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“interacting with our own silence”

By Anne Dalke
February 24, 2015 - 10:05
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Name--I’m glad you’re finding in this assignment space for thoughts you can’t find time for, “conversations you would not have had with yourself otherwise.” Curious to me that this seems ecological, but not academic, to you, and I’d like to push on that binary (as all others!). As a starter, it seems that this exercise is so tangled for you because you are struggling with “not knowing what you’re supposed to be noticing.” But if thinking-and-being ecological means letting go of focus and purpose, open to what arises…

Contact Zones in The Hungry Tide

By marian.bechtel
February 24, 2015 - 09:18
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In response to Celeste's post about shifting perspectives, I too was really struck by the moment where Piya shows Mej-da the picture of the dolphin and he sees it as a bird. When I got to this section, I was immediately reminded of our discussion of contact zones. First of all, this exchange was a contact zone between Piya and Mej-da, who clearly live in different worlds, speak different languages, and have different goals (Piya to find the dolphins, Mej-da to get paid).

Notes on "Creating Justice"

By sara.gladwin
February 24, 2015 - 07:39
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"Seeking Justice Inside and Outside the Walls"

Go around and ask each person to say their names and one thing that makes them feel powerful… as an example of one of the ways we have opened up a space…

 What does it mean to create justice? 

The specificity of the word “create” … Who creates the space?

We associate creation with artistic processes -- making work vs. doing work

Can Truth be the Final Word? - Reactions to "Race & Caste in the U.S." by Michelle Alexander

By The Unknown
February 24, 2015 - 01:57
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            I appreciate how Michelle Alexander talks about the importance of learning about the truth, about discovering the roots and complexities of race and class issues in particular, but I question whether there is one eternal truth. Whose truth? Can’t there be more than one right answer or account of an event? Is there a way for one’s sociopolitical background to affect his or her or their account of what happened and it still be the “truth?” Is it possible to embrace all of these truths equally and not disregard them?

Reinforcing Stereotypes

By Lchase
February 24, 2015 - 01:41
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The article “Culture, Literacy, and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind” by Carol D. Lee discusses Cultural Modeling within a classroom. This is to reinforce teaching core curriculum while incorporation culture within it. The article uses rap and R&B lyrics as a way to reinforce innate reasoning the students have before they discuss the primary text discussed in class, Beloved. This tactic seemed to be very helpful for the students—they were able to explain the meaning of the lyrics and unravel the symbolisms within them. The one question I want to ask is how do teachers create a lesson plan using Cultural Modeling without holding on to assumptions and stereotypes?

Language and Dichotomies

By Abby Sarah
February 24, 2015 - 00:08
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In thinking about Ariel’s post, I wanted to point out the importance of language in dichotomies. Through language we are able to construct these dichotomies, to delineate between certain things that we need to separate to preserve, as Ariel puts it, our human significance. It felt like maybe Coetzee should rejoin the conversation. We talked about his distrust of rants and language and literature. Given the chosen format of Haraway’s book, at first glance I doubt Coetzee and Haraway would agree on many points.

An abundance of comparisons

By asomeshwar
February 23, 2015 - 23:57
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For me, the beginning sections of The Hungry Tide reminded me a lot of two things, the first being other books I've read where there are people who are considered foreigners in the environment, and two, of my life. Not my entire life - just bits and pieces of it. When Kanai describes the ease with with Piya (who he considers to be a foreigner) is able to navigate the train station and the train itself reminds me a lot of how I used to travel (occasionally) when I was in India.

First Field Log (makeup for Thursday class)

By cteng
February 23, 2015 - 23:47
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The field trip on last Wednesday (2/18) is comprised of two parts, an info session with Ray O (Ms. O) and a brief introduction with the Ms. K’s literary class.

I was drawn to the program because it uniquely avails of the Fairmount water works as part of the curriculum. Engaging local resources, community culture and linking the known environments with the unknown knowledge have repeated themselves many times in our pedagogy and curriculum readings, thus it is exciting to see how theory can be put into action. Though with benevolent purpose, there still exists a primary challenge of incorporating the specially designed curriculum into the existing standard.