Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

"It's not like they come here to be labeled, or to believe the label. We're all here, kids, teachers, parents, whoever, it's all about us working together"

   I really enjoyed reading this article. In the article, “Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome” Christopher Kliewer claims that each individual child with down syndrome is different.  Yet they put all the children that have down syndrome together in one special classroom. They all have different learning and thought process. Kliewer says that children with disabilities should be incorporated into the regular classroom. The article really got into detail about incorporating disabled children into a regular classroom. This enables the children with the disability to be viewed as normal. It give the regular children the chance to look at the children with disabilities as one of them and not a special education child. I really think it is a great idea.  

   I remember when I was in high school, I had a friend who was disabled but he didn’t have down syndrome though. Anyways, he told people that before he came to Classical, it was either be separated from the regulars or with the regulars. He chose being with the regulars. Everything turned out fine for him and everybody welcomed him with open arms. I think Kliewer ideas it is already starting to be put in action already. Integrating a special needs child into a regular classroom can be a challenge, and may not work for some children though I feel everybody should deserve a shot.

Should Kliewr idea be put into action or no?

(Sorry this post is kinda short compared to others but I maybe will come back and edit it...)

P.S. CAMBODIAN NEW YEAR WAS MADD FUN....

Patrick J. Finn's “Literacy With An Attitude”

This week’s post is based on Patrick J. Finn's “Literacy With An Attitude”. Given the title, I thought the author was trying to make literacy feel cool. Man, was I off by a mile. In the first few chapters, Finn goes into detail about why he chose this title and it's more about literacy that challenges the status quo. “The status quo is the status quo because people who have the power to make changes are comfortable with the way things are. It takes energy to make changes, and the energy must come from the people who will benefit from the change.” Finn wants there to be radical changes and even though his ideas are undeniable, change doesn’t come easy.

Finn wants to demonstrate the inequality in the education of the privileged and the unprivileged. In chapter 2, Finn draws from Jean Anyon's study, which explores class differences in elementary schools. The study looks at four different kinds of schools. These school were categorized as "affluent professional", "executive elite", working-class, and middle-class. Finn effectively illustrates examples of how middle-class and lower income students are not receiving the same education as the upper-class students. In the working-class school, emphasis is placed on respect and remembering what is taught. “For example, one teacher led the students through a series of steps to draw a one-inch grid on their paper without telling them what they were making or what it was for. When a girl realized what they were making and said she had a faster way to do it, the teacher answered, "No you don't. You don't even know what I'm making yet. Do it this way or it's wrong.”” In the middle-class school, getting the right answer and following directions are emphasized, and doing well in school would lead you to a decent job. “Answers were words, sentences, numbers, facts, and dates. You could not make them up.” I think Finn wants society, particularly educators, to be aware of the gaps.

I feel it's not right for educators to simply help students read words on a page and nothing more. It's our job to ensure that students not only can read the words, but know what they mean and how to use them. What do you think?

Pennsylvania School Separates Kids By Race

I found this video the other day about how a school in Pennsylvnia is separating kids by race for a couple of minutes per days. This is designed to boost academics for African Americans. Would this work? Voice your opinions…

Gender Gaps In Education

It may still be a man's world but for how long? For years, educators were concerned that girls were not keeping up in the classroom. Now the worry is that boys are falling behind in almost every academic category. Thirty something years ago, boys, not girls, were the high performers in schools. Today, test scores, grades and dropout rates show boys are achieving at levels far below girls. You might notice this but go to almost any college campus in America today and you’ll notice something missing. In the last 10 years, two million more women than men graduated from college in the U.S. Women now make up just over 40 percent of the nation's college students. And it’s not just college. Women dominate high school honor rolls and make up more than 70 percent of class valedictorians. And where are the men going?

In the nation's elementary schools, that’s where many young men first start to fall behind. What we know is that in America:

• ·         80% of high school dropouts are boys
• ·         80% of all classroom discipline problems are boys
• ·         44% of college students are boy

Once boys hit their freshman year of high school, they're at greater risk of falling even further behind in grades, extracurricular activities, and advanced placement. While the girls are busy working on sweeping the honor roll at graduation, boys are more likely to be bulking up in a weight room or otherwise engaged in video games or downloading music.

