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.