Hear ye! Hear ye! Let it be known that the 23rd of May marks the naming of the cohort class 2010 of the Urban Accelerated Certification and Masters Program. 

This was a very long process and at times I often felt frustrated and wanted to withdraw from the conversation of naming.  However, I like the name.  I decided to do a little research on how others see Pangea.  I found a board game, a music group, film companies, organic products, businesses, and film festival, all named in the effort of uniting the people of the world for a greater and fuller tomorrow.     

Before visting the first classroom the professor asked us to think about the following questions as we interacted with the teachers and students.

Question: What assumptions do you have about urban classrooms?

Answer: I assumed that the majority of students would be black and hispanic or latino. I also assumed that they would be sitting in their seats faced forward and so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. I assumed that the teacher would be frustrated. I assumed that the class size would be unbelievably large.

Question: How was the classroom experience different from your assumptions?

Answer: In the classroom, majority of the students was a total of 17 students–1 White, 3 Asian and Pacific Islanders, and 13 Black students. The children spoke upmounst themselves as they ate their lunch and even welcomed the vistors into their conversations. The teacher was very calm and relaxed. She acknowledged students for following directions, “Thank you for making good choices,” which encouraged other students who were not following directions to the necessary changes to their own behavior.

Question: What is something interesting about the classroom observation?

Answer: In Ms. Robb’s class there was a little girl from Myanmar who could not speak English. She came to Idlewood two weeks ago. During these two weeks, the young girl has learned each of the other student’s names and the teacher’s name. During fresh air time, the young girl played with the other children with no problems. They were chasing one another. Some students were monsters while others were the prey. Her interaction with the other students was simply awesome.

This was a very encouraging experience and gave me a sense of hope. I felt welcomed by the student

According to E.D. Hirsh there are questions that every literate American should be able to answer.  Who is Max Planck?  What does the phrase “fin de siecle” mean?

Since I did not know the answer.  so I went to look it up.

Max Planck was a German physicist, known as the founder of quantum theory.  Planck came up with the mathematical solution to explain the nature of black-body radiation.  Planck won the Nobel Prize in 1918 and together with Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity his quantum theory changed physics. 

“Fin de siecle” is a french phrase often used to refer to the characteristic world weary mood of European culture in the 1880s and 1890s.  It is also used to characterize anything that has an ominous mixture of decadance combined with a shared prospect of an unavoidable radical change or approaching an end. A modern day ”fin de siecle” would be Y2k.

Great information to for trivia pursuit.  Enjoy learning something new.

This is my favorite Spongebob Squarepants episode.  The reason I chose to post it was because it shows a community.  Inside the community there are those who lift you up and those who tear you down.  You have to strong enough to be your own motivator.  We have to instill this in our students. The help is always here, pull from within.
I hope you enjoyed!

We are defining intelligence and the initial studies of intelligence. I find the most interesting topic to be multiple intelligences.  However, this raises valid questions.  What is stupid and where did the term come from? Can someone be stupid?

Over the past few days, I have been thinking about Adam’s American Dream.  I have tried to research if who his dream included or excluded.  I tried to question my own principles as it relates to the American Dream and challenged the norms of mainstream society based on how I fit in and how I am cast out.  This is what I have concluded:

Adam’s American Dream has a obvious exclusion, women.  It took me a few days to catch this, he specifically states “…life should be better and richer, and fuller for every man.  Even though the dream has been changed to add specific details, the dream still excludes in  2008 by creating barriers not only for women.    

There is a time and place for everything.  My mission as a teacher is not to strip any student of their experiences, their community, or themselves.  My mission is to teach students to be themselves but be mindful of their surroundings.  I do it everyday.  The students will thank you!

“All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an unescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny.  Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.  You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.  This is the way the world is made.  I didn’t make it that way, but this the interrelated structure of reality.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  

Today, our class toured the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia.  As I walked slowly through the exhibits taking in every detail, I filled with gratefulness and a sense of priviledge.  I left the King Center with an understanding that I must be an active particpant and stand up for something, someone, for me and for you.  I can’t sleep through the revolution!  This quote was in the first exhibit and it meant the most to me because it was what King was fighting for, we are one community and we need one another to succeed in order to be successful as a whole.  If one person is failing, then so will another.  

The effort to understand the concept of social classism and how it is linked to education, it is important to understand the American Dream.  There are many personal definitions of the American Dream, but only one true definition.  The American Dream was introduced in the 1930s by James Truslow Adams, author of The Epic of America.    Adams defined it”… that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement…. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”  My interpretation of the American Dream is that living in America will afford every person the opportunity to reach their full potential based solely on his/her skills, abilities and achievements.  However, Adam clearly states that there is a defined social order or hierarchy.  In this order a person cannot be placed in any specific ranking by birth.  A person is ranked in the hiearchy only by their skills, abilities and achievements.   There appears to be no definite barriers beyond trial and error.  So, I pose the following questions:

Who determines what full potential is?

Considering the time that Adams created this dream, was this including every person regardless of race or color? Does it exclude anyone?

If things are beyond my control, can I still achieve the American dream? 

I tried to hint on this is class, but I was not quite sure how to make it fit.  When we watched Blue Eyed by Jane Elliot I understood that the “blue eyed” came into the room believing one thing and then changed to live down to the expectation.  I wrote my thoughts and formed many, many questions. We look immediately at what this race is doing to the other race, but what about inside the race.  I did a little research and found that this is called intraracism.  Elliot stated, “The way to get ahead in this country is to act as white as you can.”  You may not suspect that children are aware of this but they are.  Children are just being children, but they are aware of race, gender, class, and sexuality just like adults.  To hear phrases like ”You are too black,” “Your lips are too big,” and “You have good hair,” concerns me because the same type of oppressing behavior exist.  How do you address this issue within the classroom when the children are the same race?