Black Ants and Buddhists

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/outofline/2008/11/voting_delay.html

I included this political cartoon because this chapter of Black Ants and Buddhist was about voting. In our country, I feel like a lot of people take the right to vote for granted. In this chapter, the writer mentions how minorities did not always have this right and that they felt it was very important to get people to register and go vote. I think that is why this political cartoon is so powerful. Minorities had to go through an entire movement and violence to be able to vote. I really enjoyed reading the article and about kids who were educated on what it took to get the right to vote and I was very happy to read about how they were able to make a difference.

Walking and Talking Geography

While reading this article, the first thing that stood out to me that was mentioned was "First-through-third graders are not ready developmentally to learn how to identify species of animals living in a rain forest or to color code Earth’s five oceans and seven continents. These activities—dealing with distant things and abstract concepts—are more appropriate for later elementary grades. David Sobel, author of Mapmaking with Children: Sense of Place Education for the Elementary Years, maintains that activities dealing with abstractions do not honor young learners’ relationships with the local environment. Rather than helping children establish connections with their immediate surroundings, such activities can alienate young students from their local environment by sending the message: Important things are far away and disconnected from you; nearby things, the local community and environment, are unimportant (Gary Fertig and Rick Silverman)." This part stood out to me because I could really connect to it. I think when teachers think of geography they think that teaching children about the world outside of their local world is more important when in fact it is not. By teaching geography to students using their communities and neighborhoods they are able to appreciate their surroundings and also see that geography is everywhere, even where they live. Even when I learned geography, I was always taught about geography in other places but I never got to explore my community in a geological perspective. I think by teaching about the local communities students will be able to make that connection easier.

Critical Literacy for Young Children

This lesson was a good lesson for young students in the lower elementary grades. The lesson began by giving background information about the student teacher who conducted it and she said something that stuck with me. This lesson was about how young children can investigate to learn about history and the past. The teacher before the lesson, mentioned that young children are able to do this if teachers took that leap and I thought she made an extremely good point. Not only can middle school and high school students do this and understand what they are discovering but so can young children. I think it was important for her to mention that because teachers may feel like younger kids are not capable to understand historical topics and make connections, but from this lesson, the students were able to understand. They were also able to relate what they were finding in the non fiction books thing that related to them in their lives and also make connections that things back then were also way different. I thought the lesson was a great one to get students to make connections between the different parts of social studies. If I get put into a lower grade, I would love to try something like this in my classroom. I thought, based on the article, the investigative approach was very effective.

Junior Detectives

I really enjoyed reading this lesson. I thought it was great at having students explore different types of history through primary sources themselves, which helped to make the subject less bias. I really like how the lesson included 3 different primary sources from the perspectives of 3 different types of people, such as the white child laborers, Rosa Parks and also the Japanese Americans during Pearl Harbor. I think it is important for kids to understand that everything they have come across is not alway accurate or right. By doing this lesson, students are able to look at the primary sources and really analyze them and critically think about what the person was thinking and how they may have really felt in the pictures. I think the idea of being "detectives" excites kids and also gives them a sense of seriousness by connecting them to real detectives.

Young People's History

        This article was a very interesting read. It was amazing to see how different we were  taught about Christopher Columbus in school, compared to what really happened. The way that Christopher Columbus was portrayed to me in school was a hero who came over and discovered America, and showed Native Americans different things and traded with them. We were also taught that Native Americans willing did these things when it was not true at all. Christopher Columbus was violent and introduced slavery in America and Spain. I chose this political cartoon to represent the reading because it shows to Native Americans questioning why both Osama Bin Laden and Columbus are not both being treated as terrorist. As Americans we think of Bin Laden as one but not Columbus because he was a European who "did this great deed." Which was discovering America and doing all of these great things for Native Americans. 

Entry 3: Rosa Park's Myth and How to Teach Slavery

          The Rosa Park’s Myth article was very interesting to me. I have never really like history as a subject so for the most part I never really put must thought into what I was though through my years of schooling, but the points that were mentioned in the articles definitely gave me a new perspective. Growing up in school, I have always noticed how white washed history in America is. Being African American myself, I have always known that the people who discriminated against African Americans and the people who were being discriminated had very different perspectives.

            I liked how in the article they gave the real details about the important parts that we learn about Rosa Parks in history class. They mention how she was angry and refused to go to the back of the bus because she was this tired woman who had enough, but how that idea of her was wrong. They also mentioned how she was like everyone else when she wasn’t at all. She was actually an extraordinary person that fought for African American rights. These facts I read in this article were never taught to me in school and it makes me question the way our text books make African American seem to white people.
            The podcast about how to teach slavery was also very interesting. One thing that stood out to me was how they included news stories and announcements about how teachers were having African American children roll play slavery. I was even able to remember a few because they have happened so recently. The podcast was important to hear because like they mentioned, slavery is a very hard subject to teach and especially in elementary schools. Since it is black history month, in my student teaching classroom, we have been reading books about several African Americans and slavery always comes up. Even I have to think carefully about what to say and how to say it because certain details, the hard truth, is not something that elementary children can handle, and I think that is also why textbooks are written the way they are written. The truth about slavery and the perspectives of the enslaved are hard for people to accept and talk about.

Entry 2: Teaching What Really Happened

http://thebigindianpicture.com/ihcbeta/communalization-of-education/

 I added this picture to showcase how textbooks are revised to make the white supremacist prospective seem like its the only prospective and its the only side of the story. In the reading "Teaching What Really Happened," the author talks about how textbooks are white washed and leave out a lot of information to sensor the horrors of different historical situations. In school, myself, I have thought one thing to be true and have later found out through research and as i got older and able to understand things more that everything being taught to me in history was not fully explained. I feel like this cartoon speaks to that. The teacher is ripping out pages of the textbooks and is only leaving certain parts in it and I feel like that is how America has treated history. They only want us to learn about what is beneficial to the majority instead of including information from all sides.