Blog Post #9

Troublemakers by Carla Shalaby

*I feel like I should warn that this blog post is mostly about mental illness and my experience with it.

Reflection:

Overall, I agree with what was said in this piece. The canary analogy is apt, as I have seen firsthand how excluded students highlight deficits in our school system. A student I worked with in the spring comes to mind. He was one of the most insightful children I have ever met, and wise beyond his years. Every time I visited that classroom, though, he was yelled at for speaking out of turn. I always felt awful for him and tried my best to validate what he had to say. Generally, in cases like his, I fully agree with what Shalaby says.

However, there is one subtle thread throughout her writing that I take issue with: her approach to mental health. It is not the main point, but she references the intersection of deviancy and mental illness a few times. She says that students who are the canaries are "routinely pathologized" and "too often [medicated] into docility." While I cannot universally say that what she alludes to never happens, I take offense to the implication that this is widespread. What she says reminds me of the stances of Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist who claimed mental illness did not exist, and instead was a stigma applied to those who could not or would not conform to societal standards. In some regards, these stances are correct, in that those with mental illnesses are heavily stigmatized for their differences. However, to deny they exist or suggest that they are merely classifications used to justify how people are treated is simply incorrect. While I was not a "troublemaker" student, I have suffered from mental illness in my educational journey. To say that my inability to participate in "normal" class structure was just my inability or unwillingness rather than clinical depression is frankly insulting. 

Szasz's book detailing his stances on mental illness.

Further, I find the reference to being "medicated into docility" particularly problematic. In our current culture, medication for mental illness is widely demonized and discouraged. After all, just recently, federal leaders (leaders who are part of the administration of a president she saw as a culmination of our society's violence) have claimed that antidepressants cause school shootings. The reference in this text furthers a common myth that is damaging for those who need medication. I know I was hesitant to medicate because of descriptions like Shalaby's. Once I started medication, though, I was able to return to being myself, and I have never regretted it. Of course, there are cases where medication is used to control behavior. In most cases, though, medication for mental illness is a good thing, and I find it horrible to suggest anything else.

Comments to Share:

I find this piece and my reaction to it interesting, as while I actually agree with the majority of what was said, my opposition to part of it somewhat soured my view of the whole. I would like to explore her ideas more, though, as I really do think that "different" students are who we learn the most from, even if they may challenge the traditional status quo.

Blog Post #8

 Literacy with an Attitude by Patrick J. Finn

Reflection:

As disheartening as it is to say, I can't say I found any of the findings Finn discusses shocking. While I did not have Anyon's descriptors to talk about it, I feel like there has always been an understanding that schools differ based on background. For example, when I was in high school (which I would describe as a middle-class school aspiring to be an affluent professional), I was on the Science Olympiad team, which was an after-school club for us. Every year at the state competition, we viewed Barrington (an affluent professional school) as our rivals and cursed the fact that they had a class, not just a club, to work on constructing knowledge for the competition. At the time, I certainly knew that there was a distinct difference in available resources and the background of the students, but I never thought about how those differences fit into the larger world. Warwick is mostly working or middle-class families, so of course our schools reflect that. Barrington has a much more affluent reputation, which is reflected in its schools. 

These are the results from the last Science Olympiad I participated in. The distribution of scores among Rhode Island high schools generally follows Anyon's observations.

Even before I got to high school, Anyon's observations about the differences in each "class" of school hold true to my experiences. From middle school, if not late elementary school, we began to be tracked into classes, and those of us in Honors classes were especially pressured to start thinking about college and careers (I couldn't find the original survey I did, but the College Board one seems similar). Assignments were often those like fill-in-the-blanks that were easily completed, but required little construction of knowledge. I did have some projects that were more sophisticated, but they were exceptions, not the rule. While I found "busy work" easy, I never really felt satisfied after doing it, and they are tools I don't want to use much in my classroom.

