kids and comfort levels

So we have a project at kidnet where the children have to record their voices for a two minute audio file where hey talk about themselves with music in the background.  One of the students has a really hard time speaking in front of the mic, and stumbles and gets really shy.  All of the staff and i really tried to get them to do it, but in the end, she just is way too uncomfortable to do it.  It really made me wonder if we should really make her do it or not.  I mean, comfort level is a really vague line and I'm not sure if it's our job as educators to cross that line.

     I know that one of the most important aspects of education is to broaden horizons, and make kids do things they never expected to do.  However, there are also boundaries that we shouldn't cross, ånd some fears must be conquered personally and not within the realm of academics.  I'm just really trying to find that line, because I actually thought that the student shouldn't have been made to record her voice after about an hour of arguing.  She's going to have to conquer her fear at one point, but maybe that day wasn't the day.  I don't know tell me what you guys think:)

getting attached

So after a few weeks of working with these kids, I am getting pretty attached to them, and hopefully they to me as well. It really makes me wonder, when teaching children in an academic setting, how attached should you get? How much is too much? Is it really necessary?

Personally I think a relationship is one of the most important elements of teaching children, especially if you consider yourself a good example. However, I think promoting independence in an academic setting is very important. If you do everything for the child, or the child because too emotionally dependent on you, this is unhealthy and may cause over dependence. I think a perfect balance must be met, to a certain degree you are friends with the children, but first and foremost you are an example and a teacher. It is a job, a function.

However, obviously this is not a clear line. These kids are great, and cute might I add. It's hard to draw a line, it's hard to say no and be the bad guy. I think experience is the only thing that can teach a teacher how much friend and how much mediator and how much mentor they should be.

How old is young?

So at my site, I saw kids watching inappropriate music videos and Family Guy etc., and it got me thinking of whether or not this is okay. At first, my reaction was that this is not okay, because they are kids and they should be innocent.
However, then I thought, if I think that way what makes it okay for me to watch these things? The only difference between me and a child is age, and they are going to be exposed to all this anyway so why not? I mean, it's not idea in my mind, but it's a bit unavoidable.
I wonder if exposure is more beneficial for children than protection? We try to censor things from kids all the time, but we know they always manage to find things out for themselves. Overprotection leads to unhealthy rebellion eventually, because they need to experience things for themselves. So how much protection is okay? How much exposure is okay?

identity and children

So while observing the kids at Kidnet, I really realized the enormous amount of media and activities that children identify themselves with. This form of identification goes beyond liking something, but truly shaping their lives based on it. I can't decide of this is beautiful or superficial.
For instance, a girl at Ellie in Kidnet loves animals. She has 14 pets of all kinds: lizards, turtles, cats, fish etc. She not only loves these animals, but her life is based on these animals. When asked what would she wish for if she had three wishes, she said she hoped her pets could be healthy forever, that she could be a vet when she grows up, and that she could get a dog.
With many children especially with Ellie, I find this strong identification with a hobby to be very healthy, even inspiring. I wish half the older people I know could have such strong passion for something. Children need to define themselves in a strong way, to create an identity. It gives them motivation, direction, ambition, and hope. It is one of the most important elements of development in my opinion.
However, sometimes these forms of identity are not so positive. For instance, one of the students, Denzel, has a very strong liking for a shooting game called Call of Duty. First of all, I'd like to say that I myself love this game. Also, I am the last to say that video games are detrimental to children; on the contrary I think it helps them learn. However, when you base your identity upon a violent game, I do believe that will have some negative affects. There are enormous amounts of media surrounding these children today, and I do believe they should be surrounded by more positive media. Rappers will often talk about sex and drugs, and one may argue that this has no real affect on children's actions because they're just songs, but it perpetuates an image that children will think is cool.

Which brings me to a rant about the concept of "cool." In my opinion, the feeling of "cool" and the people and ideas are associated with it are a psychological mechanism of development. It is the implementation of strong emotion and passion upon a subject that is desirable to immitate. So, if we want to create a positive future, we had best make what children think are "cool" to be positive.

race, ethnicity, identity

These words are very formidable to define. i'd really like to use this entry to describe how i use these words to define myself. My mother first of all, is half Korean and half Japanese. My father is Half Mongolian and half Japanese. So when people ask me my race, I say Asian. I don't want to say all that one people usually expect a one word answer for the question. At the same time, Asian is a very low satisfactory answer, people usually ask after: "what do you mean?"
At the same time, I have no idea what to say my ethnicity is. I don't have a single Asian culture to relate with and I was born in America. I am culturally American (Minnesotan to be exact). On top of all that, I don't have a sufficient definition of ethnicity, but even if I did I would still not be able to tell you what mine is.
My identity however, is something I do know. Although race and ethnicity go into identity, my definition of identity is more self instilled. I identify myself with how I think of myself, my art, my writings, my style, the people I love, and much more. Identity to me is a concept beyond race and ethnicity, beyond social security and sid numbers, beyond my physical appearance. It's a part of my life that the sculpting of both myself and my environment shows. It's a part of my life that I choose to have control over, something other people may impose upon me but in the end is something only I can fully know.
In other words, I don't know my race, I don't know my ethnicity, but I do know who I am.

