also hope the radio interview with John Amaechi pointed out that, even in 2007, we are still having trouble as a society around issues of homophobia. I also expect that you are gaining more tools and courage to break down the Silence=Consent paradigm that permeates our society.

I have sent out the Grant & Sleeter article through webct email. Please look for it. It is over 20 pages, so be prepared for some printing. It is a great article! Also, don't forget to read chapter 4 from Neito. This chapter, "Structural and ORganizational Issues in Schools" begins to get at the heart of how schools are organized and its effects on our kids!

There is A LOT of reading for this week, so please start reading soon and try and read a bit every day. It will be very difficult to do late Sunday night
;-)

Also, if I do not have a copy of your personal history of otherness, please bring a hard copy on Monday.

Do You Have a Personal History of Otherness?

Okay, I am going to try and use this blog to keep everyone updated on what we did each week. As this is a public blog, and we are working at building our own small community, I will keep the content fairly generic to protect everyone's privacy. With such a dynamic topic, I want to be able to structure the class around our needs, which may or may not be reflected in the syllabus.

Week One: We did your introductions, went over the syllabus and read the 4 excerpts from Luiz Rodriguez, Annti Jalava, Amy Tan, and Victor Villaseñor.

Week Two: We received new students . . .so, we discused the concepts of naming and normalcy, as well as introduced the concepts behind the contect of your personal history of otherness papers. . .Draft due on Mon, Feb 12.

Week Three: We shared reading journals, had an amazing discussion of the Robert Jensen piece, and watched "Shadows of Hate: History of Intolerance in America." It was both good and bad that we didn't have time to really debrief after the movie. It was good in the sense that you were able to process it on a personal level without my and other opinions influencing you; bad in the snese that that type of processing is necessary for many people to fully process.

For Week 4: Please don't forget to bring your essays. We will work with them for the first 1/2 of class and then Nieto, chapter 3 for the second 1/2.