Empowering Education by Ira Shor

In the article, Empowering Education, I feel there was one item that keeps came up Money. But we have the right to a free Education. Well, the free education come by the price of how much the town how to put into the education system.
This article I compared to my service learning project and the school that my children go to. In my service learning project the school ran out of money to have art and music be part of the children's education. These two area are not something that school has to have, it is extra. The town also doesn't has a lot of programs for students to do after school every day. There is one sport program, which is through a grant the school and a  21century grant through the federal government. This program makes it so children can bring dinner home. Many of the children depend on getting there meals through the schools food programs. Many towns start cutting them school budget before looking at anything else.

The school has a PTA group and do have parent volunteers but they are not able to create the amount of founds from a small town to start and most of the people are living in poverty. When the school does a fundraiser they do it in other towns to help get founds for their children's school. The PTA did a fundraiser in Barns and Noble in Smithfield. This brings in more money then doing a fundraiser in their own town.

At my children's school the PTA does a lot events right at the school and sends home a lot of flyers to buy items for their school. They also have double the amount of parent that are full time with the PTA. The schools PTA has a lot more people keeping up on the webpage for the PTA from Facebook page and the webpage to help advertise events to people in the community. The PTA just purchased a new science program and a new math program last year.  The school was not able to buy a lot of the new programs so the different PTA groups work on different project from educational fieldtrips, to new playground to new educational programs. Educational program should not so much money for schools to buy. The programs should be created by the government to pay for them. Programs shouldn't not be made for only schools with money to buy.

TRULEY WRONG

One other topic was to make sure children asking about their own education and question what they are doing in school. Educate the children to have a voice, it is their educate and they should get the best one they can. It should not be baste off of how much money a the towns people have to give.

People need to invest into the children that one day will run this country.

Citizenship in Schools

Having children be part of a community, not part of a system.

In the article call Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome by Kliewer I was see how it was related on SCWAAP and the article by Oakes.

SCWAAP plays a part in this article by people having Able Body. If a student is different in the littlest way they are thought as not being able to be part of that classroom community. A children should not be seen with what they can't do but what they are able to learn to do.  People have an image in their head of having a classroom with able body children and giving them worksheet to complete to show how you have taught them. It should be more of a picture of  a diverse classroom with every child being different and bringing something special to their classroom community.  In the article the teacher proved that having children of all ability's in the classroom create a community of learning for everyone to take part in. When we label children with a disability and teach them outside of the classroom, it doesn't help students in the classroom or the students with disabilities but we still do it. The same goes with how we separates children into different districts by where children live. We have proven that it does work but we still do it. When every child finishes school they will be working with all different people from all different backgrounds. Working as a community is what is going to change the world and going to create better leaders to lead the next generations.

Looking outside the box to teach children of all different backgrounds should not just be done by a worksheet like Oakes pointed out about the different working class groups. Just because a student have a disability doesn't make it so we turndown what they are learning but need to look at how we are teaching them. Teaching the students in one room as a citizens in the community helps them learn from each other and helps other students become leaders in their class.

Teachers that look at their  students as citizens create  great relationship with each other and see how each one has their own identify in the classroom.

Literacy- Finn

I was reading Austin blog and I really liked the quotes he used. He connect the quote to different reads and how Johnston would agree with what was happening in the schools

"The status quo is the status quo because people who have the power to make change are comfortable with the way things are". (Finn XI)

In this picture you are able to see the students were able to do a hands on project with their classmates. The teacher helped the students brainstorm ideas but they have to create different ways to go faster to win the race. The teacher was able to get the items for this class by a grant because the school was unable to buy the supplies.

I feel this quote is so true because many people don't really see how different each school is when it comes to education. Many people believe that students that live in a low income areas are just not that smart and the parents don't care. This is not true at all. Students that might leave in a low income area might only have one income house holds or a parent that has to work a lot. Peoples will try everything they can for their child but are unable to give extra money to the PTA groups for fundraised help because they are working so hard to put food on the table.

When people say a name of a town they already have an "image" of what kind of town it is. Like, When I say the town name Central Falls, RI. People think of only negative ideas but it has positives to the town, too. But to find these great items in the town you need to take a deeper look and learn how the town was decided. This is a clock tower that is in a great park for children and their families. This clock tower is on the hill

and you look up and it is breath taking. Just like this clock tower, there are great student that are in the Central Fall Schools. Some believe that the students don't have anything to give back to the community and they score low because the students don't care. Well, it is our job to teach them the rules and codes of power so they can be successful through life and at the same time learn from them about who they take in information best. Give some of the student’s power in how they learn and learn from them. Teacher should never look down at their students. They should learn how to connect to them because they are the next generation to lead this country. If we give up on student because we think we know everything about them, than what are we really teaching them? 

People with power need to stop and take a look of how we can help them. One step that Rhode Island College has done to help student's is showing them that they can go to college. The program is called Innovation Lab. The college helps with money and the families on the journey of going to college and staying in college. It is a little step to help others get a higher education in a low income area. It is nice to see Rhode Island College has not turned their head on educating for every student no matter what their income background is. They have stepped up to the plate and shown that every student should get a good education and helped shown they can go to college if they really want to.

Connecting everything

"Miss"

At first I didn't know why they didn't understand call me by my name. I wanted to look to see what the children called the other teacher and they didn't call their other teachers either "miss" or "mr". This was the first time I had heard children call teachers not by their name. Delpit

"Who do you think you are, Oreo?"

The first time I was called a name like this I didn't know how to respond. I learned that I needed to know how to respond to the students and learn to get to know them. I needed to know where these kids where coming from when they called me this and why they didn't want a white woman coming into their life. I can see where they are coming from, who was I and why did I want to help them.

When talking to one of the students they were telling me how they had to talk care of their 11 siblings before they go off to school because their mother had to go to work. That really made me think of what the students had to do before they every got to school. They had a lot more stress from what was going on in their everyday lives.