Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
- “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
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A lot has changed since 1964 and 1913, and yet a lot has not. My neighbor hangs a Confederate flag outside - isn't secession from the Union the opposite of being American? I see bumper stickers on cars that offer different variations on the 'You're in America - Now Speak English' theme. And all too often our Founding Fathers are lauded with credit for establishing true democracy that is for the people and by the people....unless, of course, you happened to be a woman (until 1920), or of minority status (until 1965 unless you consider current voter ID laws) or non-Judeo-Christian. The Constitution's writers' assumptions of 'American' were not so democratic as we would like to believe, and so 'American' becomes very hard to define, explain and hold our citizens to. 'American' is blurry, messy, and extremely subjective.
That said, we do require children to take on another identity to be American. We require it of their families, as well, if we want them to participate in our 'public' schooling. We ask them to dress a certain way, walk and talk a certain way and behave in what we deem to be 'appropriate' ways. Being American in a public school setting means standing every morning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag and stand for a moment of silence. I had a friend, who through all of high school, refused to stand and nobody could understand why. He was weird, smoked pot and was always talking about 'the man' who was 'keeping us down.' Was he unAmerican? Should my teachers have forced him to stand out of respect? One of my first teaching jobs was at the Foote School in New Haven. Foote is a private day school. I didn't have an American flag in my classroom, let alone say the Pledge of Allegiance every day. Was that unAmerican? That changed on September 12, 2001. All of the teachers got flags for their classrooms and reciting the pledge became mandatory. All-school assemblies were instituted, where we would sing a patriotic song and recite the Pledge of Allegiance as an entire school once a week.
Do I believe it is the school's responsibility to 'Americanize' students? For better or for worse, whether we like it or not, if our collective goal is to educate students to go on to college and a stereotypical white-collar work force, then yes. If we look at Gee's Chapter 8 where he describes Leona's failed attempt at storytelling, it is critical that we understand that it is through a caucasian eye that her story is interpreted. The teacher interrupted and prompted Mindy; did that impact and scaffold Mindy's ability to tell a story? Were her responses to the teacher's questions built on the clues that the teacher was giving as she asked questions?
I wish that the answer to the above question was not yes. I do not believe that all students must go on to higher education. I wish that we as educators could embrace a child like Leona for who she is, without 'denigration of her community-based social identity' (Gee, Chapter 8). I wish that we could crawl into that identity and wear it like an old sweater for a day. I wish that Leona was growing up in a country where she would not be judged by her syntax but by the content of her thoughts and beliefs. I was hopeful, as a private school teacher, that we could offer that to our students. As a public school teacher, however, my hope is fading. Common Core seems to be sealing that deal. The 'level playing field' seems to be anything but, and cultural and socio-economic differences and gaps seem to be widening as the way we teach and our methodology is narrowing so that we all can be 'on the same page.'
Good educators take into account the whole child when making assessments and don't rely just on snapshot data collections. The first few weeks of school is typically spent assessing students, formally and informally, academically and personally. I find that I learn a lot about my students by watching their behavior - before class, as they come into class, when they're at recess, while they are eating lunch; their appearance is also something I assess - their posture, the cleanliness/fit/style of their clothing, their personal hygiene. All of these factors lead me to make judgements - both positive and negative - that impacts the way I interact with my students. Sometimes my visual profiling is spot on, and other times I'm a little off the mark.
Visual profiling in educational settings is a meaningful tool to use, not in isolation, but alongside a variety of other data. Before the special education teachers give me their 'lists' of students and IEP accommodations, I may have already noticed that certain students are what Jerry Seinfeld called, "close-talkers," where the idea of personal space is lost on them. They make little eye contact, and in the case of one of my students, get agitated over things 'typical' learners may not. Obviously I'm not going to assume that a student is on the spectrum of autism just because he stands too close to me when he's talking and doesn't make eye contact, but it is a huge red flag and will lead me to ask questions of a homeroom teacher or specialist.
In the Teaching Channel video ("Rick's Reading Workshop"), I first watched the video of the teacher who had the longer hair and earrings. I expected poor classroom management with an unsuccessful, bizarrely structured lesson. Halfway through the video I realized how hastily I'd judged and just how wrong I'd been. I couldn't help but wonder if I'd dismissed my own colleagues in the past based on appearance - what a loss that would be! The Learner.org teacher from Lexington, Massachusetts, in his dress shirt and dress pants, reminded me of my husband's work outfits (Scott works in the Digital Channels division of a bank). My mind immediately went numb - 'boring' was the only thing that I could think of to describe this teacher's presentation, both visual and physical, before I'd even begun listening to the content. (Sorry, Scott!) So yes, I do judge. I do profile. And I can justify my reasons, even though doing so causes me to cringe and reevaluate my motivations. Do the ends justify the means? Is it okay to profile as long as I am right? Would it be any different if I substituted the word 'visual' with a more provocative word, like, oh...say, 'racial'? Or 'gender'?
I chose to use a Blendspace lesson plan creator to accompany this written response. Writing is the medium with which I feel the most comfortable, yet I have been impressed by a number of my classmates' forays into various other tools. Blendspace is similar to TEDEd, the medium Lisa shared, and it seems to be a bit less intuitive than her tool. One of the benefits I noted is that participants can add comments on each tile and the teacher can receive notifications that this is occurring in real time. I also wanted to try something that was visually based to target those visual learners in my classes.
Gee, James Paul. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. London: Routledge, 2012. Print.
"Amy Cuddy: Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
"Jamila Lyiscott: 3 Ways to Speak English." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
"Let's Stop Reading Shame!" Psychology Research: Differences In Family Language Learning - Dr. Todd Risley. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
"Rick's Reading Workshop: Complete Lesson." Teaching Channel. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.