Meyer: Gendered Harassment

How far have we come?

The Help by, Kathryn Stocket is a story about extraordinary women in the 1960s South who come together and risk everything to partake in a secret writing project  that opposes society’s rules and social norms.

Charlotte Phelan: I read the other day about how some girls get un...unbalanced. Start thinking these... unnatural thoughts. Are you..? Do you uh...find men attractive? Are you havin' unnatural thoughts about girls or women?
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Oh, my God!
Charlotte Phelan: Because this article says there's a cure. A special root tea!
[angry Skeeter gets and walks away]

 More importantly, where are we going?

The chart  Meyer refers to on page 6 summarizes the formula of external influences merging with internal influences to output a reaction. 

Meyer says identifying the barriers from teachers' perspectives is important so more effective intervention programs can be put in place to support teachers' efforts.  But are those policies only as effective as the culture of the school and community?  "The social norms do not emerge in a vacuum, but are often a reflection of the community...Teachers are more inclined to act in ways that reflected shared norms and values of other teachers than in ways defined in school policy" (15-16).

 Don't Ask Don't Tell was only recently repealed. Gay marriage is not legal in the majority of states.  We are living in a world where many people do not recognize homosexual relationships as deserving of the same rights as heterosexual relationships.  Teachers who are trying to oppose gendered harassment are fighting prevalent external forces.  What message are children getting when prior to September a man in the military couldn't identity himself as a homosexual without punishment?  Some barriers Meyer mentions include the inconsistency of all teachers to address these issues, the lack of support from administration, and community values.  In a country a where potential presidential candidate avows, "We believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage, and I applaud those legislators in New Hampshire who are working to defend marriage as an institution between one man and one woman, realizing that children need to be raised in a loving home by a mother and a father,"   we must recognize we will not always be supported in our efforts.  "...studies have shown that sexual and homophobic harassment are accepted parts of school culture where faculty and staff rarely or never intervene" (1).  This is unacceptable. The repeal of Don't ask, Don't Tell and the increasing acceptance of gay marriage suggest we are in the process of change, moving past archaic ideas of gender roles and sexuality and the schools must set the tone for equity for all people.



The "experience with discrimination and marginalization that made [several teachers] particularly sensitive to these issues in school.  The challenge with this finding is how to raise the awareness of educators who have not personally felt the impacts of discrimination or exclusion from dominant culture" (17).

Educating those not personally affected by discrimination on the harassment LGBT students face can help to create an awareness of the harmful impacts of this behavior and the destruction that occurs when educators allow it to continue.

 "2009 National School Climate Survey: Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT Students Experience Harassment in School" from the GLSEN website reported:

• 84.6% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 40.1% reported being physically harassed, and 18.8% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.
• 63.7% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed,  27.2% reported being physically harassed and 12.5% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their gender expression.
• Nearly two-thirds (61.1%) of students reported that they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation, and more than a third (39.9%) felt unsafe because of their gender expression.
• 29.1% of LGBT students missed a class at least once and 30.0% missed at least one day of school in the past month because of safety concerns
• The reported grade point average of students who were more frequently harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender expression was almost half a grade lower than for students who were less often harassed (2.7 vs. 3.1).
• Increased levels of victimization were related to increased levels of depression and anxiety and decreased levels of self-esteem.

REEEEMIXXX

Michael Wesch "Anti-Teaching"

Is this going to count for a grade?

School’s relevance for students has become grades.  That is what they connect to their lives. They need a certain grade to move on, to get into the school or program they want, or to get a dollar from their grandparents.  Whatever the motivation, most students care far more about what grade they get than how much they learn.  In a world where a school is failing if everyone can’t earn a certain score on a standardized test, this is not surprising.  Even as a teacher I have to ask the horrible question: “What do they need to know for the test?”

All students are cut out for learning.

I have to agree with the "often heard lament, 'some student simply aren’t cut out for school'”(5).   It is my agreement with the statement that confirms my ideas that the system is broken.  We need to find a way to make schools something that doesn’t cut out kids.  

