Journal #6 4/11/19

Today was my last day at my service learning internship and it was bittersweet. I seriously loved the time I got to spend with all the children helping them learn and grow. Today was like any other day, except I had gotten there early in the school day so I was able to go with them for lunch. Before that, they were doing their different centers and a little boy wanted me to help him with Mr. Potato Head so I did. He got excited and would throw Mr. Potato Head and then all of the pieces would come out so he would asked me to help me again. He kept doing it for awhile but I didn't mind because it made him happy. I kept playing with him until another little kid had come over and asked me to play with the dinosaurs with him. Eventually, it was time to clean up for circle time where they would go over the day and who was present and who wasn't. After that, was another round of centers before lunchtime and I just walked around the room playing with each student as much as I could, I used magnetic letters to spell out my name on the door for the little kids. The it was lunchtime which was nice to spend with the kids before I left. I had a difficult time telling the kids that it was my last day, I didn't know how to tell them that my hours were completed because I knew they wouldn't understand what I meant. The teacher knew but once it was time for me to leave, I just told the kids I would back one day because the teacher had invited me to continue to come and help her with the children once I was done with classes which I'm probably going to do and because I didn't want them to be sad.

Hebert - Connections

Hebert's article "Separate and Unequal" discusses about how it's difficult for teachers to get good results in schools that are in high-impoverished areas. Expectations in these schools are much lower levels of parent involvement and student achievement. A goal that is logical would be to have kids that come from poor ethnic backgrounds in school with middle class peers because that is a long line of evidence that shows they do better academically. In order to truly improve poor children's education, we need to take them out of the environments are are riddled with poverty.

Two articles that I connected to Hebert's article are Kristof's "Land of Limitations" and Kozol's "Amazing Grace". Kristof's article talks about how the children from the lower social classes can be the most talented person in the world but it won't matter because where they come from. It's unlikely for them to be able to break out of the constraints of their social class. I connected this article to Hebert's "Separate and Unequal" because there's a connection between since children from schools that are in high-poverty areas are limited academically in school because all the poverty and crime that surrounds them which relates to Krisof's quote from his article that states that talent is universal but opportunity isn't. They relate to each other because the kids that go to school in areas of poverty can or are talented individuals but they won't have the opportunities to make something of that talent because the social class they come from.
Kozol's article talks about the imbalance of power in our country and how bad it has gotten. Neighborhoods that are consider "ghetto" in New York are broken and run down because the city does not care to do anything about it. It talks about how people always say "if you don't like your situation, just change it" but you can't because you don't actually have the power to change it. I connected Kozol to Hebert because the children that go to schools in impoverished areas also live in the run down and broken "ghettos" that Kozol talks about. How can we expect children to learn and improve if they're stuck in poverty when they go to school? We can't expect students to be able to learn and think about their futures if they can't see a future that isn't in poverty. In order, to help them imagine a better future we need to remove them from the environment that doesn't allow them to grow.

Shor - Reflection

The article "Empowering Education" by Ira Shor talks how participation is important for student involvement because the traditional classrooms lack students being active participants in their own education.  It also discusses empowering classes in schools that help students develop skills and knowledge along with high expectations for their education, future and themselves as well. It helps them "to fight for a quality of life in which all human beings benefit." An important concept in the article is "Banking Education" which is basically that a good amount of educators just stand in front of the classroom and piled information about subjects that do not make them interested or invested in their own education.

Personal connections that I made to this text is that my whole education up until high school was banking education. I remember just sitting at a desk everyday day for hours in different subjects listening to the teachers drone on and on about topics that had nothing to do with me. I often remember thinking why was I forced to learn things that wouldn't help me later in life? In 7th grade social studies class, we had to examine and study maps and then recreate it by ourselves. How did remembering continents ans states help me further myself in life? All it did was help me memorize information for the quizzes that we had but the information from it seems useless otherwise.

