Working Children

I have decided I sound like a horrible person in this blogging world, but here I go again. Why are children abused if they have to work with their families? I had to work on the family farm as soon as I was tall enough to drive a tractor. That equates to beginning to mow the lawn on a riding mower at the age of seven. The lawn was five acres. I also climbed the plum trees and picked the plums, hoed the garden, picked and shelled veggies. The garden was about three acres. It was used to feed the family and the field hands in the summer. I started cooking for the twenty to thirty people that showed up for work every day during planting and picking seasons around the age of five. I remember helping in the hot houses before I was in school. It was expected because everyone in the family was expected to do their part. The land was actually my aunts, but everyone in our family worked and was supported by the farm in someway or another. If it wasn’t your full time job, your worked the land when you were off. At the beginning of school each year, our teachers asked what was planted this year. This allowed school to know whether we were cutting class or missing school for farm work. Granted our situation is not as bad as the situation in California with the migrant workers. All things considered, the migrant school day program quoted in the article still gives the students close to the same school day in length as home schooled students. The problem with migrant workers does show the need for standardized timelines on teaching curriculums and using the same texts statewide. I guess what really bothered me in all goings on was that this is what is normal for many, not just immigrant children. I can take you seventy miles from MTSU and show you children hauling in water from the “crick” before breakfast and chopping wood for the stove. They are ingenious at making up games and having fun without a television or computer. They may stay up all night and catch chickens for cash. This is really abuse, but no less abuse than that their parents experience doing the same job. They come to school the next day with hands and arms cut from the chicken spurs. They hunt early in the morning before school, but it might be tonight’s dinner. The first full moon after the first frost, many miss school because they have been up all night slaughtering hogs. The meat is supposed to taste better if you do it this particular night. As their teachers, we know to expect the high absentee count on this day, and we respect that they are doing what they have to do to survive.
Our teachers are doing what they must do to survive also. I see my friend Lisa as she runs out the door headed to her second job cleaning a church. Doug leaves for his job at Wal-mart, if it is not his weekend for National Guard. Others have started their own businesses after hours. The consistent theme is that none of us are able to afford to live on what we are making as teachers unless we are married with a spouse who is also working. The teachers in Memphis either have a lower cost of living or we are not doing a good job of managing our funds in our neck of the woods.
Children of Katrina did not make it to our small school. I had friends displaced during the storm. They started over sending their children to the school their children were zoned for in the places they settled. Somehow we missed the fact they could have chosen to send them to the school of their choice. Their children have adjusted to their new situations and are doing fine.
Sesame Street was a great thing when I was a child. I have a strong affection for Muppets. After all, Chrissy Gayle was born three blocks from where Kermit the frog was dreamed up. The maternity ward had murals of Miss Piggy, Kermit and the whole crew lovingly lining the walls waiting to great the new arrivals. The Muppets have become to commercial to suit me. I miss the good ole days. Why do babies have to be constantly having learning shoved down their throat even before they are out of the womb? Can’t they just look up at a mobile and discover things anymore? Can’t we just learn to sing our A, B, C’s and be happy? Take your kid away from the television, go outside, and play. Have a great summer!

Cultural Pluralism

When I first went to answer the questions to this blog, I thought, “What a shallow person I am!” I have few friends that are not like me, but then I looked more closely. I was the rebel trouble making child. I went to a private school. I dated a guy that not only went to public school, but was Catholic to boot. We were Church of Christ at the time. I also regularly slipped off to school dances, because I just didn’t think dancing was wrong. I had friends from all different religions. I grew up not knowing any black children, but I was taught to treat older blacks with respect by my best friend’s parents. Her family had employed members of the same family for generations. Growing up it was worse to sass one of the Brent maids or gardeners than it was to sass Granny Brent. Recently when Eden’s mom died Ida Mae, Ollie, and Melvina’s families were seated with the Brent family because they were more like family than many family members there. The family pays for any member to go to college that wants to go and provides them with a job in the family business if they want one or helps them find one somewhere else if they wish. Most choose to move on to somewhere else. I also remember growing up with people of the Chinese culture that had lived in the south so long they spoke with a southern accent. The culture clashes in our area were between African American and Chinese kids. Other than those that went to my school, I don’t remember them.
I hate to say it, but college didn’t get better. I went to a private college for a while then to a small university near my home town. Cultures still did not mix. I managed to “doom my soul to hell” by marrying a Methodist (I still hear this regularly from my mother.). If possible, I moved into an even less diverse area, Grundy County. I loved my time in this area, but it was different. My time living in Rutherford County has been the most diverse and plural in my life. Apartment living will do that to you. I have watched my children interact with other children and people from other countries and cultures without hesitation. I have met and made friends with people from all walks of life. I still have my moments and outbursts where I think and say things I shouldn’t. The difference is I am immediately ashamed of myself when I do and I only do it when others can’t hear. I have grown over the years and stand up to my mom and tell her she is wrong when she uses hurtful names. I correct her when she uses them in front of my children. I have learned to respect others right to have an opinion that is different from mine. Isn’t that what cultural pluralism boils down to in the end?

