Promising Practices

I attended the Promising Practices workshop for my social justice event. This event was very enlightening and overall enjoyable.

The first workshop I attended was called “Girls Gone Wired.” This was a presentation given by a female coder who owned her own web design studio. It was all about the ways that women could be involved in the technology field, all the ways we are oppressed, and things that we could do to solve the problems. Much of this I was not very aware of, as I myself am not a technically inclined sort of person. I really enjoyed the 3 rules that she had to offer to help make women equal in this specific field because I felt that they could really be applied to any situation or occupation:

1)   HUMANIZE: The point of this rule was to always address people as a whole. Do not address men, or women, or “techies”. Always talk to the group equally, and do not call out specific groups or genders.

2)   EQUALIZE: The object of this rule was to equalize opportunities, but not sheltering women from the truth of the field. The truth is that it is very male dominated. It is unrealistic to tell women that there will always be lots of women around and that women will always be equal to men. But it important to emphasis that there can be some equality, with proactive change.

3)   CREATIVE-IZE: This rule was to help bring more women into the field. To emphasize the creative parts and not just focus on the math or tech sides. There is a much more creative side to web design and coding that lots of people don’t know about. Emphasizing the more creative side will help bring more kinds of people into the technology field.

I found a website online for a program called girlswhocode.com. (http://girlswhocode.com/ )This is a group of girls dedicated to bringing about change in the technology field. The vision of the program is:  “Girls Who Code’s vision is to reach gender parity in computing fields. We believe this is paramount to ensure the economic prosperity of women, families, and communities across the globe, and to equip citizens with the 21st century tools for innovation and social change. We believe that more girls exposed to computer science at a young age will lead to more women working in the technology and engineering fields.” When researching women in technology and coding, there were many websites and programs like these dedicated to bringing change in this industry. I never knew that this was such an issue, but listening to this workshop, and doing my own research, I learned that there is a fast amount of inequality and stereotypical injustice between men and women coders. Websites and programs such as Girls who Code are striving to bring about positive change, while sticking to the 3 main rules described above.

The second workshop that I attended was about Technology in the Early Childhood classroom. This was all about the new and innovative ways to incorporate computers and all sorts of new technology into grades Pre-K-2. I really liked the presenters of this workshop, two teachers from the Barnard school, however I did not really like the presentation itself. To me, it seems like technology is being used too much in the classroom. I agree that it is an important learning tool, and that the world is changing and becoming even more important. However, it seems to be replacing things that I don’t feel should be replaced. Things like reading real books and learning math facts on paper. Almost all of the websites and programs that we were shown had some way for the child to be lazy with the assignment, or to do it quickly without learning. I also felt that the teacher was being replaced by some of the technology, which leaves socialization to a minimum, which I think is a very important part of schooling, especially at such a young age. The Huffington Post said, in an article entitled “The Most Powerful Tool in the Classroom”, “As we progress in this technologically charged world, we face a very important question. What is to become of the role of teachers? Will they become obsolete?”  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-wike-loyola/the-most-powerful-tool-in_b_6012136.html)Although this was not the intention of this workshop, this is what I took away from it. The technological options available to teachers nowadays are taking over. There seems to be very little room for teachers. Although right now using these types of things are only an option and an enhancer, it seems that complete technological takeover in the classroom is on its way very soon.

The last portion of the day was the keynote speaker, Christopher Emdin. Emdin spoke on cultural learning and ways to teach to the students. I really thought that Emdin had a lot of really great messages and was a very engaging speaker. I related the speech to “An Indian Father’s Plea.” In this reading, a father was concerned that his son was being labeled “slow” or “stupid” because of his cultural differences. It was not that his son was not able to learn what the teachers were teaching him, it was the way it was being presented to him. Both the reading and Emdin spoke about the way teachers present information in a “my way is the only way” manner. Both talked about ways that teachers can teach in a culturally correct way, in a way the student will understand and connect with, while still getting across the points that they need to. Emdin spoke about ways to present the information in a way that kids will relate to, but also teaches them how they can later present this information in a scholarly way. Although Emdin spoke about Hip Hop Culture and the reading was about a Native American in a white classroom, the message was very much the same.

I also connected this presentation with Delpit’s article, “The Silenced Dialogue.” In the article, it says that “all of the white respondents, except one, have wished to talk more about the question of skills versus process approaches….All of the nonwhite respondents have spoken passionately on being left out of the dialogue about how best to educate children of color.” The white educators are very set in teaching the way they think students should be taught, rather than really thinking about the approach that their specific students need to learn. Emdin was speaking on Hip Hop culture, and how kids can memorize rap lyrics in a second, but information in a textbook is a whole different story. He is a strong believer that by teaching these kids in a hip hop way, they will learn more effectively in the classroom, and be able to retain and use that real knowledge in their lives, instead of barely remembering it long enough to get through an exam. Emdin also spoke strongly about the culture of power being the white educators, as was also the case in this reading.

I was also reminded of the piece “Hunger of Memory,” by Richard Rodriguez, while Emdin was speaking. In this autobiographical piece, Rodrigues speaks about when his Hispanic culture was stripped from him when his catholic nun teachers visited his house. They insisted that Rodriguez’s parents only speak English in their household so that their children could succeed at school. These educators had no regard for another culture other than that they were teaching. Instead of working together to make it work, and learning from each other, they demanded that Rodriguez, and his entire family, abandon their own cultural identity. This is exactly what Emdin is trying to avoid. He sees a world in which culture of power is gone, and culture and education can combine to produce real learning and knowledge, with more real life application and experience. Emdin wants the education system to work together with different cultures, like hip hop, to create a world where everyone is free to learn in their own style in order to produce the best results. On his website, www.chrisemdin.com, Emdin is quoted “Education should not be a way out of your neighborhood. It should be a tool to improve it.” Christopher Emdin does not think that education is only for the elites, and that it should be a way to get to the elite level and keep things the way they are. He wants culture and education to mix together in a way to better everyone and to improve the world.