As a future teacher, I don't want to force my kids to listen talk for hours about information that they won't need later in life but encourage them to about themselves and, their future and their education by constantly thinking of different ways have them participate actively in their own education. I'm going to make it one of my goals to be the kind of teacher that empowers her students to learn and engage rather than drain them of their curiosity and social instincts. It's really our job as future teachers to help teach and guide our children into becoming great citizens that think and question the world and society they live in rather than robots that do what they are told too without questioning it.

Kahne and Westheimer - Argument

Kahne and Westheimer argue that service learning is an important aspect to have in society and classrooms because it can give a different energy to the class providing experiences that influence students to want to improve or change the things around them

Kahne and Westheimer's main idea is the importance service learning curriculum within classrooms. They discuss the important difference in charity and change within service learning. Charity in service learning can be explained as an action of giving rather and experiencing what it feels like to to do something before understanding what exactly is need. Charity is temporary change that impacts single people. An example of charity described by Kahne and Westheimer is Mr. Johnson's class that put together daily life kits for the homeless. They had decided on what to put in the kits without having a conversation with someone that is homeless or someone who has knowledge on the subject. This stopped the children from experiencing any meaningful interactions and develop an understanding, caring relationships. Change on the other hand can be explained as gaining knowledge about an important economic issue and thinking of what ways to help change the issue. An example of change explained by Kahne and Westheimer is Ms. Adams class that examined issues of concern and voted to put their attention on homelessness. Their service learning unit discussed and looked deeper into political determinants, legal and social and economic of homelessness before inviting guest speakers and read newspapers and books about the topic. After, they thought and developed plans of action for relief efforts for the homeless people in their communities and raised money for homeless advocacy groups they chose. They also discuss how important meaningful reflection is withing the service learning curriculum.

Journal #5 4/3/19

Today was a good day at my service learning, I arrived at 12:30 which is around the time that the teacher takes the kids outside to play for about thirty minutes depending on the weather. I enjoy going outside with them because a little girl "Samariah" always asks if I'll play goose with her (duck, duck goose) which the children's version is naming someone (me) the goose and I just run around trying to catch all the little ducks. It's different than the way I played as a little girl but I enjoy it nonetheless. Instead of just playing goose the entire recess time, she also wanted to play catch with me where I tried to get her to throw the ball from a good distance so I could catch it but she much preferred bouncing it to each other or throwing it from a short distance. We had fun playing with the ball for a while and then I noticed that hopscotch painted on the ground for the children so I asked "Samariah" if she knew how to play and when she said she didn't I taught her the best I could (I was never the best) and we had tons of fun just taking turns playing hopscotch for the rest of recess. By time the class goes back inside, its almost time for dismissal so the teacher assistant gets the end of the day snacks set out for the kids to come up and get some cereal in a cup and a juice box if they haven't brought their own from home. While the children are eating their snacks, the teacher passes out their dismissal badges that they need when they go home whether on the bus or if their parent comes and picks them up.  The teacher also gives the students that behaved or listened well, a little paper that says "I did good listening today" with a smiley face and allows them to take a sticker from her sticker box.