multiculturalism

So I harp again on the fact that I grew up in Mississippi when schools were trying to integrate. I had parents who had been taught that blacks were literally biologically different than whites. My mother is still very rude and condescending toward people of other races although she thinks she is now very liberal because she will let a black nurse help her or go to a non-American doctor. She is also seventy nine years old. Her family share cropped land and constantly moved around. She picked her first two hundred pounds of cotton in one day at the age of seven for twenty-five cents. She missed many of her compulsory days of school because she was needed to work to support her nine brothers and sisters. Her family was treated worse than African Americans in many ways because her ancestors were Irish indentured servants who married into the Iroquois Indian Tribe. To add insult to injury her father was in prison. School was not a place she wanted to be. She was made fun of because her clothes can from the church poor box. She did not have a slate or chalk. I think when we focus on history we forget about the groups of "whites" that were not considered good enough or clean until the depression equalized much of society. I think we have presented a one sided view of history and lumped people together by skin color together for so long much of the true cultural struggle for many groups has been lost. Children today have never really known a world where people could not overcome their background. It is hard for older people who fought so hard for so much to watch things change so quickly. As the younger generation takes the reins and leads the nation into new beginnings, we must be patient and remember that many resisting changes remember a time when electricity was not in every home, television and computers did not exist, and business was conducted in cash.

Religion and school

I will start by saying I am a Christian. I believe in our Constitution and do not believe my rights to practice my faith are more important than someone elses right to practice theirs which is what these two articles come down to debating. Last semester I wrote a paper on intellegent design. I found an article that stated in England science teachers are expected to teach on something like sixteen different theories of how the Earth began. Evolution is taught as the only scientific method. The article proposed that teachers do not teach other theories because they do not understand them and are afraid to delve into the religious and cultural ideas behind the ideas. If we are truely going toward reading across the curriculum, why not assign readings on some of these other theories and teach science/social studies/ reading/ language class at the same time and get a good debate going on the merits of some of these theories. This would satisy most of the persons who want creationism, and intellegent design taught because they are not wanting it taught as fact, but merely heard as a viable theory in most cases.
The two articles being presented are different because in the case of teaching creationism or intellegent design, the school acting as Government is being asked to promote an essentialy religious idea that favors one group. The article on the moment of silence and pledge are concerning an individuals right to free speech. In both cases Government was trying to bend the will of someone and force them to submit against their personal beliefs. The one child's religion forbade members to salute or pledge the flag because it was seen as an idol. Government put the child in a no win situation. Unfortunately we still do this many times with how we word the moment of silence announcement that begins our day at schsool.

Makers and Innovators

I have always used John Dewey's quote "Education isn't preparation for life. Education is life." This always seemed so fitting for struggling students who hate coming to school because it is so hard and just doesn't make sense to them. I try to bring grade level material to their level and teach them ideas and concepts while teaching them to read. Some say they are bored (they are really afraid to try) and some are frustrated, But I expect a lot. They are not stupid. They just can't read. We learn a lot by doing. My choice of makers was Bush. Not because I like NCLB. I picked him because I thought he has created the most change in recent history. The change did not start with him, but he gets the credit for signing NCLB. The negative change makers I find are actually Roland H. Good, III and Ruth Kaminski the creators of DIBELS. This test infuriates me to no end every time I give it. It tests how fast can I spit out these words and never stops to wonder if I understand what I read. If I understand what I read but don't read fast, I don't cut it. I become a child labeled at risk for failure and lose my enrichment time to get interventions to make me read fast. The thing that really gripes me is that Good never taught anyone how to read. He joined the national reading panel in 2000, stayed awhile, resigned, returned to the University of Oregon, and sold the American School System a test without ever being trained to teach a child to read. How is this test a valid measure or reading proficiency other than it measures what a group of non-reading teacher, non-elementary teacher, not many with classroom experience at all thought children should know in order to be able to read? Did you figure out I don't like this test or the National Reading Panel???

Why Billie's Bugs?

I teach K-3 reading lab. I had to find some way to get all those little boys interested in reading so they became my bugs. They each have their very own bug they raced for points across a number line throughout the year. When they reached 100points, they became a bigger bug or a different bug. Since I will let them come to my sight and type me notes, it is only fair my blog be called Billie's Bugs. I do not text. I like to talk to people. I do not really like my cell phione. The buttons are too small. My computer is very rude and argues with me all the time. My students think this is very funny. They are very good at making it mind when it refuses to cooperate. Hopefully, I will be able to find a picture and download it onto this fine page I am trying to create. If not, I know four third grade boys who will be happy to assist me tomorrow morning. They are my bugs and I will greatly miss them at the end of this school year.