Sharaai's blog

2Pac - Trapped

"There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education, a real sex education class. Not just pictures and diaphrams and unlogical terms and things like that. There should be a drug class, there should be sex education, there should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cult, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on aparthy, there should be on racism in america, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there not, there’s class on gym, you know, physical education, let’s learn volleyball. because one day…you know…there’s classes like algebra where I’ve yet to go to a store and gone xy+2 and give me my change back thank you. I think you can let me out, I’ve lived alone by myself. And the things that helped me were the things I learned from my mother, from the streets." --Tupac (Age 17).

It passed my mind to post for class today, but I am stll going to go for it.

I am posting pictures that I found when I googled Overbrook High School. I worked there for a semester, helping students in "Algebra II" classes, though they were teaching basic algebra and geometry skills. It was such an eye opening experience for me. One event I can clearly remember is when one of the students was bragging about "just getting out" and returning to school. During this one class period, he repeatedly emphasized the fact that he was locked  up and that he'd been through the system. It was such a surreal moment.

To add to this, when Jody gave us the ed newspaper in class today, the graducation rate for Overbrook was incredibly low and their college admission rate even lower. How does my isolated story relate to Overbrook's really low gradution and college track rates?

This is a video that Dan and I watched together while reading though Right To Be Hostile. It's a "Crazy prison riot".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LWbxSZ2Nxw

We invite you to consider what this does to people's perceptions of prisoners? And contemplate what goes through our mind when we see a headline that includes the words "prison riot".

So overall, I really enjoyed Saturday's trip, even if I felt a bit torn at time by some of the comments I heard and the things I saw.

One of the pictures I took can kind of explain how I felt through the entirety of the trip.

For me, this photograph shows a clear view of what is in the frame but it can also, very clearly, show that the person viewing the room is behind a chain/fence. That whoever is looking onto the cell and onto the broken down bed frame is an outsider.

Outsider. That is to me.

Hey guys, here is a link for the album where I uploaded the photos I took yesterday! Feel free to share and download them. The password to access it is serendip .

http://s749.beta.photobucket.com/user/sharaai/library/Mural%20Arts%20Tour%20and%20Eastern%20State%20with%20360

Looking back and rereading my initial essay, silence has since taken on a bigger definition, a wider range of activities and has also become a more comfortable topic for me. When I was writing my first essay, my thoughts of silence and being silenced all strung back to events of feeling silenced or silencing because it would be more convenient for others and me to not speak up. In my history of silence, it has been more convenient for me to stay silent because I felt I was wasting my breath and thoughts on attempts to comment on people’s comments. I don’t think I was trying to “correct them” but I guess I felt like it could sound like it. But with that, I didn’t feel like I was being listened to, I felt like they would be waiting for their turn to speak.

Hey guys, so below I am posting all of the places the different codes from the mural sent me. A few are audio clips, it's pretty cool!

http://familyinterruptedproject.com/topics/uncategorized/

http://familyinterruptedproject.com/

http://familyinterruptedproject.com/audio/EXOFFchoices.mp3

http://familyinterruptedproject.com/audio/MIMICfailedasaparent.mp3

http://muralarts.org/

 “Prisoners of a Hard Life” (PHL) took me a long time to get through. Not because it was dense of long but because the information I was taking in was so intense. I felt myself disgusted and uncomfortable with all of the information in front of me. I didn’t know how to digest it the first time I was going through it so I decided to put it down and pick it up another time. Though I had only read the first few pages during that first sit in, I felt that the information needed to be shared. I clearly remember talking to my roommate about it, at our kitchen table, and telling her how insane all the facts and numbers were. How incredible it was that “Of all people incarcerated in New York with drug offences: 93% are African American or Hispanic.” This really struck me because as a Latina woman, I imagined my cousins, aunts, sister and friends in prison on a non-violent crime.  I could envision my mother behind bars, away from her five children.

"Professor contact is reserved for graduate students, or undergraduate majors, or honors classes, or for students at the most costly yuniversities, where money is invented in small classes for the elite." -Ira Shor, Pg. 98

Reading this quote for the first time gave me an inkling feeling that I myself, am a secret elitist. When I think about Bryn Mawr and the relationships I have with my professors, I feel incredibly priviliged and spoiled.A prime example of these relationships is this course. We are able to spend time with the same professors, who are also getting together themselved to improve our experience witht our classes.

Which comes to full circle when reading the Ellsworth piece and she speaks about addressing the classroom and the students. With the unique experience of the 360, we, as students, are able to shape how our own information is addressed because we are able to experience different classrooms together and are able to shape and form how we interact within the classrooms. I feel that, so far, we have been given the spce to adjust our classrooms and take advantage of the time we have together. We are able to share experiences in one classroom and bring them into the next. Since we are able to talk and work through our classes together, we are able to wrok on our final outcome together. Both as individuals, as a class and as peers. Bryn Mawr has a sense of elitism but we are (hopefully) going to use this (and the 360) to enhance our semester together.

Taking my time, scrolling through the many images that my classmates had posted, I found that I kept going back to the image that Jomaira posted. This image stuck with me, even while I looked through the others. When I look at the young girl, it feels like her silence is partially self-induced. Though she looks like the silence is taking a toll on her it seems as if she cannot do anything about it. She has lost control of her voice and of her freedom to speak.  But all at the same time, she is covering her mouth with her own hands. The power dynamic of control in this image can also be looked at through a different lense , it can also be a form of self-control; form that isn’t her primary option but one that she must choose.

When I think back and find moments in my life where I have felt silenced, it seems as though I took the option of silencing myself. They are times when I felt that my primary opinion on something would be too much or just excessive. When location comes into these moments, they are all connected to being home. When I am at Bryn Mawr, I feel like my opinion will always be listened to, even if my listener does not agree with me. This is a community where I have learned to not let myself feel silenced because my peers have learned to listen to new opinions and take them in and instead of ignore them.