 Do most students see the value of education?  Why do we expect them to?  I remember saying I wish I was already working when I was in college, because the education classes would have had so much more relevance to me.  I was interested in education.   I cared about doing well, and learning something-but I still did not see the value and practical application of a lot of what I was doing in school until I had the experience of teaching.  I find a much stronger connection and interest in all of the work I have done at the graduate level than I did as an undergrad because I have the context for it now.  Part of education’s significance to the world around us is preparing students to become contributors to society.  School should introduce students to variety of subjects so they can explore them and discover what they are interested in and what they are good at.  It should also teach students how to think and multi-task and manage time.  It is unfortunate that in a world where even people with a solid education are struggling to find jobs, this is not enough to make students find meaning and significance in their education; but the fact of the matter is it isn’t.   “Meaning and significance are assured only when our learning fits in with a grand narrative that motivates and guides us” (6).  --I was a good student.  I went to class, I challenged myself with honors and AP courses, and I got straight As, not because I found meaning and significance in my education, but because my parents did.   We have explored the disadvantages those outside the culture of power face in today’s educational system, and here is another.   Since today’s model of education measures success in grades and places its relevance 12-15 years into the future, students, who do not come from a culture where education is seen as powerful  or as a means to create opportunity and improve life, will not  trust in its significance.  Many of these students are “cut-out” of schools.

  The larger problem with example of my experience is that since the meaning and significance of education was not mine, all I connected to was grades.  These were how I communicated to my parents that I was respecting the meaning and significance they found in education.   Everything we have read so far points to the obvious notion that education is designed for students from the culture of power and cyclically reproduces the gap between the these students and those outside it.  With the significance problem that Wesch points to, even the racially and economically privilege cannot escape unscathed. 
      I was cut out for school, but just because I knew how to get As doesn’t necessarily mean I learned anything.  I did in many classes, but there were plenty of others that I “beat the system.”  I went to my Animal Science class of 500 students 3 times: the first day, the exam review day, and the final exam day.  I got an A.  

A Vision of Schools Today  -“After I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn’t exist today.”

We are preparing students for a future that doesn’t exist yet, to face and solve problems that we can only hope to anticipate.  We must reach them; they are far too important.  

The students are giving us signs. They are reading 8 books and not opening the rest of them.  They are writing 42 pages, but they are viewing 2300 websites and composing 500 emails.  Maybe the student who isn't interested in reading a chapter, will explore a website. 

       My students never look at a dictionary. I alert them to their location, I even bring them to their desks, and sometimes open them to the right page, but they are resistant-sometimes it seems they would rather not discover what the word means than have to look in an ancient book.  This year I made all my student who had smart phones download a free dictionary app.  They are using these dictionaries all the time-some of them even get a word-of-the-day that they incorporate into their daily speech.

My point is not to replace the teacher with an i-phone app, or throw away all the books, but maybe we need to capture their interest with a website so they want to read the book.  Furthermore, students maybe able to text undetected under their desks, and bypass the block on facebook on any computer in the school, but most of them do not know how to really use technology to further their understanding of the world around them.  If we can teach them how to use technology in this way and grab their interest while doing so...2 angry birds with one technology stone?  

This networked student explores the learning opportunities the 21st century has to offer and explains how the teacher helped him get there...

   

The world is changing and we are educating our students in system that has not.  We must find ways to merge the what with the how and the why.   “When students recognize their own importance in helping to shape the future of this increasingly global, interconnected society, the significance problem fades away” (2).  We have to help them realize the value of education in their own lives, and we have to deliver the content through interactive methods that engage them and teach them to communicate with others, access technology and think critically and globally.  It goes back to what Finn said, it is our job to make the students “want what teachers has” (105).  We have digital learners in our classroom, we can just throw paper and pencils at them.

Ian Jukes argues today's kids are "screenagers...the first generation that has actually grown up with a mouse in their hands along with an assumption that that the images on the screen are supposed to be manipulated and interacted with - that screens aren’t just for passive consumption."  He suggests they are actually wired differently and prefer getting information quickly, and need immediate gratification and instant rewards among other things. 

