Wikis are great fun and allow each user to change the content. It seems like a good tool for a classroom where students have access to computers and internet.
Last semester, I designed a wiki about critical literacy and social action. Like this blog, it is just a start and a way for me to try to synthesize my knowledge. However, if you would like to check it out, go ahead.
The access key is: saraht
As a kid I had my favorite books and authors like Roald Dahl, The Chronicles of Narnia and Anne of Green Gables. However, as a teacher, I feel as though it is my duty to read and understand books that I may not normally gravitate to. For example. although I did love some fantasy as a kid, some of it sort of turns me off.
I have to be totally honest and say that Dungeons and Dragons clubs sort of freak me out. But maybe that is because I don’t totally understand them. In a recent post about separating boys and girls in classrooms I made the claim that teachers need to appeal to all kinds of kids. For me, that may mean trying to read, love and understand different kinds of books.
My partner, who happens to be a man, is pretty obsessed with fantasy. He knows all of the characters and backgrounds in Lord of the Rings. So, I decided that I would start my fantasy quest with the Hobbit. I’m trying, as I read it, to figure out how to read it with a critical lens. And I think my favorite questions so far are, “What’s good and what’s evil?” and “what’s fair and what’s unfair?” and “what is this book trying to say about religion?”
Anyways, more later… but my quest continues.
No. I really don’t think so. I’m not saying that I don’t think there is ever a time when boys and girls shouldn’t be separated and I’m not arguing that we should do away with single sex private schools. However, I do think that separating kids by gender is 1) A violation of title IX 2) Based on faulty research and 3) students should have an opportunity to work together in classrooms so that they can work together and understand each other in the “real world”.
Sax, the man who has conducted research allegedly showing biological learning differences seems to pulled from very esoteric sources. There may indeed be biological differences between boys and girls, but as teachers we need to meet many needs within the same classroom. When we separate boys and girls, I worry that the opportunity for people of different genders to work together and understand each other will go away. And, now more than ever, I think it is crucial for students of different races, classes and genders to be able to coexist within the same classroom and work together.
I’m also insulted by the fact that Sax thinks all boys are taught by “soft spoken women who bore the boys.” Yes, it’s true that much of the teaching force of elementary aged kids is made up of women. But are all women soft spoken and boring to boys? I think that is a generalization that. I don’t think that I’m soft spoken.
In my mind, a large part of the problem is the issue of high stakes tests. Students and teachers are spending more and more time valuing test taking. Important play time and other activities have been compromised. I think that this has a negative effect on all children, though boys may show more symptoms from it.
I think that dividing up students by gender is a scary phenomenon.
Where I’m From
I am from sinking my face in to icy, salty waves.
I am from six people around a small, round table.
I am from yeast that bubbles up in warm water
I am from getting so muddy that my mom would yell,
“Don’t come in here until you hose yourself down!”
I am from curling up on a pillow next to the heater with a book by Roald Dahl.
I am from the sea.
I am from a father who would sometimes lose his temper and I would try to sneak away and go to sleep.
I am from a big state out west whose name starts with a C.
I tried to read this piece of ficion in the New Yorker with critical literacy lens. I didn’t upload the whole piece, just a couple of pages.
Here’s my work: reptile-garden
Link to critical questions to ask when reading
White Space
There is a moment before playing a song on the piano
when you place your fingers on the smooth keys
and conjure up the tone, as if
stepping in to its shoes.
So, too, is writing.
Hands on the keyboard,
tone of the piece,
moment of silence—
And then, clickety-clack. A spoken word.
I am glad that we were able to read Literary Practices as Social Acts: Power, Status, and Cultural Norms in the Classroom in out book club. I actually thought that Cynthia Lewis’s main ideas and concepts were quite theoretical and hard for me to understand. However, I enjoyed the activity of creating an interview because it forced Anne and I to carefully examine her ideas ensure that we understood them. However, I feel as though this is the kind of book is one that I would need to re-read in order to really absorb it.
One area that I would like to explore in this reflection is the concept of fitting in to the social world outside of the classroom. Through her classroom observations Lewis notes that although students are taught to read critically and disrupt the common discourse, they find it necessary to fit in to the outside social world. Lewis notes that, “Other researchers argue, as do I, that stereotypical gender categories they observed in their studies were not to be essentialized as biological or cognitive in nature, but rather as stances that are socially and discursively produced (Lewis, 2001, p. 154) However, during free choice, Lewis finds that there is social pressure for students to fit in to the stereotypical roles.
Although at the end of the book, Lewis gives some ideas for teacher pedagogy and recommends using critical literacy to evaluate all texts, I still have questions about how to validate students who choose to throw off the stereotypical roles. Despite what we do in the classroom, there is an outside community where these gender roles are readily enforced.
This reminds me of times in my life when I have felt as though I need to act or dress a certain way. One time I was in a small town in Honduras, visiting my friend Paul’s’ friend. His friend was a fisherman and we had a great time visiting—we ate fish, hung out in town and played soccer. I love to run and one day I got my running clothes on a jogged around town. When I came back, the dad called me “Mala macha.” The direct interpretation of that, I think, is like a bad macha. In Latino society, it is often viewed as good for men to be macho—tough, strong, decisive. But for a girl to exhibit these qualities was seen as bad. It made me mad that this man insulted me this way, but I admit that part of me just wanted to fit in.
My point, then, is how can we teach kids to understand gender stereotypes and still be able to make choices that are right for them? I really hate to say this, but I feel at a loss. As much as teachers can create an environment for students to understand the dominant discourse and resist it, a classroom cannot change the views of the community at large.
Another thing about this book that resonated with my personal experience was in the interactions Lewis observed with the students. There was one boy who was not as popular as other students and was not a part of the white, middle class, Christian world. When he spoke, often times other students didn’t listen to him. How can we teach students the value of listening to every voice? From my own experience I find this to be hard, even as an adult.
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