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At my placement, I rarely have time to take a set back and observe the students and their school community. I am usually knee deep in the class and talking to the students, interacting with them, facilitating the class and having a very present role in the classroom. This past friday, after a few hours of being there, going over a science experiment with water chemical levels, I had the chance to stay at the school for a school wide assembly after my class-when they usually have class that I do not attend. As I walked with a student from my class who had been helping me clean up, I asked him what they were meeting for in the afternoon, he explained that every Friday in the morning, they have an all school assembly to announce the 'star student of the week' which was a student from each grade that was reconigized by the teachers for excellence during that past week. I asked him if he had ever gotten the 'star student' recognition, and he said he had a few times. 

Last Saturday, at my placement in Adelante, we had a parent/student session in Norristown to share with the parents and students information on different learning styles. The week before each of the students took a quiz to see what kind of learner they were. At the beginning of the session we played a game with the parents and students. There was a bag filled with different colored paper and each person had to take a peice. If the person picked a blue paper they would have to share their dreams for their child. If they picked a green paper they would have to share their favorite book/movie. If they picked a yellow paper they would share a place they want to travel to some day. As we went around the room people shared their answers. None of the parents spoke English and most of them had to bring their younger children with them because they couldn't get a babysitter. When asked what their dreams were for their students a lot of the parents said the same thing,they wanted them to go to college and make a better life for themselves, and the American dream and whatnot. After one mother shared that she wanted her son to go to college, our coordinator added "and graduate!". This reminded me of a book that I'm reading for my inquiry project called From here to university : access, mobility, and resilience among urban Latino youth by Alexander Jun. In the book he discusses why Lantino retention rates at Universities are so low. This moment also reminded me of what my parents wanted for me.

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.

When reading "The Land and Language of Desire" and thinking of how it would be possible to "collapse the distinction between nature and textuality", I kept reflecting back to my Eco-Artist Ian Hamilton Finlay and the ways in which he weaved language into his art, bringing together two very different disciplines into one object. The art and literature were seamlessly weaved together in such a way it was hard to find any distinction between art/landscape and the language and poetry he used in his work. I also thought about John Dixon Hunt's quote about Finlay's work, specifically that "the ideal gardner is the poet". How can we see post-structuralism and nature/the land as more porous to one another? As Campbell states " what makes one of us care about textuality, where another cares about the land?" (134). Both studies and writing about land and language have inherent value, but should there always be a distinction between them? When should we make them porous to one another? When should they be made to be separate units of study? And who should decide?

Unfortuanately, I was unable to physically be in my classes yesterday, but I found the Judson reading to be very englightening and interesting. I was especially drawn to the way she found imaginative education and ecological education to be somewhat in tension, and felt like in some ways the reading raised more questions than answers for me. Judson asks: Is it possible for students to develop ecological understanding when the teachers may lack this ecological understanding? And I wonder: Is there a standardized type of curriculum that allows teachers with or without the ecological understanding to develop their students' understanding?   How can we balance imaginative education and ecological education in fostering students' emotional connection to nature? These are all difficult questions to address given budget constraints, teaching preparation programs, and other logistics, and are even more difficult in some cases, where the outdoors are not an accessible place to create a "classroom." To end on a lighter and more postive note, though, I think Judson expressed the importance of conveying the interdependency between humans and the environment in schools. It won't be easy, but I do think this can be done in a variety of settings, and teachers can foster their students' emotional and personal connection to nature.

praxis snapshots:

1. We are sitting in a circle discussing last week's writing assignment. The assignment is to write about what we wished was taught in schools that maybe isn't. People are sharing their thoughts - a lot of them revolve around "surviving" in the world, practical knowledge, a real and comprehensive sex ed (the idea of a "Rape 101" class comes up) - esentially, things that may have prevented them from being in the current position they are in. While a lot of people agree with each other, one person makes a comment that sparks a heated debate, saying that she doesn't necessarily relate to all the stories being shared (stories of leaving behind families and falling into addiction). Someone comes back with a comment along the lines of "well, we're all here for a reason." This is the first time I've heard someone explicity reference the setting we are in. They discuss how learning from each other's experiences is helpful and useful, and how maybe hearing someone's story can prevent another person from going through the same thing.

I am placed in a preschool for bilingual students. The parents of these students speak mainly Spanish, and very few speak English. The teacher is supposed to be teaching these students English, but seems to speak more Spanish than English. She even speaks to me in Spanish! Although this itself is an implication, I am not going to focus on this. I just wanted to give some context of my placement. I am going to focus one student who is three years old.

            This little boy, KJ, is a very bright three-year old. He can do everything that the other students in the class can do; however, the teacher does not treat him this way. There was one time KJ went to the teacher to tell her something and she did not know what he was trying to say. She thought that he was telling her that someone hit him, but he was not. She picked him up, made the class sit down, and told him to point to whoever hit him. KJ did not point to anyone because no one hit him. I thought that this was interesting that she went through all of the trouble to do this, when there were plenty of times that she could not understand what other students in the class were talking about. She did not stop the class to find out what was going on, but instead, she essentially “brushed” them off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/opinion/climate-signals-growing-louder.html --
or, 'how much latitude can we allow,' in telling our stories?

Today at my Praxis, the students were still in PSSA mode. The students were going to be sitting for the writing portion of exam on Friday. Mrs. C. explained to me that the students are required to write an essay for the PSSA's writing portion of the exam, but her 8th grade beginning level students had just been introduced to the concept of a paragraph. Mrs. C. was ecstatic that I came to praxis today because I was able to provide one-on-one attention to an extremely low level student. As Mrs. C. addressed the rest of the class, I worked one-on-one with Jamie*.