At the same time, I do think it's important to have a culture to identify with. I have three, all of them which I am not very familiar with anyways. This is a question I have to answer throughout the course of my life, I definitely need to travel to Asian and learn the languages better. Hopefully I'll do that after college.

We talked about how hard it can be to say the word “hella” if you’re new to northern California, but what are some other, or more serious examples of what Bakhtin’s talking about when he writes this?: “Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intention, it is populated – overpopulated – with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process.” (p.294) Why is it so hard to make others’ words your own? Think of regional accents, styles of speech (even classroom English at UC Berkeley!), new or foreign languages, etc. along with individual words…


This goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning of class; how literacy relates to specific discourses. Within a single language, there are accents, dialects, slang, jargon etc. This is because language is a tool, and such a tool must adapt to the user's needs.
This is why it's so difficult to make others' words your own. We're from different regions, and we adapt to different social settings; even if the regional difference is as minute as southern and northern California. Such separation of language within language occurs to an even greater level when it comes to academic discourse.
For example, a linguist cannot use the jargon of a chemist or vice versa. A person who works in bussiness can't use the language of a lawyer. Even age groups have these separations of minute linguistics (a seventh grader will speak differently from a ninth grader).
As an Arabic major, these differences in language are very pertinent to me. Each country within the middle east and near east has their own dialect of Arabic, all of which derive from Quranic Arabic. All the dialects are quite similar, but they also have characteristics depending on the nature of the region. For example, the Egyptian dialect has over one hundred words for camel. This does not occur in the Moroccan or Jordanian dialect. This is because Egypt's vast deserts have shaped the culture into valuing the camel a great deal.
Another interesting example of adopting other peoples' words occurs in the middle east as well, specifically in Morocco. Morocco and much of North Africa was colonized by the French, thus this dialect is practically half French and half Arabic. In this case, it was not difficult for the Moroccans to make the French's words their own (probably because of years of unwelcome colonization and forced standardization of French).

Growing environment also affects the types of words you use. For example, each state, generally, has their way of pronouncing the word often. In California, people pronounce it without the "t," but when I lived in Minnesota and New Jersey, this was just plain bad English.

It's really interesting how many variations of a single language there can be. But, looking at the enormous diversity of regions, especially in the United States, along with individual diversity and culture, one can really see why this happens and why it's not easy to take on another person's manner of speach.

second blog

Identify a learning or participation issue that you’re struggling with in your tutoring:

I'm actually having a lot of trouble trying to remember what it's like to be a child. Obviously, I don't remember how I thought, what the world was like, how exactly I viewed adults, what I wanted etc. because I was confused and young. This makes it quite difficult to decide how to treat a child, how to address him/her, what is permissible and what is not. This is especially difficult because I don't have too much experience with children.
It is an exciting journey for me, to decipher the world of children. I find myself attempting to view the world on their terms in order to understand them, because I'm a firm believer in that empathy is the most effective tool in teaching.



Thinking together with the others in your in-class groups today, what are some issues of common concern that tie a concept(s) from the readings to practical concerns of beginning tutoring, and/or your own literacy journeys thus far? (an open question to be sure!):

I'd like to first address the role of technology in education today. It is so interesting to see how children interact with incredibly accessible advanced technology and the internet. I have very mixed feelings about this.
On one hand, technology is a fantastic tool to advance the education of youth, especially because our exponentially expanding world economy is based so much on technology. Children need to know how this technology intimately if they are going to survive in the fast paced modern world.
However, I do naturally have a tendency to believe there is some romantic value to "analog education." The circle reading of books instead of internet articles, the creative process of making arts and crafts and poster presentations instead of power points and videos, the beauty in having a field trip to the park for escape from industrialized society instead of to take pictures of everything for education media.
I guess there's necessity in both elements of education, and the most effective way is to have a balance of technology and "analog education."

To come back to the matter at hand, this ties into the ideas of literacy we have been discussing in class because the whole concept of literacy is at question when looking at the types of technology that are available to children today.
One can either see it as lessening the importance of literacy or emphasizing it. For instance, since these days people can't survive without the internet (which is based on literacy) children MUST learn to read and write if they are expected to survive in the world economy.

However, one can also see this form of literacy as not literacy at all, but perhaps "semi-literacy." People don't need to have the proficiency of a novelist if they want to understand most of the media around us. "Semi-literacy" as I define it, is a proficiency within the realm of necessity but not reaching the level of valuable discourse. But since the internet allows people to learn with very limited reading and writing ability, it may prevent people from reaching beyond semi-literacy.

In my opinion, technology is improving literacy because literature and text is so readily available to everyone due to the internet. I've seen it first hand in my very limited volunteer experience thus far, and I believe that it's a great thing.

first blog

meta-

     What a strange idea: meta.  Meta discourse, meta physics, meta language, metaphor.  It's astounding how deep of a hole that humans can dig into the realm of intellect; so deep to the point that we have discourses on the concept of discourses themselves, language to communicate language, physics to explain physics, words to explain words.

     However, in world exponentially increasing in complexity, I believe this is necessary to allow the comprehension, simplification, and classification of our newly found, digital data based, technology interwoven, constantly changing world.

     In the light of literacy, this strongly calls for a greater necessity of the written and spoken word.  Never has there been a time that literacy is more used in every day life for comfortable function in society.  Only through strong literacy can one understand the numerous metas found in today's reality.