kdiamant's blog

I found Blackburn’s discussion of “negotiating threat lovingly” (95) interesting and helpful, and it reminded me a lot of what Kumashiro said about crisis. Blackburn writes about how youth perceived to be LGBTQQ and allies experience threat on a regular basis, but that what she had not previously realized was that, in efforts to combat homophobia, she was actually threatening those whose ideas she was challenging. Blackburn writes that she started to wonder whether threat was always good or bad. Like Kumashiro says for crisis, she comes to the conclusion that threat is something to work through, rather than avoid. She writes that working through threat lovingly requires a process of inquiry and “[believing] in others’ knowledge” (95).

My placement is at a preschool literacy program for children whose families’ dominant language is Spanish. The majority, if not all of the children, are of Mexican descent.  On Monday, we spent a significant amount of our structured time singing and dancing. Many of the songs and rhymes played were children’s songs that are in English and are part of an English speaking culture—The Hokey Pokey, the alphabet song, Jack Be Nimble, etc. When the teacher, Ms. L, played London Bridges, she also sang a version of a similar song/game in Spanish. She also played and had them dance to the pop song, Happy, and some of the children started to add in their own dance moves. When Ms. L was particularly impressed by a boy’s dancing/energy, she made comments about how he was going to have a lot of girlfriends when he grew up. After many songs in English, the children sang “De Colores” (in Spanish). Then, the teacher told them, “Niños (boys) on that side, and  niñas (girls) on that side.” The two groups split up into lines of boys and girls. The boys were reminded to put their hands behind their backs, and the girls put their hand on their hips. The teacher then played The Mexican Hat Dance, and the children did a dance that they seemed to all know.

I want to look at bilingual literacy programs in early education (preschool and kindergarten). I’ve seen a number of approaches to literacy in early classrooms, from majority play to majority structured work on letter sounds and reading, so I’m interested in looking at the differences in programs, and especially how the programs in bilingual schools relate to the students’ and their families home practices and experiences with language. I’m interested in looking at how and which languages are privileged (or not) in these classrooms, and how this may vary depending on the teacher, the students, and the larger community. I think I would like to interview my placement teacher, who teaches at a preschool literacy program for mostly Spanish speaking kids, as well as some of the preschool and kindergarten teachers at the bilingual school I was working at last semester in Costa Rica. While I will mostly want to look at educational research from classrooms, there is also a fair amount of psychological research about the process of bilingual language development, and I’m thinking about incorporating some of that as well. 

I am doing my placement at a preschool literacy program in M, a large town that has a sizeable Latino population, and where many residents are lower class. The preschool class is part of a larger organization that provides different services, like social workers, legal support, language lessons for adults, and after school programs to mostly Latino community members. The preschool class that I am working in has about 20 students, about a quarter of whom are 3 year olds, and the rest of whom are “pre-kindergarten” age. As far as I can tell, all of these students come from families where Spanish is the dominant language at home. The program is free, but the teacher, Mrs. H, explained to me, “I tell the moms it’s not free. They have to put in the work supporting their children and helping them to learn.” If the family is not willing to be involved, read to the kids, etc., the child cannot stay in the program.

At a general, my-personal-values level, I think that I believe in Levinson’s point that the “civic empowerment gap” is a big issue. In a country where we put democracy on a pedestal and where the structures, policies, etc. of our country are decided by a so-called democratic process, it really doesn’t work if huge groups of people simply aren’t being heard.

In light of the Boler chapter on teaching socio-emotional skills and subsequent class discussion about the problems with teaching “universal” values and skills, however, I found this chapter more troubling and confusing. I think that there is a lot of potential for undermining the lived experiences of students, for undermining the action that they do take in their lives, and teaching them to incorporate themselves and work within a structure that is actually really detrimental to them (and is, in fact, a reason why they are less civically engaged).