I just wanted you all to know that I passed orals. Thanks for the support!

To Teach the Journey, in Comics / Concluding Questions:

1. A question is posed by a student on page 965: “Why does the wheel go around?” In reference to Mr. Quinn’s response, how would you have answered this question if you were a teacher? Has taking this class altered your potential response? Connect the comic strip ideals with Friere’s problem-posing model of education. Give examples from your own educational career.
   

2. Using examples from William Ayers's comic excerpts and other readings, explain how the gap between students and teachers can be bridged.
   

3. To what extent does the literacy of a comic strip differ from the literacy of a case study, for example? Be sure to define your meaning of “literacy.”
   

4. What have you learned about education and literacy practices as a result of this class? Include examples from class discussions, this comic and other readings, and/or your site volunteering experience.

Poetics of the Oppressed Questions

• "There are many languages besides those that are written or spoken." What does Boal mean by this, and how does it tie into the discussions we've had in class about new definitions of literacy? Do you agree with his statement? Why or why not?
• What are the two different kinds of poetics that Boal discusses before explaining the type of poetics introduced by ALFIN? How is the "poetics of the oppressed" he talks about more appropriate for a program like ALFIN designed to teach literacy?
• What is the "technique for breaking repression" that Boal describes on page 150? How is this related to his claim that the theater is "rehearsal of revolution"?

Katz: Growth in motion QUESTIONS

1. As an educator, how would you try to incorporate the idea of embodied learning and various communication modes in the classroom in order to aid all students in engaging with learning material on a deeper level?

2. What do you think is meant when one is “learning how to learn” (reader p. 942)?

3. In what ways can you incorporate more opportunities for reflection in the classroom to understand one’s development?

-- Kathy Shen

Questions for week 13

 Multimodality and assessment Stornaiuolo, A., Hull, G., & Nelson, M. (2009). Mobile Texts and migrant audiences: Rethinking literacy and assessment in a new media age. Language Arts, 82 (5), 382-92.

• In this article, the authors argue that young people growing up in a digitally mediated educational milieu have “wide-ranging opportunities to choose how to represent themselves in relationship with others (pp. 383 of original text).” Does this argument seem somewhat naïve or romanticized in that these very same young people face far greater constraints, where identity construction is concerned, i.e., available selves, vis-à-vis their more affluent white counterparts?
• The authors argue for a re-conceptualization of the current measurements, which seek to gauge young people’s cognitive abilities/capabilities. More specifically, they argue for assessments that take into account poor, marginalized students’ multimodal, culturally-informed, pre-existent identities. If these types of measurements are enacted, what if any, effect do you feel they will have on the lives of young people whose lived experiences mirror the students highlighted in this paper?  

Stein, Pippa.  (2004). Representation, rights, and resources:  Multimodal pedagogies in the language and literacy classroom. In Bonny Norton & Kelleen Toohey (Eds.), Critical pedagogies and language learning (95-115). Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press.

• The author argues that: “Classrooms are semiotic [meaning-making] spaces in which multimodal texts are constantly being produced and transformed by human beings who are the agents of their own meaning-making (pp. 98 of original text).” Do you agree with this line of thinking? More to the point—are students truly “agents of their own meaning-making” or are they identities, in fact, informed and (re)configured by the institutions and structures that they are enmeshed within? (This doesn’t have to be an “either/or” argument.)
• Do you agree with Stein’s argument that language is limited? What does she mean by this? Please explain.

Mendelson & Papacharissi QUESTIONS

- Why do you think that women tend to post more photos (and in more settings) than men? How do you think that this statistic applies to/parallels with gender differences in education?

- Photos inside the classroom are rarely posted on networking sites such as Facebook. Why do you think this is? Do you think that frequency of photos appearing in classrooms varies between campuses? Why

- Does the way you define your identity on Facebook reflect the way you act in class? Why or why not? Is there a fear to be portrayed to others (who do not attend your university) to appear ‘smart’ and therefore ‘uncool’? How does this define our personal literacy?

-- Kathy Shen

Hull & Stornaiuolo: Literate Arts in a Global World QUESTIONS

- How do programs like Space2Cre8 parallel having snail mail pen-pals? Is interacting with/meeting people over social networking sites like Space2Cre8 more or less beneficial to having snail-mail pen-pals?

- Using the key activities and processes mentioned, how has your “profile” on social networking sites you use changed as you have grown older? Why do you think your profile has morphed over time?

- What did you think of Monica and Rahim’s conversation and how would you have responded? Would you have acted differently? Why?

- As an educator, how would you incorporate social media/networking sites into the classroom and learning environment?

