"Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome" Christopher Kliewer

Connections

Christopher Kliewer's article is about how children with down syndrome and with other disabilities are treated differently and most of the time kept seperate from the rest of the class. In class we watched a video showing that full inclusion classrooms can work. Some of the "traditional" students even said it helped them to know more about students with disabilities. The first connection I made was to Finn and Oakes and tracking. These students are tracked because of a disability. They are put in "special education" classes because they have a disability. Some of the students in the classes only have a physical disability but because of tracking, are kept in this class. I feel this is completely wrong. These students are denied oppurtunities because of their handicap. This leads me to my next connection. McIntosh. Before doing my SL project I may not have made this connection but Peggy McIntosh has other articles on priveleges besides being white. I saw a connection when reading Sarah's blog. She quotes a part in the reading about not knowing what it's like to have a disability and I think Peggy McIntosh would agree with this. Just as I don't know what its like to walk through the mall and get followed for my race, I don't know what it is like to be placed in a lower level class or denied an opputunity because of a disability. The last connection I saw was to Dennis Carlson. Carlson talks about everyone becing treated equally requardless of their sexuality. I think the point of Kliewers article that Carlson would like is that we are all people. Some are straight, some are gay, some are white, some are black, and some have a disability.

Here is a link to a webpage about being a childs advoacate that I found very interesting.

"Empowering Education" Shor quotes

"People are naturally curious. They are born learners. Education can either develop or stifle their inclination to ask why and to learn"

I think the author is trying to point out that we can't just tell people that something is true just because. We need to explain why it's true and if we talking about something that has yet to be proven, we need to teach them how to ask the write questions. The author is saying that everyone is born with the ability to learn but when they enter school, a place that should be encouraging learning, some are being left behind because they learn differently and no one is teaching them differently.

"Empowered students make meaning and act from refelction, instead of memorizing facts and values handed to them"

I think the authour is saying that these are the qualities a teacher should be trying to bring out of their students. If "empowered students" are our future leaders then we should be encouraging all students to think critically and ask why. Teachers shouldn't let them accept "just because" as a reason why. This will teach them what questions to ask and expand their knowledge.

"Empowered education, as I define it here, is a critical-democratic pedagogy for self and social change. It is a student-centered program for multicultural democracy in school and society. It approaches individual growth as an active, cooperative, and social process, because the self and society create each other"

The author argues that students today are the future of society. We need to teach them the past and present while also helping them to develop social skills. In order for them to succeed in life, they will need to have the knowledge and ability to ask the right questions while also having the social skills to work with others. Society can change us but we can also change society.

In class I would like to talk about what we as future teachers can do to further this idea. How are we going to develop a student centered education in our classrooms?

Check out this page with the background on Ira Shor with videos of a keynote address he gave.

Oakes- Arguement Post

In "Tracking: Why Schools need to take another route" Jeannie Oakes argues that even though it's difficult to do, tracking needs to be changed. When we seperate students and expect more from the "high ability" students, we not only put the "less abled" students farther behind but also the "average" students are getting penalized. Here is a passage that I think really sums up what she is trying to say needs to change to help equal things out.
"Students who need more time to learn appear to get less; those who have the most difficulty learningseem to have fewer of the best teachers."
And here is a part where she discusses the "average" students...
"Researchers found that the proliferation of classes and special programs for students at the extremes-students with high abilities or with handicaps- had the effect of making students in the middle "unspecial" and guarenteeing that they were taught in quite "unspecial" ways.

I agree with Jeanne Oakes arguement and it reminds me alot of my service learning placement. In the classroom I am in, the students are grouped by reading level but instead of giving the students who need less help more help, they make sure the students struggling with reading get more help and are working now to even things out. I think Oakes would like this and want it to be modified to secondary education in place of the tracking thats going on now.

Here is a newer article that states what Oakes said in 1985.

In class I plan in discussing further how I think the school I volunteer in is heading in the right direction.

Gender in Education

While researching gender differences in education, I came across alot of studies and research talking about the gender gaps in education. As the years go on the gaps seem to get smaller but they are still present. More girls than boys end up going to college and thinking about the classes I have taken here at RIC and even thinking about the ones I took at CCRI, I realized that there have been more females. Here is a link to one of the sites I found discussing the gaps in 2010 and some of the changes.
In class I planned on asking why the gap is getting smaller now? What has changed to make more men choose to go on to higher education?