Maybe it is time to stop measuring student learning with grades and test scores so we can compete globally, and focus on educating students so they can contribute globally.

 

Carter's Keepin' It Real

"...children can't achieve unless we... eradicate the slander that a black youth with a book is acting white." Obama, Democratice National Convention 2004

Carter resonated with the other authors we've read in class, but I saw a particular connection to Finn.  Carter makes the point that "educators must recognize the values of different students' cultural repertoires and the impressions that students get from the appearance racialized form of tracking."  Finn spoke of the different types of education that students receive: domesticating education and empowering education.   Carter's examination of the contrast between upper level academic classes encourageing  students to be assertiveand critical  and the low-track classes encouraging conformity, passivity, and defiance mirrors Finn's ditinction.  Rayisha explains “you got to have a teacher that inspires you, that lifts your spirit up, makes you want to get up and go to school” (71).  Maybe she is talking about a teacher who provides students with 'literacy with an attitude.'  Finn talked about Paulo Freire who started an adult literacy program for the illiterate poor in Brazil.  He believed all literacy programs would fail as long as the students saw literacy as part of an outside culture.  He discovered his students equated learning to read and write as part of the identity of an alien culture.  They saw very little possibility for change in their lives, and "if they thought about it" they would see "any effort they put into adopting the culture of the rich would be vain since they would not be accepted among the rich [...and] the only result would be that they would become aleinated from their own people" (Finn 156).  These ideas are reflected in many of the noncompliant believers' explanations.    Freire decide the only way to be successful would be to teach his students that culture is made and thus it can be changed, and show them the literte are powerful  and they were not.  The cultural mainstreamers and cultural straddlers seemed to understand this.


 Carter tells us acknowledging  and affirming the multiple capitals that come through our school's doors each day can increase the students’of the nondominant culture attachment to the school.  This attachment piece is really important. “For many African American students, nondominant, or more specifically ‘black’ culture capital matters because it signifies in-group allegiance and preserves a sense of belonging” (41).   Students develop boundaries for these groups and guard them to preserve their distinctiveness.    “How race links to culture allows the holders of capital to limit access to outsiders” (56), and this is true of social groups as well.  I thought of Molly Brown in the movie Titanic.  Molly and her ‘new money’ tried desperately to fit in, but her confusion over which fork was the salad fork distinguished her as someone who was “acting rich” and thus she was snubbed by those who were "authentically" upper class.  Season 4 of The Wire (an amazing show about the many angles of the Baltimore drug scene) examines the schools.  This season connects to so many of the topics we have discussed in class, but after reading about Carter’s idea of cultural boundaries  I thought of a specific episode where an educator took four of the most at risk students in the school to a fine dining restaurant as a reward for academic achievement.  The students were excited about this adventure, but it proved to be an uncomfortable experience for all of them.  They did not possess the culture capital and know “the rules” of fine dining.

Making Room

Gerri August's Making Room for One Another

"But what if the purpose of schooling in a democratic society is not simply to transmit and reproduce the knowledge and culture of the present order but to evaluate social an political practices according to principles of democratic ideals and, further to equip students to become active agents in the transformation of society"(2)?  Sounds like "literacy with an attitude."
Finn pointed out that all teaching is political,and it is the controversial nature, not the political nature, of topics that make teachers fret. Confirming this August suggests "the political nature of teaching ...reveasl itself in the wake of cognitive and affective consequences of exclusion" (2).   Being in a classroom each day lends itself to many of these "teachable moments" that August examines.  --On Friday I was reviewing the school's activities and clubs list with my advisory students, when one male student voiced some interest in a dance activity, a female student said , "A boy on a dance team?  That is so weird."  When I questioned her about this, and mentioned the prevalence of males in dancing, she said, "Well, like hip-hop is okay for boys, but ballet?  That is different.  It is just weird!"  -- I could help but think of this situation when Zeke danced like a ballet dance in front of his class.  Now maybe the students were laughing simply because their teacher looked silly dancing-but none of the boys initially danced this way, and the girls did.  This changed the next time.  As I continued to discuss the "weirdness" with this student I realized convincing her to assess her opinion would be more complicated than having a male do a few pirouettes for her.

