Collins Compositions

Talking Points: 1. "The assignments were so easy that all obedient students got good grades, but I gave plenty of bad grades to students who were not obedient, who did not do their assignments." This quote reminds me of a topic of discussion in a previous class. "Grading" assignments versus giving students meaningful feedback is a core component of integrating justice into the classroom. This requires stepping away from grading as retributive process for obedience, and stepping towards giving students what they need to be successful in life. 2. Throughout Chapter 2, the author discusses the different traits and attitudes towards learning, classroom environments and knowledge throughout different schools. I found it interesting thinking about the ways in which these traits maybe have been created or perpetuated by education. There are so many factors present in a student's socialization, and it's easy to see how things like a student developing an opposi...

"The Problem We All Live With" This week's blog is centered around a podcast called "This American Life", hosted by Ira Glass. In this particular episode , Glass interviewed Nikole Hannah Jones regarding the issues and barriers that are in the way of closing achievement gaps between black and white students. The interview starts out discussing the police shooting of Michael Brown, and then quickly transitions to discussing the failing school system of Normandy, Missouri.  According to Jones, the school system here was collapsing, and as a result, the state payed for students from Normandy to attend a school district other than their own. The unintended integration of white and black students raised a lot of concerns from both sides of the conversation. Below, I have listed three segments of the interview that I found the most thought provoking, coupled with my own thoughts, reactions and connections to my own experiences. Quote #1 "What integration doe...

“The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children” Talking Points 1. "If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier." I found this quote to be powerful and relatable to general teaching best practices. In order for our students to do well on assignments, it is better to explicitly tell them the expectations and model effective responses. For students to be successful in our society, we must name the power systems around them so they can gain access to that power. 2. "People of color are, in general, skeptical of research as a determiner of our fates. Academic research has, after all, found us genetically inferior, culturally deprived, and verbally deficient." In today's education system, supports and resources are typically allocated when the proper data and research has been produced. How can we use the tools that have disadvantaged PO...

In  Armstrong & Wildman 's article titled Colorblindness is the New Racism,  they discuss a new and shifted conception of what racism looks like it in today's 'post-racial' society. Throughout their article, they assert that the idea of being 'colorblind' -- meaning you see everyone as the same color -- is an inherently racist viewpoint. This colorblindness is a component of what the authors describe as white privilege. The authors state that: There is the idea that white people do not think of themselves in a racialized way, which is a main component of white privilege. Every day a Person of Color exists within our white-dominant society, they are reminded of the boundaries that are set in place due to their color. Due to the fact that these boundaries are inherently tied to skin color, white individuals are not socialized with the awareness that these boundaries even exist. Race plays an important factor in recognizing these boundaries, and the 'c...

Blog Post A Talking Points 1.  Johnson notes that, when discussing the differences of people in society, "they think they're about to be told they've done something wrong. That blame and guilt aren't far behind, especially if they are white or male or heterosexual or of a privileged class." (viii). As a white male, having discussions about these differences with other people that share privileged identity markers can be difficult. I believe that  moving beyond  guilt and blame is a difficult hurdle, but absolutely necessary in order to build coalition across identity. 2. One quote from the text that resonates with me is when Johnson writes, "For myself, it means I have to take the initiative to find out how privilege operates in the world, how it affects people, and what all that has to do with me" (10). A lot of the time, those with dominant/privileged identities place the responsibility of educating SCWAAMP individuals on those without the privile...