On This Fool's Day'niversary

Once upon a time, in a decade a few years ago, I met a truly wonderful man at a gaming store in Norcross GA. Over the course of the next several years, we became acquaintances, then friends, then lovers, then best friends, then partners, then husband and wife.

This man doesn't hit me, doesn't belittle me, doesn't cut people out of my life, doesn't lash out at me for his own insecurities and imperfections, doesn't think headgames or snipery are a mandatory aspect of a "normal relationship", and doesn't pressure me to be something I'm not.

He encourages my dreams, my silliness, my addiction to fairy tales, my quest for intellectual development, and my crafting/culinary/gardening adventures. He plays fun games with me, works with me to create my own, and he shares with me a world of stories via travel and music and shows. He lends strength when I'm facing something that makes me afraid. He holds me when I hurt, and he soothes the rage that comes with that pain. He tells me every single day that he loves me; every single day, without fail.

This day each year is the day we celebrate our piece of government-required paperwork for insurance purposes - and the day we delight in a relationship that never needed that piece of paper to be lasting or real.

Happy Fool's Day'niversary, my darling Boy.
I love you. Always. Forever.

[EDUC-2120] Discussion Topic #3 - Classroom Communication & Conflict Resolution

Discussion topic for Module 3

View this YouTube video on cultural communication before answering the following questions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gRXMzR_8BY

Consider the communication styles of various cultures and the significance of these differences in your future classrooms.  Nonverbal communication is a message, other than words, that people exchange.  Children do not always find as much meaning from nonverbal communication as adults.  Based on this video and Koppelman's concepts of communication, what should we do to make sure our point and message are not confusing and our students understand the message we want to get across?

My Response for This Prompt

For me, our research video this week was extremely enlightening when paired with our textbook topic for the week.  My initial reaction to the video was that it is a fair depiction of stereotypes of life in the United States; that there is within it a good bit of commonly held assumptions about what Americans are and the type of people we want to be.  I thought it interesting that the video's creator did not give specifics of those "some other countries" he referenced.  This lent a feeling of "an introduction to American culture" to the piece, something that might be similarly produced by an American-born and raised student doing a school project on what life in Dubai, India might be like as experienced by the natural-born citizens of Dubai. 

Where the piece broke down, for me, was in its failure to communicate that the stereotypes are not an accurate reflection of life for all Americans.  The reference to "Chicago" and "DeKalb" helped to place where these stereotypes are purported as "American normal."  The video's creator did not make clear the difference of "rock logic" and "water logic," meetings across the full breadth of corporate America often start late and rarely end on time with all action items firmed, and people in America act far more often on what they "feel" than on what "logic" might dictate.  In addition, it is generally accepted among polite society in the southeast that you do not talk about (or make) private plans in public as it is unforgivably rude to those not on your guest list.  And, if you invite a special friend to a dinner or movie, the inviter is expected to pay for the invitee unless an allusion of some sort or another is made to "dutch treats" as part of the invitation.

Two of the comments on the page spoke to me, in particular.  I offer them here, pasted "as is":

                 paul march, 4 years ago

                I have never seen such a miss intrerepted information as this.

                 shatov72, 2 years ago

                Whether or not there are any problems with this presentation depends on the intended audience, and the intended purpose of the presentation. It is certainly US centric - for example, using 'other cultures' all the way through - but if it is for a US audience, that is ok. Main issue is that it presents an idealised view of US. Taking the UK media as an example - our coverage of China lacks accuracy, but we like to believe our media are fair and free. This apparent hypocrisy by us annoys others.

The second commenter is correct; it all comes down to context.  We do not know the context in which the video's creator originally positioned this piece, so we cannot accurately speak to how well he communicated the concepts he hoped to deliver to his audience.  For all we know, the point of this video was to communicate how stereotypes never tell the whole story.  If that was his goal, he truly did a smashing job of it.  If that was not his goal, then he has offered us a prime example of why stereotypes make such a poor medium for communicating the full truth about life within a given culture.

Our textbook offers five other examples of communication misconceptions.  I agree with all but the fourth, "Communications can break down," as I think Stone, Singletary, and Richmond (or our textbook author; it is hard to tell which is responsible for the wording in this section) chose to pick semantic nits instead of addressing the actual issue.  The textbook offers this, "if verbal exchange ceases, communication in some other form - whether words or actions - will replace it" (Koppelman/Goodhart).  As the very concept of communication is, at its heart, more than the simple tossing off words at a wall to see what sticks - as if the words were little more than verbal pasta and we wanted to know if they were done.  If communication is not effective then it has, indeed, broken down; it does not matter that some other communication style might take the place of the first style; the first did not see productive resolution, so it did, in actuality, break down.

