So, I know that I am very late--but I wanted to do an art piece of many black women activists that i'm sure many of us hadn't learned about before. I hope you all like it! I provided small biographies of some of the women that are featured in the piece.. Thanks!

For my final paper, I would like to do more research on alternatives to no-excuses schools. My field placement could not operate further from the model of KIPP schools, because rules are generally relaxed so long as the students are taking responsibility for their academic work. For example, when students come to school late, there are no consequences so long as it doesn't interfere with their ability to turn in work on time. Additionally, I want to explore the project based model that my field placement school has. Unlike KIPP, progress at this school is measured by benchmark projects instead of testing. I would like to explore both the benefits and potential challenges for adopting this model.

One of the issues that keeps popping into my mind is this new model of student freedom in schools. This concept still shocks me, especially when I see students at my praxis at Bell high school where they are given more freedom in their academics then I had when I was their age. I understand the purpose of allowing urban kids to have a space to voice their concerns by questions their teachers and the administration, which is important when student enter higher education, but the lack of discipline still makes me question whether these students are given proper guidance to achieve this goal. For example, at my praxis at Bell High School I help student with their essays in the LIT Lab but a lot of the time there are no students using the lab. Now our English teacher, Ms.

An issue I’ve seen at my field placement is the difficulty of balancing student autonomy and independent work with order and productivity. The Smith School focuses on project-based learning and encourages the use of technology in the classroom. The goal of this method is to challenge students to learn on their own or in groups through research and exploration, instead of spoon-feeding them information through lectures. There seems to be a lot of value to this philosophy because it forces students to think critically about what they are learning instead of passively being given the information that they may not pay attention to.

One component, at my placement, that I have been continuously impressed by is technology. Each student has a computer and most of the projects are heavily technology based. The use of paper seems foreign to these students. If computers weren’t enough, each student seems to have some type of smart phone. In the class that I supervise, every assignment that I have seen them produce has been submitted though an electronic drop box. My question is, how do teachers control the usage of the devices? How they draw the line between appropriate and excessive?

Throughout my time at my field placement I have thought more about classroom management. As highlighted from one of the speakers at our panel discussion, discipline in the classroom is highly emphasized throughout the entire school. She made it clear that she personally thought it was necessary to establish a sense of control in the classroom before it was possible to effectively teach students. In my placement classroom, I have seen a similar model being employed. The classroom management style a teacher employs really dictates the atmosphere of the classroom and the relationship they can develop with the students. In my placement classroom students would be expected to sit silently for most of the class, working independently.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/city/Philly-City-Council-calls-for-hearings-on-youth-in-solitary.html

I've been pretty despondent about academia and Bryn Mawr lately. I'm so disappointed in the handling of race at this college. In thinking about the social literacy I hope to gain from my college experience, and the kind of community I wanted to join, I settled on Bryn Mawr as my university of choice. I came here because I thought it would be a place that was a bit better at dealing with systemic oppression than most colleges. It's an institution, and those are always problematic. However, I hoped bryn mawr would be a place that does better.

Last semester I took an English course on comtemporary poetry, which featured explorations of peotry/poets concerned with gender, race, queerness, and other identities that had been excluded from the academy. I wondered if similar theoretical lenses could be applied to disability poetry. Fortunately, people have started to think about this. There is a 2011 anthology of disability poetry ('Beauty is a Verb') that I plan to dive into to in search of the seed of a project.