Kevin's FNED 246 Blog

 When you look at everything, we have done this semester, what stands out to you as meaningful?

1. Banga Card Game- This game to me was very interesting and meaningful due to the fact that everybody was given different rules, and everybody was playing their own rules and thought that they were right. Some people while playing the game were talking and trying to tell the other people which cards were which even though we all had different rules. This soon came to lead people to give up and not try anymore which was a very good way to show how much we rely on people to help us when we are struggling.

2. Service Learning- This experience was very meaningful to me because before doing this, I have never observed a classroom on my own. It was very important to me due to the fact that I want to be a gym teacher when I get older and now, I know that a physical education class should be a place where these kids get away from their work and just have fun. This also has show me what these teachers go through at times and how stressful it can be when student's do not listen and are constantly interrupting the class.

3. Shalaby Troublemakers- This author was very interesting and meaningful due to the fact that out of every author we viewed, Shalaby made the biggest impact and was the easiest for me to connect to. I agree when Audrey talked about how powerful Shalaby's text was and how easy it was for me to connect to in the real world.

Kevin's FNED 246 Blog

 Queering Our Schools

Blog #10

For this blog, I will be pulling quotes from "queering our schools" and explaining why they are important.

Quote: "How do we create classrooms and schools where each child, parent, and staff member's unique, beautiful self is appreciated and nurtured?" I think that this is a very big problem in this world, and I have had several experiences where I have been in situations where people are getting bullied or made fun of because of how they look, how they act or what they say. 

Quote: "Just because people may dress or look a certain way on the outside, that does not necessarily mean they feel that way" This was easy for me to connect to because I have been in many situations where somebody has been judged or made fun of for something that they did but they don't even know the person and will just start making false accusations about them. 

Quote: "In a recent survey, six out of 10 LGBTQ teens said that they felt unsafe at school and 82 percent had been verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation". After reading this, this made me think about how teenagers in my middle school and high school felt when a topic was brought up or if they got made fun. I think that it is a terrible thing to judge someone of what they choose to make their life out to be. Everybody is different and everyone has the right to make their life out of what they want. If somebody has a problem with how someone chooses to live their life, the best thing to do would be to just keep your mouth shut and ignore it but not say something verbally just because of their orientation. 

Attached HERE is a link on how to avoid harming LGBTQ and how you can become a better person by supporting them because everyone deserves to be supported. 

Kevin's FNED 246 Blog

 Elimination Ableism in Education

For my blog post #9, I will talk about my experiences through ableism and the connections that I have had throughout my life. 

I feel as though I am a very caring and kind person, and I will always stick up for people when I think something is wrong or someone is being laughed at or made fun of. Throughout my whole life in education, the public schools that I have been to have always been big in being kind to everyone and treating everyone with respect, no matter how you look or act whether you have a disability or not. In every public school that I have got an education in, there has been a lot of people who have had ableism in my schools. My schools have done things such as make unified sports teams, clubs for people with disabilities and even have made what they call "college" for them in the school after they graduate. I think that this is extremely important because not everybody will go to college or know what to do straight after high school, especially if you have a disability or are not able to perform as well as others. For my connection, I want to talk about one of my friends that I made in my gym class who loved sports but wasn't the best at them. Nobody would ever want him on their team and wouldn't ever choose them. However, I was completely different. I didn't care about whether my team won or lost I just cared that he was having fun and enjoying it. I would always volunteer in being a captain and I would always choose him first to be on my team because I wanted him to be happy and this would always make him happy and make him think that somebody wanted him on his team. People would always say stuff to me such as "wow your teams really good" or "you're not going to win any games". Coming from a athlete my whole life and still a athlete here at Rhode Island college, I didn't care about winning or losing in gym class. I just wanted to make sure that kid was happy. He rarely had any friends as it was so the time that I had with him I wanted to make him feel worthy of himself and that he was wanted for once. 

Attached HERE, is a link to a page that I think is extremely important and is a severe worldwide problem. People think that they are better than someone with a disability in which I believe that everybody should be treated the same and fairly. 

Kevin's FNED 246 Blog

 For my blog post #8, I will be using quotes from Aria by Richard Rodriguez. 

The author talks about his childhood, and the language struggles he had to go through growing up as a kid. He mentions the fact that him speaking Spanish rather than English, game him a stronger feeling of belonging and he felt more at home. He then goes on and talks about the struggles it is to be a naturally born Spanish speaker and trying to learn and adapt to an English-speaking school in order to get an education. I can make a strong connection to this reading because in my inspiring minds class that I go to, there are some students who just speak English and others who just speak Spanish and some that know both and I can tell for the one's that only speak Spanish, it is way harder for them to learn due to the fact that they do not know what the teacher is saying and they have to go based off of what their classmates are telling them to do. 

Quote: "Again and again in the days following, increasingly angry, I was obliged to hear my mother and father: 'Speak to us en ingles.' (Speak.) Only then did I determine to learn classroom English. Weeks after, it happened: One day in school I raised my hand to volunteer an answer. I spoke out in a loud voice."

