Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt

Melvin Dixon gives a little insight of Ida's thoughts (a woman speaking of her niece’s son Junie who recently passed away from AIDs). She has been quilting since a very young age. She plans on making a quilt in memory of Junie. He was a great singer and loved by the church. Ida stitches pieces of Junie's things in his name to remember him by. They plan on sending the quilt to Washington D.C. where a lot of different quilts made by others can be pieced together in memory of those who have also lost babies, mothers, and fathers from AIDs.

What are your thoughts on this poem? What about Ida? What was your first image of her when you started reading? Did it change by the end of the poem?

Still Separate, Still Unequal

Kozol tells us of the fact that even though legal segregation is over segregation in public schools across the county is still rampant. He describes how he visited public schools and the population various schools across the country were mainly Black or Hispanic. For example, Kozol spoke to that one teacher who claims that in her eight years of teaching she had never taught a white child.

Do you think that segregation is common even in College? Even here in NIU most Black students are put into Grant Hall, while a majority of white students are in the rest of the residence buildings. What are your thoughts on this?

Different uses for blogs

Blogs can be used for a variety of purposes, and can engage a variety of readers and participants. Some blogs are kinds of personal journals, where the author posts his or her thoughts on current issues or events - be they personal, social, political, or otherwise - and blog readers add their own thoughts or sympathies. Blogs may also be used to reflect on or discuss current business trends, or developments within a particular field. Still other blogs allow people with similar social or political concerns to connect and exchange ideas. Some blogs might fit within more than one of these basic categories, such as this principal's blog site reflecting on issues relating to education. If you're looking for a blog on a particular topic, you can use Google's blog search, or another blog search tool called Technorati.
The blog is a very flexible tool for people with similar concerns to connect and exchange information and ideas. As with all tools, though, knowledge of how to use it effectively is essential to its usefulness as a tool. And, as with all writing, observation of certain rules is necessary for communication to happen.

The Idea of Greater Entity

Lamott tells us about the effects of religion on the lives of a variety of people of different layers of society. She also describes how she went through various stages of life and developed a fervent belief in God, even though she was very much opposed to religion and Christianity before.
Religion plays a major role in the American society. For example, some people base their view of the world entirely from the religious perspective.

Do you think that a greater entity or entities, such as God or Allah, exist? How do you think religion affects your life, if at all? If it does, do you think it is a positive influence or a negative one? Finally, do you think religion has a place in the modern world or do you think it is a thing of the past?

Immigration

In the story by Martinez, he turned in the immigrants who told him their stories at the border. The immigrants openly gave him their story, but Martinez turned them in, for what he thought was their own good, after listening. Do you think that his actions helped the illegal immigrants or hurt them? If you were in Martinez's shoes, what would you do? Would you physically help the illegal aliens or would you turn them into border patrol. If you did help the immigrants, how would you help them and what would you do to make their lives better? If you turned them in, would you explain your action? Would you feel guilty for breaking the law or turning the immigrants in?

Vocational feelings

After reading the Rose selection how do you feel about vocational students being treated as having special needs? Do you feel that students that have been written off have huge unrealized potential? Rose comments about students "floating on a shallow pond." This seems to indicate that teachers do not know how to engage vocational students minds. School is organized as a hierarchy with a lot of emphasis and effort placed on the upper level classes. Do you think that teachers lack of motivation is partially to blame for vocational students being far behind other students? Will this way of teaching set a person up for a failure in the real world?

Rose

Rose is a young man who was sent to a vocational high school because, his test scores were mixed up with someone Else's. The story shows how he was put into classes with teachers that couldn't control the class to teachers that didn't care. Surrounded by peers with little ambitions to succeed. Finally a teacher realized that his test scores were consistently above average for the students attending the vocational high school. So he was placed into a college prep high school where he met an English teacher who recaptured his interest in reading and writing, After meeting this teacher Rose is able to attend college and become a successful writer.

1. From what we learned from our own experiences and from what we learned from reading about Rose, does the public education system really provide an equal opportunity for everyone to succeed?
2. Do you feel Rose's experience with education can be used to model ,or depict, what goes on in our modern public education system?

Writing for self-expression

Does anyone else here write for self-expression? Sometimes I find writing to be an important and helpful way for me to externalize my thoughts, and make sense of problems or situations that I'm struggling with or that are confusing in some way. Somehow the act of writing and seeing my thoughts on a page (or a screen, as the case may be) helps me organize my thoughts and digest things a little bit. Both of the readings we discussed in class are just that: people writing to make sense of a significant and perhaps confusing situation in their lives. I'm interested to find out if anyone else has tried something similar - be it in a journal or in the margins of school notebooks. It could be as short as a poem (like the one by Morales) or as long as a short story (like the one by Jack). It could even be just rambling on about whatever comes to mind. What works for you?

The Family Myth

Where do you think the "family myth" in American culture comes from? What are some possible sources for the idealized picture we painted together in class (mom and dad, two kids, dog, two-car garage, picket fence, baseball and a home-cooked meal)? In what current situations, contexts, or debates is this ideal picture evoked - for good or for ill?