Map The Authors

A couple of weeks ago at my service learning internship, I go into the school expecting the same stuff as usual and for the most part things were the same but as it got to the time where the students had to start getting ready to go to lunch and the little girl that's in the group I work with every week "Lindsey" tells me that the boy that's also in the group "Issac" punched another little boy from a different classroom in the face so the principal and teacher decided that "Issac" should be disciplined by being forced to eat in the office away from all other students and his classmates for the foreseeable future. I connected a number of authors to this one story. Some of the authors that I connected to my experience and story are August because in her article said said that students cannot learn if they do not feel safe in their school settings, I connected August because "Issac" probably didn't feel completely safe in his environment for whatever the reason may be and made the wrong decision to punch the other student in the face. I believe that instead of just giving him what's known as in-school suspension, the principal and teacher could have tried and talked to "Issac" to find out not only what made him decide to punch another kid but why did he decide that was his best option? Did he not feel safe or confident enough to be able to go to an adult and tell them about an issue? Did the teacher and principal not make "Issac" feel safe within his school? A second author that I connected my story to was McIntosh, in her article she talks about how white people do not recognize how their race is valued higher unless they are actively paying attention to it. I connected McIntosh to my story because as expected the teachers and other faculty members are predominantly white so I would say that this story is a prime example of how whiteness in valued at the school and also how whiteness shows its power to all of the students, not just "Issac". A third and final author that I'm going to talk about that I connected to this story, is Christensen, in her article she discusses how schools need to help students acquire the tools to interpret the media and other cultural texts to be able to recognize oppression and stereotypes so they don't feel excluded or like something is wrong with them. I connected Christensen to my story because from what I've witnessed at my visits, not just this particular one is the teacher and other staff members tend to 'single out' "Issac" quite a bit over some of the other kids I work with. I can imagine and also relate to the fact that "Issac" felt like he was a problem when the principal and teacher forced him to eat lunch alone in the office and that he also felt very excluded as well. Seeing as "Issac" is apart of the minority population I feel that the school principal and teacher could have tried to find a better less excluding way to discipline "Isaac" for his negative behavior that wouldn't have made him felt singled out or like a problem that needed to be corrected.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PAH_eki-CiWtNSg0CUHIVQUehp92rE3UUF8JeiolrGQ/edit

August - Quotes

Three quotes that I picked from the article "Safe Spaces" by Gerri August are: "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode." by Margaret Spelllings in response to the PBS show "Sugertime!" episode that had little girl with two moms. What this means is that parents would be upset if their child watched this episode and thought that a little girl having two moms was normal rather the stereotype of having one mom and one dad. This quote is relevant to the text because it proves that the LGBTQ community is not represented a young child's learning. Another quote that I picked was "When someone with authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing" The meaning of this quote is that when someone with authority like a teacher or staff member talks about the world and the different people in it but not you, they teach you about how things should be but not about how they are in reality. Basically erasing yourself from existence in society by saying you don't matter. The reason that this quote is relevant is because it teaches teachers and future teachers that what we say to our students helps shapes the way they view the world and themselves. The final quote I choose is from a principal explaining to her school's librarian why a book she chose to put in the library was not okay, "I'd love that [book] to be available to counselors that work with families that maybe have this situation, but in this society here, in this town anyways.. I don't know if it's our job to expose [children]" What the principal meant in this quote is that children with parents that are the same-sex aren't acceptable in the society by restricting the book to the children that have same-sex parents. She influencing the stereotype that a child has to have a mother and a father to be normal and accepted. This quote is relevant because it proves that some principals refused to incorporate the LGBTQ community in her school's learning environment and are blind to the damage they are doing to their students.

Something I would like to bring up in class that that I think as educators it's our job to try and help teach our children that sometimes in this world they will come across concepts or people that are different than them but that doesn't make them any less normal or accepted than them because if we don't do it, who will then? It's our job to create safe spaces in our classrooms for all kinds of children and make them feel welcomed in order for them to grow up in a world a society that has all sorts of different people and to spread love, not hate in the world

Journal #4 3/15/19

Today was my fourth day at my internship with Inspiring Minds and as I spend more time with the children that I work with I feel connected to them and the more they look at me as an adult that needs their respect. It was more of a chill day, the teacher had them mainly work on their Chromebooks but after things settled she had called the group I work with every week to the round table and gave me a whole stack of books for them to read together with me. After playing bingo last week they didn't really want to read but I kept telling them that we had to read the books because it's what the teacher had assigned me to do with them. They also had read a good number of the books but the teacher told me that it was okay to still read them because they needed to familiarize themselves with the word families and the different the letters make for the third grade. Since there was a good number of different books I tried to pick ones that we hadn't read together before and also ones that they wanted to read. Overall, they were great with reading except Issac who gave me a little more a a hard time than usual because he didn't feel like reading. I eventually got him to cooperate with me I little but I had to get serious and a little stern. I believe we read a total a five books before they had to get ready to go down to lunch.

