Koala

I just finished "A pedagogy for liberation" an enjoyed the discourse between Ira and Paulo. It occaisonally was got repetitive, but I finished it with two musings in mind. The first being, Paulo is very enamoured with the idea that there be a dialogue of learning between the teacher and the student. This entirely depends on the two parties being open to dialogue at all in the classroom. For dialogue openness to happen, there must be mutual respect. I've had a couple of teachers think I was not worth their time for x reasons, some of which were my fault and some were not. I did have a teacher tell me that he didn't expect me to understand chemistry because I'm a woman. (my mother had him fired two weeks later, woop).

Reading Freiri's dialogue on dialogical learning and teaching, it made me think about a book I read last semeste, titled What the Best College Professors Do, by Ken Bains.  Bains did a study in which he looked at college professors who were being rated by their students as exceptional professors.  He wanted to know why students enjoyed certain professors and not others, and whether or not that would lead to grade increases.  What he found was that a majority of professors shared the same views as Freiri when it came to dialogical learning.  These professors saw their time with the students not as a chance for them to show off how knowledgeable they were in their given field, rather it was a chance for the two, the professor and the student, to engage in mutual learning of the same subje

In my other class I have spent a good amount of time thinking about how and if opting out of something can be used as a form of empowerment, so I was very attracted to Paulo’s comment in A Pedagogy For Liberation on page 102, when he says “for them to feel pressured to speak even when they have nothing to add creates a false sense of democracy, a fake moment of discussion.” In here he condemns those being forced to speak, and calls whatever they are saying ‘fake’ moment of speaking “instead of a genuine exchange.” While I agree with him in that no one should be forced to speak up in a class when they do not feel comfortable, invalidating someone speaking (even if they are being forced into it) doesn’t help them in anyway.

This past week I was sitting and listening to two friends talk about a third party.  The third party had a trational Asian sounding name, which also sounded like another mutual friend of our's name.  One of the friends present at the conversation looked up and said, in reference to the friend with the traditional Asian name, "why is her name like that...

I'm going to put up my blog post on Saturday instead of Tuesday night, because I'm being productive on this warm Saturday afternoon, yo. 

Okay. I'm going to write about my first time in a women's prison. Our group  all squeezed ourselves into a BMC van and went to a prison in the area (can't say which one it is on the internet). I had heard about this opportunity a year ago and was very interested to go and see what it's like in there. We spent a total of about three hours in there. I was very apprhensive about going in. I have never been in a working prison before; I had only seen the insides of them on documentaries. Needless to say, the place was quite dismal and stark. 

I had a conversation with an individual last semester (for their own privacy this individual will remain unnamed and for the most part unknown).  The converstation when he said that he didn't understand why the two individuals from years back who had dressed in black face and as women for Halloween were in the wrong.  Obviously this bothered me, but I really wanted to try and get at why he thought this way.  It took a lot of hashing out, and we talked for quite a bit about this, but eventually we worked out his confussion.  It turned out that he wasn't saying that dressing up in blackface wasn't wrong, or that these individuals weren't in the wrong, it was more a matter of intentions.

I had a conversation with an individual last semester (for their own privacy this individual will remain unnamed and for the most part unknown).  The converstation when he said that he didn't understand why the two individuals from years back who had dressed in black face and as women for Halloween were in the wrong.  Obviously this bothered me, but I really wanted to try and get at why he thought this way.  It took a lot of hashing out, and we talked for quite a bit about this, but eventually we worked out his confussion.  It turned out that he wasn't saying that dressing up in blackface wasn't wrong, or that these individuals weren't in the wrong, it was more a matter of intentions.

Last year at Plenary there was a large movement to create a more inclusive space for those who whose gender was not represented in the constitution at Bryn Mawr. This was done by removing the words, women and freshwomen, and replacing them with student and first years. Also we added to the Mistress positions the titles of Mister and Mistex. The resolution passed, and Bryn Mawr made the changes, and people seemed to move on from it. But the last semester the debate seemed to move to focus on the fact that there are many women who are not allowed to even apply to come to Bryn Mawr. Specifically Transwomen.  As it stands “Bryn Mawr's admissions policy as a women's college is to admit female students only.

During my freshman year, I had the best roommate one could ask for. For the purposes of this assignment, I'm going to just call her Kim. She is a true Californian girl who's never had to brave the cold for longer than a week. Her parents came to San Fransisco from South Korea in their teens. Kim is a child prodigy. She is a stellar cellist and all-around academia-ist as well. She never scores lower than an 85%. She's also very in touch with her heritage. She goes to South Korea at least once a year to see her extended family. The suburb of SF where she lives has a very high population of Koreans. She's a very devout Roman Catholic. 

I grew up in a very small town in New York, where I attended a K-8 school of about 300 students. Since my town was so small, I wasn’t exposed to very much diversity growing up. Almost everyone I knew came from a white, upper-middle class to middle class, Christian family. In my grade of about thirty people there was one girl, named Angela*, who had severe autism. She was unable to speak and had a helper with her at all times. Angela was at our school from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade and our class grew up with her as a constant part of our lives. Although physically and mentally she was different than the rest of our class, her parents still sought to give her a fun and happy childhood.