1. Where/What will you visit? Why did you choose to go there?
The grocery store. Many students probably go shopping with their parents.
City hall and the police station. We want to learn about different event in the city and a little bit about the demographics.
Library. Hopefully the students in our classrooms are spending some time here. There are resources they can use at the library and free events they can take advantage of. We learned a lot about things that students can do. There is a summer reading program that a lot of kids take part in. We also learned about a thing called the Dolly Parton Imagination Library where you can get one free book a month if you have child under the age of 5.
Louie’s Pizza. A well know restaurant around town that we have heard people talking about. We wanted to see what is was like, what kind of food you could order . We were disappointed to find out that Louie’s Pizza is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays so we were unable to go inside or try the pizza. I was surprised that a restaurant would be closed two days out of the week that is not common.
The race track. A well know landmark in Hazel Park. Fundraisers were also held there to fund our trip to Mackinaw. When we went to the race track we got a tour of the entire thing. We were taken into the back areas where they control room was and down by the raceway even though the live season is over. I was surprised how willing they were to show us around and familiarize us with something that we have never experienced before. Knowing about the racetrack and what goes on their because a lot of our students have been there or their parents go there.
Viking arena. This is a place where kids can take part in sports or go hang out with friends and go open skating. I was surprised to see how empty the rink was. We did go at a time where most kids would still be in school. The kids that we did see there may not have been from Hazel Park because they played for Honeybaked travel hockey team; where kids are pulled from all over to play for them.
- All of these are places where our student’s might go.
2. What do you expect to see? Spend some time thinking about common ARCHETYPES and BIASES present in your community.
My expectations of the city are stereotypical of what a low income area would look like. I don’t expect to see BMW in the parking lot or women walking around with Gucci purses.
3. What do you think an "outsider" would see? Does what an outsider might see differ from what you think you will see? If so how? If not why not?
I think an outsider will see the same things that I see. I consider myself an outsider. The community I am teaching in is very different from the one I grew up in. I still think that I have a lot to experience in the city and learn before I can fully consider myself to not be an outsider. But through this experience I have learned so much about what my kids daily lives may look like, places they go and even people they may interact with. Becoming part of the community helped me to understand them more. After this experience I agree with what was said in the Compton article, “Reflecting on my own “aha” and “oh no” moments that I experienced forced me to confront my own assumptions about teaching inner city schools has helped me to constantly monitor my actions, works and thoughts for times when I am biased, insensitive, or judgmental”. Hazel Park may not be an inner city school but it is lower income. I may have had some judgments about parent involvement and the environment the students live in and through this some of them have been eliminated.
4. Florio-Ruane (2010) explains, "The ecological view of literacy asserts that reading, writing, and oral language cannot be separated in their learning and in their use to learn subject matter. They are interrelated because they are all part of communication and are meaningful within social groups, contexts, knowledge and activities" (p. 2). Think about the setting/event you will visit as part of your Inquiry 1 investigation, and jot down some notes about the types of interconnections you are likely to see among reading, writing, oral language and other literacies and how they might contribute to communication in that setting.
There are connects between reading, writing and other literacy’s everywhere. When we were at the hockey rink, if a child is at the concession stand the child is going to need to be able to read the menu, know how to add up the prices of what he or she is purchasing to make sure they have enough money and then must communicate to the worker what they want.
5. Think about the connections you could make between and among contexts such as your school, classroom and the community. Literacy can and is found in all of these contexts, though they are not always as "obvious" as they are in our classrooms.
One way that literacy is found in the community is on all the street signs and store signs. Children don’t realize that when they are going down the street reading the signs that they are actually reading. They don’t view this reading the same as picking up a book and reading. Places in the community can always be used in math problems. Many kids buy candy at the local store, they don’t see this as doing math. However, if they are doing a story problem that has the store name and the candy they frequently buy in it , you have just merge their community and everyday life into math literacy.
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