Nicole's Fall FNED Blog

     For this week’s blog, we watched a video from “Woke Kindergarten”. In the video, the book They, She, He, Easy as ABC by Maya Gonzalez was read. The book goes through the alphabet, talking about children with names that correspond to each letter of the alphabet and the pronouns that they like to use. The book pairs fun colors and pictures to show young children that pronouns, although confusing at times, can be fun and easy to use. Before diving into the meat of the book, I would just like to reflect on the video itself. I think that the person who was reading the book was fantastic. Her upbeat personality really made the video enjoyable, and I found myself diving into their other read alouds to see what other books they read.       In regards to the book’s content, I think that the book itself displays the idea of gender orientation beautifully. As someone who would like to go into the early childhood field, something that has always been a concer...

     For this week’s assigned reading, we read “Toward Ending Ableism in Education” by Thomas Hehir. In this essay, Hehir describes how in order to decrease the stigma that comes with disabilities in education, it needs to be addressed. It cannot be glossed over or ignored, but needs to be faced head on. To do this, Hehir gives the following advice: make disabilities a part of diversity plans, encourage students with disabilities to use tools that are the most effective for them and their needs, focus on results rather than where students with disabilities are placed in the classroom, and promoting high standards rather than high stakes (in other words, pushing students but if they fail, not pushing it as the “end all be all”). One point that Hehir brought up that I found interesting was how schools should focus on results rather than placement of students, meaning that schools should see the benefits in integrating students with disabilities with able-bodied students. Pe...

     For this week’s assigned reading, we read “Aria” by Richard Rodriguez. In his memoir, Rodriguez discusses his struggles with being a bilingual student and having to adjust to the dominant culture. Rodriguez grew up as a Spanish speaker, solely speaking Spanish at home with his family. He associated his native familial language with a sense of warm, comforting privacy. However, after the nuns who taught in his school came to his house to tell his family to use more English at home, this sense of comfort was destroyed. His one safe language of Spanish was bombarded with the foreign language of English. As the chapter goes on, he describes losing touch with his native language and culture, with English becoming the dominant language in his household. His once close-knit family turned to one of limited conversation and distance, as it does for many bilingual learners adjusting to the dominant culture.       In my own clinical experiences, I have worke...

     For this week’s assigned reading, we read Literacy With An Attitude by Patrick Finn, and I have decided to reflect on this work as a whole. In his writing, Finn brings up the idea that education varies for people in differing social classes. The curriculum does not change; however, the way the curriculum is taught is what changes. He describes that people in the affluent or executive social classes receive a more “high-end” education – one filled with creativity and the opportunity to think outside of the box to challenge oneself. However, the middle and working classes get a more restrictive form of the same education – one filled with learning from textbooks and students not being pushed to challenge themselves.       I think that in his writing, Finn brings up an excellent point that is multi-faceted. One point that isn’t explicitly stated is that the varying social classes have different financial means. For schools that tend to have more wor...

Precious Knowledge:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/19sZ1ajbMW4NpIKmigFwOVCvSq39TVRhiQj6GSEN6Q8s/edit?usp=sharing  Teach Us All:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/14R8a6c872dfjm17N3HGB3SAp40LMNAx4Hs4opv9q7Hs/edit?usp=sharing Classroom Tour: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19E7ie58EhSRTj_3BYsCfM6UYR1HGs_Zt99q9lZY_bLc/edit?usp=sharing

  In this week’s assigned reading, we looked at Alfie Kohn’s “What to Look for in a Classroom”. Kohn describes what are good signs in a classroom and what can be found in a classroom that may be a sign to worry. In my opinion, I think that some of these attributes are self explanatory, but some of the things that one should “worry” about, I disagree with. For example, I agree with desks and tables being put in a way that invokes conversation between students, as well as hanging students’ work to invoke a sense of pride and community in the classroom. However, in the “to worry about” category, a teacher-led classroom, and “all students doing the same thing” are included. Personally, I don’t think that these are necessarily signs to worry about. I agree that students should be collaborative and have a say in the classroom, but I don’t think that a teacher leading a discussion or an activity is necessarily a bad thing. With younger children, they need that direction. Without teacher-l...