Post 6

The Banking Concept by Paulo Freire is an essay on the way things are taught in today's society and the problem with that.

On page 111 of Educational Foundations Freire talks about a conversation with a peasant that went as follows: ""Now I see that without man there is no world." When the educator responded: "let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the men on earth were to die, but that the earth remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars...wouldn't all this be a world." "oh no," the peasant replied. "There would be no one to say. 'This is a world.'""

This reminded me of a quote from the philosopher Descartes, "I think therefore I am." This is important because it tells us that the only thing we can truly know is that we exist because we are thinking. We perceive the world, call it a world, and all the things in the world by name too. Without us thinking this they would not exist in the capacity that we think of them. They would not have the name we gave them. If we were to discover a new creature, and call it a gobbler, it is only a gobbler from that moment on. Before that it wasn't a gobbler because it didn't exist in our minds before then and therefore there was not such a thing as a gobbler. In this way, without us identifying the world to be the world, it wouldn't be a world.

Throughout the whole essay the words 'oppressed' and 'oppressors' are used frequently. This is extremely harsh language, but makes a huge impact on the reader of the essay. He makes a specifically harsh distinction because it allows us to see how bad the Banking method actually is. However, I got slightly confused about who in particular were the oppressors. This is because the oppressed were obviously those being taught, but sometimes it was also the teachers themselves. Which makes me wonder when we know who is the oppressed teacher and who is an oppressing teacher. My thoughts are that it's probably the oppressed teacher is unaware of the way in which they are teaching and is not aware of another style, the oppressive teacher is the one that recognizes another way but makes a conscious decision to use the Banking Method instead.

Field Post 2 - Beachwood Middle School

On the 13th February 2014 we went to Beachwood Middle School, it is a particularly small middle school with a lot of diversity, it is also very wealthy. I went to do different classes, the first was Chinese, the second, English.
In Chinese they started by having 5 minutes to study before doing a short test on vocabulary. Just before giving the test, the teacher went through spellings, calling on students for the answers. After the test they learnt to count from 1 to 10, and their homework was explained to them. This is what I observed and interpreted during the lesson:

Observation	Interpretation
Each child has Apple laptop given by school	Rich school, many resources, so good environment
Chinese themed room	Immersive environment
Personal teacher pupil relationship	Allows teaching to be personal and more adventurous
A-not good for one, amazing for another	Individual teaching, more personal
Need “Good penmanship”	Accuracy is important, teaching an art as well as a language
Use workbooks	Organized, pre-planned lesson
Matching pictures, reciting and writing out to learn new material	Many different ways to make it more interesting

Before the class started I spoke to the teacher about what she thought about teaching and she said, "I love my job, but only in this district, nowhere else." This is interesting, because it shows that where you work as a teacher affects your experience as a teacher, but also how well you can teach.

The students started by looking up their own word of the day from reading that they were doing in English. They then worked through grammar rules with the teacher, finally moving on to a conflicts paper. This is my T table for this class:

Observation	Interpretation
Teachers desk at the back	Not important
Colourful boards around the room and Word of the day board (“Absurd to Pedagogy”)	Interesting and challenging, some words on the board I didn’t know, worrying for me…
New student asked to read and teacher questioned to work out where she was in the syllabus	Trying to integrate new people
Do work then go through in class	Methodological
Some desperately want to answer, some just don’t talk (then get called on)	Genuinely interested, or teacher wants them to be engaged

I preferred to watch the Chinese lesson because I felt it was more engaging than the English lesson that seemed to mainly work through a blue packet and wasn't as individualistic.

Post 5

The difference between my high school British experience and my American University experience with LGBT people and it's Implications on my thinking.

This week we have been talking about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender individuals in the educational arena. The conversations we have been having made me wonder how different my experience in the UK is to my experience in the USA. It is more similar in some ways but different in many others.

My high school was a private boarding school in a small rural town in Somerset. There were only two gay people in my school, that I knew of, and both were students. It was a very ignored subject in school around those two people, but many jokes were made. Being gay or lesbian was definitely made fun of, and the idea that someone might be homosexual was highlighted, anyone who had this was picked on a little for it. People also gave a wide birth to those which our school society deemed possibly homosexual. The idea of bisexuals and transgender people baffled most in the community, no jokes were made or comments because nobody really knew about it. We didn't have any information on them and nobody seemed sure about how to deal with anyone like this.

In the UK as a whole being homosexual is fairly accepted, not completely, but most people are fine with it. But, like at my school, many people in the UK don't really know how to approach Bisexuals and Transgender, because it is not commonly known. I do not know why this is but it does seem to be the case.

Here at John Carroll University, it seems that homosexuals have less jokes made of them than at my high school, I'm aware that there are still some, but fewer. The biggest contrast to here and the UK is the reaction to bisexual and transgender individuals, it is mainly accepted here and people seem to be more informed about them. I believe this is a good thing, because it is important to be informed to know how to react to different people's situations. I find this is the case throughout the USA, or at least in this area of the USA.

This leads me to an important advancement that I believe should be done throughout all educational institutions in all countries: to educate about being LGBT, what it means and how you should react to it. If it is made to be a perfectly normal thing then no one will tease or react to it. It is different but the difference should eventually be as accepted as women wearing trousers (pants or jeans) in today's society. It was socially unacceptable, but now, nobody looks twice, and that's what we should be working towards for LGBT people. I think this now after learning and working out more things about these individuals, without this I didn't care, I believed it normal to joke about it, and that was fine. I do understand that some may find it wrong to be LGBT, and that is an ok belief to have, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be accepting of those who are LGBT or that you should tease them. It is easy just to not bring the issue up.

