Pedagogy and Praxis Day 20

The one thing I don't like about blogger is the fact that I can't cut,paste, and copy. Cause I wrote a bunch of stuff yesterday and the connection at school wouldn't access anything and I lost all the work that I wrote. So here we go again and see if I can remember shit.

So in my Asian American studies class, one of my favorite and brightest students explained the analogy from the previous day to the students. She broke it down into language that the students could get and more of them got it. I don't think all of them got it... but that's cause some are apathetic bumps on logs. Before we started the reading I had them review what we had underlined, bracketed, and written. Then I pulled sticks and asked questions on the reading. I've been trying to hammer into their heads that to be sucessful with texts you have to look at it a bunch of times. You aren't just going to get a reading if you read it only once, unless you are some photographic memory having genius. This is a fun text to read cause the students really like exploring racism. Scandalous is a word that is spoken often in connection with this reading. After the reading I'm going to show "Bugs Bunny nips the nips". I got a copy of it on the internet and it will blow the kids away.

In my US history class we read from Zinn's People's History. The kids were far more animated and interactive with this text. I think that I shot myself in the foot by reading about the problem with textbooks from "Lies my teacher told me". Now kids really don't want to read from the textbook. But when it's other readings they are more interested. I also threatened to give 4s for people that hadn't turned in their homework and I got more homework this time. There wasn't a lot of writing on the homework but I had more of them. So I had a greater quantity of papers but the quantity and quality of writing in the papers were lacking. But hey... baby steps. That I got more than 5 homeworks is an accomplishment unto itself and I need to recognize that. I also introduced the students to the concept of surplus value cause we were talking about the corporations crushing labor organizing during the Spanish American war. Then I also had them write down the imperialist line. Humanity, love of freedom/democracy, and money. When the gov't propaganda machine starts spewing that out... watch out. We are going to be killing someone.

In my multicultural class, I asked questions about the text "nigga or nigger" because I want the kids to understand what Davey D is trying to say. I didn't want their opinions at this moment I wanted to make sure they understood. I am trying to get the idea across that they must learn to understand another side's argument if they are to really disagree with it. The questions I asked are

1. What does Davey D mean by "Internalized so much negativity that it's ridiculous."
2. What does Davey D mean when he says Notorious BIG was giving license to people to use the word nigger
3. What does the saying "What you say or allow to be said about you is what you will become."
4. What does it mean that "many within the Jewish community ain't letting stuff slide. There seems to be an attitude that says you will not mischaracterize our people.
5. What is the difference that Davey D is talking about between the public and private arena.
6. What is blackface and what are the stereotypes associated with it.

It is interesting and disturbing to me that there is so much resistance by the students to hearing the notion that nigga is a bad thing to say. Much of the argument seems to revolve around the idea that older people don't like it but that with younger people it's ok. That there is a definite difference between Nigga and Nigger. This is going to be a hard one to crack. With the last question I asked them to define blackface and we made a list of stereotypes good and bad about black people from the perspective of the dominant white culture. Guess which list was longer.