Melissa Crews Freeman

The census process we used this week was very interesting to me.  It was seeming to work very well but at the end we still had people in the community who seemed upset.  That makes me question if all the efforts were really worth it.  We could have just gotten it down to 3 names and taken a vote, I feel as though the feelings would have been the same.  Maybe I am wrong and it is possible that the outcome would have been totally different if we had taken a vote.  I guess overall I felt frustrated that we put in so much effort and time and in the end there seemed to be people that were still very unsatisfied.  I guess my point is, in society can we ever really achieve a  happy ending for all?

Today was a good day! It was fun to get into the classrooms and see what we would be working with, in terms of supplies, rooms and of most important students.  It was very helpful to talk with previous GSU students of the program and get insight.  The only thing that really had me wandering was how do those teachers know what to teach?  I guess we will find all of this out as the year progresses? It made me realize how much I have to learn but also made me excited about what I am going into.  

I wanted to talk about this more because this is such a strong issue to me.  It seems so unfair to me that books like Harry Potter can get banned from schools simply because they are a fairy tale book about wizards and magic.  We read fairy tales to children all day, and that is okay.  Where is the line drawn that Judy Bloom is too risky but Cinderella is perfectly okay.  The story Cinderella is about a White woman who wants her prince and when she finds him and marries him life is perfect.  That is a more toxic story to me than wizards and magic.  Also why do Christians get to have so much pull in our education system?  The political structures that serve our system I understand are predominately Christian, but most of the time no other views are relevant. I also believe that we are doing ourselves no justice when we begin to let the government dictate what we can teach children and what we cannot.  This should be the job of the families in the community and the school system working together.  The more power we give our government to “protect” us, the more we loose out on our own social power and knowledge.  

Wow, is all I can say after reading the seven lessons of teaching as well as, Noguera.  It is depressing and informative to read both of these.  I do believe that education is extremely political.   It is all a political statement and depends more on who is bribing who, than what is working for the students.  Who is making money at the top of the pyramid, I feel are the people who’s great grandfathers wrote this system.  I feel like they are taught the truth to how this system is working and then politically work to keep it that way.  If this was not true, then we would have had a complete education reform years and years ago.  Like the seven lesson article talks about, a complete educational reform would have been cheaper than the amount of money we have spent trying to put band aids on the system.  I know that this huge fundamental paradox exist, but how do I still become an effective teacher?  The only thing I can think of is to be just a subtle teaching the underlying truths as the system is at teaching the lies.  It will take more creative teaching methods and conversation and certainly more time, but this is the only way I can truly feel effective.  

I do remember being tracked as a child in school.  In elementary school I was put into the slower groups, and was always given the easier work, never challenged.  Then in middle school I was considered a pretty girl, not a smart, or intelligent girl.  I was pushed by many teachers and my mom to be a cheerleader.  I began cheering in 6th grade.  I had a lot of fun and loved to be social so this was perfect for me.  However, y grades weren’t good I was an average student with B’s and more often C’s.  No teachers ever pushed me or got on to me, because I was pretty and I was a cheerleader.  Looking back I guess my future, to the school, lied in marring a rich handsome man who was going to take care of me, because I certainly was not challenged or “smart”.  By the time high school came around I was in all lower math classes and basic physical science and english.  I did end up earning a college prep seal, but I had to start at Junior college because no University was going to take me.  To me college is where we find our determination, if we make it there, to get out of the tracked system.  I became a diligent student in college and ended up transferring to UGA and making the Dean’s List.  There was not one teacher in high school who ever pushed me, taught me how to prepare for college, it was not important.  I was tracked to possibly attend a junior college, and maybe get a associates in nursing or a two year certification in dental hygiene.  In fact that was what my counselor suggested, because I was social and pretty those would be good fields.  Well I found my determination and I was determined to graduate and take a different path, ain’t nobody trackin me!!!

