Tolerance

From what I have seen on the website, It all looks very useful! Some lessons are very hard to find information and material for and this website looks like it would be helpful to fill those voids.

Movies always get students excited to learn about a subject because it (usually) keeps them interested and is something different from the normal lecture/activity.

This is also useful for lessons that you don’t know how to start or lessons that might be hard to talk about. Some of these topics can be a bit touchy especially when relayed to parents from the students so this website gives you resources to have these conversations with out hurting or offending anyone.

This also gives you the resources to teach kids these topics that are new to being necessary to raise students who are open and understanding.

Religion

Church was not a huge aspect of my childhood. The only time we ever really went to church was for Easter. I ended up exploring religion on my own but most of the features of Religion that were taught from a young age are still somewhat foreign to me. 

For this project I went to a catholic church although I would consider myself a baptist. I chose to do this because of a couple reasons. First, my whole family are catholic. Next, It is a religion that is out of my comfort zone but still easy to find someone to go with. 

This assignment, at first glance, surfaced a lot of feelings. Excited about the opportunity for exploration but concerned about the possibility of offending someone. I am use to very contemporary services, so it being a very formal service made it that much more extreme. 

My first observation of my experience is that i probably should have gone with someone else. They didn't inform me of all the different things to expect which lead to me not really understanding what was going on which than lead me to feeling a little out of place. 

I think doing things like this is very important. Times are changing, and they're changing quick. Having an open mind to everything is the best way to live your life and is soon going to be imperative. On top of that having experiences like this can open your eyes to how other people live, giving more understanding and even possibly strengthening your own faith.

Gender Identity

        Gender for a lot people is a very sensitive topic. People, especially from the south, don't like when things change away from the traditional values. So now in modern times with people being more open with themselves, others who are stuck in the past are quite against it. I, personally, identify as a girl and am physically a girl therefor giving me the benefit of the doubt in most situations. I have been privileged with the trait of being 'typical' but not everyone is born this way. I have no problem with anyones decision to be who they want to be and I don't think anyone should have a problem with it. 

I think a lot of how you identify is in your genes and isn't something you can change. Although, while being raised, little things in movies, around town and other family members will all affect how you grow an understanding of how genders identify. Along with that, being raised in certain areas can definitely influence you on how willing you are to open up to your community which would influence how you identify. If you're in a very closed environment you may be scared to identify as something other than what you're 'supposed to' causing you to force yourself to be the way you don't want to be. While being raised in an open community you may be more willing to experiment with different things. 

I think it shows from birth on in to adult hood that girls can identify as a boy a lot easier than boys can identify as girls. In elementary school I can remember lots of girls, including me, who called themselves 'tomboys' and it was normal. They were athletic and liked boyish clothes. But if a boy tried to do it they were, more times than not, ridiculed. As adults, I feel like girls are more open most of time which, once again I think makes it easier for girls to open up about identifying as a boy. While when a boy tries to identifying as a girl, girls may be more okay with it but boys won't be so accepting. Although I say this, it is not always true. You will find a ton of boys who are accepting towards these situations and girls who are not. 

Friends

        Unfortunately the episode I decided to watch was one about an engagement so obviously there was a lot of talk about guys with the girls. There are three girls in the show and they all do talk so it passes two of the three criteria and as many episodes as I have seen they do talk about things other than men but it is definitely one of the most popular topics. 

This assignment has definitely surprised me more than expected. When reading the instructions for what we are supposed to be paying attention to and the criteria for the Bechdel test, i honestly thought it was going to be bogus. I thought it was one of those things where people had only looked at a couple different examples and came to the conclusion of how shallow some women characters could be. But after trying my hardest to pay attention I have noticed a pretty sting theme. Of course there are the crime shows and others of those sorts that the women characters are actually productive and don't talk about men all the time, however if you look at the popular sitcoms shows there is hardly anything else that they do talk about. 

Whether they are talking about shopping or boys it is always very materialistic and almost prissy. There are times in Friends that they do talk about things like their jobs and family but it is definitely the minority and rarely does it get much deeper than the surface. With this assignment I tried to look at the whole show remembering everything I have learned thus far in my two education classes and began to notice a couple other things. For one thing the personalities of the six main characters. Two of the men are very successful and with minor exceptions pretty normal. While the girls are have huge extreme personalities. Rachel is all about boys and shopping and is supposed to be considered spoiled, Phoebe is dumb and just in her own world and Monica is very OCD and bossy. The writers made the woman actors very stereotypical which i had not noticed until now. 

Having to view media in these ways this week has kind of made it hard to view it in any other way. I have started looking at every thing including commercials, shows, movies and advertisements and have noticed how girls are made to look on them which I don't think i have before. There are always exceptions but for what i have seen, most women are portrayed very dependent. Im sure that is a huge impact on how young girls are brought up and what they are made to think of themselves. 

Raising Your Child Genderless

         To me, this is a very interesting topic and I'm sure very controversial to many. When I first read all the headlines my first reaction was completely negative towards it. Now after reading, it doesn't sound as bad of an idea but like Judith Rich Harris explained maybe more misguided if anything(Huffington Post). The idea of raising a baby gender neutral is great, in theory. Letting them choose what they want to play with, what they want to wear or even how they want to present them self might, in the long run, be beneficial but I think as a child it may be detrimental. 

