Multicultural Education 2014

Since I forgot to post about Tuesday's reading Interrupting Hate before Monday at 5, I've decided to instead reflect on my in-class conversation and reflection. In our small groups, I talked with Natalie about the differences between talking with boys and girls about LGBTQQ topics/themes/issues. Our conversation raised a lot of questions about cultural hegemonic gender norms and whether or not the "gay man" is somehow more threatening to boys than the "lesbian woman" might be to a girl. Is the stereotypical effeminate gay man more threatening to hegemonic masculine traits than a butch woman, or whatever the stereotype might be to women or girls? How might young girl figures like the tom-boy figure in to this?  

I think these questions connect well to many of the other quotes I saw posted around the room. For example, one quote discussed when/at what age it would be appropriate to expose childrent to relevant literature,these topics, etc. Natalie's and my conversation about gender stereotypes and how these relate to people's willingness to engage in such conversations seems to connect to this--specifically, I think if broader gender stereotypes and heterosexist stereotypes were combatted from an earlier age (without getting into the details of sex ed specificall), it might help boys be less threatened by these conversations. 

LGBTQ has always been a topic to be avoided and not discussed open publicly from where I'm from. Unfortunately, homophobia and just the idea of it scares many Malaysians away. This is because homosexuals engaging in sex are considered illegal in Malaysia and they continuously face discrimination from government policies such as a law that makes sodomy punishable by 20 years in prison. Just recently in the news, sixty-six Muslim schoolboys in Malaysia identified by teachers as effeminate have been sent to a special camp for counselling on masculine behaviour. As I read Blackburn’s Homophobia in Schools and What Literacy Can Do About It, I try to think of the reasons to promote how schools in Malaysia would be open to discuss about this topic. Could it be part of the core-curriculum of the national exam? If so, who would teach it? Perhaps the biggest obstacle for me is to convince parents. Just to demonstrate how the society views homosexual couples. In an article published in the news two years ago, the Malaysia's Education Ministry has "endorsed guidlines" to help parents identify gay and lesbian "symptoms" in their children. The following are the list of “symptoms” that were listed. From reading this statement alone, I am embarrassed and disgusted by my government’s actions. I can’t think of possible solutions to this especially since homosexuals are being punished legally in law. What would be the first step to tackle this subject and connect it to high school education?

Symptoms of gays:

As I read Blackburn’s reading, I couldn’t help but think: What if LGBTQ themed books were incorporated in every school’s curriculum. How would the school environment change? Would it be a positive or a negative change? I know that this depends on the school, but I was thinking about it in terms of my high school. One of the students spoke about how her middle school teachers forbid LGBTQ, but it is more accepted in high schools. I agree. I believe that it more common that GSA would be in high schools rather than a middle school, but then again, that’s where the limit is drawn. I tried to think of books that I read in high school that included characters from the LGBTQ community, but I could not think of any.

Hannah Bahn
Multicultural Education
Inquiry Project

Research and Practice: How Teacher Practitioner Research can promote Culturally-Relevant Teaching

I am eager to engage in teacher practitioner research in my future classroom because the practice beautifully fuses my interests in applied education research and teaching. For many years, my entry-point into the field of education has been through academic, ethnographic research and then, later, applied education research. I love collecting peoples’ stories, expressed in a variety of mediums, and synthesizing them. For a long time, I thought I wanted to do this outside of the classroom.

But this past fall, when I was enrolled in the “Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar” and a “Sociology of Education” course, I began to develop a newfound understanding of and appreciation for where and how educational change is created and sustained. As I read about top-down reforms that adjusted class size or the number of hours in the school day, I began to realize that these tweaks to the system matter little if they do not fundamentally inform classroom practice. This realization in conjunction with my growing knowledge of curriculum design and pedagogical practices prompted my newfound interest in becoming a teacher.

The first half the book delved into the idea of creating a safe space to talk about potentially sensitive issues like homophobia. One sugesstion was to allow students to have the ability to writing in public private ways (41). I bellieve that this could have a very impactful effect on students as I've seen in in my praxis.