Another thing that I found interesting was that there are many people who believe that schools should be segregated. Many researchers think that school curriculum is geared towards teaching girls. Here is one site that explains why girls and boys recieve a different education. Reading all this really made me mad because thinking about my classes, I don't think I've ever noticed a teacher who has tried to exclude the boys or set them up for failure and it seems that is what this site wants people to think. Another site I found talks about how boys and girls should recieve seperate educations because boys develop at a different rate than girls. I disagree with this completely. It is true that boys mature slower than girls, however I think it's important to have interaction between boys and girls in school to help expand the learning. Having the different genders in schools offers different perspectives. Click here to read the research on having seperate schooling. This link is actually from 2003. There are newer sites but this is the most informative.

"Between Barack and Hard Place" Wise Argument

This author Tim Wise argues that as society has come a long way from direct racism, we still don't recognize indirect racism as a whole, "we are nowhere near a post racial America. He states that we have gotten away from what he calls "racism 1.0" which is direct biggotry and old school bias. He says that we need to be on the lookout for "enlightened exceptionalism". Many people said that they voted for Obama because he is different from the "black norm" which we as a society need to get away from. We can not accept someone just because they are different from the "black or brown norm".

In class I would like to hear other students comparasions between Brown v. Board of Educations issues and the issues that Wise argues as I found it hard to navigate the site.

In the Service of What? Youtube post

I think that the type of service learning Ms. Adams' class does is the better way. They are understanding the issues which in the long run could inspire some of them to help change it. In Mr. Johnsons class, the students didn't understand the problems they were helping which only leads to a temporary fix. In order for things to change, people have to get involved and in order for people to get involved, they need to understand what the cause of the problem is. Mr. johnsons class did things like walk patients to their appointments which really didn't teach them anything. Ms. Adams' class actually learned about the homeless and the causes and these are the people who can make a change. most of the students in our class want to teach because we want to make a change. We want to make a difference in our students lives.

I tried to embed a video but the link has an error so I will attach the link instead. The mission of the shelter that students volunteer at in the video is not only to give out food, clothing and shelter but to teach life skills and try and change the stituation rather than just give a temporary fix.
Homeless Video.

Response to Jess

Is this really happening? Okay, what century are we in again? And we still can't accept that people are different? What is wrong with out society? I just had to get that out because I am extremely disgusted, to say the least, with what is going on in our world right now.
The morning before I actually read Carlson's article, I was watching the news and found out that yet another young man had killed himself as a result of being harassed because he was homosexual. This man, named Tyler Clementi, was a freshmen at Rutgers State University of New Jersey, and, as you can read in this news article, he was pushed beyond the limit, and decided to end his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
It doesn't end there. Just last week, two other boys took their own lives after being bullied and pushed out of the social norm for being gay. Thirteen year old Asher Brown of Houston, and thirteen year old Seth Walsh of California decided that they couldn't live one more day getting treated the way they were. And Billy Lucas, a fifteen year old high school freshmen, also hung himself last month from the same cause. Blunt enough?
Carlson argues that people, kids especially, need to become aware that there are differences in this world, and they need to be accepted. No matter how against something kids are, they need to somehow reprogram their brains and think otherwise. To do this, teachers and departments of schools need to stop being cowards, and they need to start teaching and acknowledging homosexuality in their curriculum. They need to know that it's okay to teach about these things, because it is present in the real world. It's when teachers decide to maneuver around the subject and ignore it, then students begin to think that maybe it is wrong, and maybe it shouldn't be accepted. And that's when gay student themselves are too afraid to stand up for themselves and live their lives openly as who they really are.
In this video, clinical psychologist Jeff Gardere reinforces the idea that teachers and parents need to help their children and students understand that homosexuality is a part of our world and it needs to be accepted. The video expands on Tyler Clementi's tragedy but the most important points begin at around 3:20 in the video. I also found this page that is strictly on gay/lesbian news where anyone can comment on specific stories and share their thoughts and I found it really interesting to read the different things people have to say on this topic.
Carlson states that "the official policy in most school districts is in fact identical to that of the U.S. military: Don't ask, don't tell," and that is ridiculous. People shouldn't feel the need to 'ask', because it doesn't matter either way, but they also should most definitely not be afraid to 'tell'.

I plan on furthering my discussion on how teachers, as well as parents, need to begin taking full responsibility in how their children and students view the differences in our society. This segregation and these "phobia's", need to stop, and since children are the future, I believe that's the best way to go.