Goal keeper at heart

5 years ago today, Carrie Holmstrom, was in a car accident that changed her life forever.  I used to play soccer with Carrie and she was such a nice person that pushed her whole team to give their best.  When i heard the news about Carrie's accident i couldn't understand why such a horrible thing could happen to such an amazing person.


http://www.pressherald.com/archive/despite-life-changing-accident-shes-still-a-goalkeeper-at-heart_2008-06-29.html


This article is from a few years ago, but now Carrie has lost a lot of weight from doing 6am work outs every morning.  She also has a blog where she updates a lot about what she has been doing and what she feels.  Carrie is one of the happiest people that i have ever met, even to this day.  It is very inspirational how Carrie lives everyday like it is her last.

Education in Politics

Education is Politics
Ira Shor




1. "The teacher is the person who mediates the relationship between outside authorities, formal knowledge, and individual students in the classroom."


 I really like this quote and i do agree with it.  I feel like teachers should balance their time with different aspects of the classroom and also needs to not spend too much time on one thing.  Subjects can not be taught at a really fast pace unless the teachers know that every single student completely understands the material.


2. "He urged teachers to encourage students to question their experience in school: ‘You must arouse children's curiosity and maker them think about school."


 I feel like the most successful students are the ones that want to be there and are interested to learn.  Sometimes its very hard to get students interested in school but the way teachers teach can help.  Learning is not always supposed to be fun but if a subject is taught in an interesting way or by doing an experiment then the students will be more interested.




3. “The students in that media class learned subject matter through student-centered problem-posing in a critical dialogue, not through my lecturing them in a banking fashion.”


I feel like this way of learning helps many students learn and be interested in the topic.  A student being interested in a subject is very important because most student will refuse to try to learn new things if they find it not interesting.




I feel like this reading had some good points about how students should be able to say their opinions but i feel like i lost interest with the reading because it was so long.  I feel like teachers should try to teach in a way where the students discuss more and aren't always taught subjects in a ledture

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

- Jennifer

1)"Community requires a willingness to see people as they are-different perhaps in their minds and in their bodies, but not different in their spirits or in their willingness and ability to contribute to the mosaic of society."

1. This is my favorite quote.  I know plenty of people that claim they are scared of people with special needs and just do not like to be around them.  The best moments for me in the last two years have been when i was around people with special needs.  Being around them has gave me a different out look on many things in life.  They are not given as much respect as they deserve.  The battle obstacles and judgement every day, which i find completely unfair that they have to go through as much as they do because of the special needs clients that i know at my job are some of the most amazing people i have ever met.

2) "“How absurd to be judged by others at all, especially by those who have never experienced a disability or who are unwillingly providing us with support or who don’t listen to the voices we have.”

1. I completely agree with this quote.  I work with people with special needs and nothing annoys me more than when me and the other staff at my job will take them out to eat and to do other activities and waitresses and other people act like they do not have opinions and can not do anything for themselves.  I do understand how some people do not know how to act when they are around people with special needs, but people do need to understand that they have their own thoughts, feelings and most of them are capable of doing plenty of daily activities on their own.


3) "If you came into the room and were told there was a retarded child in the class, a child with special needs, I don't think you would pick Lee out.  The kids really agree that he's as capable as they are.  Intellectually the same."


1.  I really like this quote because there are many people with special needs that are extremely smart and many people do not think that some people with special needs are smarter than most people without special needs.


This reading was by far my favorite reading.  I can relate to this reading more than the others and it is also a topic that i feel strongly about.

“Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon

“Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”

by Jean Anyon

-Jen

1)"In the middle class school, work is getting the right answer."

 1.  I agree with this, I also think it is something that high school students do too.  Most students do not look at what the purpose is on doing certain activities, they just care about getting the right answer.  I feel like if the learning was done like in the second quote on my blog then the students would realize why they are doing certain activities.

2)"While right answers are important in math, they are not "given" by the book or by the teacher but may be challenged by the children. Going over some problems in late September the teacher says, "Raise your hand if you do not agree." A child says, "I don't agree with sixty-four." The teacher responds, "OK, there's a question about sixty-four. [to class] Please check it. Owen, they're disagreeing with you. Kristen, they're checking yours." The teacher emphasized this repeatedly during September and October with statements like "Don't be afraid to say you disagree. In the last [math] class, somebody disagreed, and they were right. Before you disagree, check yours, and if you still think we're wrong, then we'll check it out." By Thanksgiving, the children did not often speak in terms of right and wrong math problems but of whether they agreed with the answer that had been given."

