The quote that I received

I feel like the quote that I received from Mr. and Mrs. Dr. Williams was very fitting, and it almost made me cry. The quote is from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 Inaugural Speech and says,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

My own self doubt is something that I struggle with.  I do think that I am meant to achieve greatness, but I haven’t been able to let my light shine.  Or, I haven’t realized how to let it shine.  Everyday I am closer to making that realization, and I am becoming more and more willing and able to let my light shine.  It really is a journey to let go of the fear and the self doubt and just let myself be free.

Visiting Idlewood Elementary

I am really glad we got a chance to visit Idlewood Elementary yesterday.  I feel like it gave me more confidence in my decision to become a teacher.  Just seeing the teachers who had already been through our program in action made me feel like I could do it, and I could do it well.  One of the things that I noticed in the class that I observed was the “No Place for Hate Promise.”  One part of the promise said, “I promise to do my best to be kind to everyone-even if they are not like me.”  This really showed me that we can take what we are learning about being culturally responsive and help our young students apply it to their own lives and in their classrooms.

My highschool experience

After reading “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” by John Taylor Gatto, I thought about my own high school experience and what it taught me. I did not fit into the high-school system. One quote from Gatto’s article that really struck me was, “Individuality is a contradiction of class theory, a curse to all systems of classifications.” I definitely felt this way in high school and struggled to assert my individuality in a setting where I was constantly told to conform to the norm. The norm was being excited about Friday night football games, being peppy at the Pep rally, memorizing facts so I could spit them out the next day and being happy to do it. In order to assert some individuality I wore strange outfits, cut my hair very short and dyed it black, smoked cigarettes in the bathroom, blatantly read books on Buddhism or books of poetry in class when I should have been taking notes or doing a Chemistry assignment. I spent a few Saturdays in “Saturday school.” I think I was trying let people know that I was different, that I thought about things differently. I couldn’t wait to get out of high school and was ready to be done with the whole education thing altogether. Luckily, my dad gave me a choice that made it very easy to decide to go on to college. Upon graduating, I had not applied to colleges; I hadn’t even thought about going to college, but my dad told me that either I needed to a) go to college, or b) move out of the house. Well, ummm, I think I give this college thing a try. Since I hadn’t done very well in high school and hadn’t planned to go to college, my options were limited. I went to the local community college, and it was one of the best decisions of my life. I felt like I finally had control over what I studied and how I studied. I had control over my own life, and I could succeed or I could fail. Most importantly, I could be seen as an individual with thoughts and feelings. I saw myself as intelligent, and I chose to excel. Some people look down on community college, but for me it gave me the opportunity to think about my life and get myself together as I prepared for the next phase of my life.

Tracking kids from a young age

When I was 6 or 7  years old, I took a series of tests to see whether or not I was “gifted.”  I remember going into a little room, talking to the man who was administering the test, answering his questions, playing with blocks and shapes, and taking an IQ test.  Well, according to the results of all his tests, I was, in fact, not “gifted.”  A few months ago, I was going through some old school work and art at my mom’s house.  She had kept a copy of the report that this man wrote about me.  He talked about how quiet and anxious I was during our meeting and during my tests.  I wonder how much that anxiety affected my performance.  Even as a 27 year old woman, who has graduated from college, it made me feel bad to read this report about myself.  It made me remember how I felt when I learned that I hadn’t “passed” the tests and wasn’t “gifted.”  I had to stop myself from saying that I really must be dumb.  I don’t know how I’ve made it all these years considering that when I was 6 I was too stupid to be considered “gifted!”

An Atheist in a Christian Nation

I thought I would go out on a limb here and talk about what it means to be an Atheist in the United States. I know that there are many negative connotations associated with the word “Atheist,” and I know this because I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. I would like to point out a few things and hopefully clear up a few misconceptions.  I would also like to point out a few ways in which Atheists are discriminated against in this country.
As an Atheist in a Christian nation:

