Aria

For my second blog post, I chose Aria by Richard Rodriguez. I thought the reading was very easy to understand. I did not agree with most of the story though. I think that when students are bilingual it is very postive and no one should take their home language away from them. While I was reading I kept thinking why can't Richard teach his classmates some words in Spanish and the classmates can help him with his English, this way communicating will become easier and it this would be a great way for him to make new friends. I also think that students should learn a second language at a young age because then it wouldn't be so different to them when they reached middle or high school.

1. "The odd truth is that my first-grade classmates could have ecome bilingual, in the conventional sense of that word, more easily than I. Had they been taught (as upper-middle-class children are often taught early) a second language like Spanish or French, they could have regarded it simply as that: another public language." This quote is bascially saying what I said earlier that if the teacher let Richard show his classmates his culture and his language then his classmates would have learned something new. Also if students start to learn a foreign lanuage at a young age, it would become a language that they get used to and will get to know more about how to speak the language.

2. "But the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then. Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates." I disagree with the parents making Richard only speak English when he was at home, even though the Nunes came to the house and asked the parents to do that. I think that maybe they could have practiced English at home but I think that its important to keep the home language at home because that is something that keeps the family together.

3. "Hearing Spanish then, I continued to be a careful, if sad, listener to sounds. Hearing a Spanish-speaking family walking behind me, I turned to look. I smiled for an instant, before my glance found the Hispanic looking faces of strangers in the crowd going by." This quote made me feel sad for the boy because I think its horrible that when he heard others speaking Spanish he got sad because he missed speaking the language and he missed the family closeness.

Talking Point # 1!

For my first talking point, I chose White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh. While reading this piece, it reminded me a lot like the reading from Johnson about the Privilege, Power and Difference. Both of the authors had some of the same views on privilege, in that the privileged ones get something out of it and the others get hurt by it. I think that this reading was very easy to understand and this reading along with the other readings make me realize how many things I have taken for granted in my life.

"For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex" This quote reminded me much of reading Johnson. Many people think of the word privilege as a good thing but for some that isn't always the case.

"Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity." I had to read this quote over a few times for it to sink in but then I realized that it meant that many white people think that if they aren't racist against it doesn't have to do with them, but if you flip the table blacks could think the same way.

"One factor seems clear about all of the interlocking oppressions. They take both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see." This quote was a bit confusing to me. I get the active forms, but I'm not quite sure about the embedded forms...

Tuesday September 8, 2009

Hi Everyone! My name is Kristyn Proctor and I am currently taking FNED 346. My semester is going great so far and I think its going to be a very successful semester. I am very excited to be in the classroom this semester and help out the students. When I am not in class I am usually out having fun with friends. If I'm not doing that I am working at CVS, babysitting or doing anything random that comes up. That's about it! See ya in class