-- Kathy Shen

Questions for Gee's Learning by Design

• What, according to Gee, makes for a good/deep video game? Pick a few of the learning principles he describes that can be found in good video games and summarize the main points he makes about them.
• Do you think it is practical/possible for these principles to be implemented in schools? Why or why not? Do you agree with his argument that the principles of learning behind video games should be implemented in schools? Do you think that video games themselves should also be introduced into school curricula, after reading this piece? Why or why not?

Questions for next week

1. The "Methodology" section (720-725) of the Hull, Kenney, Marple, & Forsman-Schneider article details the process of constructing a qualitative case study. What's the relationship between these qualitative methdologies and course themes related to out-of-school literacy and learning?

2. On page (reader) page 724-5, Hull et al discuss the importance of agency and "de/recontextualization" and, in Gee's terms, how "good learning requires that learners feel like active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers)." With these ideas in mind, discuss how the teachers in the Parker excerpts enabled students to learn agentively. What implications do these approaches have for pedagogy in general?

3. Choose one of the learning principles discussed in Gee's article about video games and discuss how you would use a video game to teach specific content (a concept in math, physics, language arts, physical education...)

running late...will be there in 5 minutes.

Here are the presentation groups for next week:

Ogbu J.U. & Simons H.D. (1998). Voluntary and involuntary minorities: A cultural-ecological theory of school performance with some implications for education

Group: 

DJ Campbell

Matt Williams

Remington Price

James Lubell

David Keys

Nancy Ledesma

Lee, S.J. (1994).  Beyond the model-minority stereotype: Voices of high- and low-achieving Asian-American students.

Group:  

Yoon Ju Lee

Rocio Sanchez

Yoojung Kwon

Isaiah Kang

Stephanie Chau

Richardson, E. (2002). “To protect and serve”: African American Female Literacies.

Group: 

Vishal Baheti

David Song

Juyeon Baek

Shannon Hawari

Kathy Shen

Newkirk, Tom. (2002). Excerpt from Misreading masculinity:  Boys, literacy, and popular culture

Group:  

Nicholas Piccinini

Joshua Tovar

Alister Meshkin

Soon-Chan Kim

Tina Chen

Hull, G.A. & Schultz, K. (2002). Connecting schools with out-of-school worlds: Insights from recent research on literacy in non-school settings.

Groups:

Laqshya Taneja

Sasha Rasmussen

Scott Sok

Jelani Dunn
Julia Heunis
Victor Sandifer

Street, B. (2003). What’s “new” New Literacy Studies? Critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice.


Jeremiah

More blog entry questions (in addition to Yurie's excellent questions :)

• Street argues that literacy is a “social practice.” Using examples from Hull & Schultz, Richardson and/or Newkirk, explain what Street means
• Street also argues that literacy is “always contested, both its meanings and its practices, hence particular versions of it are always “ideological”, they are always rooted in a particular world-view and in a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and marginalize others” (p.694 in reader). How might our discussion of Friere and/or racial power dynamics play into his conception of literacy?
• Richardson writes that “African American females’ language and literacy practices reflect their socialization in a racialized, genderized,sexualized, and classed world in which they employ their language and literacy practices to protect and advance themselves” (p. 637 in reader). How does this intersectionality create a unique linguistic practice? How does Richardson see these affect African American female students?

Newkirk writes about the role that Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” plays in
what is considered valid reading and writing subject material in school.
What does he mean by “cultural capital”? How does this tie into power in
our classrooms?

Last week, we read Mahiri and Sablo who indicate that “real life” subjects
such as drugs, murder, and abortion are not considered socially acceptable
topics. Newkirk highlights the unacceptable genres of comic books, horror
stories, etc. Why do you think classrooms are such restrictive spaces for
student creativity? Who benefits from restricting the canon? Think about
out of school examples highlighted by Hull & Schultz as ways we can
problematize these limitations.

Questions for Misreading Masculinity (Newkirk)

• In his book Newkirk argues for the "viability and utility of forms of popular culture that many in education dismiss as inappropriate or worse." He makes the case that these forms of pop culture that young boys enjoy should not be excluded from schools or separated from what education systems deem as important mediums of literacy. What is his evidence/reasoning behind this argument and how does he come to this conclusion? Do you think that what he argues is valid and should be applied to the American education system today?
• What does Newkirk say about the "hierarchy" he claims education systems have established in literature today? What does he mean when he talks about the classification of literature into the "serious" and the "vulgar"?

No blog entries this week...

Don't worry about blog entries this week; instead, concentrate on getting your literacy autobiographies polished up and ready to turn in. Good luck!

