Class Presentation

 Here is the link to my teach out project:)

Eliminating Ableism in Education

     

    Thomas Hehir argues that there is a large problem of ableism in schools and that we must take steps to creating an inclusive and supportive environment for students with disabilities.

    The first point I would like to address is the ableist assumptions section. Hehir begins to tell the story of Joe Ford and how his mother had to process his disabilities and getting him the support he needed. There is a quote that says "she would have to fight constantly for her child to have the most basic of rights." Unfortunately this quote is very accurate from everything that I have seen thus far in my life. I am currently enrolled in a special education class and I had to interview a mother of a child with a disability and she spoke of the same experience. How if she did not educate herself on the rights she had as a parent and the rights that her child had she would not have been able to help her child nearly as well. It seems that Joe's mom, Penny, was able to find support from someone to help her but not everyone knows a person who is knowledgeable enough to support you in this way. This is one of the biggest things that needs to be changed in our special education process. I feel that we spend so much time focusing on what the child's diagnosis is that we forget to inform the parents of what this means for their child's education and often we do not explain all of their rights. Many times parents do not even understand the jargon used in IEPs. This may be such a small quote to zero in on but it is something that needs to be paid much better attention to in the special education process at schools.

    Next I would like to address the quote "the belief that disability could be overcome led to the rise of the other dominant image of disability: the inspirational disabled person, or the 'supercrip.' Shapiro arrgues that this image is deeply moving to many disabled people and the press, but is widely regarded as oppressive to most disabled people." This is a concept that I have never thought of, there are many times as a child I remember learning about people who are disabled doing these amazing things and using them as inspiration. It's a strange concept when you really think about it because we are amazed to learn about someone who is disabled doing something successful but the concept is really used to show able bodied individuals that if someone who is disabled can accomplish those things surely you can. It doesn't actually make society more accepting of disabilities because those same days at school that we would learn about an inspirational disabled person, students would still make jokes about "the short bus". If you have not seen the TED talk "I am not your inspiration, thank you very much," I invite you to watch it. The speaker, Stella Young,  does an amazing job of really putting things into perspective. 

    The final point I would like to discuss is the section "The education of the deaf." I was very surprised to see how we had made so much progress in the 1800s and then had worked our way backwards. I had no idea that there was so much history with deaf education in Martha's Vineyard and it was very interesting to read about, however it was disapointing to see how that progress did not last. Growing up in a world where I was always taught the value of ASL or even just manual language in general I almost did not understand why we went backwards and decided that deaf people utilizing manual language was wrong and they should be learning oral language still. But it all goes back to a section from the beginning of thhe reading that says something along the lines of the most of the time, the goal of educating disabled students is to get them to function like non-disabled students. I am glad to see that we have made it very far in our journey with manual language because it is extremely beneficial to deaf students to have a form of communication they are comfortable with using. My mom is a special education teacher of grades K-2 and in her classroom she has a few students who are non-verbal but are able to use some ASL and seem to feel more confident using ASL as compared to point to words and pictures on a paper to show what they are trying to communicate. The point being, that manual language provides a voice for those who may not have one and I think that it should be encouraged in a school setting.

Literacy with an Attitude

    

    Patrick J. Finn argues that there are two types of literacy taught to students: powerful literacy and functional literacy. He argues that powerful literacy is often taught to upperclass students which "leads to positions of power and authority" while lower class students are taught functional literacy which "makes a person productive and dependable but not troublesome."

    Finn discusses a study that was done on different class levels of schools and highlights the main similarities and differences between the schools. The first thing that I noticed is that I teach at a working class school and I can confirm that my school does run very much like the study describes. The school thrives on discipline and students are rewarded for good behavior rather than creativity. In many ways they are graded based on discipline as well. Reading this study was a rude awakening when compared to other schools because you see the flaws in how your own school is run however, I have to say that the issue feels a lot more complex than it reads on paper. In my school, we deal with many safety concerns due to behavior. If we do not run a tight ship where the teacher is an authoritarian model students start fights, are inappropriate in the bathrooms, and have even left the building many times and this is in an elementary school. Now, not all teachers are necessarily yelling at the students at all times but teachers who do not run their classroom in the way described in the study for working class schools, have typically had more safety concerns from what I have observed and since I see every class in the school, I would like to think this is a fairly accurate observation. I can also speak from my own experience as a first year teacher. I had student taught at a school in Providence and the fifth graders there were tough and I thought that everyone was exaggerating and they just needed more freedom and creativity with assignments that mattered to them. So when I found out that I was going to be working in Providence I had already started brainstorming creative projects that the students would be interested in doing but even though I set clear classroom expectations, giving them the little bit of freedom led to them walking all over me and losing control of the classroom. This could be due to my lack of experience but I'm just not sure it's as simple as teaching in a different way because these students grow up differently than students in other classes and not all idealistic methods may be best. 

    Another point that I found interesting is that this almost conflicts with Delpit's argument in a way. Delpit claims that we must explicitly teach our students because by teaching them implicitly we are doing them a disservice. We should provide our students with the exact steps to succeed rather than probe them to come to what they think the answer should be. Finn on the other hand seems to believe that by explicitly giving lower class students these step by step tasks that lead them to the answer we are doing them a disservice and that the affluent classes who are probed to come to what they believe the answer to be on their own are much better off. In my opinion there should be some sort of middle ground between the two where students are given the exact steps needed to succeed but then are given further learning activities that probe students to use what they've learned to try to discover something else or to think creatively. 

    The final point I would like to discuss is that, at least in my personal experience in education, I have not really been taught about overall how to run a classroom to create a productive learning environment for students, I have instead been taught about how to simply manage a class. This may be the downfall of not being educated as a regular classroom teacher but I found that most of what I learned about running a classroom I have learned this year as a first year teacher but I have learned it based on how other teachers model their classroom that is "effective" in a working class school. Now I fear, that I may be continuing this cycle and I'm not quite sure how to break it as of now. This is something that I would like to continuously work on as an educator and I hope that with more experience I come to correct my flaws so I can create a safe classroom environment where students are looking forward to learning. An interesting article I found about equity in school systems based on funding can be found here and is worth a read to see part of the problem with why working class schools may not be able to achieve the same things as affluent schools.