Sunday, February 27, 2011

Pat Griffin, GLSEN Team Up to Launch Upcoming Sports Project

Hyperlinks:

I choose this article because it was about something that i care about, sports.  Although there was a lot of information on the website most of it didn't interest me that much.  The article that i read was about how schools were stating to make sure that the "physical education climate is based on the core principals of respect, safety and equal access for all students and coaches regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.(Daryl Presgraves)"  When i went and tried to find more information on this subject it was very easy.  One of the first things that I found was about a transgender athlete playing for the George Washington Women's basketball team.  She was the first athlete to play Division 1 athletics as a transgender athlete.  I feel like this relates because i also found another article about this athlete and how the school ended her season.  The article said that she had suffered from numerous concussions and therefore her season would be over.  It was also said in the article that the doctor did clear her to play but the school over ruled it saying that she wasn't fully recovered yet.  The school wasn't aware of the athlete being transgender until her junior year and that's when her playing time started going down and when the school ended her season.  Then going along with the article from GLSEN it shouldn't matter what is going on with the athlete.  She should be treated equally and allowed to play if she was cleared to play be a medical doctor but the school trainer said to keep her out.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Argument

Teaching Multilingual Children By: Virginia Collier

Collier argues that there is a right and a wrong way to go about teaching multilingual students.  Throughout   the article she states seven points that I believe are very important for teachers to use and be aware of when teaching these students. The points are...
     1. Be aware that children use first language acquisition strategies for learning or acquiring a second language.
     2. Do not hink of yourself as a remedial teacher expected to correct so called "deficiencies" of your students
     3.  Don't teach a second language in any way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the first language.
     4.  Teach the standard for or english and students home language together with an appreciation dialect differences to create an environment of language recognition in the classroom.
     5.  Do not forbid students from code switching in the classroom.  Understand the function that code switching serves.
     6.  Describe the literacy development curriculum that is specifically designed for English language learners.
     7.  Provide a balance and integrated approach to the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

I believe having the knowledge of these seven points would really help teachers out who are in the position of having to teach these students.  Teachers in these circumstances can't simply say ok were going to be speaking English only today.  That is not fair to the students because English is their second language and can't be expected to be fluent in it and not have to go back to their original language at some point.  In Collier's third point she says that a language should never be eliminated form the classroom.  So trying to take away the language would be the wrong way of going about teaching a second language.
Collier says that teachers need to value the students home language and their dialects.  A teacher should never tell the student that they are doing or saying something wrong because of their unique dialect.  Also if a student is having trouble understanding something in the second language the teacher can't get upset if the student refers back to his or her original language to try to better understand what the teacher is trying to teach.  Collier calls this code switching which is in her fifth point.  Then what I think is her best point is number seven when she says always refer back to the four language skills.


I thought that this was a very interesting article because I am in a ESL classroom for my VIPS tutoring.  Many of the students that i am working with barley speak English at all so i went online and tried to find some ways so i can get through to the students better.  Then i cam upon this website, and i used some of the things that it said to help have the students understand better.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

White Privilege by: Peggy McIntosh

Reflection


     When I was reading this article all i could think about was Lisa Delpit's piece, The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Predagogy in Educating Other People's Children.  When McIntosh spoke of unearned privileges I immediately thought of Delpit's Culture of power.  These two things are directly related in my eyes because in both instances white people are gaining unfair advantages over other races.  In White Privilege the author goes on and list twenty six ways that white people have advantages over black people. These are things that most people wouldn't think of if they had the white privilege.  The culture of power is essentially the same thing as this because white people are gaining advantages in everyday life just because of how they were brought up.  An example that we used in class was that if a student is playing with a puzzle and the teacher says, "is it time to be playing with the puzzle?" the student may say "yes i'm almost done with it.".  Even though in class we were talking about the culture of power this also works with white privilege because the white child would be privileged and know what the teacher actually means where as the student of another nationality may not know.  I think these two articles were directly related saying the same things in different ways.



During class i would like to discuss how similar Delpit's piece is to McIntosh's.  They are both talking about ways in which white people have advantages over other races.  Even though Delpit's piece is about schooling children of different races and McInthoshe's article is more in a general sense the two articles directly relate to one another.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Hey I'm Luke

Hey I'm Luke, I'm 18 years old and from Seekonk Mass.  Im a freshman at RIC this year majoring in Physical Education and Health.  So far this semester has been going pretty well considering how many days we've missed because of the snow.  My classes haven't been to hard for the most part but i am looking forward to the summer.  Basically when I'm not in class I'm either hanging out with friends or either reffing or coaching basketball.  I also enjoy playing basically any sport for the most part.  Thats basically it, I go to school, hang with friends, and ref and coach basketball.