Notes:

Today, since it is raining, recess is inside. About half of the class is making airplanes out of legos, while others are playing with playdough or magnetic blocks. I sat down at a table with playdough and started rolling it into balls to build a snowman. Kevin and Robby were making balls and flat discs, and we talked about what foods we like and what we don’t like. They asked me to come play with blocks with them, and we went to build a castle out of blocks. 

Notes:

Three years in the education program and I’m still not really sure how to do field notes. I’m not a big fan of the column format, either. Anyway, February 26 was my first day of my placement at the Center for Creative Works. Very easy to get to, but the places where the sidewalks disappear into car dealership parking lots were slightly terrifying to deal with. But I found the place all right. I signed in, gave my papers to the placement coordinator, and conveniently at that moment the sculpture instructor came upstairs to pick up a box of paints. I introduced myself and followed him downstairs. Immediately, I was surrounded by a lot of people introducing themselves and wanting to shake my hand. I had remembered this from my orientation last week as well.

I'd like to spend some time in class talking about the desexualization of disabled people, and how this tendency of the oppressor to erase or ignore the humanity of the "other" extends to other parts of identity, including gender identity, sexual orientation, race, etc. Through reading A Disability History of the United States, we saw some examples of how sexuality was used against people with disabilities, or as a way of defining disability (for example, women who were essentially considered disabled because they became pregnant at a young age--many of these seem very tied up in misogyny and sexism--or the men who were considered physically/mentally "unfit" for society because of their relationships with other men).

A thread I would like to keep thinking about as the semester continues is the accessbility of information. The bioart portion of the CCW collaboration was born out of a desire to make science accessible to a non-scientist public, but I have yet to fully wrap my head around what that means. I think that in the moments of actualy doing the project in the lab I ended up focusing more on physical accessibility than conceptual accessibility. Although, I don't really think those are two separate goals - we had one moment in lab where the physical iPhone microscope adapter totally conveyed the concept of what a microscope can do to one of the CCW artists.

One idea that I would like to explore more in class is parental reactions to being pregnant with/having a child with a disability, and how genetic testing plays a role in this process. As I mentioned in class, prenatal screening is the norm for most pregnant women nowadays, at least in the United States, including tests that indicate whether or not your child has Down syndrome. While some women choose to abort pregnancies based on prenatal testing results, others adapt and seek information so that they can be better preapred and equipped to satisfy their child's particular needs.

I was thinking about how spring is coming. I talked to a teacher today at my placement, and she said that so long as it is over ~20 degrees. I asked, and they rarely couldn't go out. It was nice to hear that they could go out usually, and it seems that they will be able to go out more and more. Today it started to rain at recess, and we didn't really go in right away which was nice to see. None of the students seemed to mind either.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/the-joyful-illiterate-kindergartners-of-finland/408325/

Thoughts welcome!