• I will be outnumbered anywhere I go.
• People might assume that I worship the devil. I grew up thinking that an Atheist was the same as a devil worshiper. But, just like I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in the Devil either.
• I carry around and use currency that says, “In God we trust.” I am no longer a part of the “We.”
• If I were running for public office and talked about my non belief in God, I probably wouldn’t be elected.
• If I say the Pledge of Allegiance, I make a very conscious decision not to say “under God,” which is distracting and makes me feel very aware of my place in society, which is like an outsider.
• It took me a long time to get over my feelings of guilt and shame concerning my non belief in God.
• When I talked to my mom about my thoughts and non belief, it broke her heart. She still asks me to go to church with her, and denies my non belief.
• At family meals and gatherings, I am expected to pray.
• People might assume that I am really just angry with God, when, in actuality, I do not believe in God. It is hard to be angry at something that doesn’t exist.
• I might be expected to teach that God created the world in 7 days. I base my believes on science. I like facts and need concrete proof of God’s existence. I do believe in evolution and see human beings as another species on this planet. We have the ability to think and reason and create, and I think that we are an amazing animal, but I think that evolution can explain all of it.
• I have studied world religions and probably know more than most about them.
• I have studied the Bible and Christianity.
• I have high moral standards and value human beings and freedom. Many Christians believe that morality comes from God, and if a person doesn’t believe in God, then that person must be immoral and wicked.
• Generally speaking, I am a happy person. I am not angry or sad, and I love life and cherish the moments that I have on this Earth.
• I often feel like I have to lie about my non belief, or at least hide it.
• It makes me mad that, in Georgia, I can’t buy alcohol on Sundays.
• I believe that religion causes more harm than good – wars, crusades, televangelism, cults, bigotry, mistrust, terrorism, and discrimination are a few that come to mind. I know that there are many positive things that come from religion, and religion has helped a great many people reach a higher level of understanding and consciousness, but for me the bad outweigh the good.
• Most people assume that I am a Christian.

Please feel free to comment on any of these or ask questions if you have any.

Ebonics

I have to admit, it was difficult for me to not think of Ebonics as “incorrect” English.  I have a degree in English so I spent so much time and effort trying to speak and write in the “correct” standard English way.  I had a bit of an “Aha” moment on the way home this afternoon.  Melissa and I carpool, and we were sitting at a traffic light next to a liquor store.  When traffic started moving, we started to go, but a truck was trying to pull into the liquor store.  The driver started to pull in front of us just as we started to move forward.  Melissa said, “whoa, okay, go on and getcha lickha.”  I don’t know if that would be classified as Ebonics or not, but I realized that we do have ways of talking to our friends and family that we wouldn’t use in class or when writing a paper.  I say “y’all” and “what choo doin” and “nuthin” and many other words and phrases that I wouldn’t say in certain situations.  Thinking back on it, I do tend to slip into my Southern accent more easily when I’m around my family.  This way of speaking works for me and the people that I’m around and it does have a place and a value.  As long as students know when it’s okay to slip in and out of certain ways of speaking there isn’t anything “incorrect” about it.  It’s just the way people talk and interact.  I am questioning why I immediately dismissed Ebonics.  As a Southerner, I drop letters off of words, my words run together, I understand my grandmother when she says things like “over yonder” and “warshin machine.”  Is this way of speaking better than Ebonics?  I think that I saw it that way.  Did I see it that way because I’m white and educated?  I am sitting here trying to come up with an answer, and I don’t have one.  I think I have taken the first step in answering it by beginning to question why I did dismiss it.

New appreciation

After visiting the King Center I think I have a new appreciation for Dr. King. Of course I am familiar with his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and it is easy to, not necessarily overlook, but to not really think about his life of service and sacrifice. He worked so hard to bring people together and to live a life of peace and justice. The one thing that really stood out to me was when Abernathy was giving the speech at Dr. King’s funeral, he said that the American psyche must be in such a terrible place that we would take away one of the best. Dr. King really was one of the best that this country and this world has ever produced, and he was needlessly murdered. I just wonder if he had had the opportunity to live his entire life, what changes would he have been a part of? Would we be in a completely different place now?

Oh, the times they are a changin’

I have been reading a lot by James H. Kunstler. He argues that the decline in oil production will force Americans to live in more localized, agrarian societies. I do believe that the current system can not sustain itself. We have built our society and our lives around the production of cheap oil. We have started to see the effects of this with the rising oil and gas prices, which cause rising food prices because it’s all connected. What does this have to do with education? In his book, The Long Emergency, Kunstler talks about the current education system, in relation to our reliance on cheap oil, and how this will change in the future. Here is a quote about the current education system from The Long Emergency.

