AAVE & Hip Hop Culture

I'm a hip-hop fan and I had been working in a middle school in Ithaca for 3 years. When I took the kids to the gym to play basketball we'd often put on hip-hop CDs that I would bring (only because all theirs had profanity and that's a big no-no). We had one student, Kris, who had just moved from NYC and produced a lot of rap with his cousin and we got to talking about the language they used. He was complaining that he can make all this money producing/writing/rapping in, as he called it, hip-hop language, but in Ithaca he would get yelled at if he spoke like that in the classroom because it was not proper. He said it was only a few teachers but often english, reading, and writing teachers. I never really knew how to fill him in on this whole idea the AAVE is a fine way to speak but that many people consider is subpar to SE (standard english)... Not to give this kid too much credit though... He was suprised I liked hip-hop and that I liked basketball because I was white.

A scary reality

Today there was an incident at Jefferson. Our school was put on 'Code Blue' lockdown because of an attempted robbery involving gunfire, directly across the street. Because of the heat all of our windows have been open, and many students and teachers heard the shots, and saw the commotion. My classroom looks directly onto the yard/alley. Fortunately, I was not teaching during the incident, but all day long we could see the taped-off house, police officers, and news crews stationed outside the premises. Sometimes I laugh and joke about the reputation our school has, but today was scary. For the first time I felt unsafe. We have practiced lockdown procedures before. Everyone followed directions. It took about 20 seconds to lockdown the school. But, open gunfire 25 yards from my open classroom window can never be considered safe.

Language Literacies

Richardson's article offered wonderful insight into the styles of communication and comprehension that young African-American females utilize. This article was different from most opinionated ed. articles that analyze an issue then criticize by explaining why teachers, administrators and schools are wrong, based upon subjective views. Richardson spoke out about a specific and often unobserved issue, used personal experiences and observations as well as fictional accounts, and finally offered simple and reasonable advice on how to overcome these obstacles. I set this article down with clear and attainable objectives. Richardson cites Foster's work and suggests teachers use "familiar language patterns, including repetition, call and response, analogies, aphorisms, and moral messages that resemble the secular and religious speech events in the African American community". Richardson takes Foster's suggestions further and "encouirages students to articulate their ideas int heir native tongue and translate it so that the higher education experience does not alienate them from the languages and cultures of their nurture". This process would provide knowledge confirmation for students, and increase self-esteem by reinforcing their own knowledge and culture. An easy and simple way to implement Richardson's ideals into our classrooms.

Web 2.0-Pandora

I absolutely love Pandora. My housemates keep making fun of me for not having known about it before, and because I am slightly obsessed with it. My main problem with Pandora-they played Hanson (and their bio called them “a revamped Jackson 5”) and New Kids on the Block. It is kind of my fault, since I did add the Teen Pop shared station, but still….

It was very easy to set up and use. It asks you to start with a band or song and walks you through what to do and how the site is best used. Little pop-ups appear to remind you of things or to teach you new things, like how you can put a song on ‘sleep’ for a month. I at first was disappointed that you couldn’t enter a genre for a station, but playing around with the section at the bottom of the page I realized they have shared stations for genre. The cool thing is that they will still customize what they play on the shared sites to your preferences and they can give you a reason for why they played that particular song. You can also still rate them with the thumbs up or down.

I had a lot of fun reading about why they played the songs they did for me. It is interesting to see what they have decided that you liked based on what you have shown preference for. Apparently I was doing it wrong at first in my enthusiasm, because I was saying I liked pretty much everything. I later got a little pop-up hint saying you should only say that when you like “almost every aspect” of the song and think it really fits with the station. I like a lot of different stuff though, and apparently I am very easy to please.

While you are listening to a song you can read a bio of the band, look at a list of some of the attributes of the song that the Music Genome Project identified and get a list of similar artists. It also shows you some people that are listening to the same thing and the other things that they listen to. There is a social networking aspect of the site, where you can look for people based on either location or their music. Stations can be shared with other users that you meet on the site. You can also bookmark songs or artists. Your bookmarks appear in your profile, and there are links you can click to buy it on iTunes or get the album on Amazon.

Overall, Pandora is pretty user-friendly. You can just jump right in and start doing things, and there is a lot of support built into the site to guide you about what to do next. The menus are very accessible and easy to use and figure out. I wish I had known about it earlier.

Deficit Model

After reading the peice on literacy practices, packaged materials and their effects on kids learning I refected on my time in the RCSD. The deficit model that was brought up is a tough feeling to overcome. The reading suggests that teachers have this feeling and it is driven by a historical and institutional belief that students abilities are what they are and they are not going to change. I thought back to when I used these curriculum activities in my science classes my first year. It was a frustrating my first year. It felt like everything I tried didn't work and towards the end of the year I found myself givign the kids note-taking worksheets that went along with the book and vocabulary builders. I guess I lacked the confidence that year to dump that "deficit feeling" and really challenge my kids and force them to get on board or get off the train. Has anyone else ran into this or felt this? What did you do to overcome this? I never overcame it as I transferred to the burbs...

New Website

For my Web 2.0 activity this week I semi-created my own website for my classes. Back in January the district bought the software for a webspace for teachers to create their own website and place it on the district/school websites. I signed up for it but never used it. So i decided to go back and fill it out. At first I was alittle apprehensive about making a website because I have never done it before but as I went through it was pretty easy. The set-up was extremely easy to use and I even put up pictures, review sheets, added websites and there is room for even more. I love the idea of having a website where my kids can go to get information at home such as worksheets or reminders, and they can even email me right from the site. I am also going to try and use the class bog spot to start a running blog next year. Overall it was easy and straight forward. As a test, I had my forensic kids to check it out and give me some feedback. They liked it. http://web001.greece.k12.ny.us/webpages/rswitzer/

WEB 2.0 - Wiki

For this Web 2.0 assignment, I decided to create a wiki, which I had never done before.  I have used wikipedia to find information, but that is the extent of my experience with wikis.  I decided to create a wiki for our research project for this class that my group could use to write our research paper.  I have had experience in the past with writing papers in groups, and it has always been extremely difficult to do, because we would always end up with several word documents floating around, and it was confusing and inefficient.  I thought that in using a wiki, each member of the group would be able to add information and writing whenever they wanted, and we could read and edit each other's work as well.

To create the wiki, I went to google and did a search on "create a free wiki" and found a website, pbwiki.com.  All I had to do was enter my email address and a name for the wiki, and that was it!  I then added the other "writers" (my group members) by adding their email addresses, and pbwiki automatically sent an email to each of them, inviting them to join the wiki.  They needed to enter a password for themselves, and they were all set!

So far, the wiki has worked out extremely well for this project.  We have been able to add, edit, write, etc. without problems.  Also, the wiki website sends out an email to each member of the wiki whenever something is added or edited, so that we each know when changes are made.  We were also able to create several "pages" of the wiki for different portions of the research project.  I have found using the wiki MUCH easier than any other way of collaborating on a group project.

This would be an extremely useful tool as a teacher in that it could be used by students to complete a group project or even a larger class project.  It allows each member to contribute, and it can be changed and added to at any given time, from any place.  Students would be able to work at school, at home, or anywhere with the internet.  

http://tesolliteracylearning.pbwiki.com