This category is intended for you to raise general discussions about course content. Feel free to add a respectful comment, question, or reflection that is inspired by class activity.
Archives
Categories
- assignments (2)
- discussion (5)
- home (1)
- resources (13)
- rubrics (2)
- schedule (2)
- sidebar (3)
- Uncategorized (1)
I’m not sure if anyone will check in on the blog again or which postings they’ll respond to so I’m going to post in a couple of different places.
I felt badly that I had to leave before the end today. I wanted to say goodbye to each of you personally and tell you how much you enriched my LAST course. I learned something from each one of you and I want to thank you. The depth of your thinking and willingness to challenge yourselves, your beliefs and your practice is what will help change the course of public education where it needs to change. This was such a great ending after three years of work. In many ways it is catapulting me in the next things. My experience after my M.Ed program was “what now?” tinged with sadness. I feel some of the same sadness now as well but I also sense a new direction emerging that I doubt would have surfaced without all the rich discussion and intense reading and coursework. Charlie thank you for all you gave us.
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to cross paths with you however late in the game it is for me.
One last request is for folks to post their email addresses here so that we can get in touch with each other if we are so moved. I want to know how things are going for Karen up north and how Katharine is doing in Winooski. I want to know how Christine makes out in New Hampshire and what’s going on for Leo with his group work. Ellen, your brain research is going to benefit all those SPED kiddos you work with. They are lucky to have you. Tara, Christie, Katie and Tammy I want to know about your experiences as you test the waters in your training. Melissa let us know if you decide to go back to the classroom or shake up parents from that perspective. Gina the student affairs perspective in higher ed was brand new to me. I want to know about the interface with the profs!
Anyway my email is artemis@gmavt.net
Christine,
I made with plans with you to stay after class tomorrow and forgot that I also have to leave class early. I coach a girl’s running group and we are purchasing sneakers for the girls tomorrow at 10:30. I will be done and back at UVM by the end of class. I just didn’t want you to freak out when I left. I am looking forward to working with you. If you want to call me, my number is 652-5102. I will be at home working tonight.
Todays discussion was little emotional for me. Because I do have personal experience with the situational poverty I could really identify with feeling “put-down” if you will. It is very humilating asking for public assistance. Even though I am educated at times it is very desparing. My experience has helped me to identify with some other parents that have similar situations. So, I can utilize my experience and empathsize with parents the difficulty of raising children and not having enough money or not having transportation to get to the food shelf. And the feeling that if I told other people about my situation they would think less of me because of it. At the time, my husband and I made a choice for me to not work because I had worked as a paraprofessional making $7.16 an hour and we felt it would be better for me to be home with the baby instead of working for peanuts and having to pay day care costs while someone else raises our child. I have witnessed other families choose to stay where they are at financially because they don’t know any better. My school has home/school coordinators who help those families when they are identified. Usually these families need wrap around services (counseling, information, resources, transportation, etc.), and even some help in making the phone calls if they don’t have a phone. From my own experience people are opened to receive help if it is coming from a helpful place. In the preface to Vygotsky when his daughter talks about another student not doing well on the test he tells her that perhaps she should help her friend, “be sure you really want to help her, and really mean her well, and so it would not be unpleasant for her to accept your help.” The sincerity and genuinness of the act of helping her friend is a way of making amends. This is true nature of what I read from Vygotsky…building relationships with others through a genuine desire to do so, not because I have to. I met a man named Ron Rubin through my graduate work and he works for the state dept. of ed. on a task force to end school violence his words were, “relationships, relationships, relationships.” I hear his words often because I know today that it is the building of positive relationships with all people I come in contact with that builds positive environments. Now I sound preachy and didn’t mean to.
I too would like to look more into poverty issues because it was a big factor when I was teaching. I too taught in a rural setting and I actually found it to be one of my biggest challenges.
I too enjoyed the discussion yesterday. All year I spent trying to “control” the behavior in my classroom and hence control the environment; however, now that I can step away from my class and reflect from a different point of view, I realized that too much time was spent on developing behavioral plans and incentives and too little time was spent trying to understand why these children lacked motivation and respect. I came from a completely different background than these children and I think I am not as sensitive to their needs as I should be because I don’t know enough about it. In my previous experience at my cookie cutter private school it was easy to bring in their interests and understand their backgrounds because they were similar to my own. I am thinking that my personal project will revolve around poverty and the link to motivating students and engaging them in their own learning.
I would love to look further at poverty issues because in the public schools here in Vermont especially in more rural schools that is where, I believe, much of our diversity lies. Understanding our cultural differences and those of our students will support us in connecting and creating community.