Reflection #6

I read Finding Ways In: Community Based Perspectives on Southeast Asian Family Involvement with Schools in the State of New England by Francine F. Collignon.  I found myself thinking back to lots of class discussion and my own recent experience with UTEC and LCHC and the Teen Coalition when they visited our class.  One thing I had not noticed among these groups was a mention of family.  In Collignon's article, a CBO is brought up that is aimed "at the intrapersonal level (a Summer Academy for youth and their families)."  I really like the idea of community programs that involve a range of ages and cause parents and their children to spend time together in a different way outside of the home.  Involvement like this could possibly help parents understand the way US schools operate and educate their children.  Collignon writes that these current parents were once refugee children.  They grew up in a time of war and had to abandon education in order to survive.  Instead of the separation between home life and school life that these parents were used to, they are finding that school and family are more closely intertwined.  As a future educator, I believe it is important for parents to be involved in their child's education.  It is strange for me to think about my childhood and my parents not being interested in what I was doing at school.  I am not quite sure how this connects to the stereotype of Asian students being very intelligent and hard working.  Is this article implying that they are also very independent and do not need family involvement in school?

Reflection #5

For this week's blog entry, I decided to focus on Affirming Diversity.  I was very happy to read the case studies in Chapter 8, and was quite interested by them.  For my Student Behavior and Adolescent Development class, I read a case study a week and really enjoyed writing about one a couple of classes ago.  The case studies I want to reflect on that of a young girl who from the United States named Nadia Bara. She is a high school freshman.  Nadia was born and raised in the United States with her older sister.  Her parents are from Syria and moved to the US after getting married.  She is Arabic and Muslim and identifies with these qualities just as much as she identifies with being American.  Nadia discusses the struggle to find a balance between her roots and the country she calls home.  I believe we have discussed a lot of this in class back when we were reading about immigration.  She also discusses the stereotypes she faces as an Arabic Muslim.  Since the 9/11 attacks, she has had to deal with the preconceived notions people have towards those of a Middle Eastern background.  Nadia writes about some serious issues in a very mature style, while still maintaining a youthful tone. I found her essay to be an optimistic and hopeful one.  She sounds confident in her desire for stereotypes to be broken, especially those that have been applied to her culture and her religion.  I was really glad to read more case studies on immigration, and more case studies in general.  I find that I learn more from the experiences of someone else than I do from an informative, textbook write up about the same topic.  It was much easier to learn about and understand what life has been like for Muslims in the US since 9/11. 

Reflection #4

One section of Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice that really grabbed my attention was the section on abortion.  One of the last things I expected to read about for an education class was abortion, and I think Gilligan wrote about in such an informative, approachable way.  Abortion is one of those sensitive topics that people, especially young women, need to be informed about.  Gilligan was definitely informative in her writing, which was also something I really liked about it.  Keeping her tone informative kept the reader form picking up on any opinions or emotions connected to abortion.  Informative is a neutral tone that does not take sides, and is necessary when discussing an topic like this.  Gilligan conducted a study and interviewed women who had had abortions or were in the process of deciding whether to have an abortion or not. Personal experiences mixed with Gilligan's neutral way of writing are a great combination in teaching young women about abortion.

The personal experiences were the most interesting to me.  The process that goes on in a woman's mind when faced with this big decision taught me more than I had ever known.  Most women had different reasons for choosing, but there were a few similarities as well.  Feeling selfish for choosing abortion came up a lot, and so did the question of morality.  Some women were able to justify the choice of an abortion with reasons pertaining to family, money, school, and their relationships with lovers (fathers). Reading this made abortion appear to be what it really is, a necessary evil. Women are not terrible people for getting them, in our society it can be necessary for survival.

Reflection #3

The part of Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype by Stacy J. Lee the most was the section on Korean students.  I could see this same stereotype in a Vietnamese friend of mine from my hometown.  She was always very driven in school, and in conversation would mention that her her parents were strict about grades, would prefer she stay in to study instead of go out at night or after school with friends.  I remember she was a bit difficult to make plans with too.  I was surprised at the motivation these parents had for their children and good grades.  This stereotype was one I had just accepted and never given much thought to, but the reason behind all of the pressure for good grades was surprising to me.  Getting the highest grades was a way to prove how smart and successful Korean people were, and a way to earn the respect of white people.  It makes some sense when one thinks about white people being as abundant as they are in the United States, but why the respect of white people?  Why not the respect of people in general?  I don't quite understand why the respect of white people is desirable.

Reflection #2

The entire time I read Children of Immigration, I thought of my mother and all the experiences she had growing up as the oldest child Italian parents who had immigrated to Massachusetts.  As a little girl, around 5 years old, my mother was the one who spoke in public, not my grandmother.  By the time my mother was born, my grandmother had learned English, but was too embarrassed by her accent to speak in public places.  My mother was also a teacher of American culture for my grandparents.  She explained everything to them that was questioned.  Simple things like brownies, lilacs, and pot roast were not around in Italy and completely unknown to her parents.  I can see hints of ethnic flight in the way my mother talks about growing up.  To this day, she still hates tomato sauce and believes that she hates it because it reminds her of her home.  As a teenager my mother was much happier away from home and would leave as often as she could.  When I was a kid, I did not have half of the responsibilities that my mother had.  She doesn't think it's right that as a child, she had to be a teacher to her parents.  She constantly had to answer their questions, speak in place of my grandmother, and find her own way in American culture. There wasn't really anyone around to be a teacher for her. 

Reflection #1

After I read "White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack" I took a moment to process everything that Peggy McIntosh was saying in her essay.  As white people, we learn a behavior towards other races without even noticing it.  We can blame racism, but racism is only a part of it.  I was reminded of a problem a friend of mine had when he was an undergraduate in an education class.  After doing a school observation, he wrote that the class he observed was not diverse, a vast majority of the students were the same ethnicity (not white) and there were only a few students who were different form this majority.  His professor criticized this and said this observation was wrong and that the class was diverse.  Could this be the white privilege in action?  Maybe in the US a white population is the majority, but in a class with only one or two white students wouldn't that make those few students the minority?

Self Introduction

Hello everyone!

I'm Rebecca Dickinson, but I just go by Becca.  I'm 22 and just graduated with my Bachelors in English literature today from UML, which is why I'll be following up this post with one on this week's reading. I'm in this teaching program to become a high school English teacher.  I've wanted to teach since I was 17 years old.  My chemistry teacher from high school was a huge influence on me, and after taking a class with him for a year I knew it was what I wanted to do. When I'm not in class and being studious with my homework, I like to run or go the gym.  I love cooking and trying new recipes (especially desserts), and since it's summer I'll be getting to the beach as much as I can.