Pedagogy and Praxis Day 19

I have to admit something. I like Thursdays cause when I wake up, Allison is already up and she doesn't have class till later in the morning. She'll pack me lunch and make me coffee and it rocks. So Thursday was at least going to be have a good lunch for me. I had Pork fried rice from last night, a hardboiled egg and an orange. I got 4 hours of sleep last night cause I was up writing a paper (for my Latino Studies class) and lesson planning, so I was hanging on to every last minute. It was rough getting up.

It was the last day of STAR testing social studies and the 9th graders didn't have to take the test. So I was having a study hall with them. Which really consisted of me turning on music and hanging out for a while. They've been testing for this week and last. High stakes linked to funding tests. What the hell they can chill out for a while in a classroom setting. I had some of my 3rd period class in their so I gave them the reading for the day. Nigga or Nigger by Davey D. I'm sick and tired of kids saying nigga this nigga that.... Nigga please!!! I know, I know... terribly hypocritical joke... But I believe that it's a bad word, it is painful, it is a part of the colonized mindset. A proponent of the positive connotations and usages of Nigga is Randall Kennedy. I'll probably get to his stuff on Monday. Then I am going to do a computer tour of a site with crazy pictures of black caricatures. I've seen these videos "Little Black Sambo" and "Scrub me Mama with a Boogie Beat" and I want to get them to show the students.

In my Asian American studies class we kept reading Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome and I had trouble explaining an analogy to them. Here's the thing... a white person in america says to an Asian American that they understand their discrimination because they went to China and knew what it was like to be a foreigner. But that analogy doesn't fit. The better analogy is the White American in Asia and the Asian American in Europe. That way they are both foreigners or you are saying that the US is a white country. They were a really hard time grasping this analogy and I was having a really hard time explaining it in any other way. Class ended on that. Still trying to figure out a way to explain it better. I'm thinking of asking about what an american is or is America only for whites. Then from there leading them to seeing the inapt analogy as not seeing Asian Americans as Americans. Asian Americans are not foreigners in America like the white person was in Asia.... now I'm confusing me.

In my US history class we read the Spanish, Filipino, and Cuban textbook version of the Spanish American war. I had the students write a 1 1/2 page paper on the differences in the various stories. I realize that I'm not going to get to a lot of things so I want to do some things well. I think US imperialism at the turn of the century is really important and interesting stuff. Especially at this time in US history.

Then in my multicultural class we read "Nigga or Nigger". I started off this saying that if they weren't able to handle the topic matter in an academic adult way then I would throw them out. I had to throw out two students. This could easily descend into a bad lesson so I wanted to establish rules and control. We ended the class not too long after finishing the text so I didn't really get into the article. I wanted to read the article through with them and model active reading skills with underlining, bracketing, and summation. I go through this with them as much as possible asking them what to underline in paragraphs and what to say in response to text we had bracketed.

There's this student that seems for whatever reason to trust me. She's a real unhappy kid. I've tried to get her to talk to the school counselor. She doesn't want to but she wants to write to me and have me reply to her. I want to help her out but I can't be that person for her. She really needs to talk to a counselor.

Then I had to go to University. I had the last day of my latinos class and had to talk to my teacher. She recognized my situation and gave me some mercy saying that I could get my final paper to her by Monday. We were in a circle talking about our final paper and how it was different from the final. I never technically lied when I said that my paper hadn't changed. Then I talked for a bit about how I found the US occupation of Haiti for 19 years crazy. Was it straight racism or willful lack of self evaluation that Woodrow Wilson, the man who wrote the Fourteen points and help start up the League of Nations would be the guy to invade and occupy Haiti. Absolutely unconscionable. Straight racist shit. 50 years removed from the Civil War the US was enslaving Haitians to build roads. Crazy fuckin shit.