In the beginning of the party, Bryn sat in her seat. However, just a few minutes later, she kept standing up and sitting back down. Over time, she then began to move around her seat causing Mrs. G to tell her, "Please sit down." This continues for some time as Bryn's classmates are presenting their book reports. Eventually, Mrs. G makes Bryn to go next for her presentation. During the presentations, one could notice the distraction of Bryn standing up and down in her seat, as well as the shifting and moving of her body while at her chair. This caused a distraction to the other students sitting on the floor while they trying to pay attention to their classmates' presentations.

Knowing How to Wait

           Last semester I was placed again at School A, my placement since Spring of 2011. An advantage to this is that I can continue to build a good relationship with the students and faculty and I even get to see the students grow, literally. Being a part of a school means you begin to really get a sense of the person behind the image of a student. You can predict how some students behave if they are having a good time in school and also how they will react if they are having a hard time. As a teacher, building good relationships with your students is a continuous goal. Your reaction to a student in certain situations can either propel your relationship toward the positive route or the not-so-favorable way.

               This is an excerpt from my field notes last semester that highlights one particular moment:

Your souvenirs:

Icelandic horse carving, fleece sleeping bag, hardback

Which left me longing for a translation that doesn’t exist;

What to do with a text I can’t read?

Old book Ritsafn, old tee-shirt soft,

The paper shines; signed by Fra Sigurdardottir a Hlodum.

She was a writer of fairy tales and poems married to a carpenter,

Ever after farmers.

We are the writer and the carpenter;

My caretaker, I shall translate into the genitive case romantic.

Book and word are English cognates of the Icelandic language,

Word list and word lust.

I learned enough Icelandic;

Now let us make like old people and read in bed!

1/25/13: Part I: Before (written at 11:10AM)

Last night Students for a Livable Future had an almost-two-hour planning meeting over dinner for a 1.5 hour teach-in today during lunch at the dining center. (Wouldn't it be amazing if teachers could do that? Though on second thought, that degree of planning would probably prove tiresome and unnecessary for experienced educators.) We are calling our event a climate justice teach-in but really it is all about our campaign for Haverford to divest its endowment from fossil-fuel companies. (Is that misleading? Will people be upset? Or will no one come at all? We advertised quite heavily with posters hanging from trees, tons of Facebook posting, etc. I'm pretty nervous about it all right now.)

            Economics is a patriarchal social science. It aspires to dominate society by imputing value on goods that it finds important or relevant, and therefore manipulates perceptions of social value, and controls social welfare. Because of this, there is an abrasive intersection arising between economics, ecology, and ecofeminism. Marilyn Waring, author of Counting for Nothing, believes that there is a need for value to be imputed on unpaid women’s labor, but believes a fiscal approach would be inefficient and “totally dysfunctional”. The core of her argument is that economics has been designed to economically repress women, and that excluding women’s unpaid domestic labor from calculating national income is harmful in addressing the progress of our economy. Because the patriarchal nature of economics does not allow for a true imputation of value on opportunity cost women’s domestic labor, it cannot be considered a true measure of national income, and if remained unaddressed, will be detrimental to modern day society.

Education 311: Field Work Seminar

Spring 2013

Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College

Bryn Mawr/Haverford Education Program

Office: Bettws-Y-Coed 303 (BMC)

Meetings by appointment

Phone: 610-526-5214 (office), 215-206-6832 (cell)

jccohen@brynmawr.edu

Course Overview

This is the culminating seminar for students completing the Minor at Bryn Mawr or Haverford Colleges, and is open only to students completing the minor.  Drawing on the diverse contexts in which participants complete their fieldwork, this seminar will explore how images and issues of practice emerging from students’ fieldwork inform and are informed by cross-cutting issues in the field of education. 

This put me in mind of what Prof. Crawford told us about the
effect of the fault line on the building of cities:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/the-fall-lines-fault/

Ladies and Lying: Some Questions about Honor

“Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,” for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience.  The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us.  We therefore have a primary obligation to each other; not to undermine each others’ sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.  Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience.  Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

--Adrienne Rich, “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying”, p. 190