Marcia's Blog

       As educators, we can't no longer expect the majority of our students to be predominately English speakers, the number of immigrant students is dramatically increasing. School districts can no longer ignore the need to adjust insctructional programs to better serve immigrants students. The article and the videos this week, presented many important ideas that can make teaching more efficient.              While watching the videos, I realized that many teachers allowed students to use their home language to complete assignments. The question,should students use their home language in the classroom always intrigued me. Although I strongly believe that its very important for emergent bilinguals to practice English, yet being able to use a home language in the classroom it's also very beneficial. Let's consider the fact that a student may have a contribution to share with the classroom,  but because of a lan...

In chapter one"Engaged in Pedagogy" of T eaching to Transgress, the author claims that engaged pedagogy does not consist only in the empowerment of students, but also in the empowerment of teachers. In other words, educators should not expect students to take risks they are not willing to take, or to share in any way they would not share. Relating confessional narratives to academic discussions demonstrates how experiences can illuminate and enhance our academic understanding. Although, educators must practice being vulnerable in the classroom,but can educators loose authority in the classroom by being vulnerable? To illustrate the desire of marginalized groups to break from the hold of the status quo, the author of "Teaching Progress" uses the example of water with dirt in it. When you are living in one of the richest country in the world, you can waste resources that you consider impure, but we don't take in considerati...

All the articles presented important issues, however what struck me most was the video by Kimberle Crenshaw. When we think of police brutality against people of color, we typically assume that men are more likely to suffer from it than women. The names :  Shantel Davis. Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Renee  Davis. Sandra Bland were unfamiliar to me before watching this video. Yet, if we take a closer look at the  American History : Women of color have been enduring violence from the law enforcement since slavery.  During slavery, women of color were victims of the " plantation justice" which punished women in many ways. It crystal clear that women of color have achieved many great things since the end of slavery, but  the video by Kimberly Crenshaw demonstrates that women of color are still  victims of the law  enforcement.  I  connected the video to the book " Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and  Women ...

QUESTIONS: In Liz Crow article"Disability in Literature" she claims that the current portrayal of disability in children's book continue to fail us. It is under-represented and mis-represented. What strategies can we use to change this? Analyzing the idea of Bad Vs Good, having a disability is associated with being " bad". For example: Captain Hook was portrayed as a dangerous and malicious pirate who had a disability. In a classroom, how can we use these figures such as Captain Hook, the Hunchback of Notre Dame to deconstruct  these stereotypes? When studying the idea of " able " and "disabled".What kind of activities to explore this should I use instead of presenting a lecture?

The article" Blaming Mothers: A disability perspective" presents a tradition that been present in   schools for many years: if a child has a disability, the mother is always blamed for any problems the  child has. According to the author, there are four kinds of " blame the mother" strategies used by  school districts:   Blaming the mother for incompetence includes criticizing the mother for having " only the basic skills,and the ideas suggested by the mother are not given credit.  Blaming the mother for working outside of the home; school districts claim that mothers who work do not spend enough time with their child and expect parents to help children on a full time basis Blaming the mother for being too passive: mothers tend to agree at first to the district's educational recommendations, by the time they realize they need to file a complaint, it may be difficult to convince the hearing officer that the education is inadequate. Blam...

This week's reading talked about two topics that I always called my attention : Monolingualism and language diversity. In the article Educational Linguists, the author argues that the failure of the monolingual white community to assimilate to multilingual and multidialectal mainstream its causing a language gap. I completely agree with the author, however I must state that along the years I been seeing some improvement,  at my internship. A case that I found interesting was a seven years old boy who comes from a white monolingual family , but his parents wanted him to learn a new language. He was put in a dual language classroom, where most students were exposed to another language at home. The students need to be able to complete assignments, read and write in both languages: English and Portuguese. My first thought was that the young boy would be resistant to learn in another language, but when I started helping him I noticed that he was reading better than som...