“Many of the problems of education today are the unintended consequences of consolidated administration – the attempt by school districts to save money by operating fewer but bigger buildings, running fewer but larger bus fleets, and employing fewer non-teaching managers. This was made possible by a chain of connected circumstances. The suburban development pattern erased the essential quality of locality per se. Typically, by the 1960s, suburban children couldn’t walk anywhere, including to school, so wherever they did go to school a bus was required to get them there. Cheap oil made the school bus fleet a normative part of the system. (Think of a school bus fleet as a public transit system that runs only twice a day for people under eighteen and you may grasp the basic profligacy of the system.) Once that was established, school districts gathered their pupils from ever-larger geographic population ’sheds’ and bused them to ever more gigantic consolidated ‘facilities.’ The economies of scale they strove to enjoy were typical of any larger enterprise during the cheap-oil age. The effect of all this on the students, though, was always secondary to the administrative benefits, and the purpose of school somehow got lost, so that, paradoxically, even the richest suburban high schools with Olympic swimming pools, food courts, and hectares of playing fields produced alienated students dogged by anomie, depression, and a pervasive anxiety about their future roles in a consumer society.”

He goes on to say the this system will not be feasible in the future. There will still be a need for capable teachers, but education will have to be scaled down and done on a more local level in smaller communities.

Here is a wonderful interview with Kunstler. It is a 5 part series and a little lengthy, but I highly recommend it if you would like to learn more about him or his ideas.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hXsCMC0xcOY

My dilemma

I was forwarded a very offensive, racist email today. I received this email from my fiance who received it from his grandfather. Jason sent this to me because he was shocked and disgusted. His grandfather is notorious for forwarding offensive emails, but this one takes the cake.

If you want to see the article, click here. It’s listed as satire, but the ideas that permeate it are vile, satire or not.

Basically, this email told of a “Precedent setting decision” in which a judge ruled that black women no longer have independent naming rights for their children. Because black children have names that are so “ridiculous,” black women now have to have at least 3 white women agree on a name before the black mother can name her child.

Are you appalled yet? His grandfather did send an email afterwards saying that this wasn’t actually true. Wow, thanks for clearing that up! I just got out of an intense 7 hour class about racism and stereotypes, then I get this email. I feel sad and overwhelmed and angry. I also feel helpless. I told Jason that he needs to say something, otherwise his grandfather will continue to send him these awful emails and think that he agrees. What if he doesn’t say anything? Should I send an email to this man that I barely know and tell him how ignorant and horrible he is? Is it my place to enlighten him? I think I am getting to a point where I am tired of being nice and polite about these things. Racism changes who people are, and those changes start with children.

Lost Voices

The history and literature that we are taught as children is centered around white Europeans. For example, history doesn’t even seem to begin in this country until Europeans started it. What about the history of the American Indians? What about their literature, their ideas? Literature doesn’t begin until white men wrote it down. The education system has failed to include the voices of American Indians, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. During my undergraduate studies, I signed up for a class called “American Literature Before 1800.” Honestly, I thought that it would be an easy A. It would be a class on the literature that I had already been taught, and I could probably even recycle a few papers. Little did I know that this class was taught by Dr. Timothy Powell, a professor of Native American studies. We didn’t begin the class by talking about Columbus or Puritans or Salem, we began the class by talking about Native American rock art and how it can be considered literature. Let’s just say that my mind was blown. Finally, a class where we talk about other literature, not just white people’s. I think that the problem with our education system today is that we don’t include those other voices. Even when I learned about slavery or the Trail of Tears, I rarely heard the voice of a slave or a Native American. It was still a white European voice. In order to tell the whole story, we must include everyone. I guess the question becomes, how do we include everyone? Is it enough to tell a story about a slave? Is it enough to read a poem by an American Indian? Can the curriculum include everyone? The system has definitely started to get better about including other voices. At least we have Black History month now. Should March become American Indian month? Is April going to be Asian American month. Is setting aside one month enough to make everyone feel worthwhile and appreciated? What about the other immigrants, the other histories? Maybe that’s why it has always been “sugar coated” and watered down. Trying to include every voice and every history is a huge undertaking; one that hopefully we can get a better handle on as teachers.