Collins Compositions

Are today's youth digital natives? In the debate of digital nativism between boyd and Prensky, I wholeheartedly agree with boyd's perspective. Digital nativism is the idea some generations are digital natives, meaning they naturally adept at navigating and understanding digital technologies and systems. On the other hand, the existence of a digital native implies the idea of digital immigrants, or those who are foreign to the digital familiarity experienced by natives. In chapter 7 of danah boyd's It's Complicated , she discusses the idea of digital nativism and how it is actually dangerous mindset to have. To start, boyd discusses that the idea of nativism vs immigrant truthfully stems from the fear created by generational gaps which are increasingly illustrated through technology use. She paraphrases Barlow when she discusses that, "the implicit fear that stems from the generational gap that has emerged around technology." The idea of generational tensi...

I was born prior to most of the modern day technology youth have access to today. Although I was not born into this technology, my early childhood years saw the transition into today's modern technologies. Due to this, I think of myself more as a digital native than a digital immigrant. Though I was born in a time when cellphones and laptops were not quite as ubiquitous  as they are today, I spent most of my time with the forms of technology that were available to me. As a 6 or 7 year old, I would play Nintendo 64 or Playstation or Gameboy, which were new and advanced for the time. By the time I was in middle school, I was spending a lot of time on the desktop computer, on websites such as Myspace (shoutout to Tom !). I developed the 'native' skills of twitch speed or parallel processing while going down Wikipedia rabbit holes while playing flash games in another tab.

Hello everyone! My name is Christian Collins. I am originally from San Diego, CA, but I have been living in Rhode Island since the summer of 2016. I moved here with my boyfriend Ammar, as we both were placed in Rhode Island as part of the Americorps programs City Year (for myself) and Teach for America (for him). Without knowing a soul in New England, we moved from one of the largest and most populous states, to little Rhode Island. I have since fallen in love with Rhode Island and New England in general. We have decided to make Rhode Island our long term home and have since put down roots here, including; buying our first house (yay!), adopting our dog/son Winston (super cute!), recently sold our first home to buy our second (that was fast!) and have created long term commitments with our employers. Currently, I am teaching as part of the Americorps program Teach for America. I teach 6th and 7th grade English Language Arts (with "English as a Second Language"...

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This week's reading was theTeaching Tolerance article  Teaching at the Intersections  by Monita K. Bell. In this article, the idea of 'intersectionality' is discussed, and what that means for educators and our students. Various student experiences are discussed throughout the article as a way to make sense of the idea of intersectionality. In my experience, intersectionality has been framed as the threat of discrimination due to one or multiple of your identity markers. In this way, a student in the article, named G.G., is used as an example of the ways in which multiple markers can disadvantage someone beyond just one of their identity markers. Being black and female and queer presents the potential  for increased instances of discrimination due to one, multiple, or all of those markers. In order to be effective educators, we must view our students " through an  intersectional  lens: recognizing that race-, gender-  and  class-related circumstances a...

Collier "Many transitional or ESL programs do not emphasize the backbone of school success: academic literacy." In my experience thus far as an ESL ELA teacher, this is a component that is often emphasized in trainings that I have been to. It takes several years to develop a language conversationally, and even longer to be proficient in an academic context. These skills in language need to be explicitly taught in order for students to learn the language. This is why an ESL classroom should clearly define the language objective for each lesson, so students know the academic language they will be learning and applying. Rodriguez "Only when I was with them in public would I grow alert to their accents." The recounting of this story speaks to the importance of why we need to promote the idea of students valuing their home languages when learning English. If any value judgement is negatively applied towards a student's L1, they may begin to adopt those beliefs ...

Johnson, A. G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference. A central component of this article is the idea of privilege, and how privilege (or lack thereof) affects an individuals relationship to power. Johnson paraphrases McIntosh in his discussion of "unearned entitlements" (i.e. working in a safe environment) versus "unearned advantages" (when that safe environment is only guaranteed to one identity). I find this to be a major hurdle for those entering into discussions on race and identity. I intend to using Johnson's article to help in my Teach Out assignment based on LGBTQ identity markers, and hopefully by creating a LGBTQ club at my school next year. By having students interact with others that share the same identity, they can hopefully begin to make sense of the world and their own relation to the power systems at play. Safe Spaces: Making Schools and Communities Welcoming to LGBT Youth I was hoping to use this article as a main piece of my teach ou...