Post by ksbarber on May 22, 2016 22:30:41 GMT
Reading #2: I really enjoyed all parts of our Reading 2 list. Being sick last week gave me some extra time to let it all churn in my head.
I had never thought about the term “Hidden Curriculum” before in reference to younger students. It dawned on me that all the peripheral operations in a classroom used by the teacher are basically teaching students “how to be” in our society. It doesn’t mean that students will accept everything they saw and learned as “musts” in later life, but I believe that every child, every new mind, is looking for guidelines to go by. Having all the girls line up for the “girls room” and boys line up for the “boys room, asking students to follow rules of taking turns, using etiquette to address elders, etc. give students a starting point so they can function within the group space. I have experienced being around children within my own generation that grew up with little parental/societal guidance, and even in my own children’s generation. The results were not good. I think “Hidden Curriculum” and some daily routine, with allowances for free time and creativity, make for a less stressful atmosphere in the classroom. Students know what to expect, but are given time to express themselves. If there are hidden curriculum behaviors from the teacher that parents are concerned about, the parents should just have an open dialogue with the teacher about it and proper modifications be made.
This ties directly to the comments in the literacy practices video when it describes literacy practices as “ways of being, thinking and acting” to be a member of a discourse.
The “School to Prison” pipeline has always been a concern for me. It has been apparent for sometime that a good majority of those in prison were high school dropouts. Somewhere along the way in life either they did not get the teaching style they needed to grasp reading and writing, or there were life issues that put those things on the back burner for pure survival. In my own parent’s generation, my father only finished up to the eighth grade, then had to go to work to help feed their family with eight kids during the late depressions years. Even though he secretly wrote poetry, he never got to study high school literature. He and his friends were kept busy working on government projects under the “New Deal” and I guess that kept them out of jail. When my father passed away we found poetry stashed in his Civilian Conservations Corps truck from the public relief program operated from 1933-1942 for young, unmarried men. When World War II broke out that generation went to war and that was where a large majority of young men got their education in the 1940s. By the time my older brother was a young teenager, life was good again with the baby-boomer generation. They got into trouble, but communities were smaller and local law enforcement found ways to make “juvenile delinquents” repay their debts to society with community service. Now our society *is so big and so impersonal that a lot of young people are herded through the system like cattle and don’t get the benefit of a caring local policeman or judge.
Improvements have been made over the past ten or twenty years and the two facilities we are visiting for our internships seem like positive moves in the right direction to give students a chance to learn outside of prison walls or military if that is not their choice. I am hopeful our society has learned that not all students come from the same backgrounds and learn the same way. But again, the basic “hidden curriculum” must be in place for everyone living and learning in our society to function together.
I had to look up the definition of “ephemeral literacies” and found it was a term to describe small pieces of writing and home writings about home, its meanings and practices. Before finding the definition I did not know I came from a family chock full of ephemeral literacies. As I mentioned, we found poetry written by my father during his travels with the Civilian Conservation Corps stashed in his “C.C.C.” trunk after he passed away. We also found free-writing about what it was like to be a returning U.S. Marine from WWII looking for a job and being treated like a bum after risking his life to survive the battle of IWO JIMA and other foreign battles. Once of my great aunts on my mother’s side used to type us long descriptive letters on a cursive font typewriter about her life on sailboats up in Maine. I started writing poetry and describing “feelings” about what I saw going on around me down at a young age. Even my “hip” teenage older brother did some essay writing.
And of course this train of thought leads me to Kate Pahl’s paper, The Aesthetics of Everyday Literacies: Home Writing Practices in a British Asian Household.
In my case the connection would be entitled “inherited speaking and writing practices in an Irish-Catholic Household with New Jersey Irish-German-Italian immersion”. I loved that Kate centered her study of the families writing practices on textiles (art projects), gardening and harassment. These themes are so universal.
I even found humor in the family sayings the children were taught to fend off discrimination and rude comments. “Violence isn’t the answer”, or “ignore what they say, they are not well educated.” Not that it was good that other children made fun of the family due to their skin color or culture, but it reminded me of the saying my brothers and I were taught: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”. We used this when neighborhood bullies from public school tried to pick on us for going to Catholic school. I’m sure my parents learned this from their parents growing up in the immigrant mixture of families living together in New Jersey in the 1920-30s. And just as the girls in the British Asian family learned about their father’s work past and gardening and aunt’s embroidery, I learned about cooking Irish and German foods passed down through the generations. All of these verbal and written home writing practices occur around the world and seem to be a natural outlet of the human existence. As teachers, we must be sure to make time to let students share their home writings if they re so inclined. And we should encourage students to write what they are feeling. It’s a known therapy practice, and possibly a basic human need. Even cave dwellers felt the need to draw out their stories to vent and share what they went through in their daily lives.
