Pecha Kecha Link

Pecha Kecha Link
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRgVvBBC8Si0gV7AYY93A0CtqmIGCE7U5YsfFX21UJCCj8gH_iLbqTBkACZ2cmUOwCreG_ANNmzr4Go/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=20000

The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244283/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/10/the-vagina-monologues-college-offensive/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUg85s27uJU

The vagina monologues are a series of speakers talking about their experience with vaginas. Not just their experience with their own vaginas, but all of the ones they come in contact with in the real world around them. 

McIntosh

 The vagina monologues is about women who discover themselves in a way that makes them appreciate themselves and their bodies. I feel that this relates to McIntosh because she used the article that we read to explain how Caucasian people have been conditioned to look past the privileges brought on by their skin color. Many men don't realize that they have privileges brought onto them because of the fact that they have male anatomy.

Delpit

There are many different codes of power in the world. A highly prominent  code of power is men being seen as better than women. Men have always been seen as higher beings where as women have been seen as less than. This has created a stigma about women, their bodies, and their sexuality. Men have often been praised for having sex or for not having sex. Women are more likely to be judged for what they do with their bodies. If they don't have sex they are prudes. If they do have sex they are whores. Based on what they wear they can either be slutty or overly conservative. Many times, no matter what a woman does, they are always in the wrong.

August

Many of those who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community are lacking the support that is necessary for them to be comfortable and confident with how they feel and who they truly are. Many don't have a space where they can talk about the daily struggles they face. August believes that safe spaces should be present and available in schools or other public settings for all that require them. The Vagina Monologues touched on the fact that many of those who told their stories didn't have those safe spaces and explained what they went through without them.

Kliewer

Reflection

Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0bXVmZVR4ODI0RHc/view 

Cheistopher Kliewer

 Much of my experience in a classroom in a play-school, preschool, and two kindergartens involves interaction with students who have IEP's or are often thought of as special education students. I have seen these students across a wide spectrum of severity. The issue in schools that is slowly beginning to get better is that these students weren't really seen as students in the past. They were not seen as fully capable. many didn't give them the ability to show their strengths in a classroom or school setting. Many are put into lower level classes where many aren't even getting the chance to learn basic things. People are afraid that they'll fall behind and will often be a distraction in a regular classroom. The truth is that many of these students actually thrive in regular classrooms. They are given the chance to learn what their peers are learning. This is also a chance for the child to be encouraged by their peers and even for their peers to get a better understanding of others being different for different reasons and for them to know that small differences don't make any less of a regular child. This gives them a great chance to socialize and keep up with others their own skill level. This is what Kliewer emphasized in this article. It is important to listen to these students and understand where they truly fit and thrive in which classrooms. They can accomplish what they set out to do but so many people doubt their abilities and this is a mindset that we need to diminish.

April 8, 2019

I see many children speaking Spanish in the classroom and around the school. I see how many of the students are comfortable with the main teacher and conversing with her in Spanish. She is quite understanding of the fact that some of the students are a bit more comfortable with some certain words in Spanish rather than English. This reminds me of the author Rodriguez. I feel this way because I see how comfortable the teacher in my classroom is with incorporating Spanish words and books into the classroom for the children that happen to speak Spanish. She also does this to show the other children in the classroom that it is normal to use more than just one language in life and to teach them a bit of Spanish.

I was once towards the back of the rug when a child I will call M was acting much better than normal due to the fact that he really wanted to go to the block center which has four available spots. He mentioned to the teacher that he was going to try extra hard to behave because he really wanted to make it to the center before it filled up. He had done well all day and was sitting perfectly still as she started to call out children's names. All four of the first children picked the block center, but none of them were M. Of course he was devastated because he informed the teacher before hand that he was going to be extra good and he followed through so he though that he would be rewarded for his good work but he was not. He then told me that he would go to the art center instead and he continue to sit still, criss-cross-applesauce with his hands folded in his lap but he was again not called on in the time that it took for the art center to fill up. He got annoyed because in that time, two other centers had also filled and he wouldn’t be able to do anything that he wanted to do that day. Even though he was sitting and acting perfectly the teacher made an effort to make him one of the last children called on and I watched her pick his card up and place it deeper in the pile so he would have to wait longer. This ended with him acting out. I have seen this a few other times in very similar situations. This reminded me of Delpit because the teacher taught all of the students the codes of power in the classroom. The students still disobey, however, even when they do follow directions, the teacher only gives some the credit they deserve. ​As a teacher, she should give some power to the obedient students to choose their centers but she only gave this power to some and not all.

