Pedagogy and Praxis Day 14

Today there was a field trip for seniors to a nearby college and there was STAR testing in science for a lot of students. As a result, there were very few students in my classes. Plus the kids' brains were all fried cause of taking the tests. So in all my classes I read from "Animal Farm" and then had them quiz the vocab words for 5 minutes. After that I taught them some more basic blogging like how to make links and how to link things on posts. I also talked to them about how they should learn basic html cause it's the easiest computer programming that you can do. I talked briefly about how there were more job opportunities available if you had more computer skills. I also talked briefly about the dangers of the internet. I gave my spiel on how I see the internet as a repository of the collective consciousness of humanity. As a result, it makes sense that there is so much porn and violence and whatnot on the internet. That is what is on many people's minds. The internet can enlighten or degrade. It has a dichotomous nature.

After that in my Asian American class I introed the next reading from Frank Wu's book "Yellow". The reading is on the perpetual foreigner syndrome. Frank Wu is a great writer and I really learned a lot from his book. I want to really press home the idea of the dehumanization of people and the effects of that dehumanization. Also, when the oppressor is dehumanizing a person what that allows them to do to that person. For example, when the nazis called the jews vermin or the whites called blacks nigger.

In my US history class, I've decided to not put up with them not doing homework. I will assign homework and if they don't do it then they will get a four on their contract, meaning four hours of detention. I'm not going to spend all my time getting work together and lesson planning and then come to class and find out that no one has done a thing. So I made my promise/threat to them and we'll see how it works. I am sure that I am going to piss off more than a few people with this, but I'm not too happy either.

In my multicultural class I had students present what they learned from the quotations and analyses that they did. There wasn't much time left so class ended with this. STAR testing sucks and you can kiss any classes and learning that week goodbye.