Bees knees

My placement was at the GingerBread Women’s Prison located in the greater Chocodelphia area.  Every Friday from 11:45am until 3:30pm or 4:00pm myself, seven other students, and two professors made our way to the GingerBread Prison, about a 45 minute drive from campus, to participate in a book club with the women there.  I remember before our first visit going and speaking with my professor about how I could very well be the only male in the room, either genetically or emotionally.  We talked about how this might be an issue, and what we should/could do to make my presence in the classroom comfortable for everyone.  In the end we realized that there was nothing we could really do but feel out the situation.

I began this semester hoping to have a space to discuss and listen to ideas about what multicultural education meant. As the semester began, I was fresh out of my 360 on Global Health, missing the educational perspective on the issues we had been discussing the entirety of the fall semester, such as neoliberalism, imperialism, and globalization.

    My placement this semester was in several math classes taught by Mr. M at Westside High School. This school in West Philadelphia is composed of 95% Black students, which for the most part also represented the racial composition of the classes I was in.

Blackburn brings up a lot of interesting tensions throughout the book, but the one I am struck most by is that of the process of naming (p. 19-20). She intentionally makes explicit the difficulties she has creating categories of and inside of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The argument of Foucault vs Harstock's critique of Foucault about the tensions of naming to control vs naming to disrupt were interesting because I think there is a quick jump to say, "oh, well it's just semantics."  Of course, this is generally the people in the position of power who are able to say with some certainty that no matter what you call "it", it still exists.

I really liked the Keenan reading on sharing stories.  I remember sitting in homeroom classrooms as part of my placement, and having the teacher go around and ask students to share something.  This could be from and object from home, or what they did over the weekend, or something that they are excited about in the upcoming day, week, or month.  Regardless of what it was, all the students loved it because not only did it give them a chance to talk about something that they were excited about or interested in, it gave them a chance to listen to their peers and find common intrests and discussion topics.  

I really enjoyed Joanna Cattanach's article "Student Parents to Improve Student Learning."  I feel like we often talk about the roles of students and teachers in classrooms, but we often leave out the roles that parents play in the learning and education of their students.  Many educators often cite that parents must get involved in their childrens' education, but often those discourese do not take into account the accessiblity of the American education system, especially if parents are unable to speak English or are not aware to the extent that teachers and other educators wish for them to be involved. 

Reading about Pedro's journey through being mislabeled "Learning Disabled" and the misunderstanding of the type of knowledge that he carried, I was tempted to see his story through the lens of a broader immigrant experience. I think the extent to which knowledge is so inherently cultural, from the way it is received to the way it is held, is a clear indicator that schools were built and maintained for a specific type of student--specifically one who has the basic language and cultural skills to navigate the learning process. The fact that Naiditch was able to create an almost instant connection to Pedro's mom and find out the importance of an oral tradition in Pedro's life speaks volumes to the simplicity of opening that door for communication.

I feel like we have talked a bit in Multicultural Ed about immigrant students in the classroom, but I don't think we have talked about refugee students.  I think this is a very important distinction to make, given political, social, racial, and socioeconomic contexts.  I think immigrating to another country as a child and having to take part in a totally foreign system of education is traumatizing enough; but having to leave politically/socially unstable countries and arriving to America, sometimes without parts of families or their friends is even more damaging and traumatizing.