Overall, I am quite pleased with the gain my students made from the pre to the post test scores. The class of students averaged 49% on the pre-test and grew to averaging 85% on the post-test. Every one of my students registered gains. I believe the fact that everyone made gains is indicative of the [...]
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According to Sorokin, a sieve is a control that acts as a sifter in society that maintains and regulates social mobility and actually places individuals in society according to her/his “talents”; in fact, sieves “control the process of vertical circulation”. Sieves typically have a direct relationship with standardized tests. Examples of sieves that Sorokin gives [...]
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Posted in My Life, Social Justice Education, language, tagged assimilation, cultural capital, cultural competence, cultural mismatch, Ebonics, education, Signithia Fordham, social capital, Social Justice Education on December 1, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Something that I wish more researchers, educators, and scholars would study and write about is the socialization and assimilation process that students go through during their “education”. For all students, this is a very difficult time and process. Recently I have spent a bit of time reading and analyzing how many African-American students manage this [...]
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This post came as a result of an article that I read online; I had to make a comment on it, though it was short, I did. Here’s the link if you desire to read what I thought was a slippery piece of information:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf/2008/11/whats_next_for_affirmative_act.html#comments
This is an extremely delicate issue. I do have a few questions [...]
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Mathography
Something that I have recently realized is that I remember very little of my school educational experience before middle school. For instance, I don’t remember when I learned to read, write, or do math. I remember being “good” at doing these activities or exercises, but I have an extremely vague memory of when I [...]
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Literacy Autobiography
One of the most shocking realizations that I have come to in the last year is that I have no recollection of ever being read to as a child by my parents or siblings. I imagine that I was likely read to here and there, but it was apparently so infrequent that I [...]
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Posted in Social Justice Education, Uncategorized, tagged academic achievement, assimilation, Bandura, Behaviorism, Beverly Cross, critical pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, education, Geneva Gay, Gloria Ladson-Billings, learning styles, Learning theories, Lisa Delpit, Martin Haberman, Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike on September 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Behaviorism is one of the theories that have remained popular since its inception. This theory came out of the notion that humans were biologically continuous with the animal Kingdom (Phillips & Soltis, 2004, p.21). The focus in behaviorism isn’t how new knowledge is acquired but how new behaviors are acquired. Simply put, behaviors are [...]
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Middle School Autobiography
My middle school years were both complex and a lot of fun. With the advent of hormones, I was one moment thinking about every attractive girl I saw and on the other contemplating the state of the world. I’ve always been one of those people that wish everyone could just get along. [...]
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Posted in Social Justice Education, Uncategorized, tagged social capital, education, culture, dominant culture, students of color, racial privilege, Lisa Delpit, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Beverly Cross, culturally relevant pedagogy, Geneva Gay, cultural mismatch, teachers of color on September 12, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Is Cultural Competency Just Another Buzz Word?
As education reform in the United States continues to move, even if the movement is in circles, along with reform comes new buzz words and phrases. One of the hot phrases of today is cultural competency. Educators, teacher educators, and education institutions claim to be in [...]
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“It is a travesty to expect all children to reach the same standards when only a few receive adequate resources” Asa Hilliard III
Like every conversation about effective schooling and the notion of reform, this conversation, the one about standards, is very slippery and complicated. I struggle to know from which angle to come at [...]
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