What are your thoughts? I feel outnumbered in every way!!! LOL

Separate and Unequal

This week’s post, is a not the typical we are assigned every week. This week we had to explore Brown vs. Board of Education, watch videos of Tim Wise’s thoughts on Racism and White denial in the age of Obama, and an article called “Separate and Unequal” by Bob Herbert. These pieces all have relationships and connections and discusses the change in education since Brown vs. Board of Education.

On the Brown vs. Board of Education website, fighting for school desegregation became part of broader movement for social justice while it led to include racial and ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities, and other groups, each demanding equal opportunity. In Bob Herbert pieces, though school are now desegregated, schools itself doesn’t seem segregated today. It is resulted from residential patterns, social class and poverty. Low income students are going to school where they don’t learn much. Good teachers tend to stay away from school with a high population of low-income students. Herbert  says, “Long years of evidence show that poor kids of all ethnic backgrounds do better academically when they go to school with their more affluent - that is, middle class- peers.” Basically, I feel that the article says that race isn’t the issue. It is about the culture of poverty in which these children grow up, and the value system and hidden rules that they absorb from it.  Yet “We are nowhere near a post racial America”, says Tim Wise, author of “Between Barack and a Hard Place”.  Wise says, "6 out of 10 white folks admit to stereotyping by either perceiving blacks as less intelligent, more violent, less hardworking, less patriotic, live on welfare, and they do not work."For many people, the election of Barack Obama seemed to signify the end of racism as a pervasive social force in the United States. But is this true?  The answer to this is really dependent on how the people of America responded to the election and understanding the election to mean and what they understand it not to mean.  All of this relates to each other.

Question: Is America looking for segregation tomorrow? Why can’t we all just get along and learn from one another?

In The Service of What?

In the article, “In The Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning” by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer, it discusses two types of services. Kahne and Westheimer  discusses the difference between service for charity and service for change. The idea of service for charity is based upon the concept that a peerson volunteers his or her time to give back to the community, and to experience the pleasure of committing to this service. On the other hand, service for change, has a deeper meaning for a community and its volunteers. In the service for change, a community needs service which can aid the volunteers with knowledge to form relationships and help solve the problem together. Kahne and Westheimer believes service learning for change offers much more WINNING experiences for the community receiving the aid. Service for change concentrates more time on a WINNING plan rather than unconsciously volunteering time for the benefit of volunteering. Kahne and Westheimer wants the idea of service learning projects to individually provide different purposes and emphasize a variety of standards. The time that a volunteer spend working with students only provides real changes in their education when they are determined properly and repeatedly. If changes in their education are not being made, the time that he or she spends volunteering simply becomes a service for charity.

My question is, “What are we doing it for?”

Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us and POWER RANGERS!!!

       In the article, “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us”, written by Linda Christensen, its discusses the issue of media influencing our youths.  She believes that our youths are persuaded to believe the media’s representation of specific stereotypes. Media is perceived as innocent but Christensen tries to prove a point that there is more than meets the eye. Children’s cartoon, shows, movies, and literature gives stereotypical messages to our young people before they can understand the meaning. Christensen points out that media gives off a secret education towards our youths. They enter the minds of children at a very early age. All children see is the pleasure that comes from within them.  She is blaming racism and stereotypes on media.   
       This article is a very enlightening piece that I have read in a while. Her argument was true and she had all the facts to prove it.  For example, she says, “Have you ever seen a black person, an Asian, a Hispanic in a cartoon? Did they have leading roles or were they a servant? What do you think this is doing to your child's mind? Women who aren't white begin to feel left out and ugly because they never get to play the princess” (131). I started thinking of every show I use to watch when I was little, to see if they sent a stereotypical message. Sure enough, there was one in particular. For example, the first season of Power Rangers. If any of you have been alive long enough to have seen the Power Rangers, you would have already figured out that there is something odd about the portrayal of the original cast. The black ranger is a black guy who break dances. How stereotypical. The yellow ranger is Asian. The white ranger is a white dude and also the mightiest of the rangers. The green ranger was Irish. The pink ranger is a preppy white girl. The blue ranger is another white guy. The red ranger is a redneck and he was the leader. That’s just my opinion. Why couldn’t they had cast an Asian as a leader. Despite that, this is still my favorite power ranger season. It was weird thinking after finishing this article. 

Here’s a clip about power rangers (Note: this is just a parody...not the originals)