So many of my peers have already stated it on our classroom forum this week, but I will state it, too.  As educators, it is our responsibility to approach our communications carefully.  We must pay attention to the visual, auditory, linguistic, and cultural cues that our students or colleagues give to us.  We must strive to deliver our message in a way that is elegant in its simplicity, so that our intent remains clear from the first.  We must be vigilant for instances where our message comes through inefficiently; we must never fault the listener for this failure, but work with them to rectify the misunderstanding and move forward together, confident of successful future interactions.

REFERENCES

Koppelman, K.L. & Goodhart, R. L. (2011).  Chapter 3: Communication, conflict, and conflict resolution.  In M. Mattson (Ed.), EDUC-2120: Education GA Perimeter College North (pp 47-69).  Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Education.

Mattson, M. (2014).  Chapter 3 lecture notes: Communication, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution   [PowerPoint slides].  GPC iCollege, EDUC-2120-001. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from https://gpc.view.usg.edu/d2l/home/485701

Ty., R.  Comparing Different Cultures: Intercultural Communications.  Théâtre Palme d'Or.  Retrieved 05-Feb-2014 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gRXMzR_8BY

[EDUC-2120] Discussion Topic for #2 - Jigsaw Classrooms Can Change Southern Culture

Discussion topic for Module 2

Read the weekly research article about the Jigsaw Classroom technique.

After reading, can you list any advantages or disadvantages of this technique?  Also, can competition add to the cause of prejudice?  Refer back to the Koppelman text to support your answer.

My Response for This Prompt
I loved and hated reading this week's research article.  I loved it, because it validates my own plans for group instruction methods and implies that they should be quite successful.  I hated it, because it is almost as if someone stole my thunder from forty-something years in the past.  I have given much thought to overcoming the problems faced by my own childhood/teen classmates and me.  I have thought about the nearly homogeneous social/political/economic environments in which we were raised.  I have thought about the different teachers we had, their strengths and weaknesses as educators, and I have considered the best manner in which to incorporate the mindset changes that rural and suburban southern communities need most and have traditionally resisted the hardest.

The South, unfortunately, still lives in a highly stratified mindset.  Too many children live in poverty with little physical reserve left over to engage in intellectual pursuits.  Men of color and women of all colors espouse a full range of socially acceptable or unacceptable opinion, often seeing the needs of their own In Groups ahead of the needs of any other group, even when the underlying interests of those groups truly coincide.  Moreover, far too many white men go their whole lives wondering what all the bellyaching is about, claiming that it was not so hard for them, so people should stop whining so much and just buckle down as they did.  There is significant competition for resources among the various resident cultural groups in our state, which can lead to competition in the classroom when students arrive with homegrown prejudices in tow.  Our research article for this week leaves no doubt that Aronson was correct in noting that the “competitive atmosphere of the typical classroom only served to fuel the fires of inter-group hostility” (Reese).  His Classroom Jigsaw method “was born of the need to change the atmosphere from one of competitiveness to one of cooperation” (Reese), and could go a long way toward overcoming prejudice-sparked competition in the South’s rigidly traditional public schools and communities.

The public school cluster where I live now is a world of difference from the socioeconomically homogenized environment of my youth.  As I shared in our discussion last week, there are so many people from different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds currently living in Gwinnett County that language barriers are a significant problem at our schools; our teachers have to “Jigsaw” almost as their default setting.  The educators I have been privileged to meet here in Gwinnett do not engage in the sort of victim-blaming that was the norm in the 1970s/1980s.  Back then, it was publicly held to be the “foreigner’s fault” for coming here and encountering difficulty in school, and their children were often told, “if you’re going to live here, you can at least learn to speak the Bible’s language.”  Academic failure was also openly held to be the fault of children of color for “drinking the Hand Up Kool-aid,” and they were often told “you should just try harder and, if you’re lucky, you can be as good as the rest of us.”  Some of our teachers would even seem put out by lower income students who had trouble grasping concepts because the SES problems their family faced made schoolwork incredibly difficult, and chastised them for missing things in class that “normal white kids everywhere are smart enough to get”.  Our textbook defines victim-blaming as “a focus on the group being harmed by societal prejudices [with insistence] that society doesn’t need to change: The group needs to change.  Victim-blamers urge individuals to stop being so sensitive or so pushy, to work harder, and to quit complaining.  Group members are told they are responsible for whatever problems they must overcome” (Koppelman 39).