One major incident that I've seen in the involving money issues in the school was during center time. I was assisting the art center while child A was attempting to hang his painting on a metal cabinet when he dropped the magnet that he wanted to use. When he pulled the magnet off, he dropped the magnet and the dry painting it was originally holding. They both fell a little to the side of the cabinet that was rather close to the wall. Along the wall was a pipe. Child A knew that he would not be able to reach the paper or the magnet, so he grasped the pipe to used it for balance. I didn’t realize he had grabbed it or that it was a burning hot pipe until he yelped out in pain and started to cry. I went over to see what had happened and he explaned. I touched the pipe to see just how hot it was and it even hurt me. I brought him to the teacher and she thought that he was just making a scene and not that there was really anything wrong until I told her that something was really wrong. This pipe should not have been exposed. It was such a hazard to these children and it had already hurt one of them. Its very disheartening that they didn’t invest in a way to keep this from happening. This reminded me of Kristof. This is because the student went to the appropriate ​person, the main teacher, and she did not listen to him at first. She made an assumption based on his past behaviors rather than listening to him nd looking at the facts in the moment.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EvDl_P4TTNjRsFDPkFNcJRikPvs_4TZXmT-C5xPdqKQ/edit?usp=sharing 

"This American Life"

Reflection

"This American Life"

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one

This was an interesting podcast explaining the integration process and trials of the Normandy school district. The podcast mainly followed the story of Nedra Martin and her daughter Mah'Ria Pruitt-Martin's story and how they experienced the trials and errors of the integration process in the Normandy district and surrounding districts. The school Mah'Ria was in was in bad condition. The school was on probation. The school was not just on a week long probation. Not a month long probation. The school was on a 15 year long probation. It was not counted as a qualified school for 15 years. After these long 15 years, the district then lost its accreditation from the state entirely. The district let the students transfer to whatever neighboring school they wanted and over 1000 students took this offer. Many of these transfer students excelled in their schools and held honor positions. However, before the students could even enter these schools, they were met with great trials from the parents of the current students at the school. Many parents thought that the new students would drop the rating of the school. They also thought that they would make the school a much more dangerous place. They felt that in order to have these new students, they would need to install metal detectors or hire drug sniffing dogs or other things that would prevent students from bringing bad things into the schools. They said that this was the only way they would let their children continue attending the school. Let me tell you, as a students from a mainly white school district that had a pretty good ranking, there were still a great amount of drugs and dangerous items that entered the school, even without students from lower level schools entering into my district. Honestly, I don't think that any extra students would have made the district any worse than it already was. In the podcast they mentioned that the government then took over and changed the Normandy district all together and made it into an non-accredited district so that they could get away with keeping children in this awful district. Those that stayed in this district did not get the chance they deserved and fell behind, all because the government didn't want to spend a little bit more money on the education budget.

"In the Service of What?"

 Reflection

 "In the Service of What?"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0Uk96Z2g3NDI2bkU/view 

Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

 In this article I am getting that many political leaders are trying to change schools into teaching the kids how to better the country in the future without teaching them about the issues in the world outside of school. Many in society feel that the schools should open the classrooms to only specific issues that the world is facing. Many believe that the children are too young or innocent to be exposed to specific issues and not others even though the children are already being exposed to these issues. They feel that the children will nit understand these issues or they don't want the children to understand. In reality, many children are already being exposed to these issues and will continue being exposed to them due to where the live or due to their families. Many political leaders don't understand that these children are already living in and are experiencing these issues that they are hiding them from. I feel that these children should be exposed to these issues reasonably. We should not just dump these issues onto them and bombard them or just completely avoid the issues in total. We should expose everyone to these issues in a way where they feel comfortable and where their opinions are being understood and listened to. So many children are being exposed to different issues at an early time in their lives and they don't have a safe and comfortable space to express their feelings about what they are going through, but they don't. The school system is pushing the children away from these issues.

