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In the interest of fostering our love for poetry, (This one's for you, Anne!) I wanted to share some of the blackout poetry that I've done. Dan mentioned this in class but I thought I'd give an example. Trying to reduce fact into art is an infuriatingly lovely process, and I recommend everybody try it out! 

I realize that they are both on their side and hard to read so I'll type them out here: 

They were dismantled, 

reduced. 

Critical and 

Emotional. 

I close around me 

rather than just watching the moment bloom 

amidst 

the world. 

-- 

Perhaps, 

the idea 

was part of the air. 

An elegant lightness, 

derived from the burdens upon them. 

Predictably, 

she asked it 

to dance. 

In Greg Dimitriadis' "Popular Culture, Pedagogy, and Urban Youth: Beyond Silenced Volices" I was intrigued his a sentence stating: "Accountability has become the watchword for policing what education can mean for youth in state-funded institutions" (233). I couldn't help but think about "Prisoners of a Hard Life" (a reading we did for our class on vision) and how the theme of over-policing: who has the power to police, and who and/or what are they policing, was prominant in many of the stories. 

In our first education class, we read a quote that said that the purpose of education was continually changing. I couldn't help but find this problematic, because I didn't understand why the PURPOSE of education needed to change/ be changed. I found myself contemplating both the reasons why the purpose of education would change as well as who had the power to make that call. Why is there a need to police education? I couldn't come up with an answer. All I could come up with was this notion that how we learn is dependent on individual ethnography, for ethnography is critical to understanding silenced voices (234), but I couldn't understand why individual ethnography could, at a policy level, alter what education means to the individual. In other words, why would my race, gender, or my urban upbringing affect what the purpose of education should be for me? Shouldn't the purpose of education be the same for everyone and the manner by which we arrive at that purpose or goal be different? 

Free Film Screening on Peace, Education, and Justice: 6 p.m. on Friday, September 21, 2012, at the Friends Center in Philly.

Campus:

            OED:

                        Etymology: 

Latin campus: field. First used at Princeton, New Jersey.

I was honestly fascinated by the Kim & Markus piece, Speech and Silence: An Analysis of the Cultural Practice of Talking. It intrigued me from the very beginning with the description of Asian American students in the classroom and how teachers have found these students "do not participate in class as much as [they] want them too". This point really hit home for me. While I am in no way Asian or East Asian, I did grow up in a predominantly Asian community. I went to a school that was 90% Asian and had all Asian friends. For this reason, Asian culture is a huge part of who I am, and my early exposure to cultures other than my own was very influential in shaping the person I am now. Part of me would really like to use this influence to explain why I find it so difficult and uncomfortable to speak up in class. And maybe it plays a part. I know that my mind is a busy place -- overflowing with thoughts most of the time. Just because I don't speak them doesn't mean they aren't there. It would make sense that I am a product of the culturally-infused academic environment that I grew up in. But of course, not all my time was spent in school. My house was never a particularly loud or expressive place. How much of who I am in the classroom comes from home and how much comes from primary school? 

As I was reading the piece by Greg Dimitriadis, I couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not he was a white author.  The name Dimitriadis sounded Greek and when I google image searched him, he appears to be white.  We discussed this in Jody’s class a little, but I’m interested in continuing to explore ideas of representation across race and ethnicity.  I must admit that when I read for class, I generally assume the writer is a white, and also probably a man.  Although part of me knows this is a dangerous assumption, part of me also knows it is a safe or practical one because many of the writers ARE white men.  As I was reading Dimitriadis’ piece, I began to become more and more uncomfortable with the idea that a white man was representing African American children, but don’t quite know how to articulate why this makes me uncomfortable.  As we read in the Ellsworth piece for our Voice class, issues of understand and correct representation are an ever present problem.  But I guess I question if that problem is further exacerbated when a white author is writing about African American youth.  I’m sure Dimitriadis has the “credentials” and education to do such work, but how far does that go? I became especially uncomfortable when he wrote about the students interest in the violent or more action scenes and when he said they associated gangs with the Black Panther.  I don’t doubt that this is true, but was he missing something important or not giving enough explanation?

I have read the Delpit reading in multiple settings and for different reasons. Once for my ED 250 class where my classmates and I explored how dominant forms of literacy marginalize groups of students because their way of speaking, writing and native languages are left out of public education. During the summer, again, I was told to read this same Delpit article as I prepared to embody the life of a full-time 7th grade writing teacher. This time, I took away from the article that explicitness in the classroom was key. As I taught, I was always conscious of what I said, how I said it, and the different forms I could say it so that my instructions were clear and catered to different learning styles.

As I go through my sophomore year here at Bryn Mawr, I've been finding myself constantly making comparisons about my experiences in high school and Bryn Mawr. My high school was a great place and I know I recieved an exceptional education there, but right now I can't help but feel like I've been wronged in terms of how I had to learn things, as if I didn't have any other options to choose from. I've been slowly coming to the realization about why I began to lose interest in classes where the subject I once used to love seemed to be working against me. English used to be my favorite and best subject (perhaps it was my favorite because I was good at it) in elementary and middle school. I loved reading and writing because I was able to use my imagination and I could be creative. But when I took AP Lang and AP Lit in high school, I was miserable. Both of my teachers were wonderful people but I would always get this sinking feeling in my stomach when I stepped into their classrooms because of how difficult of a subject English was becoming to me. I felt rejected, rejected because the subject that I had enjoyed the most was now helping me realize how weak of a student I actually was. A particular activity that helped me feel this way was the Socratic Seminar. Half of the students would sit in a circle and have a discussion about the text and ask each other open-ended questions while their partners (who were sitting outside of the circle) tallied the number of the times their partners were speaking. It was my worst nightmare.

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The Oxford English Dictionary