Explanation: I chose this quote because I think it shows a really good understanding of how his parents were forcing him every day to speak English even though he hated it and didn't want to do it. He used the words "increasingly angry" which just shows here that he didn't want to speak English and the fact that he was being forced to do it was making her angry. Then he states weeks after, he voluntarily raised his hand in his class and spoke out her English in the whole class. I think this is really important due to the fact that it took him weeks to even volunteer and participate in the class. 

Quote: "At last, seven years old, I came to believe what had been technically true since my birth: I was an American citizen."

Explanation: I chose this quote because I think that it is really important how after seven years, he is finally realizing that he is an American citizen. He uses the words technically true to show how much of a struggle it has been for him due to the fact that he had known no English when he got here and now, he is calling himself an American citizen. 

Quote: "At about the time I no longer bothered to listen with care to the sounds of English in public, I grew careless about listening to the sounds family members made when they spoke. Most of the time I heard someone speaking at home and didn't distinguish his sounds from the words people uttered in public. I didn't even pay much attention to my parents' accented and ungrammatical speech. At least not at home."

Explanation: For my last quote, I chose this because I think that it is important due to the fact that he is now starting to say that he no longer bothered to listen with care of English and public and also stopped caring to listen to the sounds of family members when they spoke. He talks about how he didn't even pay attention to his parent's accent or bad speech because he just stopped caring about it and doesn't care about what it sounds like or how it comes out. This just goes to show how hard it has been for him due to the fact that now he doesn't even care about how his parent's talk or how people talk in public. 

Attached, HERE, you can find further information on how to make it easier for a Spanish speaker to learning in an English environmental classroom. 

Kevin's FNED 246 Blog

 Literacy with an Attitude

Quotes

Quote: "Teachers made every effort to control students' movement". 

Explanation: Growing up, I have always felt that I was under control, and I didn't have any freedom in school up until high school in which I did whatever I wanted. I would always have to ask to use the bathroom when I was in school instead of just being able to leave and go do it without saying anything. Even sometimes the teacher would say no you can't, or they would make me wait until we are done doing something which is completely unfair due to the fact that I am being held to use the bathroom. You couldn't leave the class or go anywhere unless the teacher approved of it, and this is why I agree with this quote due to the fact that I always felt my movement to do anything was always under control. When I go to my service learning, I am in a fifth-grade class with them, and it is the same way whereas they can't do anything without the teacher letting them. I feel like with it being this way, this causes the students to not want to behave and do their work and it cause them to not be focuses and to fool around in class because they don't want to do what they are constantly told to do due to the fact that they are just fifth graders. 

Quote: "You can't teach these kids anything. Their parents don't care about them, and they're not interested." 

Explanation: I feel as though this quote is really foolish for this teacher to say due to the fact that people's parents obviously care about their kids. These students are not interested in learning, and you can't teach them anything because you're trying to teach them isn't working for them. Constantly trying to get them to copy notes down or writing answers to a ginormous textbook you assigned isn't going to interest them and make them want to learn. As a teacher, you must find ways to make your students interested in wanting to learn. I was the same was growing up; I never wanted to learn or do any work because it was always taking notes or doing book work. I feel as though if we come up with better ways of learning then these students will be more interested in learning. 

In class, I want to go over how we can make students at a young age want to learn and come up with fun ways to get them the information they need so they do not end up hating school forever. I was the same way, I hated middle school and high school due to the fact that in my classes it was the same thing over and over again where we would take notes, do textbook work or problems and then have a quiz or a test. Attached HERE, you can find more information on how to make your classroom more interesting and entertaining for your students to want to be able to learn. 

Kevin's FNED 246 Blog

 All three of my video analysis templates are posted here below. 

Kevin's FNED 246 Blog

 For my blog #6, I am going to be using connections from What to Look for In a Classroom by Alfie Kohn.

Growing up as a kid, I was very fortunate to have such a good education and a good learning environment. I had good connections with all of my teachers and my friends, and I really enjoyed going to school. This was really easy for me to connect to, and I feel as though I had the "ideal" classroom. Kohn stated, "chairs around tables to facilitate interaction". I could really connect to this because growing up as a kid and even now in our class, I feel as though there is more interaction when we are all close to each other at the same table rather than sitting in rows or by ourselves. Kohn then goes on to say the location of the teacher should be "typically working with students so it takes a few seconds to find her." I thought that this was really important, and it stood out to me the most due to the fact that the teacher is interacting with the students one on one to help them get a better understand and learning. I also liked how Kohn talked about how the teacher should be respectful and welcoming and should have a eager to demonstrate and teach the students what they are doing if they don't understand. Attached HERE, you can see more details and find more information about what an effective teacher's classroom should look like. In class, I would like to talk about how important it is for all students in the class to contribute to the conversation and to feel welcoming. I would also like to talk about the things in a school that attract the students into wanting to learn more and the certain things that makes them want to show up. 

Attached here is an image of what it seems to be an elementary class and you can see how decorative the walls and the room is in general which causes the students to be more attracted to it. You see posters, a lot of toys, a colorful carpet and several colors that all draw attention to young students in a classroom. You can also see how there are several chairs at one table, so the students are facing each other and forced to talk to each other more rather than sitting by themselves.