Please notice a new PROCESS WRITING category has been added to our blog table of contents.
Please check out the following websites in particular:
These will be our writing workshop guidelines in working with our sixth grade writing partners.
BARNGA Simulation Game prompted a discussion about culture:
CULTURE DEFINITIONS
"Culture is a mold in which we are all cast, and it controls our daily lives in many unsuspected ways...that part of human nature which we take for granted-the par we dont't think about, since we assume it is universal or regard it as idiosncratic....Culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants" (Hall, 1990, p. 29).
Hall continues "The ultimate reason for such study [ studying other cultures] is to learn more about how one's own system works. The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness-an interst in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference" (Hall, 1990, p. 30).
"Culture is communiction and communication is culture" (Hall, 1990, p. 186).
Hall, E. (1990). The silent language. New York, NY: Doubleday.
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Joseph Abeyta's definition of culture: "A total way of life of a people. The environment in which the people live-their language, their philosophy, their standard of behavior, their beliefs and their aspirations."
Our friends-the Navajos: Papers on Navajo culture and life. (1976). Tsaile, AZ: Navajo Community College.
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"the everchanging values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors that can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion...culture is complex and intricate; it includes content or product (the what of culture), process (how it is created and transformed), and the agents of culture (who is responsible for creating and changing it)....everyone has a culture because all people participate in the wolrld through social and political relationships informed by history as well as by race, ethnicity, language, socila class, gender, sexual orientation, and other circumstances related to identity and experience."
Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes. New York, NY: Teachers College, p. 48.
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Culture is "the dynamic feature of relationships, of how human beings fill the space between themselves and other people. This space can be filled with basic respect, admiration, playfulness, touching; or it can be filled with disregard, suspicion, anxiety, holding back. It virtually is always filled with language and gesture."
Tice, T. (1993). The Education Digest, p. 39.
Please share your reflections about your RED APPLE TRANSIT ride. (How was it viewing from a bus; did you notice things you didn't see before; did you learn anyhting new about Farmington; connections; metaphors; insights?)
WEEKLY SESSION HIGHLIGHTS
Each of us will take turns recording HIGHLIGHTS of weekly class happenings and events. In this way we can remember how we came together, worked together, played together and learned from each other in respectfully diversified ways.
When posting class highlights, please include session date and name of scribe........Thank you, Frances
Please post your reading book list here.
Please post reflections from your PRIME TIME/Library experiences here.
Jan. 30
To exit class today, please share your reflection about an experience which involved your identity, ethnicity, culture, language, discrimination, etc. Please post below.
Thank you............................Frances
My parents immigrated to USA from Ethiopia in Eastern Africa. I'm trying to learn English but it's very confuscating. Bernardo Seraphino Scongeli Cacciatigerbyitstore is my full name. I came from Ethiopia where in my country we speak Italiano. My father is an engineer at the powerful plant. Now that I am in the estados unidos, I have to lern English. No, want to learn prosper English. I am trying to make better English by chatting online. If I say anything to offend you, l'amico, I curse my infernal lack of ability to really expose in Englese what I mean.
Why is this English so difficult fo me? Just like in the commercias, things are said but you can't believe them. It is very confusement to me. For exam:
There's no egg in eggplant. No ham in hamburger. No apple and pine in pineapple which is one of my moste good fruits to eat. English muffins were not invented in England, yes, not even French fries in France.
You know boxing rings are square. Quicksand works slowly. Writers write but fingers don't fing, now do they? Hammers don't ham and grocers don't groce. (Ugh-gross!)
If you have one tooth and two teeth why know one booth and two beeth? One goose = 2 geese. One moose = 2 meese? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarium eat?
I got to get better at speaking English because I'm starting 9th grade and I have to be able to commune so people know what I'm talking about. Do you see what I;m saying? Better yet, so I know what I'm talking about, and I have to be a good student. Maybe I can stay in the states for college if I can get a student visa.
Carino, what is the best way to learn English? I go to movies but they talk with all this slang and f*** this and that.
I am reading a lot of biographies and magazines. I like cars, sports, cooking and training animals. I want to be an animal researcher in my future.
I end with a joke: These two green beans are crossing the road when one is slapped down by a truck. His friend scrapes him up and rushes him to the hospital. After hours of surgery, the doc says that he has some buono notizia and some male news.
The healthy verde bean says "Okay, give me the good news prima." Doctor says, "He's a gonna live."
"So, what's the bad news", the healthy verde bean wanders?
"The bad news is hell be a vegetable for the rest of his life."
L'amica, if you have any ideas to push me, pass them on this way. Outa, you hear? Grazie tante! Bernardo
The following powerpoint was created by UNM-F Masters alumna Stephanie Jaquez. Socratic Seminars was the subject of her practitioner research, Spring 2005. (The powerpoint may take a little longer to upload due to its file size.)
Please share your reactions and reflections about playing BARNGA today. Any metaphors for teaching and learning in the classroom?
Thank you, Frances