I wanted to talk about this in class today but I never got a chance.  When Mrs. Dr. Williams asked about the points on the slide that were titled Religion and school, I wanted to comment on the Wiccan and Earth Centered Neopagan religions.  I believe if I was working with high school students I would tell students about paganism, but not in the sense that one would think is bad.  I don’t think it is common knowledge but most Christian religions are based in Pagan mysticism and have evolved into Christianity.  So when Christian holidays come around, I plan to teach where the root of the holiday comes from.  For little children I don’t know how much they could understand the root of paganism but if I were teaching high school I would definitely give the students historical facts of what holidays are based in.  For example, Every year, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, a celebration was made.  It was Ishtar’s Sunday and was celebrated with rabbits and eggIshtar also proclaimed that because Tammuz was killed by a pig, that a pig must be eaten on that Sunday. (Ham)There are many many examples of things just like this where Christianity and Paganism are rooted together in symbolism.  Like I said I don’t know if I would teach this to Elementary school students, solely based on the concepts and time periods that need to be understood.  I would not be opposed to mentioning, for example, that the egg and easter bunny represented in Easter came from and ancient religion called Paganism, and some people still celebrate that religion today.   

Today’s lesson on judging another culture was very valuable to me.  It was a fun experiment to see how in just an hour we all became very committed to our culture.  Although we knew it was an experiment we all became so childlike.  We were playing and having fun but also becoming very critical of the Beta culture.  I realized later when we were telling our experiences of the culture, we said that the Beta’s were primitive.  However, after realizing the truth behind the culture they were more advanced then our culture.  They had a very distinct language and it had symbols connected with counting.  I liked being shown how we as humans can become so attached to defending something we are not even that passionate about.  I was in a patriarical society where all we did was talk about our fathers or grandfathers, but in the skit I was defending my culture.  I found myself saying things like  (jokingly)”well at least we laugh all the time and we hug and talk!”  I was defending a culture I had only been a part of for about 50 minutes.  How can school systems even imply that people from other cultures should abandon their sets of rules they have had for centuries?  And why do we even want to be so uniformed in our one culture of American?  That sounds very boring to me.  Yet as the experiment proved to me today, there is something innately human about wanting to be a part of something and we will attach to our cultures and cling to them as hard as we can.  

Today was an inspiring day.  When I was at the museum looking at all of the information about real people who had laid down there lives to make the country a better place, I got very emotional.  Thinking of the oppression that still exist in the world, it made me sad that it takes such extremes to get people united.  Why does the situation have to be so bad, before we come together for change?  It made me sad to think how complacent we have become as humans.  The world has changed for the better and the civil rights movement was an amazing process but we are not even close to equal or being done!  It seems to me that the movement was just the start.  How bad does it have to become before we organize and demand change.  Fair labor prices, equal education, bridge the gap of classism, accept all people for who they are as humans and so forth.  Will we have to become visibly enslaved once more before the working class takes the power into their own hands? I know this seems far out, but it was very real to me standing in the King center and looking at what people had been fighting for.  The working poor in this country is a very real problem and teachers are the working poor!  

I just finished reading the article on “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us”. I have actually been introduced to this concept before this article but it never fails to make me ponder, what are we being exposed to unconsciously?  My question is always the same, did cartoons and movies get written to portray these views or are they the experience of the writer and he/she writes the roles unconsciously?  I have to look at this question and consider all the many facets of the answer.  I wonder if there was a great story that displayed equalities in gender and race, if it would make it on the airways or to the public.  I know first hand that, organic food companies have tried to get commercials on TV for even 30 seconds, speaking about the harm in eating fast food and that is stomped out instantly by the television networks.  So it is hard for me to understand if this is another way the government, or corporations are trying to “secretly educate” us, or if theses are just the views of the story tellers themselves?  It most often seems to me that this is societies way of setting the norm.  Or should I say the top 10% of the wealth, because they are the ones who control the television, radio and most media that get’s out into mainstream.  I like the way Christensen said it on page 8 of the article, ‘We are taught more than anything else, how not to rebel”. 

This day has been very heavy so I am going to keep this blog light. I am sure anyone reading this blog has sensed a reoccurring theme that I am a big advocate of how the media effects our world.  When we were speaking in class today about stereotypes and wrote down on the paper what we saw in different races of people, I noticed a lot of media stereotypes represented.  In the news we often see Black culture represented as poor, uneducated, petty crime and so on.  We often see Asians represented in the math success stories, or music.  We often see White people portrayed as politicians or people of authority.  I think if we are going to change the way we think of the world, we have to be advocates of changing the way it is presented to us.  We as individuals have to demand the media to cover the real news, issues and to portray real culture or turn the TV off and not support it.  PS. Judy Elliott Rocks and I am in awe of her and the realizations she is bringing.