Here, if a child has trouble keeping up, it is the educators’ direct responsibility to get that child (and their family) on track.  This is partly due to our teachers’ inherent desire to give Gwinnett kids the best opportunity possible, and partly due to residential reprisals should it come to NCLB probations. It is a relief to know that I will work for a school cluster that truly wants every single one of its families to have a better life via education and community-sourced outreach.  I cannot describe to you how deeply thankful I am that I will get to be an educator in this time where it is acceptable to call people out on their prejudiced assumptions, their bigoted words, and their discriminatory actions, and to live in this forward-thinking school district.

REFERENCES FOR THIS DISCUSSION POST

Koppelman, K.L. and Goodhart, R. L. (2011). Chapter 2: Understanding prejudice and its causes. In M. Mattson (Ed.), EDUC-2120: Education GA Perimeter College North (pp 25-41). Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Education.

Mattson, M. (2014). Chapter 2 lecture notes: Understanding prejudice and its causes [PowerPoint slides]. GPC iCollege, EDUC-2120-001. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from https://gpc.view.usg.edu/d2l/home/485701

Reese, S. (2009). Classroom connection: The jigsaw classroom [PDF document]. In Techniques Magazine: Connecting Education and Careers. Association for Career & Technical Education. Retrieved 27-Jan-2014 from https://gpc.view.usg.edu/content/enforced/485701-CO.710.EDUC2120.30523.20144/2120Jigsaw%2520Article.pdf

[EDUC-2120] Discussion Topic #1 - Non-obvious At-risk Student Groups

Discussion topic for Chapter 1

Prejudice is defined as a negative attitude toward a group and persons believed to be part of that group. What are some groups, like the example of the atheist used in the power point, which are not obviously based on culture or race, whom teachers need to be aware of in their classrooms as possible targets of prejudice? How will you guard against prejudices yourself as a teacher? 

My Response for This Prompt

From personal experience, I offer for discussion two student groups of which teachers should be aware as possible targets of classroom prejudice.  These groups include children who are physically small for their age and children are academically advanced.  Each of these groups suffers varying levels of prejudice from public social stereotypes, and teachers need to guard against their own ill-timed reactions in addition to making their classrooms a culturally positive haven from bigotry and discrimination.

Children who are small for their age are susceptible to bullying because their bodies are often physically weaker than their age peers in larger percentile brackets.  Smaller children are often slower in running games because their legs cannot cover as much ground or unable to meet the objective in activities where physical strength matters.  Because of this, they often earn playground monikers that reflect "loser" stereotypes, which subsequently leads (in far too many cases) to name-calling and bullying.  Because busy adults have a tendency to lump together as "troublemakers" all children involved in playground mishaps or classroom incidents, smaller children are asked questions such as "well, what did you do to make her/him want to hit you?" or "you just need to learn to be tougher skinned and then the bigger kids won't bother you."  Victim-shaming legitimizes the prejudice that leads to bullying by teaching small-stature children that adults cannot ensure equal footing for all students, and by teaching bullies that society does not blame them for abuses they dole out, that blame lies with the victim(s) instead.

As with the “Asian math whiz” example from the chapter lecture, children whom are academically advanced also need protection from stereotype reactions from the adults in their lives.  It might seem obvious that these children may be open to teasing or bullying from other students, but teachers must be on guard against their own internal prejudices where gifted students are concerned, too.  Just because a child is smart does not mean that s/he is automatically proficient at all intellectual pursuits.  There is more than enough pressure on these students to succeed, so it is often difficult in the extreme for them to admit that they need help with schoolwork.  We must strive to be the teachers who open doors for all of our students and not the sort of teacher that responds to a request for help with "Why, Johnny, you're so smart! Surely, you don't need help with this, now do you?"  Not only does this display of confirmation bias publicly demean the child, but it marks the teacher as a willing party to societal prejudices rather than as an authority figure dedicated to overcoming them.  The student is asking for your help, after all; why are you going to ignore their plea in favor of an incorrect, stereotype-based assumption?

Our textbook teaches that "the values we choose are influenced by our membership in groups defined by such factors as race, ethnicity, gender, and social class; however, the ultimate decision to embrace certain values is up to the individual" (2).  As an educator, my goal is to make my school a safe place everyone who walks through the door.  To do that, it is my responsibility to be actively involved with both the student and staff populations.  I can make my Zero Tolerance for Intolerance policy clear up front, working with my students to develop a Classroom Bill of Rights that lays out the responsibilities of peer behavior and the repercussions for breaking our rules.  I can also work with parents and other staff on bringing tolerance education into our school through anti-bullying and cultural sensitivity programs such as the PBIS system (3) in active use at Norcross Cluster schools.

WORKS CITED IN THIS DISCUSSION POST

1. EDUC-2120 GPC-specific textbook.  Chapter 1, Afterword,  pp.17
2. Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. http://www.pbis.org/