1. I agree with this way of learning.  It makes all the children think and figure out if the answer is right or wrong.  They also learn how to give their opinion.

2. I feel like this way of learning is better for the students then a teacher giving all the answers to the students and not letting them figuring it out on their own.

3) “As one child said, what you do is "store facts up in your head like cold storage - until you need it later for a test or your job."

1. I liked this quote because it is very true.  Almost all students do this.  They learn about a topic until they are tested on it, then they don't ever use it again until it the topic comes up in a conversation or during a job.  Sometimes a topic is never thought about again after the test.

This reading was easy to read and i do agree with some of the points, like how students just store knowledge away in their brains until it is needed again.  Also that most students only care about getting the right answers and don't care about why the activity is being done.

Race, Class, Gender; Why Students Fail Peter McLaren

Race, Class, Gender; Why Students Fail
Peter McLaren


-Jen


1."Just as male resistance in the schools often serve to more firmly cement the boys in their low-caste status, female resistance often means rejecting the culture of the classroom only to be positioned in a culture in which girls are viewed as sex object."
1) I feel like this quote is very demeaning for women.  It is saying that no matter what women do with their lives, they will only be viewed as sex objects


2."The Corridor girls started to "go" with boys as early as age twelve.  If in the process of "making out
 they responded to the boys' advances too readily or indiscriminately, however, they were labeled as "sluts"  Such names, employed viciously and randomly, were also bestowed on girls who were physically unappealing.  Girls often found themselves in the double bind of losing their group status if they engaged in "too much" sexual activity, or of being rejected as "cold
 if they engaged in too little.  Boys' status however was fundamentally enhanced by similar incidents of increased sexual engagement.  This double standard has existed historically of course and feminists have consistently and rightly attacked it."
1) I feel like this quote is disturbing.  I feel that at age 12, no one should "go" with anyone else.  At that age I feel like that they are too young to understand what a relationship really is about.
2)Also, I feel that the double standard for girls and boys is completely wrong.  Boys can do what they want with who they want, but if a girl happens to do it she is looked down upon.


3."Specifically blacks and similar minorities believe that in order for a minority person to succeed in school academically, he or she must learn to think and act white."
.... I understood this quote two different ways.
1) This quote is sad.  Its sad that people feel that they need to think and act white to succeed in school.
2) Also, i feel like this quote could mean that if a minority that does not speak English very well and they live in an area that does speak english, they need to learn english so they can fit in with the whites.




This reading had some disturbing points about it where certain genders and certain races are put down

A Particularly Cheap White Whine

A Particularly Cheap White Whine: 
Racism, Scholarships and the Manufacturing of White Victimhood 
By Tim Wise
-- Jennifer





1)"Consider a few things that have happened in the past month-and-a-half, in no particular order: First, comedian Michael Richards goes on a racist tirade at an L.A. comedy club, screaming the n-word at two black audience members, over and again for several minutes. Then, white students at four entirely different colleges dress up in blackface or throw "ghetto" parties, at which they mock low-income African Americans: next, a group of Muslim clerics are thrown off a plane because passengers get nervous after seeing them engaged in evening prayers prior to boarding their flight; and finally, New York police fire fifty shots at a group of unarmed black men, for no apparent reason, killing one who was due to be married the next day."
1. After reading this quote it made me think of what could have been going through these people's heads when they were doing all of this.
2. What the comedian did was very rude and unnecessary.  The incident with the new work police is just wrong. I don't understand how they could shoot people that are unarmed for no reason.


2)"white students are twice as likely as their African American or Latino counterparts to be taught by the most highly qualified teachers and half as likely to have the least qualified instructors in class being taught by highly qualified teachers is one of the most important factors in school achievement."
1.This quote does not make sense to me.  Whites are considered "privileged" so they get the best teachers, but the students that are considered unprivileged get the teachers that aren't as qualified.  It doesn't make sense to give the students that might need more help with the less qualified teachers. 
2. Also, I don't understand why a certain group of people get more qualified teachers over another group of people.


3)"It ignores the fact that the average white student in the U.S. attends school with half as many poor kids as the average black or Latino student, which in turn has a direct effect on performance, since attending a low-poverty school generally means having more resources available for direct instruction (5). Indeed, schools with high concentrations of students of color are 11-15 times more likely than mostly white schools to have high concentrations of student poverty (6)."
1. I think that if there are many poor students in a school and it effects the performance of the other students that something should be done.  It is no one fault, but it isn't fair for the students that are poor and it isn't fair for the students that are not.