"Safe Spaces"

 Reflection

"Safe Spaces"

Gerri August

"Safe Spaces" is an article written by Gerri August about LGBTQ+ problem regarding safe spaces in schools. This is something that effects myself and also many of my friends because I am a part of the community and so is many of my friends. I have seen many people who I am close to that are struggling with both being home at being at school. It is a struggle for them to be accepted by their family and even some of their friends. One of my close friends has made strides in their female to male transition and are becoming greatly open with who they truly are. I'll call them C. I couldn't be more proud of C, but I see the struggle that he is going through. He is one of three children, the others of which are both female. I am close with his family and I see the truth behind the happy family. His mother is having a bit of trouble changing the pronouns and getting used to having a son but she is really trying to make him feel as comfortable as possible. His father and older sister are other issues. His father uses religion as a backing mechanism to defend his disapproval of C's choices. He believes that however you are at birth is how you should remain. C's older sister just completely disapproves. She calls C by the wrong pronouns and ridicules him. I happened to play a sport with his sister and I would often hear her talking about him in a way that made me very angry. I would try to talk to her about it but she would either not listen or just walk away. At school, C has many friends that are comfortable with his transition but there are random people in the school that do not understand what he is going through, but many just go with the flow of what C wants to be known as but there will always be a few people we encounter around the school that really don't understand and don't want to understand how he is feeling and why he has transitioned.  Many from older generations make jokes about safe spaces because they don't understand why they are so important. I believe that safe spaces in schools are really important for those who don't have other spaces in their lives. These safe spaces, including the simple ones like a supportive teachers classroom, can save lives. Theses spaces give anyone who needs it a place to be themselves and to give them support and give them the home and family that they may be lacking. Safe spaces save lives.

Snow Day-March 4, 2019

Snow Day Class

"Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us"

Linda Christensen

 Popeye

 

1. The moral of the story is that the man will always save the woman and save the day and also that vegetables will give him the strength to do so.
2. The main protagonist is Popeye and he is a white American man.
3. One of the servants was Olive Oil after she was captured. She is a white American woman. When they were being served their food the servant was a man who was a person of color. When Popeye defeated the bad guy, he made them act as servants and they were all men of color.
4. The buffoon was the white American man that was accompanying them on the trip.
5. This does not pass the Bechdel test.
6.  This conveys that women need a man to save them from every situation, similar to other Popeye episodes.
7. The message of race and ethnicity that was conveyed was that only if you were a fit, white, American man, could you save the day.

"Unlearning Myths that Bind Us"

Reflection

Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us

Linda Christensen

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0NEFOT1BJZXVnZnM/view

Fairy tails are a topic that I've debated my entire life. I was always told by movies and T.V. and by many around me that life was supposed to be like a movie. This article includes some of the ways that cartoons and fairy tales have molded the ideals for today's society. I feel that this is all too true. As a child, I looked to the Disney princesses as my main role models. I saw these beautiful women being saved by their Prince Charming and living happily ever after. I thought that women had to be skinny and beautiful and a damsel in distress or else they were not good enough to be a princess. I grew up with the impression that if I didn't have an hourglass figure and long legs a flowing hair that I was not good enough. I also felt that if I couldn't find a man to save me, I couldn't have a happily ever after. This was especially hard for me because I was also told I had to be strong and independent. The two were just so contradictory that I grew to be confused. I was told to be like a princess but then I was also being told to be myself and never be like anyone else. These cartoons were controlling who I was and who  was to become and it was the same for many all over the world. Cartoons have come a long way but they continue to lack the diversity and representation children desire.

Tongue Tied

Tongue Tied

Aria

Richard Rodriguez

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0MW5DdnZyVnpGSHc/view

ARGUMENT:       This author, Richard Rodriguez, argues that school is unfair and much harder for children who's first language is not English. I agree but I also would like to acknowledge the fact that teaching ESL learners, or English as a Second Language learners, has come a long way from where it once was. He explained the story of his family and how the school and its lack of resources for ESL learners changed his family. His teachers had given him issues inside of the classroom due to him constantly loosing interest in the topics and they proceeded to visit his home. Once at the home, his teachers told his parents that they had to change their lives at home to suit the schools needs. It is now proven that it is more beneficial for any ESL learners to have their lessons or classrooms changed to suit their needs, rather than the schools. Many teachers and schools did not support these children or give them the resources they needed to succeed. The children who did not grow up with English as their first language were forced into a classroom where this new language was thrown at them without warning or help. They were drowning in words they couldn't understand and they were stranded by those meant to support they futures. Now, teaching has evolved and new ESL classrooms led by specialized ESL teachers are becoming more common in areas where this type of specialized learning is needed. Teaching ESL learners has come a long way and I believe that it will continue evolving in amazing ways.

An article that supports this post: https://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/learn-languages/language-teaching-has-changed/

"Black Children Don’t Have Nick Sandmann’s Rights"

"Black Children Don’t Have Nick Sandmann’s Rights"

Elie Mystal 

https://www.thenation.com/article/black-children-nick-sandmann-savannah-guthrie/

"Some white people explaining away the racism of other white people to make white people feel better is a constant feature of the Trump era." (Mystal).

