10th Blog

 Shawn Ginwright's Views on Healing Centered Engagement

    Shawn Ginwright's article on the transitioning from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement is an interesting and valuable conversation to be had. Trauma informed care looks at the dealings of past trauma with a medical/scientific lens on the person. However, there is an argument for a more positive and spiritually cleansing way of going about dealing with trauma, and that way is healing centered engagement. HCE is a more personal, emotional, and spiritual way of healing from trauma that does not use medical ways of curing trauma.

Quote #1: "Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place"(Ginwright). 

    The quote above discusses how HCE is a community healing process by bringing in others who have experienced trauma to help those who need another voice. There is much more awareness of what is going on and more awareness of themselves. They also go at trying to better the conditions that caused their trauma by participating in political/cultural action.

Quote #2:  "Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging"(Ginwright).

    Ginwright describes how finding oneself after trauma through HCE has a lot to due with the identity of the person. They need to find themselves after the trauma, and through that they can find belonging with themselves and their environment. It's a spiritual process of forgiveness and finding a new individual after the trauma.

Quote #3: "While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people’s mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness"(Ginwright).

    Ginwright here discusses how HCE looks forward at what the person wants to become rather than having a sole purpose of fixing the problem. There are multiple things that HCE wants to accomplish in order to move forward with the painful experience rather than just trying to fix it or get rid of it. 

    At the end of the day, a person should be able to decide what type of treatment is best for them. However, HCE is a very promising and different approach compared to the typical treatment for trauma. It tackles the trauma at multiple angles and has shown to allow people to move forward rather than try to fix a problem that may not get fixed.

Hyperlink: Healing-Centered Engagement – Transforming Education in the Pandemic and Beyond - IDRA

9th Blog

 Three Most Important Things

Key Assessment: 

    When it comes to important things that I have done this semester, the Key Assessment is up there. The ability of using personal experience as well as accurate data from RI to further enhance my knowledge on all school systems in the state is very important to my quest to become a teacher. Adding personal experiences to these information-based assignments allows me to add even more information to either prove or deny data/accusations that may have been said.

Literacy with an Attitude Class Discussion:

    One of my favorite moments in class was when we experienced Patrick Finn's ideas come to light. The lesson on how we were treated in school systems being brought to light was eye opening to everyone in the room. It made us realize that there are better ways to teach and develop young minds.

Five Tricks Card Game:

    This game opened the eyes of a lot of people in class. A card game that each person was given different rules and weren't allowed to speak was definitely a confusing and interesting social experiment. It showed us that in life people start off in different ways and end up in different ways.

8th Blog

 RI Policies and Woke Read Alouds

    The RI Policies and the video are informative on how as a society, there have been movements on creating a more accepting place for everyone. While the laws show a more specific and more serious way of presenting this information, the video uses a children's book to explain the situation to a targeted younger audience. The laws also go in depth on the protection of students and children, which makes a big deal in the development of the children when they are ready to move up in the world.

    When it comes to the acceptance and equality of everyone in a classroom environment and out in the world, I am 100% for it. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and kindness. I personally have a limited experience with the information presented based on the people I grew up around: I grew up in a rural, white town with rural white students. The idea of students that are transgender or have a different sexuality was not common where I went to high school, but it does not matter because at the end of the day we are all human. People can and deserve to decide how they want to present and think of themselves, and people should always support that. However, I am a strong believer that the student should figure things out themselves. Of course there should be guidance with important figures, but the big shots need to be made by the student themselves because it is their life that is being effected. I do not believe that there should be a push to actively need these kinds of students in the classroom just to be socially viewed as "accepting". It should be a student's decision on their own, and teachers and school systems should only present the acceptance and awareness to the students for them to figure out on their own.

Hyperlink: Teachers play a key role in helping students feel they 'belong' at school (theconversation.com)

7th Blog

 Thomas Hehir's Eliminating Ableism in Education

    The basis of Thomas Hehir's article is that special education students deserve the same support system, educational experience, and societal treatment that other students have in school systems. It mentions how parents have to get involved with the school system in order to get accommodations put in place for their children to a better chance at success. These systems should already have accommodations or processes in place for these children to better their overall learning experience and social development for their future. The elaborate testing to find out if a child has a disability or finding out they do not meet all the qualifications to be given a medical diagnosis for a disability needs to be assessed and adjusted in order to increase the education and overall wellbeing of these students. I have gone to school with quite a few people who struggled with certain parts of their learning and social skills while knowing that they have some medical symptoms of a disability, but due to them not having all the symptoms they were not diagnosed with one. There needs to be a better way to adapt learning to students who have disabilities and to fix the medical diagnosis of disabilities. 