       While these conversations might look a bit different in elementary school than they do in high school one thing remains the same, "social safety offer[s] a platform for [verbal campaigning] (137).  Even students as young as those in Zeke's classroom recognize the insecurities of difference and the safety of belonging to the culture of power.  August calls for "Dynamic dialogicality, the interweaving of underrepresented or unrepresented voices in emergent talk and activity, proved a powerful tool for building a democratic classroom in which students exercised agency in the context of multiple, even competing, perspectives" (166).


Silence and good intentions keep showing up...

SILENCE: Cody, the boy who exists outside the culture of power, is silenced.  Although Zeke's dialogical approaches in the classroom have helped Cody voice his discomfort in many situations, he is still silenced about one aspect of his life.  In this case it is not because people are refusing to listen, but because even as a young kindergartener Cody had already figured out that difference is a source of ridicule and rejection.  The classroom, his education, is, and needs to be, working to reverse this silence.  His voice, like the silenced voices of those not in the culture of power that Delpit mentions, need to be a part of the discussion.


GOOD INTENTIONS: "[Johnson] explained that democratic life requires more than good intentions" (144).  When we let these teachable moments pass us by it is usually because of the "real time, real distractions, and real pressures" (174) we are faced with as teachers.  This idea of good intentions has been raised in previous articles, all suggesting that good intention simply aren't enough.  We must lead students in the direction we want the world to head in.  August credits Zeke with "forging these paths...that might help our democracy reach for the stars" (144).

Much like educators can't settle for good intentions, we can't let our students do this either.  This study made me think of the recent campaigns to end the use of the r-word and the efforts against the use of "gay" as an insult or admission of disapproval.  

Many times when I have discussed these campaigns with students, I am met with their good intentions excuse:  "But I am not trying to be mean when I say it" or "I would never say it around a gay person" or my personal fav, "I know a gay person, so I can say it."  I respond to the first one is much the same way Zeke addresses Derek's pajama comment-- you my not mean to be unkind, you may not have even known you are being unkind, but now you do.  The latter excuses lead to a discussion much like the one that took place when Shiloh created her own version of Chinese and a student suggested it was not okay because someone in the class "may be that country" (151).   The conversations get a bit more sophisticated as students age, the content may be more complex, and sometimes the monological thinking may have been strengthened over the course of the student's 15 or so years prior to being in a high school classroom, but fostering dialogicality, taking advantage of emergent opportunities, as well as creating ones, to help students understand the impact of their decisions and encouraging them to evaluate them to "move in the direction of democratic practice" is relevant across grade levels.

I remember hearing frustration from some parents when my high school started offering breakfast to students each morning.  I heard my friend's father say, "The school is really ensuring that parents don't have to do anything anymore!  Why are we making it so easy for parents to evade their responsibilities?" We acknowledge the community's, and specifically the parent's role, in the success of school children, and we recognize that there is an absence of this role in many districts.  When is it the school's job to take on some of the so called "parental roles"?   Last week we talked a lot about the extent to which our school are educating students with the skills to compete in the global economy.  The skills that are measured by standardized tests; the ones that deem schools performing or under performing.  But what is the school's role in character education?  To what extent does our current system align with Nodding's recommendation that "educators [should] strive to 'encourage the growth of competent, caring, loving and lovable people''(5)?  Should it?  At what point does it become the school's role to impose moral education?

                  "Caring relations also provide the best foundation for moral education. Teachers show students how to care, engage them in dialogue about moral life, supervise their practice in caring, and confirm them in developing their best selves...What we learn in the daily reciprocity of caring goes far deeper than test results."

                                                     Nodding- Caring in Education 

“Teachers count a lot. But reality counts too” (7).