This reading had a a lot of good information even though the first quote i used was very disturbing and crazy how things like that can happen and people can get away with treating other people so horrible.

"In the Service of What?" by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

"In the Service of What?"
 by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

Jen

1."Educators and legislators alike maintain that service learning can improve the

community and invigorate the classroom, providing rich educational

experiences for students at all levels of schooling. Service learning makes

students active participants in service projects that aim to respond to the

needs of the community while furthering the academic goals of students.

Students in a service learning project might analyze and monitor the

composition of nearby swamplands or produce an oral history of their

community. They might work with the homeless or initiate a cross-age

tutoring project. In addition to helping those they serve, such service learning 

activities seek to promote students' self-esteem, to develop higher-order

thinking skills, to make use of multiple abilities, and to provide authentic

learning experiences—all goals of current curriculum reform efforts."

1) I agree with this quote.  Taking part in a service learning project is very helpful in different ways.  You learn many different skills and also help other people which is very rewarding.  A tutoring project is  a very good way to not only help someone with school work, but also be a friend to someone that could really need someone.

2. Some projects require a student to use what the learn in the classroom in a real life situation which is a good way to learn more about topics.

2."One student in Mr. Johnson's class, for example, volunteered at the Veterans'

Memorial Senior Center:

For Thanksgiving this year my stepmother and I helped serve the

seniors their Thanksgiving dinner. This was a very rewarding

experience helping others in need. It seemed that the dinner was

something special to them; it was a chance for them to get

together with their peers. Many don't have families in the area and

are all alone for the holidays. This made it a little less lonely,

which feels great. Thank you for giving me the chance to help!"

1.I feel that many students should be part of a project where they help make people's lives better.  I agree with what this student said about how great it felt to brighten the holiday for these people that might not have family around.  In high school my chorus would go sing at the aci and at a few senior centers.  Some of the staff told us how many of the people never smiled when they are there, but once we show up they are all smiling and singing.  It feels great to make a difference in someones life.

This article was confusing sometimes, but the meaning of it is very important.  Volunteering has been a big part of my life and i understand how you need to talk to the people that you are helping.  It makes the experience better and you can also help them out better if you know some things about them.

Unlearning the myths that bind us

Unlearning the myths that bind us
Christensen
Jen




1)"Students start to notice patterns-like the absence of female characters in many of the older cartoons.  When women do appear they look like Jessica Rabbit or Playboy centerfolds-even in many of the new and improved children's movies"
1. I have noticed in many children's movies that many times the mother has passed away and then the evil step mother comes into the house.  Students do notice the little parts of movies and cartoons that many people would just skip over.  Students also notice who is usually the servants and who is never a main character.




2) "Many students don't want to believe that they have been manipulated by children's media or advertising. No one wants to admit that they've been "handled" by the media."
1. Many people always say how they do not understand how people could believe that the media  can turn people into something they aren't.  It is very true though that the media can do that.  Girls that do not feel good enough will see the beautiful skinny girls on commercials and they will think that if they look like them then they will be good enough.




3)"Kenya asked have you ever seen a black person, an asian or a hispanic in a cartoon? did they have a leading role or where they a servant? women who aren't white begin to feel left out and ugly because they never get to play the princess"
1. This quote is something that i completely agree with.  If children notice that only whites are main characters then they will feel like they are not important because of their race, when everyone really is important.  Watching movies or cartoons like this can really effect a child.






This article makes a lot of good points.  Children notice a lot when they watch a movie or a cartoon.  What they see in these can have an influence on them.  A child noticing that a certain race is always the servant and never the princess can be very hurtful.  Having a child notice stereotypes can also affect them negatively.

Gayness , Multicultural Education, and the Community

Dennis Carlson

Gayness , Multicultural Education, and the Community

Jen

1. "In 1993, the gay rights movement claimed a major victory in the signing into law of a Minnesota bill that makes it illegal to discriminate against lesbians and gay men in employment and housing. Yet what got ignored in all the celebrating was a provision in the bill that prohibits teaching about homosexuality in the public schools"

  1) The first line of this quote is a very good step to moving in the right directions.  People that are gay are human, they should be able to work at what job they want and live where they want just like straight people can.

   2) The second sentence of this quote means that it is something that can not be talked about in school.  Students should hear about the riots to prevent gays from doing things that they want. Children should hear other people talk about it, not just their parents.  If children only hear their parents talk about gay and lesbian rights then they might grow up not having their own thoughts about it.