There are time where we will journal and share or just journal and look at the journals separately, but both are important to have students feel like their stories are important enough to be shared but not at the risk of their privacy. Sometimes hsaring can feel uncomfortable and intrusive. We don't know the sensitivity levels of everyone in the class. Giving the optin to share their insight or not is useful for building the kind of classroom that understand their is value in sharing but not to the extent that it is damaging to the student.

"Where writing once meant print text- black marks on white paper, left to right and top to bottom - today 'writing' is in full Technicolor; it is nonlinear and alive with sounds, voices, and images of all kinds" (Lunsford, 2007)

I really appreciated the views of Paris and Kirkland on the use of AAL vs DAE. I feel that because students are often caught between 'a rock and a hard-place' (as my mother would say) when it comes to writing, students are not feeling confident in their communication skills. Traditional writing and grammar practice can often be exclusionary. The use of AAL through text-messaging as well as social media interactions allows students to have a "second space" to express themselves, their feelings, and their thoughts in a manner that is not necessarily academic. I feel that students should be encouraged to write as often as possible and through any and all creative outlets. I never was really "into" my English classes in high school, though I often found myself writing slam poetry and entering competitions because I was able to express myself and my feelings without the constraints of traditional grammar and structure. 

The reading by Delpit was extremely interesting for me, mostly because this is something that I have been trying to find for my inquiry project. I have been trying to look at what makes a productive classroom and what role do teachers have in the academic identify of their students. In this article they talk about how teachers can and should push and expect more of the students. In a core way I understand this, as a teacher should always respect and admire the intelligence of the student, and try not to underestimate them in their classroom. While I was uncomfortable with the idea of a fearful respectful relationship between a student and a teacher, I was happy to hear and learn more about self confidence from a teacher and a student knowing that the teacher was there to teach them and was incented in their learning. I can tell from my own experience, that most of the classes I enjoy-in college and in high-school-are with teachers that I admire, respect, and who I know respect my time in their classroom. I find that I am more willing to work hard and push myself and understanding knowing that the teacher or professor has created the space in their classroom for this kind of low stakes challenging but with high-stakes results. 

I would like to read further into this article to figure out how to teach STEM felids, and how teachers and students usually fall short in these fields and how students often fell less than able to study these field and are intimidated or uninterested in them. 

I always love reading Lisa Delpit because I find that her writing challenges me and my conceptions of myself as a future teacher very directly. In this week’s reading, she wrote about the importance of pairing high expectations for students with “social support.” She called this the “warm demander.” What struck me most in this reading, though, was what this warm, though tough, support looks like. Delpit discusses how often for African American children high expectations are manifest in tough (and sometimes harsh) language. For example, Delpit writes that her great niece DeMya turned to her once and said, “When people’s mamas yell at them, it just means they love them.” After reading this and other passages with similar messages, I had to re-acknowledge (its something I’ve known and gappled with for a while) that this type of language and way of expressing oneself is not a practice this a part of my culture. I am not used to love and support being expressed in this way.

I'm going to be completely frank here (and probably expose myself as a bit of an emotional mess) but I teared up multiple times while reading Delpit's "Multiplication is for White People." I felt so inspired and so empowered by her highlighting of good teachers – "warm demanders" – and it brought back memories of teachers who did that very work for me. I'm also having a really meta moment: recognizing that I'm pushing myself to stay awake now to post this instead of going to sleep and doing it in the morning out of my respect for Jody as a professor (still coming in late –– but hoping my presense at both the Race and Diversity Town Hall and Toni Morrison's talk at Swarthmore this evening act as a reasonable excuses!). In the same way that students in Delpit's writing were willing to be pushed and to push themselves, I've found myself voluntarily doing more work and spending more time in courses where I know my professor or teacher really cared about my learning and my identity as a whole person. And I appreciate this meta-cognitive moment for my learning.