Many people today decide it is not worth it or that they just don't feel like fighting others when they express things in a racist way.  Instead of dealing with the problem or trying to fix it, many people just try to push it off as nothing. They pretend that it was not something that caused a problem. They play it off as though it was a one time event or that it doesn't matter. The problem with this is that, anytime anyone does something wrong, it matters. It matters especially when its issues involving inequality with things that people cannot change. When someone is acting in a way that is racist, and there are others around them not fighting it, they are saying that the problem is not a problem.

"Black children don’t get a PR firm and a softball interview when they are in need of redemption. They get an open casket and a good sermon when it’s time to appeal for grace. 
Black children have their side of the story too, but they don’t get to go on Today and explain their actions, because they are dead." (Mystal).

As seen in the media, it is seen that more white people are not fully penalized for the wrong doings they have committed. Many of those who are white and do something wrong are seen as misunderstood or are explained away as having emotional issues or childhood issues. These people have made mistakes and others are explaining away what they've done no matter how bad what they've done was. This is even happening with white teens that shoot up schools. It is unacceptable. 

"White children can “walk away.” They can “avoid the whole thing.” And if they don’t, well, they’ll probably live long enough to reflect on their actions “in hindsight.”" (Mystal).

Many black kids that are not doing anything wrong are being shot and killed for no reason. white children are killing others and mocking others cultures and tormenting others and are essentially getting slaps on the wrists. There are killers that are going to trial that people are trying to say are just misunderstood or were bullied so they shouldn't be getting punished for what they've done. There are black children who are being murdered by cops for walking down the street or for "looking too suspicious" or for being in their own apartments. Then, these cops are being told that what they have done does not need to be punished. 

Those who need to be punished are not being punished. Those who are innocent are dying. We need to start seeing those for who they arena treating them accordingly.

Nicholas Kristof, U.S.A., Land of Limitations

Nicholas Kristof

U.S.A., Land of Limitations

Quotes

• "A child born in the bottom quintile of incomes in the United States has only a 4 percent chance of rising to the top quintile, according to a Pew Study," (Kristof).

This quote is just beginning to explain the issue of unequal opportunity that is present in the United States. Many people don't like to acknowledge that these issues are occurring every day all around us because it doesn't directly affect them. Many people don't want to even look at the data that has been collected about these issues because many think that it will never affect them or that someone else will deal with the issue. A child who is not necessarily from a bad background, but of a background that did not give the child an ability to express themselves or to make their talents and such known to the outside world outside of their towns or cities. Many of these children are seen by their immediate peers, but no one else, so  they may fall behind compared to others who have broader connections.

• "talent is universal, but opportunity is not," (Kristof).

Many people are talented, however they don't have the resources to expand or show off their talents. They are forced to keep their abilities and their lives to themselves because, compared to those who have more money or are just all around more fortunate, they will not bet the same experiences or opportunities. Many children who are wealthier or are from better towns, or have experienced better upbringings may not be exposed to the same or even similar challenges a less fortunate child will face. A less fortunate child may not have the ability to a nicer school such as a private school. They also may not be able to have all of the possessions they might want or need to succeed.

• "What distinguished Rick wasn’t primarily bad choices, but intelligence, hard work and lack of opportunity. So let’s just drop the social Darwinism. Success is not a sign of virtue. It’s mostly a sign that your grandparents did well," (Kristof)

Many people gain the opportunities they due, due to the people around them. This mainly includes family members who are also well off or who also have connections. These connections can start with one person but many times they have a way of trickling down the family. This is one great reason as to why people in higher-up families end up in higher-up positions down the line. They begin their lives with these great opportunities and these opportunities never fade.

We should provide all children the opportunities to excel way past where they've come from. They all deserve to have the ability to grow as much as they can and to strengthen their futures.

Me!

My name is Julianna Esposito. I am 18 years old and an Elementary Education major. I am a freshman at Rhode Island College.

This was me at my senior prom. I loved my dress because it reminded me of both Beetlejuice and Alice in Wonderland and I love both movies greatly. I did my own makeup for my prom because I like to spend my time doing makeup.

I am a member of the Delta Phi Epsilon sorority and I spend a lot of time hanging out  with my sisters and as a group we put on many events and fundraise for different organizations such as ANAD and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

I spent a lot of time this summer hanging out with my boyfriend, Josh, and we worked together at Bayview Fun Park, went to Six Flags, and went to the beach a lot.

This is my best friend Sierra. We also work together at Bayview, but we've known each other since middle school. We played lacrosse together for about six or seven years.

This is just a little bit of my life!