I feel like the other children that I don't work with don't understand why I'm there or who I am and since I work with the dame four group of kids every week I'm there, I don't get an opportunity to try and connect with them like I would wish so when they're in a line to go down for lunchtime and some kids are talking when they shouldn't be and I just look at them and put my finger over my lips like they do, as a way to tell them to stop talking so the teacher doesn't hear them they don't give me the respect that they should because they don't understand.

Journal #3 3/8/19

Today was my third visit at my internship with second graders and I feel as if I'm starting to to gain the respect of the students I work with. The teacher had me work on syllables with different letter sounds that they would need to know in order to move onto the third grade. Overall, the students had done great with the different syllable sounds. The teacher had given me a bingo game with sight words to play with the kids and they enjoyed that the most, they literally did not want to stop playing the game. Sadly, our time playing the bingo game together was shorter than the kids had wanted because the teacher had asked me to see who completed their homework and to go over their morning work with them as well. Almost all had done their work and brought it and they had all to understand the the morning work as well. There's this little girl in the group I work with that we'll call Lindsey who I found out hardly ever does her homework so in efforts of trying to get her to start doing her homework so she can earn more points, I made a pact/deal with her that I'm hoping will make her start doing her homework from now on. Lindsey seems like a real sweet kid and I can feel that I'm starting to connect with her more which makes me super happy. My only hope for the rest of my remaining time there is that I can connect with more than just the children that I work with every week. 

(morning work front and back)

Social Justice Event: HER Workshop

I chose the HER Workshop event that took place Wednesday, March 6th. I chose this workshop because it seemed like it was going to be fun and interesting. Basically the event consisted of having the option to choose between five different workshops that were all centered around women. The workshops consisted of things like leadership skills, what messages social media gives us, domestic violence, career development and something else that I honestly can't remember. The workshop that spoke to me the most was social media workshop. In this workshop, we talked about the different kinds of messages that images form social media give us. We were asked to look at a series photos and then write on sticky notes what kind of message we extract from it. There were pictures of Indian Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas on the cover of Vogue magazine, one of the messages we took from this picture is instead of talking about things liker her amazing career, they only focus on her wedding to Nick Jonas from the Jonas Brothers. Another image was of Kristen Bell on a magazine cover for 'middle aged woman' and the message we extracted from that is that when all middle aged woman are supposed to look liker her in the photo. We talked about a lot of other different pictures that gave us similar messages. She told us to write the topics body image, socioeconomic status, gender, race/ethnicity, sports/recreation and childhood and match up the sticky notes to which topic we thought they belonged too. To end the workshop, the presenter told us ways that we could become activities and showed us pictures of what magazines covers should look like and the messages they should send to us. At about 1:15 we had to go back to the conference room for the keynote speaker from a non-profit non-violence organization and a performance from a RIC Alum. I'm happy that I decided to go to this workshop event because it really empowered me to do more and be more like my mom always did before she had passed. 

Journal #2 3/1/19

Today was my second day at my internship in an elementary school and it went a lot smoother than the first. To begin, I had taken the bus and had gotten there a little bit before nine-thirty. Everything seemed a lot calmer walking in because the teacher only had her second graders. She had me work with the same group of students but this time she asked me to work on words that have a long vowel in the middle and have a silent "e" at the end, she gave me this work sheet for long "a" words to complete with them and after read two stories from a book that cover the same subject except the words didn't always contain a long "a". I enjoyed doing the worksheet with the kids though a little boy who we'll call "Issac" did give me a little bit of a hard time. From what I've been told by the teacher Issac has issues with staying focused on the tasks at hand so she had told me if he was giving me issues to just send him to the rug but I didn't want to make the kid hate my guts so instead I became friends with Issac and made the deal as long as he helped me out by listening, he could stay at the table with the group. It worked, a little. All four of the children did great with the worksheet and short stories. I did notice when one of their classmates would try and help them out, they would lash a little out and become frustrated. When this happened, I would just talk to them and say that the other student was just trying to help them out and not to be mean towards them. After, I had finished the worksheet and reading the two stories with them, there was still like ten minutes before their lunchtime so they just went back to their desks and worked on their Chromebooks.