2."Be yourself no matter who or what you are."

  1) I believe that this quote is very important.  No matter who someone is, what their background is or if they are gay or straight, they should always act themselves because everyone is unique.

   2) If more people understood this quote then i feel like the world could be a better place.  No one can help the background they come from, or if they are gay or straight.  It is something that no one can change and people need to understand and accept it.

3." A male substitute teacher was greeted by one of the students as she shouted across her english classroom, that man is a faggot right?  Look at how he talks." ....." One young man remembers " when i was changing classes i had all the books in my hands looking down and walking up.  I'd hear someone mutter faggot and have my books knocked down.

   1) This is one quote that made me angry when i read it.  No one should be treated like this just because they are not straight.

    2)  My cousin who i went to high school with is gay.  I watched many students call her names and bump into her while walking in the hall.  Bullying someone that is gay is a serious problem and it effects how many people live their life.  Some students are afraid to come to school because they are called a faggot everyday.  Bullies are one reason that the quote "Be yourself no matter who or what you are" is very hard to live by.

This reading was one of the best ones we have read.  The author had very good points.  It is sad that people are treated very badly for things that they can not control.

Meier

Terry Meier
"Why can't she remember that?"


Jen


1) " In doing so, this preschooler demonstrates not only her already considerable knowledge about books but also her awareness of how important book knowledge is to the adults in her life.  Where do her knowledge and awareness come from? As Wolf and Heath documented, Lindsey, like many other mainstream preschoolers, has spent countless hours being read to by adults."
1.  This quote makes me feel more strongly about children being read to when they are little.  I think it is one very important thing that parents do.
2. Reading can help a child learn more words and it can also teach them lessons.


2) "While Gabriela seldom responded to her teacher's storybook questions and typically sat quietly when books were being read, other children who have not had the experience of being read to at home may participate vociferously in story reading sessions, though not always in ways their teachers approve."
1. This quote makes it more obvious that children need to be read to when they are at home.
2. The author also stated how Gabriela knew the answer to her teachers question and didn't understand why the teacher kept asking how many mittens there were.  The author stated how since Gabriela did not answer the question that the teacher may think that she does not understand the question.  This could cause a problem for Gabriela because the teacher then could think that Gabriela needed more simplified instructions.




3) " Despite their diverse backgrounds, all children bring to school rick linguistic abilities acquired through social interaction in their homes and communities."
1. I think this quote is completely true.  All students comes from different families and backgrounds, they are brought up differently and a lot of students could learn from each other and make themselves better people.
2. I feel that if some teachers thought about this quote more then some of them wouldn't be disrespectful to students who work at a slower pace than others.  Each student has a strength and each student has a weakness, which makes them unique.




I liked this article, it was easy to understand and it also showed how students should be read to when they are young because it can help them in different ways.  Also i liked how the article stated how each child is unique and brings something different to the school.

McIntosh

Jen
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
By Peggy McIntosh




1) "Through work to  bring materials  from Women’s Studies into the  rest  of the curriculum,  I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are over privileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged.   They may say they will work to improve women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s.  Denials, which amount  to  taboos,  surround  the  subject  of  advantages,  which  men  gain  from  women’s  disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended"
1. I feel like this is exactly how the situation is with white privileges.  Most people are aware of it to some degree, but when it comes time to changing it, then nothing happens.
2.I feel like nothing happens because like McIntosh stated that the men will not fix the problem because then they will not have as much power, if whites try to fix the problem, then they will not have as much power.


2)"I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male  privilege.   So  I  have  begun in an  untutored way to ask what it is like to  have white privilege.   I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can
count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious.  White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes,tools and blank check"
1. When the author states that she thinks whites are taught not to recognize white privilege like males are taught not to recognize male privilege, it makes it a lot easier to understand why sometimes privilege is not recognized.
2. Privilege not being recognized is an issue that needs to be fixed.  White privilege needs to be brought to everyones attention, because if it isn't then it will not be fixed.


3)“As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage.”
1. This quote helped me understand the difference between racism and privilege. People only recognize racism, they ignore white privilege. If white privilege is never mentioned then there is no way that it will be recognized.


This article made me think more about racism, white privilege and male privilege. The example about how males will not give away any of their power but they will recognize that they have the power over women made me think that that could happen if more people recognized white privilege. They would not act on it to fix it.