Another good explanation in one of the articles was Sherri Shepherd from 'The View' saying "First of all, the child is a baby. He doesn't know. He's not going to be able to say to anybody, I'll let you decide. He's a baby. That's where you come in as parents,"(abc news). I don't think this could be said any better. Elementary students, and even some middle schoolers are not old enough to understand the concept of someone being raised genderless. I think more than anything this would lead to more bullying and ridicule during grad school. While doing research for our 'YES curriculum', I read about how every student reaches a point where they rely on acceptance from peers and become very self-aware. I think this is when the child will have the biggest problem. Because every student is not going to be raised in this way, when they reach this stage of development I think the child might be pushed aside as an outcast. So many people have such a hard time figuring out who they are that, I think, making them choose a gender might just confuse them more. As parents you are supposed to help guide your child. I think it is a great idea to be open to letting your kids do what they want, dress however they please and wear their hair the way they want but when you are voiding them of such a large personal attribute will confuse them, in my opinion. When the child gets in to high school or even college, they will probably be accepted more and will have a better understanding of the good the parents were intending by doing this. Until than, unless they live in a very open minded area, I think the childs life will be a little rough around the edges, they'll still be happy in most ways but maybe a little lost in others. 

References

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/genderless-baby-controversy-mom-defends-choice-reveal-sex/story?id=13718047#.TzrzM5jg-zA

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-harold-koplewicz/genderless-baby_b_868056.html

Privilege

        Privilege is the opportunities and advantages you get just because of the person you are: the color of your skin, where you live, who your parents are or even your gender. Ive been privileged a lot in my life. My dad was an extremely hard worker which got him to the position he is in at the company causing us to be able to live very comfortably. My parents have aloud me to try and participate in anything I've wanted to. We weren't raised spoiled but definitely comfortably. Along with having well off parents, I lived in to a very nice area. Going through school it was never an option to not go to college. I went to a top high school and always had help if i needed it. As a white young adult I'm sure I have been privileged in many different ways. Im sure I have avoided profiling from people, its probably helped get me my jobs and generally given me a mostly good stereotype toward me. As a teacher, just like everything we've talked about, I think we need to take all stereotypes and biases we have and leave them at home. Doing this is very hard because we are raised with having stereotypes ingrained in our head but in a classroom you never know what types of kids your working with or what background they are coming from. When teaching english don't only give the boys extra help and when teaching science don't only give girls extra help. Like we talked about in class, there isn't any proven fact that boys do better at certain things and girls do better at the others. I think doing this and keeping your mind open will help keep your classroom running smoothly and help steer away from giving too much attention to some students and not enough to others.

   

Blog 2

1. Why is it important to openly discuss issues that are seen as having racial dimensions?

I think a lot of the reasons for hostility towards different races and ethnicity is some peoples fear of change and the 'unknown'. Some people are raised in very racist homes so its hard for them to open their mind around the idea of a different outlook on people. I think discussing issues like this can make people more used to the idea of a different way of life, although it may not change everyones mind. Talking about it is useful even if could open up one persons mind even just a little. 

2. What do educators need to do to foster productive examination of issues that are seen by some—or all —as being influenced by the race or ethnicity? 

I think looking at these issues in a completely none biased, none racial way. When talking to students about the issue or article you can reword the explanation of it and take out any language that can lead students minds in to a certain stereotype. Like where the person is from or their up bringing. Doing this I think students will be able to look at the issue(hopefully) by what the facts are instead of who is involved. 

3. What are some examples of effective strategies for initiating and facilitating conversations about race? 

I read awhile ago about a teacher choosing to treat students with blue eyes 'better' and told the other students that people with blue eyes were higher than the others. This exercise brought out emotions of all different kinds. I think this is a really interesting way to show students(especially younger kids) how discriminating can really hurt people. Another way I think would be good(for students at a higher level) would be to start having people talking about the stereotypes forced upon themselves as a race and than lead them in to a discussion on how they could change their way of looking at their own race to hopefully help them cut out stereotypes in general.

Break away from the crowd

       Breaking a social norm? Definitely something easier said than actually done. Riding the elevator up and down while pretending to meditate, kissing everyone you come in to contact with or even just dressing like a boy for a day. Brainstorming ideas is easy, and even pretty amusing to try and think of all the ridiculous things you can do and actually have a reason to do it. The hard part is building up the courage to do it. To know when you leave your house for the day that you are going to be stared at and talked about. Knowing all this and still being able to follow through with it was probably the biggest challenge of mine.

After a lot of thought, I decided to wear my Dalmatian onzie for the day. Its nothing super extreme and its nothing that caused a huge up roar. It was just enough to show what its like to dress just a little different, to be just out of the 'normal' circle. On campus, I didn't feel too much of a spot light on me. I know a good bit of people and felt like I was joking about it more than I was feeling judged. The real judgment came when I was at places like Walmart. When I was at places that were more open to the common public, thats where I felt the spot light.

Going through this assignment has somewhat opened my eyes to a couple things. First off, the way society, especially young women, judge people. We look at people a certain way based on what they're wearing, how they're talking, what they're listening to and even the people they surround themselves with. We never look at someone with bright pink hair or a crazy fashion style and think 'wow that person has a lot of confidence for wanting and striving to stand out and be unique' we instead think 'look at how weird her outfit is' or 'she's not going to get very far with that color hair'. Why is it that a lot of our population is brought up to look at someone who may dress differently than them and judge them immediately? Although there is still is discrimination and racism in schools, I think it is time we start not only teaching love of other ethnicities and races but also love of all people no matter skin color, nationality, outfit choice or preferred pastimes.