Blogs

The Art of Changing the Brain by James Zull has been my "brain bible" (so to speak) this year. I keep it with me all the time to help me design strategies. Zull discusses the Neural Networks that our students develop and biologically keep all their lives so therefore teachers can't erase background knowledge. A possible tactic is to find out what they are thinking and how they explain a particular phenomenon and then help them make critical new connections.

 A Case Study on Disabled Superheroes

For every disabled person living an unremarkable, everyday life you see in the media, you’ll see at least three disabled people with superpowers. The popularity of the supercrip archetype, whether created through careful media positioning of disabled athletes and personalities, is also visible in the world of popular culture - specifically, mainstream comics. While graphic novels have dealt into emotionally complicated territory with their depiction of various disabilities and life circumstances, superhero comics have really taken up the “supercrip” - the disabled superhero or heroine, as a money-maker and cultural tool. 

Week of November 2, 2009; Brielle Stark

Project: Brain and Behavior II [senses]

Observations

Overview

Observations from 10/28/09

Emily Lovejoy

In progress:

Anna Dela Cruz

Biology in Society

November 3, 2009

I remember.

I read.

I think?

The space through which you move comfortably without a thought, skirting the coffee table there, slipping sideways behind that chair to reach for a novel on the fifth shelf of the bookcase, looms with obstacles for me. And although I do not expect you to reconstruct it to permit me access, a number of problems could have been eliminated in the original design.

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this image was taken from:

www.ddsg.org.uk/taxi/medical-model.html

    Why is it that being disabled like being a man or a women means that there are no gray areas, but simply black and white? Why must one be ostracized from the categories that entail the so called norms of society because they do not fit into them clearly? I think that society has grown up around this idea that any disability in which the individual body or gender does not coincide with the norm, is not correct; that it is not proper and standard and therefore should not be accepted. This concept of a norm has been so engrained into our way of being, that we even construct categories out of norms, and we subsequently create more and more outsiders.