The focus in this article about made me think of many of your projects on ecological pedagogy--
how to get folks to change their behavior? See Stop the Environmentalist Preaching
(third of a 3-part series titled “Your Brain on Energy").

While reading Boler's chapter on empathy, I was reminded of a conversation that I had in one of my classes last semester. My class discussed the notion that in order to truly empathize with another, you must experience a similar emotion to their own. The example we toyed with was marignalized identities. One of my classmates explained that she always felt for the struggles of African Americans in the United States, but never really "got it" until she started outwardly identifying as a dyke (sic) and becoming an outspoken activist for the LGBTQ community. Immediately, we talked about how flawed this line of thinking is.

            On the bulletin board in the Campus Center there were signs that read, “Stop Demonizing My Skin Color,” and “Who Do You Think of When You Hear Gang/Theft?”  At first glance, I appreciated the shocking reminder of the racist, unequal, and detached society I live in. There were many short biographies of some of the African American people in the United States who were killed in the last year. Above Tamir Rice’s photograph a poster read, “Were you also defending yourself against him?” and below his picture, the poster read, “Just Curious.”

I've been thinking a lot about dialogue recently especially since in my other education class, we are talking a lot about the role of listening and silence in being a healing presence. The main difference that strikes me is that the discussion of listening and silence, while healthy for everyone, is not always beneficial for everyone. For example, in instances where, for lack of a better word, the "oppressed" are being told to listen and create silence, there is no change happening, there is no disrupting of the norm, and there is no empowerment or elevation of the voices of those whose voices should be elevated.

While reading “Tough Fronts” by L. Janelle Dance I was a bit upset and taken back by the terminology used to identify intercity students— “street-savvy youths” and “at-risk students”—not because it doesn’t provide the reader with an adequate understanding of these students but because it continues to classify—and in a way accept—this terminology as a label for intercity kids.  The author also reiterates gang and drug activities as a street issue students need to avoid while teachers need to acknowledge and educate in a way that does not belittle or undermine the “students’ needs to survive the street” (83).

Following how Dance weaves theoretical abstractions of social and cultural capital with the case study of Malcolm, I will critique the article in a similar fashion. First, I found the dialectics of social and cultural capital a helpful add-on or even override to the view of education as the incremental instrument for pure human capital (knowledge, skill training), endorsed by both my personal and the student-centric analyses emphasized by Dance (p72). She attributed both Malcolm’s compliance with Ms. Bronzic’s demand and Ms. Bronzic’s caring for students to the establishment of a dyadic but egalitarian relationship as an investment capable of reproducing positive outcomes (p72 + p84).