The differences in pedagogy across incomes are something that has been increasingly brought to my attention once I decided to become an educator. A frankly alarming number of people, from teachers in my high school to college professors to my own relatives, have encouraged me to avoid lower-income schools and instead try to teach at upper-class schools so I could have more pedagogical freedom. I have even been told to avoid secondary education altogether and only teach at the post-secondary level to avoid frustration with curriculum control. These arguments have both confused and infuriated me. If we have a broken system, shouldn't the solution be to fix it, not abandon it and leave it to rot? If all motivated teachers leave the schools where they are needed, the status quo will persist, and disparities will worsen. I know that my soapboxing runs the risk of making me one of the White liberal teachers Delpit discusses, but I think educators need to make change where it is needed, not where it has already started.

Question to Share: 

Based on Finn's discussion of using Anyon's findings in his own classes and my own personal experiences, these divisions seem to be near universal, at least in American schools. So, has anyone been to a school that defies these classifications?

Video Analysis

Teach Us All:

Precious Knowledge:

Classroom Tour:

Blog Post #7

 What to Look for in a Classroom by Alfie Kohn and "Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy"

Connections:

While the "Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" video was short, I found that it had numerous connections to previous pieces of media we have discussed in class, especially Lisa Delpit's article. In the video, a discussion was held on the cultural filters through which we perceive the world, and how these filters are applied in schools. Students analyze what an instructor says through their own cultural lens, not necessarily the instructor's. We expect kids to inherently know the school's culture, though, and so look down on or punish them when they do not adhere to it. However, there is no way for them to automatically know a given culture. These ideas align closely with what Delpit has to say about the Culture of Power and the Silenced Dialogue.  Instructors and students each applying their cultural filter to an interaction and arriving at separate conclusions is a prime example of the "communication dissonance" that Delpit discusses. Furthermore, the assumption that students will inherently fit into the school's culture exemplifies the Culture of Power, as it is assumed that the school's authorial culture is superior. The idea that teachers, instead of forcing this adaptation, serve as "cultural translators," aligns with Delpit's claim that acquiring power is easier when the culture's rules are explicitly stated. After all, it is easier for students to behave if they know what is expected of them. 

The discussion about the challenge of separating a student's culture from their entire identity also seemed to serve as a companion to Precious Knowledge, albeit counterintuitively. As the video states, a student's connection to their culture can vary depending on their circumstances and does not provide a complete picture of who they are. I found that the classes in the film reflected that. While they certainly did primarily focus on culture, they were also about the individual students. Some of the students in the film said that the classes helped them discover who they are, and some of the lessons shown focused on personal development. When a teacher serves as a "cultural translator" for their students, they support their individual students by learning their individual stories. 

While not something we watched in this class, the video reminded me of a film I saw at CCRI called Starting Small (I could only find a trailer, not the full version). The film followed classes with an anti-racist curriculum, which really focused on exposing kids to people different than themselves. One class brainstormed ways to make their building more accessible for a guest speaker in a wheelchair, and another class had the opportunity to meet a local Native American leader and ask him about his culture. Although the focus of those curricula was a bit different than what was discussed in this video, they had the basic idea of cultural exchange in common.

Question to Share:

I agree with most of the points in Kohn's chart. However, I found myself a bit hesitant about his classification of sticker charts as a negative, as it indicates that students are ranked. I follow his basic idea, since it unfairly humiliates students, but I have seen charts like these for classes as a whole that work well. For example, in a program I volunteer in, we give classes charts for anonymously recording both altruistic and "mean" behavior. While we do get some tattletales regarding the poor behavior chart, the altruistic behavior chart seems to work wonders in encouraging more of that behavior. So, my question is, are charts always negative, and I am just defensive about my program, or can they be used effectively? 

The charts I refer to are the green and red ones hanging on the whiteboard ot the left. The green ones (Green Poison Darts) are "mean" behavior, and the red ones (Warm Red Smiles) are altruistic behaviors.