Steele and Aronson, Stereotype Threat

Steele ans Aronson:

• In this essay the authors discuss the ill effects of stereotype cues and stereotype threat both psychologically, and to a lesser degree, psychosomatically. Do you believe that stereotype threat has the propensity to physically affect, when activated, negatively stereotyped students?
• The authors write: "From hundreds of interviews that I've conducted with black college students, it's clear that many believe that the stereotype places them in situations freighted with unnerving expectations. Some report feeling a sense of unfairness, that there will be less patience for their mistakes than for white students' mistakes, and that their failure will be seen as evidence of an unalterable limitation rather than as the result of a bad day." How has this thinking been engender/proliferated, and by whom? Please explain. 

Question for Mendoza-Denton

Mendoza-Denton:

• In this chapter Mendoza-Denton chronicles the erroneous assumptions, which later became aphorisms, regarding what was perceived as an inherent cognitive deficiency in African Americans; and, how these erroneous assumptions have informed rhetoric around the achievement gap. Who benefits from this form of race science, which posits race as biological? Explain.
• Despite working to deconstruct deleterious racist ideology in this chapter, Mendoza-Denton, there is a perceptible positivity and hopefulness in the author's tenor; why do you think this is?

Questions for Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

• In the first chapter of his book, Fanon writes: “Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local culturally originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing language… (Pp.8 of the original text)?” What does he mean by this?
• In this chapter, Fanon seems to be arguing that for the colonized purposeful assimilation is concomitantly emasculating and infantilizing. Do you agree with this line of argumentation?

• Also on page 18 of the original text, Fanon argues that the Negro…will become proportionately whiter—that is he will come closer to being a real human being—in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language.” Do you feel this this argument is applicable to our educational system here in the United States?

Articles without question

Hello all,
   There are a handful of articles that do not have questions. If you decide to read a question that falls within this description, please consider formulating/creating a question for your classmates. Questions will fulfill the the blog entry requirement. Contiguously, if you answer a question created by one of your classmates, this too fulfills the blog entry requirement. Lastly, remember that you only have to complete 10 blog entries by the end of the semester; consequently, there are 5 weeks during the semester where you may skip posting blog entries altogether.

In order to read the remaining comments on the model minority myth, open the comment section of the previous post.

re: Today's discussion

Hello again,
   I really appreciate the level of participation, respect, and candor that was displayed in today's section. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the variegated perspectives, concerns, and issues brought to the fore by this oftentimes incendiary, yet altogether important topic.  Thanks! You gals and guys are, in a word: awesome.

In class I alluded to a discussion about the model minority myth. I am pasting the conversation that took place on the blog to this post:

Hi class,

We had some great and powerful discussions in class this Thursday and I went home thinking a lot about them. So, I sent Jeremiah an email specifically about our discussion on Asian Americans and he asked that I share this with you all as well. I, myself, would love to hear what you all have to say. The following is most of my email to Jeremiah:

"We had some great discussions today in class! I just wanted to email you

about our discussion on Asian Americans and their economic and political

station in America. If I am not mistaken, you mentioned that many Asian

Americans are currently pretty well off economically. However, they lack

political power. This I agree with. I mean, I haven't seen any Asian

protest groups on campus either. However, I know of a few Asian youth

groups that do a lot of advocacy work in their communities (AYPAL in

Oakland being one). I can't help but wonder if whether our stereotypes of

Asian Americans (as submissive, docile, silent, etc) play a role in the

lack of political activism, or perhaps the stereotypes are keeping us from

seeing that Asian Americans are indeed active? I'm not very sure.

You also brought up a point that Asian Americans, unlike other minority

groups, have almost positive stereotypes. (Or more positive stereotypes

vis-a-vis those placed on Blacks or Latinos -- Asians stereotyped as smart

versus Blacks being stereotyped as dumb). Correct me if I took it the

wrong way, but I'm not sure any stereotype is positive. Being placed as

the "model minority" and being stereotyped as smart has some pretty

negative repercussions, especially for those Asians who do not meet the

expectations. A lot of the Southeast Asian ethnic groups (Laotians and

Cambodians for example) face a lot of the same realities many other people

of color in poverty face. However, when Asians as an umbrella group are

seen as doing well in the academic and professional realms, as being smart

enough, it unjustly covers up a lot of the struggles many groups of Asians

still endure -- and as a result hiding a lot of the political support and

help many Asian groups still need. It's this notion that Asians are doing

well, they are well-off economically (and some groups of Asians are) that

ties into this perception that political involvement is unnecessary.

However, I'm not sure lacking a political voice is ever desirable, even

with economic prosperity as a trade-off. (Not saying this is what you were

arguing, however. The discussion had me thinking.)

Please share any thoughts you may have."