I think by going and working with the group of children consistently that I'll really be able to break through more and create a special connection with them, I already feel it forming and I'm very excited.

Christensen - Hyperlinks

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us by Linda Christensen discusses how children's books or cartoons teach us stereotypes from race and religion to gender at a young age and the problem of growing up within society like the one we live in. In the article, Christensen discusses how students are taught how to succeed, behave and even how to love through the media. She found that some students don't like to think or accept that they've been manipulated by the media or advertising but how it's important to realize it so you can begin to change the way you view or act in certain situations. One of the big topics Christensen talks about is how women or females are depicted. Christensen talks about there's a lack of female representation within children's cartoons or rather when we did see females being represented they are made to look unrealistic like Playboy bunnies or Victoria Secret models. She also discusses how in other cartoon's like "Popeye" depicts the main female character 'Olive Oyl' as woman that's silent and obedient with whatever the men want her to do. I read an article that helps illuminate how these issues can cause problems within the real world for children and adolescent females. Why So Many Early '00s Cartoons Couldn't Escape the Male Gaze  written by Shelby Peake talks about cartoons like 'The Powerpuff Girls' and 'My Life as a Teenage Robot' are telling children that women can't be tough and fierce because of their beauty. Peake uses Powerpuff Girls for example that the violence and fight scenes is accompanied by them looking adorable and lots of aesthetics based of the charm of the PowerPuff Girls. Peake claims that feminine imagery shown along side the violence tells young viewers that females cannot be fierce without beauty being involved. She also uses 'My Life as a Teenage Robot' as an example because the plot line for the show is the main character "Jenny"or "XJ-9" just wanting to be a normal teenage girl rather than a teenage robot that fights crime. In the show, Jenny consistently fails at being a popular girl that's always depicted as stuck up and shallow which Peake argues suggests to children watching it that females cannot be strong and girly at the same time.
These cartoons among other are implanting the ideas that women cannot be strong, fierce and independent while being feminine and beautiful. They are also teaching young females that in order for a guy to be interested in you that you must be obedient and silent while never being able to do their own things.

Connections to Garcia's Translanguaging

When I started reading "Theorizing Translanguaging for Educators" by Ofelia Garcia I started to immediately think about my father's side of the family as they are full blooded Guatemalan. I think about the times at Christmas when the entire family is gathered at my aunt Sandra's house, in my mind I can hear the different languages being spoken to different groups of people. All of my aunts and uncles are at the dining room table chatting and gossiping in Spanish while my older cousins and I are sitting at another table, eating food and talking In English about how everyone has been doing since the last time we saw each other no matter how long ago it was and the younger kids to be in front of the television playing on whatever new game system that had received as a present and chatting away in both English and Spanish about the game. After reading the article I can now recognize this as "translanguaging". Now whenever my aunts talk to each other in Spanish and then switch to talking English when they are trying to have a conversation with me about how my life is going I know why they do it and the purpose behind it.

I wouldn't necessarily say that this relates to me directly but rather to apart of me that's also part of my heritage which is being half Spanish . It also kinda inspires me to want to actually learn Spanish more and helps me understand part of the reason why it's always been so important to my father for me to learn to speak Spanish more fluently.

