What i found confusing, interesting and surprising!

Mayree Ibrahim

FNED 150 Teaching And Learning In A Democratic Society

Dr. Gerri August

March 6, 2012

          What I find confusing about these two articles are the fact that they didn't already learn how to deal with the different situations that they were put in by their students already......Isn't that something that is taught in "Teaching School"? I know they couldn't have introduced them to every scenario that was likely to happen in their classrooms because every classroom is structured differently. But in my opinion, since they were teaching a certain grade, these types of situations and the way it should be dealt with should have already been explained to them.
           Something i found interesting while reading these articles were the fact that the children were already so influenced about racial and stereotypical subjects at such young ages. While reading the first page of the article which was "page 20" the part that really caught my attention was when the young boy named Matt called Angela "Brownski". My first thought was "where did he learn that from?" because remembering my childhood, i don't think i would have even comprehended what that meant and the other thing that i found surprising was that the little girl named Angela knew exactly what it meant and that it was a racial and hurtful comment. Kindergarten students shouldn't be able to understand comments like that let alone be able to break it down to if it's a bad a good comment. Well maybe it was just my generation that grew up with parents keeping us away from racial stuff like that but like i said before thinking back on my childhood.....i wouldn't have known what "Brownski" meant.
         
          

Discussing an article

Mayree Ibrahim

FNED 150 Teaching And Learning In A Democratic Society

Dr. Gerri August

March 1, 2012

   

              Discussing this article with my fellow classmate sparked up a couple of disagreements, debating and conclusions, it gave me a whole other perspective on multicultural situations, spotting discrimination, stereotypes and other racist things in our everyday lives. My friend explained to me how she felt about a passage saying the media, magazines, billboards and other things of that sort affect the way she grow up and saw people, she refused to accept the fact that awful things like racism and stereotypes molded her into the person she is today.

               The second conversation that we have was on trying to add multicultural and anti-racist teachings into our schools. Until today I never knew that it was such a touchy subject until I discussed it with my brother, unfortunately he was treated bad by his classmates and teacher because of the fact that he was the only African American student in the classroom, so he was in full support  of trying to include multicultural and anti-racist  teachings in schools.

Charting Stereotypes

Mayree Ibrahim

Teaching and Learning in a Democratic Society

Dr. Gerri August

Feburuary 15 2012

        The passage that I found the most important after reading pages 3-9 was the passage called “Charting Stereotypes” because it was the beginning of the teacher’s efforts in helping the students analyze the cartoons that they watched while growing up, s/he exposed the hidden messages in those cartoons that were molding the students’ perspectives on how they perceived what rich people dressed like, what fat people’s roles should be in life, how women should act or look like and where every other race, excluding Caucasians, should be placed in a movie. The passage also reveals that the students start to notice all the messages in these cartoons and also the hidden messages in everything on television. They notice stereotypes in the world including politics, comedy, magazines and billboards.

        Another part that I found important in this passage was about how the teacher made the students notice the hidden messages by giving them charts with different questions on them like “who plays the buffoon?”, “what are the characters’ motivation?” And “if there are people of color in the film, what do they look like?” The students filled out the chart answering those questions. It was a motivating way to get the students involved and interested in unraveling the mysteries of the cartoons that were shaping them as they grew up.