""Girl Power" used to send a message to little girls that they could be anything they wanted to be. Now, it's more of a marketing ploy, as Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown explain to Rene Syler."
As I’ve realized being in a classroom with a wide variety of students that all have different parts that make them the way they are. With that you need to be aware that these students have sociocultural and linguistic differences. The classroom teacher is very aware of this and to accommodate she always reminds the students that it’s not about how much money you have, the clothes you wear, or where you live but for everyone to get along and understand each other. Constantly she puts the class into groups of opposites; she never puts the kids with their friends. She usually gives them an assignment that they need to work together with for a good grade, by the children interacting they no longer think about who they are working with but that they are working together. When the assignment is completed in a good fashion the teacher gives those groups who tried their hardest and finished a treat. It’s always the same cookies they are vanilla and chocolate mixed, which she makes sure the students know. ‘It doesn’t matter what color you are, where you are from, we are a family”. The group assignments always help the students work hard for each other and encourage one another, they want their group member to do well.
The theorist I connected this too was Lyn Mikel Brown. Brown argued about what is the typical stereotype of what certain people live their lives. In his example Brown talks about when people talk about teenage girls they are talking about the white, middle class, female and her experiences. Not all teenage girls go through the same experience and are classified based on that. I related Brown to my service learning because I feel that by the teacher not classifying these children into one group and mixing them up away from their friends it points that the stereotype is wrong. Not all fourth grade boys go through the same experiences, and for this teacher to mix them into groups she creates communication of the classmates to work in their classroom. This teacher does however recognize the differences in her students but does not make that a factor in who can be partnered with whom in a group, these children act the way they do based on what they have seen or done which makes them who they are.
ALYSA, i dont know how you set your blog up this way... but it's fantastic! hahaha.
ReplyDeleteBut back to prompts. This was my favorite article that we have read all semester. The whole, tomboy thing was so relatable to me (as you can guess... i was, and still am, very much a tomboy.. ill admit it).
I think Brown was an excellent person to relate this prompt to. In my service learning, all the name tags for the girls were pink, and boys blue. But, some girls like blue, and some boys like green. Why do they have to be gender associated. Who's idea was it to really associate colors to genders? Isn't that what favorite color is for?
The cookie relation worked very well by the way. Very clever. Also I'm very happy to hear that your teacher is so aware of these problems that she reminds them that its not about clothes and where you live, but its who you are inside, and that everyone can work together, and not discriminate.
-Becca!
Thank you for a relevant and strong connection to Brown, Alysa. You apply her argument to the classroom teacher's recognition that not all fourth graders can be seen through the same lens. She doesn't ignore difference, she works to foster communication.
ReplyDeleteKeep me posted,
Dr. August