INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES
Educators’ voices: reflect, explore, and connect
Posted November 4, 2007
Bienvenidas/os
The meanings of individual, family, and community, as I invited my colegas to analyze, need to be situated within specific factors and within specific socio-cultural and political spaces.
The academic discussions and the amount readings invite us to continue exploring how the readings reflect our situated experiences.
To what extent do the readings mirror the different meanings people attach to ‘individual’, ‘family’, and community? This reflective question has been a constant tool to our discussions during the semester.
In this blog, all of our colegas, will post their final reflection on the learning experiences they have gained from our class readings. Students may choose various ideas to reflect on, and which take them to choose their final project.
For privacy purposes, names of institutions, and people involved in the final project, will not be revealed/posted.
We hope that these contributions make us reflect and act upon the situated meanings of individuals, families, and communities wherever we work as teachers.
Students will use their NAME and a KEY PHRASE to introduce and post their final class reflection. Please feel free to reflect on this final posting, and post a comment. Feel free to contact me, or a student in our class.
Carlos Martin Velez Salas, Ph.D.
Instructor
Bicultural-Bilingual/Interdisciplinary Studies
College of Education and Human Development University of Texas at San Antonio U.S.A.
Email: cmartinvelez@gmail.com
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2 comments:
What a great class this has been! What has been the most astounding part is that I have gotten to know some of the students in our class as individuals. As we move through different classes throughout our university time, we tend to "see" people, but really not get to know them. It was great to hear individual accounts of different people's lives. When I see how different all of our lives are and the different paths that we have lead, it makes it clear to me how teaching for all of us will be highly individual. That has been a great lesson for me. If there is only one thing that any of us take away from this class, I hope that it is to remember that the children we teach will all be individuals with different stories and different backgrounds. If we can keep that in perspective, we will all be taking the first step in making a difference in children's lives!
Here is a response that I posted on Sept 14 to our class discussion board...
This was an interesting chapter for many reasons. The Family book had some great articles for discussion as well. Family diversity is something that we, as educators, must be very aware. As a child of seven my parents divorced. This was a long, long, long time ago and divorce was not common. I felt alienated by my peers and my teachers.
Divorce is not the only issue children are dealing with today. There are many types of families today that were unheard of when I was growing up. It is obviously very important to note the different make-up of families today and include all children when discussing them.
I’ve never used the term “broken family” and agree with the text that it implies something not quite right about the situation. I do not plan on using this term. It concerns me greatly that so many single parent women are living well below the poverty line. All poverty is of great concern, but that particular statistic was frightening.
The book pointed out that we should learn a few key words of Spanish or whatever language our student’s primary language is. Although I do not speak Spanish, I plan on eventually learning to speak and write the language.
Wynter (2002) page 70 of our text was a bit optimistic (I felt) about America moving into a “postracial” period where multiculturalism would be irrelevant. There was an article in the Family book that felt the same way.
Something has to change with the way income is distributed in our country! How can 20% of all jobs in the U.S. pay below poverty level? When did we add the new underclass? I feel that welfare reform has perpetuated poverty and greatly contributed to this new class. If only 12% of the people who qualify for housing assistance are getting it, maybe we need to consider cutting some of the war expenditures! My husband is in the military and he just got some of his extra-duty pay cut to help pay for the war. If we cut out this massive war spending we could quite possibly feed and shelter the people at home who need it. (I sure hope my husband’s commander doesn’t see this!)
This is one of the things that worry me about teaching. I know we will all have students that are having one crisis or another like child abuse, poverty, homelessness etc. My concern is dealing with the emotions of all this as a teacher.
Much to think about,
Julie
What I got from chapter 3 is being a teaching in this day of age you
have to understand that you are going to get children in so many
different type of families. Families which you would call traditional
families and untraditional. I feel we need to be prepared an understand
that their are many different type of familys and in handling children we
should handle each child seperatly and understand each individual
situation.
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