Post 4

What is institutional racism? It is a type of racism that is derived from a group and not an individual, institutional racism is racism that comes from an organisation or institution. It makes the racism normal and creates rules in which racism is unavoidable for the individuals in the population. The effect of institutional racism is negative because it allows individuals to learn racist behaviours and causes the victims problems with functioning within the institution.

Institutional racism tends to go unnoticed by most people but if you look at the victims and their stories it becomes clearer. An American young man at my high school wrote and spoke like an American, he was proud of his heritage and enjoyed being able to be American when he came at 14. However, throughout his schooling the teachers would tell him that he spelt and said things wrong, because it wasn't the Queen's English; when he used particularly American phrases he was shunned. By the end of the first year he didn't feel comfortable in his lessons or around school, he spoke rarely and was very synnical of everyone around him. He resented anyone who said anything about what he had said wrong and didn't want to go to lessons that particularly picked up on this. Classmates had learnt that you should correct people if they pronounce or spell things wrong, and picked him up on all his mistakes too. By 16 he hated where he was and everyone around him, all he wanted to do was leave and go back to the USA. He felt lost and alone because everything he identified to had been damaged and had holes picked into them, in essence he couldn't work out how to identify himself in the place where he was without completely rejecting it. So that's what he did, he rejected the institution and set himself on a way of returning to the USA.

This persons story shows how much of an effect institutional racism can have on someone, how just constantly correcting someone can lead to resentment and hatred.

In one class from school I can remember the boys being sat at the front of the class and the girls at the back. The teacher explained the reasoning was that the school wanted him to keep a close eye on the boys as they were most likely to mess around, which is an institutional stereotype; that girls are passive and listen and boys are loud and do not. However, as a result the boys had more attention during lessons because they were closer to the teacher and had to focus because they were at the front which agitated them because they felt less trusted. Girls on the other hand has less attention and listened less, they distracted themselves during classes, talking or texting, because the teacher was more focused on the boys. Therefore they did worse than the boys because they didn't have the attention required to stop them misbehaving. So the negative effect for boys was the resentment for not being trusted, but the negative effect for girls was bad grades because they didn't listen. A seemingly useful stereotype, therefore, caused problems for both parties in the situation and it was because of a rule that the institution made.

Field Post 1 (Mercer Elementary)

On the 30th January we went to Mercer Elementary to have a look around and observe a lesson for half an hour. Mercer is an IB school which is different to many others throughout America and, as such, has different values and ideals. It looks to educate students in critical thinking and not just 'learning for the test', therefore it highlights the importance of learning for learnings sake. This is a picture of what the IB schools Primary Years try to teach/achieve:

When we were walking around the school the walls were very colourful and had much of the childrens work on them. There was also a hallway which was designated as an Art Gallery with pictures done by the children. On some of the walls were core things that the children were taught to think, like learning to be inquisitive. As we were walking around the PA system came on and the morning started with a short burst of announcments and then everyone recited together what the IB schools stood for and what they were trying to achieve today.
I then went into a Kindergarten class where they were learning how to write. This is a table showing my observations and interpretations about the classroom itself:

Observation	Interpretation
Colourful decorations (Letters and numbers, calendar, name board)	Help learning and keep the children interested
Tennis balls on chair and table legs	Protection
Open center space	Room to move and actively learn
Useful materials, art stuff, etc. on shelves and smart board
Toys to one side (blocks, kitchen things, etc)	Somewhere to play but that is not the primary purpose of the room
Group tables of about 6	Teamwork is good
Magazines and books for many reading levels	Encourage to learn through doing
TV set and water fountain

This is a table of my observations and interpretations of the children in the classroom:

Observation	Interpretation
Talkative but not too loud, liked to move	Involved/Engaged with class
Put hands up	Respect teacher
Happy and excitable	Wanted to be there
Write on white boards	Interactive and easily corrected
Excited when right and ask if they are unsure	Want to do well
Disabled child has special help from  personal helper and equipment	All included and extra effort made for those who need it

This is a table of my observations and interpretations of the teacher and helpers:

Observation	Interpretation
Uses a smart board, writes the correct form	Everyone can see and everyone will know
Makes jokes about things	Learning is fun and creates a happy environment
Checks boards after letter/word/sentence is written	No-one is not corrected/allowed to fall behind
Hugs and messes around with children	Personal relationship – like a parent in the classroom
Tells the children they are smart, they have beautiful handwriting and pretends to try to trick them	Positivity allows them to believe they are good at what they are doing (confidence)
If wrong tells the children softly and works with them individually to get it write	Cares for each individual child and wants them to succeed
Uses signs and sounds for each letter	Helps the children to remember them by association
Uses a points system for correct answers	Make it a competition so the children want to win
Letters then words then sentences	Working up to challenge them
Extra helpers for reading	Helps children one to one

This teacher had made the classroom look and feel like somewhere where the children wanted to learn, as described from the book, to teach:in comics. His relationships with the children was also very similar to those described in the book, he was on a journey of discovery with the children and they were very happy to be there with him. This reminded me about the Ray teacher in finding Nemo and the fact that they genuinely did go on a constant field trip and discover things together. His humour helped to engage the children and made them feel excited about learning.