Erin's blog

The Silenced dialogue:

As the course proceeding, I always see the word silence in noun or adjective form of silent. This time, it’s a silenced. The dialogue is somehow forced to be silent.

The article starts to talk about “The Black Issue”. It’s very interesting to author got complete different feedbacks and response from different groups of participants in the conversations. The while, or the main stream educator, insisted on pos their opinions about Black education. On the other hand, the Black participants stop disagreeing and seem to agree with their logic. They are very passionate talking about being left out from the conversation. It reminds me of many occasions when I tried to argue with my peers about Chinese history questions. I remember amot each one of us was told to don’ try to start conversation about religions, politics or other sensitive topics. Honestly, you cannot win.

The whole time I was reading Colored Amazons, I am constantly picturing the movies of the stories written in the book in my head since Philadelphia is just too familiar. I think after reading this book, I will look at the city in the same. Every time I walk on the street, I will think of the injustice and inequality drenched in the street.

Philadelphia is an interesting city. It’s definitely not the best one but it reminds me a lot of my hometown, a city with too many stories, both glorious and sad ones.  Back to Colored Amazons, Philadelphia was one of the few big cities that allow free blacks before the abolition of the slavery at that time. However, after two hundred years, it remains to be one of the city has racial problems.  After reading very informational introduction, Gross tries to connect many missing pieces or the overlooked pieces about African Americans in the judicial system, especially women.

The discussion we had in Tuesday really left me with more thinking about the question we are going to discuss this semester. Even from one reading about voice of students in educational research, Alison Cook-Sather studies it in so many different layers.  Surprisingly, each key word are intervened and connected through certain perspectives. The voice participated in the educational discussion might not present all the people present. Even though the voice participated might be heard, whether the advices brought by the voice can be enacted depends on who is in power. On the other hand, the interpretation of the voice totally depends on the listeners’ involvement in the conversation. Therefore, the process from the action of speaking to the final realization of the and actualization of the problem brought up by the voice is long and filled with uncertainties,

Elizabeth Ellsworth, Teaching Position

As a non-native English speaker, I was stuck as the word pedagogy. Yes, I was stuck at the first line and doubted whether I should look the work up or just keep reading and hopefully get the sense of the meaning of the word as I read more. However, as I read more, more questions came into my mind.

Silence is a precious item to find on this planet. Therefore, I picture it as the mystery hidden under the deep sea. Silence is far away but tempting. To visualize the concept of silence, I choose to use the deep sea as the representation of silence. Even though I describe silence in my graph as unknown, mysterious and isolated. My impression of the word silence is positive.

Cliff.

In Cliff's article, A journey into Speech, she revels her path of becoming a writer and what has influenced her the most in writing. I am curious about her comment about her  first piece of work. She said she wanted to believe in herself but at the same time distanced her from who she was. I think this really showed soemthing about speech. People always say that you cannot hide true self forever. Your personality and life experiecnces are constantly placing markers and tags on the way you talk and speek. However, the literature and speech somehow provide wasy to present a decorated you. I am not saying the person you project through speech and writings is not real you, but not the whole truth. Well, I guess we do need some acting in real life to be able to presnet a better self in front of others.

Smith 

I really like Smith's introdution about Fires in the Mirror. I personally think the title is very interesting. Fires represent something strong and hot. But the fires only exsits in the mirror. You can't touch it nor feel it, but only feel it. The visionlization of fires in the mirror gives me a feeling that fires might not be the fire we usually know. 

To reach the state of absolute silence is hard. The reason I choose this picture is to represent the place where I think I might find certain level of silence. Every object, whether it's living or not, has its own way of exsiting in this world and makes its sound in its own frequency. The world we are living is composed of the music made by all objects around us. Their existences don't depend on our achknowledgement. However, it is said that once you reach the deeper depth of sea, you will experience deadly silence. I still doubt whether it's absolute silence. If we can't hear it, does it mean that the silence finally takes place.