Schooling for Social Justice

 In this reading, we invision the early childhood life of bilingual man, Richard, or Ricardo, Rodriguez. He grew up only speaking spanish in his house with his mother father and siblings, and learning english in school. He began as being shy to speak when called upon, eventually causing some nuns from his school to visit his home and formally ask his parents to have Richard and his siblings speak more spanish at home for practice in school. Richard saw speaking spanish as a private language since he only ever heard it in his home, while learning english and speaking it was a public language. He felt increasingly angry that his family was losing that sense of togetherness when they spoke spanish since they began to speak in mostly english at home.  I feel like this is a common truth amongst spanish speaking students in America because in some states like ours, Rhode Island, these students are often outnumbered in schools compared to their english speaking peers. This outnumberm...

"Today, we understand that many social setups are possible. Roles and rules can be transformed so that there is greater justice and equity."  Education has been a tool that shapes social structures and determines who holds power and who remains in unsubstantial roles. Patrick J. Finn, in Literacy with an Attitude , highlights the divide between empowering education, which fosters critical thinking and leadership, and there is domesticating education, which prepares students for compliance and low-wage labor later on in life. The quote above challenges the assumption that current educational systems are neutral, instead emphasizing that education can either reinforce inequality or be used as a force for social justice.  The argument that Finn introduces is relevant in discussions about equity in schools. Literacy amongst marginalized groups was feared in the past because it was believed that it would lead to resistance and change. Today, the concern is not literacy but who has...

 Using the chart provided by Kohn on this website is helpful and will continue to be helpful when I visit classrooms for observation. The chart contains two columns of criteria called "Good Signs" and "Possible Reasons to Worry" and rows of descriptions of what to look for to categorize them, like "Around the School," "Students' Faces," and "Furniture." When I first saw this chart, it made me realize how the classrooms I have visited vary greatly in how they are set up, how the teachers treat the students, and so on... Children deserve to have classrooms that meet the full criteria from the Good Signs section of the chart because if, for example, students are not engaged in a classroom that represents art and work they have created, they will not have a memorable and enjoyable time during their educational career.  The classroom that I work with students in, as I mentioned in my previous blog, met a lot of the criteria from the Poss...

 In my opinion, the students are NOT the troublemakers in my observational classroom. The teacher in the classroom will attack her students when they are trying to learn and when they are struggling with the material. She does not clearly understand when the students are having a hard time because when she collects homework and sees some who haven't completed it, she just yells at them instead of helping them further and yells at them more during lesson time when they do not know an answer to a question. The student I work with refuses to ask the teacher for help because "She will just yell at me." Okay, I am not there every day. I do not see what goes on every day in her classroom and how her students behave every day. That is not the point of me going there because if I did, maybe I would notice who the troublemakers are. I know that, yes, there are troublemakers. I think one troublemaker in the classroom is G. G. is a light-skinned boy who has a big afro, sweet child e...

 "Classrooms must be places in which we practice freedom" (Shalaby, preface page 2). In this picture, the hand represents us, the teachers, who show our students how to be strong leaders and independent humans. The bird represents the student who broke free from stigmas, stereotypes, and the assembly line. The cage represents the solidarity of following a corrupt lead taught to them for years and how they are forced to tolerate the "poison". Schools do not teach students the fundamentals of life. They teach students how to stand in line and wait for the corporate arrow to strike into them instead of teaching them how to struggle alongside a peer and lift each other up to create sanctity between them. In this book, Shalaby discusses what she learned about being human and how she realized the hard work being put in for some people to be considered fully human in everyday life.  "Interested in freedom, I needed the children who sing the most loudly rather than tho...