Who's bashing Teachers and Public Schools, and What Can We Do About It?  -Stan Karp While listening to Stan Karp’s speech I was reminded of my margin note while reading Finn’s line “I’ve taught in public school in every level from elementary school through graduate school and no principal or chair or supervisor ever asked me whether what I was teaching on a particular day was in the curriculum.” –My annotation ‘Well Finn, things have changed!’   The problem is the people who are asking have little experience in education.  Is there a silenced dialogue in education?  Are the people who are in the classroom and involved in education not part of the discussion?  Of course bad teachers exist.  Is there a profession that is exempt from the occasional underachiever?   The reality is not all teachers are bad, and bad teaching is not the only obstacle hindering achievement.   Accountability is important. Schools and teachers need to respond effectively when the school is not serving the students in their community.  Karp reflects on his experience and says “parents are the key to creating that pressure.”  In my experiences I would have to agree with him.  The students’ who have parents pressuring the school to meet the need of their student usually get response “Finding ways to promote a kind of collaborative tension and partners, hip between these groups is one of the keys to school improvement” (6).   We had a conversation in class on Tuesday about the parent who doesn’t know how to dress for parent-teacher conferences so she stays home.  Could community outreach or PD surrounding increasing parental involvement be a better solution than making test scores carry more weight?   Finding ways to bridge this gap might lend itself to closing achievement gaps as well.  “There is no evidence that the test score gaps you read about constantly in the papers is linked to bad teaching, and there is overwhelming evidence that they closely reflect the inequalities of race, class, and opportunity that follows students to school.” (6).    NCLB is a little like the first question on the teaching tolerance survey.  It looks at all students with blinders on.  It screams Delpit’s first typical best intended statement: I want the same thing for every child, and as Johnson, Delpit, Kozal and Finn have repeatedly told us, this doesn’t work. THE TESTS-“If we spend as much on protecting children from poverty as we are willing to spend on testing children and evaluating teachers, we can reduce the problem considerably.’’ Stephen Krashen (6). Karp compares spending money on more tests to supplying thermometers in a malaria outbreak.     Rather than creating more instruments to measure achievement, the money would be better spent on solving the problems causing underachievement.  Accountability is necessary, but it needs to be real.  Test-based accountability is detrimental to the teaching profession and the education schools are providing, and according to Karp, it is ineffective “There is no research that shows paying teachers to raise test score improves…any of the positive school outcomes that policy makers say they seek.” (7). Fair test.org suggests placing too much value on standardized test scores and misusing the data inevitably leads to corruption.  …  “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. . . when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.” Campbell’s Law, 1976 A few of their ideas: A focus on the subjects tested deemphasizes untested subjects and skills.    The subjects that are tested are valuable, but when schools and their curriculum hone in on tested material, or “teach to the test,” other subjects get left behind.    Students who do not perform well on these tests are labeled underachieving.  This devalues the students who are excelling in auto, tech courses, history, art and other subject where success is not measured by a test score.      Furthermore, any important skills or effective uses of class time that get pushed to the back burner to make time for test material are cheapened. Focusing on students most likely to make the jump from failing to passing neglects the rest. Hmmm…it leaves some children behind? There are subtler ways of cheating than erasing answers. The fact that the veracity of these tests must be questioned attests to the hefty weight they are on the shoulders of schools and teachers across the country.  Numerous indicators question their validity.  The same teachers receive inconsistent results when assessed by scores on two different standardized tests.  Bruce Baker condemns the accuracy of annual test because often lower income kids don’t learn as much in the summer as kids with higher incomes, thus testing once a year fallacious.                "The basic assumptions of these testing systems are at odds with the way real schools actually work and bending school practices because of them could negatively affect everything from the way students are assigned to classes, to the willingness of teachers to work with high needs populations to the collaborative professional nature that good schools depend on for their success”(8). Karp end his speech with a message that encapsulates what I was feeling following the Finn article, “In short, we don’t only need to fix our schools, we need to fix our democracy.”