Hyperlink: Advocates work to protect students with disabilities amid education changes in Iowa (kcrg.com)

    

6th Blog

 Teaching Bilinguals and Richard Rodriguez's Aria

    In the three videos about teaching bilingual students, the teachers and students both make an effort in teaching each other and building upon the knowledge obtained by bilingual students. Unfortunately for author Richard Rodriguez, he had difficulty being brought into the American school system with Spanish as his second language. He discusses how he considered it a "private language" due to him needing to know English and be taught in English. He also said that his peers could have picked up on Spanish faster if they had started earlier due to the wealth and sources given to the school system they were in. Rodriguez also felt like English was intimidating due to its unfamiliarity and wanted more people to be taught Spanish so that he felt more comfortable. These two pieces of information depict two sides of the story: one being the newer progressive way of teaching bilinguals and supporting their culture and improving their capabilities, and the second being the "Americanization" of people so that it is easier for control over a classroom with lesser regards toward the students. 

1. How teachers can work better with bilingual students (uwm.edu)

In this article it talks about a Puerto Rican immigrant who was able to get better support through a bilingual teacher she had in the fifth grade. The article discusses more need in this area of teaching, for it vastly improves the potential and understandings of students who struggle with a language barrier. 

2. US education secretary stops at Webb Middle School to tout bilingual education (msn.com)

In this article, it discusses how the US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona visited a school system and discussed to faculty and students how important bilingual education is, with most of those students being bilingual learners themselves.

To summarize above, bilingual education is an important piece developing in the art of education that will further produce more capable minds by unlocking more potential. By making these students more comfortable as well as having english students learn another language, the intelligence and understanding capabilities of these students would be unmatched. 

5th Blog

Patrick Finn's Literacy with an Attitude

Overview: Patrick Finn's work in this article describes the idea that working class people get a better education due to it being domesticated. The domestication of the education brings students to being able to read and understand at a basic and "passable" level. However, being in the upper class of society provides better education systems, including better reading and understanding levels that develop much more intelligent students that bring out their potential. Finn also discusses his experiences with working with students in the working class level, and brings a personal insight and how he has developed due to the students teaching him.

FNED BLOG- Megan Falls: Blog Post #5: Literacy with an Attitude by Patrick...:     Literacy with an Attitude by author Patrick J. Finn puts forth the idea that working class people receive domesticating education in sc...

Extended Comments:  

 

    When reading Megan's blog on Patrick Finn, she uses quotes that describe her points well, with an example being when Finn was teaching in Chicago. She uses a quote discussing how teachers try too hard to be the dominant figure in the classroom rather than the supportive, respected figure that is suppose to show them the right path. In addition to this, she transitions into Lisa Delpit who has a similar quote to relate to how the students also have powerful, useful knowledge that needs to be taught. She further adds that working class students have good knowledge on individual and cultural background, which are both absolutely true. Megan also adds that the information these students have are useful to removing barriers in the classroom setting.

    In her second paragraph, Megan mentions how middle and upper class school systems have curriculums and procedures, which allows for more freedom for both the teachers and the students. However, Megan claims that in working class school systems, teachers and students do not have the freedom to improvise. There is also not a lot of creativity, room for error, and stricter, less understanding teachers. 

Thoughts: When reading Megan's work after Finn's, I agree with the analysis Megan has on the article. There are important differences school systems that have different economic and societal class systems that vary the excellence in the education those students are being provided.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/21/english-class-system-shaped-in-schools

Video Analysis Links

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11-_u2vykdmeGQVRmtAS_82sk8WCqk2dFt6dfMsRKEB0/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SD8_Z6JqKjjCYw2RQU3AOaR7pAdQlsJYrOmtlL9frBI/edit?usp=sharing

Classroom tour on hard copy