My cousin Alex and I from Christmas 2018

Journal #1: 2/15/19

I was placed at an Elementary School through Inspiring Minds. Going into on the first day I was extremely excited but a little nervous. In my senior year of high school I had an internship with preschoolers but I haven't worked with children in the first grade. I had planned on taking the RIPTA bus there because that's my main form of transportation at the moment but my cousin had offered to give me a ride so I accepted. I thought she knew where she was going but turns out there's two schools with the name Feinstein, Alan Shawn and Lillian so we went to the wrong place and she had to drive me to the right one so I ended up being a little late for the first day. Once I got there, I went straight to the main office ans signed in and a woman had told me where the classroom was. I get to the classroom and introduce myself to the teacher and wait at the table where she was attending to students. She kept apologizing saying that the class isn't usually this crazy and she explained that another teacher is out so the students were split and put into different classes for the day. After she was done with the students, she gave me a few things to do with the group of kids that she had wanted me to work with. She gave me these spinner wheels that have word families and blend words on them, cards to work on sounding out what the letters sound like and two different books to read. When working with a few of the kids, I had found out that they are not in first grade rather second grade I believe. Time was cut a little short because the kids had their lunchtime at eleven so I had went down to the cafeteria and helped out a little until it was time to go. I'm excited to go back next Friday and work with the children some more, I can already tell I'm going to create amazing bonds with the kids while I'm volunteering there.

Kozol's Argument

          In the article "Amazing Grace", the author Jonathan Kozol argues that the reason why the people Mott Haven live in such poverty is because they do not have the power to change their situation.

          The imbalance of power has gotten real bad in our country, I never realized how much until reading this article. The neighborhoods in New York that are considered the ghettos are so run down and broken because the city doesn't care to do anything about it because they look at the people as lost causes and waste of resources. Practically everyone in St. Ann's has some sort of illness to cope with on their own. Heroin ravages across across the town, taking countless with it. The children also often suffer from things such as depression and anxiety. The most common one is asthma which is so bad in Mott Haven that some moms have to keep breathing machines next to their child's bed. The neighborhood isn't nice by anyway means, there's always adults and kids both being shot and killed. the times magazine referred to it as "the deadliest blocks" The people that live in the town have given up any hope because they know that they can't do anything to change the horror happening in their city. Kozol's main point with sharing all the detailed descriptions was to show the true misfortune that people that live in poor communities  have to endure because there is really nothing they can do about because no matter what anyone says they do not have the POWER to change it unless the country is willing to give them some power.

Kristof - Quotes

Three quotes that I feel express that main idea of this article are: “A child born in the bottom quintile of incomes in the United States has only a 4 percent chance of rising to the top quintile.” This quote is relevant because its from a Pew Study that supports the idea of hard work not being enough sometimes. Another great quote is “The chance of a person who was born to a family in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution rising to the top 10 percent as an adult is about the same as the chance that a dad who is 5 feet 6 inches tall having a son who grows up to be over six feet 1 inch tall. It happens, but not often.” this second quote from Alan Kruger is relevant because it basically explains that in this economic world sometimes the only way people can escape their social class is by getting lucky somehow which the chances of that are slim. One last quote that ties together the point of the article is “talent is universal but opportunity is not” The reason why I believe this quote is relevant to the text is because in just seven words it tells you that you can be very talented in this country but that’s not what matters. The thing that matters a good amount of time is if your social class has let you have the opportunity to break through the social statistics.

A comment I would to raise about this article is depending on the person it possibly discourage them a little if they themselves are going through a rough patch  is that no matter how hard things are, or if not everyone believes you can be successful you can't just give in to what people might expect. You have to keep fighting for yourself. If you’re going to live life then it’s probably going to be better if you constantly have to fight to make it the best on possible no matter how hard or daunting it might get. Just because you might not be the MOST successful doesn’t mean you can’t better your life as much as possible. Afterall, it is the only one you’re going to get.

Who I Am

               I am a daughter. This is one of the hundreds of pictures I have with my mother.

I am the youngest sister. This is a picture of when my sister, brother and I went on a walk with my mom one morning.

  I am rat mom to an adorable rat named Apollo. 

When I'm not at class or working I''m usually annoying my rat, cleaning his cage or just enjoying his company.

I have a big family so another thing I usually do often is spend time with my family. This picture is me and my cousin's five month baby boy Jamie.