Schooling for Social Justice

 During the 16-week-long period of FNED 246, we read and watched a selection of media that explains how our society has evolved to grow acceptance and diversity. I found Kohn's chart among the press, which describes good and bad things to look out for in a classroom. Finding these things by observing in classrooms is essential to students' learning because different things come into account. Along with Troublemakers by Shalaby, students are not born with malice, but they learn it as life goes on, and they go through experiences. In the case of the videos, I liked the video of Woke Kindergarten doing a Woke Read Aloud about people identifying with different pronouns and genders. This video was fascinating because of the ideals represented in the story. The teachings in the video should be taught to older students and not kindergarteners. 

 In the video by Woke Kindergarten, we are read a story about teaching students the differences between and ways to use different pronouns to respect their gender-creative peers. The story being read goes over pronouns like she, he, and they, and introduces ze, and tree, which can be used as pronouns as well. I have personally heard of ze/zir pronouns, which are gender neutral pronouns. "Tree" is used as a pronoun for one of the characters in the story, which I have never heard of someone using before. I know that people have been identifying as many different things and people in recent decades, which is okay. I just believe that young students do not need to be exposed to such broader spectrums of identity as tree.  These ideas should be introduced to students in middle school, which could be correct since these times are due for students to begin self-identity exploration and lead on to high school, where students are even more inclined to express themselves freely. Studen...

 Today, we watched a TED Talk by a transgender woman and a mother of a gay son who spoke about their experiences dealing with gender creativity through the perspective of a mother and the perspective of the person. Reed, the trans woman, spoke about attending Camp I Am and how it was a sanctuary for trans youth and gender-creative children to express themselves freely after feeling as though they are the only person who thinks and feels the same way as themselves. Hearing this TED Talk makes me excited for the future of our gender creative students, because it isn't their fault if they are born in the wrong body. All we can do as supporters is, support them, and help them achieve their goals just like any student.

 Thomas Hehir's article,  Eliminating Ableism in Education , challenges the ways schools often try to "fix" students with disabilities instead of valuing their different learning needs. Ableism is the subtle yet harmful idea that it's always better to be non-disabled. This way of thinking affects deaf students, blind or visually impaired students, and those with learning disabilities like dyslexia. Forcing students to meet "normal" expectations, like reading print instead of braille or lip-reading instead of signing, hurts their education and stops students from being able to thrive in their own way.  This article consists of many examples where students were denied the support they needed only because the system could not see beyond its ableist standards. Hehir states that deaf children were denied interpreters and early exposure to sign language. Blind students were denied the chance to learn braille and instead had to read large print text and dyslexic ch...