Kathy
I had never thought about the term “Hidden Curriculum” before in reference to younger students. It dawned on me that all the peripheral operations in a classroom used by the teacher are basically teaching students “how to be” in our society. It doesn’t mean that students will accept everything they saw and learned as “musts” in later life, but I believe that every child, every new mind, is looking for guidelines to go by. Having all the girls line up for the “girls room” and boys line up for the “boys room, asking students to follow rules of taking turns, using etiquette to address elders, etc. give students a starting point so they can function within the group space. I have experienced being around children within my own generation that grew up with little parental/societal guidance, and even in my own children’s generation. The results were not good. I think “Hidden Curriculum” and some daily routine, with allowances for free time and creativity, make for a less stressful atmosphere in the classroom. Students know what to expect, but are given time to express themselves. If there are hidden curriculum behaviors from the teacher that parents are concerned about, the parents should just have an open dialogue with the teacher about it and proper modifications be made.
This ties directly to the comments in the literacy practices video when it describes literacy practices as “ways of being, thinking and acting” to be a member of a discourse.
The “School to Prison” pipeline has always been a concern for me. It has been apparent for sometime that a good majority of those in prison were high school dropouts. Somewhere along the way in life either they did not get the teaching style they needed to grasp reading and writing, or there were life issues that put those things on the back burner for pure survival. In my own parent’s generation, my father only finished up to the eighth grade, then had to go to work to help feed their family with eight kids during the late depressions years. Even though he secretly wrote poetry, he never got to study high school literature. He and his friends were kept busy working on government projects under the “New Deal” and I guess that kept them out of jail. When my father passed away we found poetry stashed in his Civilian Conservations Corps truck from the public relief program operated from 1933-1942 for young, unmarried men. When World War II broke out that generation went to war and that was where a large majority of young men got their education in the 1940s. By the time my older brother was a young teenager, life was good again with the baby-boomer generation. They got into trouble, but communities were smaller and local law enforcement found ways to make “juvenile delinquents” repay their debts to society with community service. Now our society *is so big and so impersonal that a lot of young people are herded through the system like cattle and don’t get the benefit of a caring local policeman or judge.
Improvements have been made over the past ten or twenty years and the two facilities we are visiting for our internships seem like positive moves in the right direction to give students a chance to learn outside of prison walls or military if that is not their choice. I am hopeful our society has learned that not all students come from the same backgrounds and learn the same way. But again, the basic “hidden curriculum” must be in place for everyone living and learning in our society to function together.
I had to look up the definition of “ephemeral literacies” and found it was a term to describe small pieces of writing and home writings about home, its meanings and practices. Before finding the definition I did not know I came from a family chock full of ephemeral literacies. As I mentioned, we found poetry written by my father during his travels with the Civilian Conservation Corps stashed in his “C.C.C.” trunk after he passed away. We also found free-writing about what it was like to be a returning U.S. Marine from WWII looking for a job and being treated like a bum after risking his life to survive the battle of IWO JIMA and other foreign battles. Once of my great aunts on my mother’s side used to type us long descriptive letters on a cursive font typewriter about her life on sailboats up in Maine. I started writing poetry and describing “feelings” about what I saw going on around me down at a young age. Even my “hip” teenage older brother did some essay writing.
And of course this train of thought leads me to Kate Pahl’s paper, The Aesthetics of Everyday Literacies: Home Writing Practices in a British Asian Household.
In my case the connection would be entitled “inherited speaking and writing practices in an Irish-Catholic Household with New Jersey Irish-German-Italian immersion”. I loved that Kate centered her study of the families writing practices on textiles (art projects), gardening and harassment. These themes are so universal.
I even found humor in the family sayings the children were taught to fend off discrimination and rude comments. “Violence isn’t the answer”, or “ignore what they say, they are not well educated.” Not that it was good that other children made fun of the family due to their skin color or culture, but it reminded me of the saying my brothers and I were taught: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”. We used this when neighborhood bullies from public school tried to pick on us for going to Catholic school. I’m sure my parents learned this from their parents growing up in the immigrant mixture of families living together in New Jersey in the 1920-30s. And just as the girls in the British Asian family learned about their father’s work past and gardening and aunt’s embroidery, I learned about cooking Irish and German foods passed down through the generations. All of these verbal and written home writing practices occur around the world and seem to be a natural outlet of the human existence. As teachers, we must be sure to make time to let students share their home writings if they re so inclined. And we should encourage students to write what they are feeling. It’s a known therapy practice, and possibly a basic human need. Even cave dwellers felt the need to draw out their stories to vent and share what they went through in their daily lives.
Kathy
