#educating esme

[infinityand-a-day]

Okay, if you're studying to become a teacher you MUST read Educating Esme, I have to read it for a class, and I'm halfway through it and I love love this book. Its a must read, specially if you're a first year teacher, since that's what the book is about. 

[algonquinbooks]

The art, science, and struggle of teaching and learning.     

Barnes & Noble is featuring Jay Mathew's Work Hard. Be Nice. and Esme Raji Codell's Educating Esme as Back to School picks.

[commaqueen]

I have no right to indulge in lack of confidence. 

-Educating Esme, by Esme Raji Codell

I love this quote in the context of being a teacher and being a human. Life is too short. For the sake of my students, I have no right to indulge in lack of confidence. 

[learn2teach-teach2learm-blog]

THE END OF EDUCATING ESME!

Thus ends my journey and responses to the book Educating Esme by Esme Raji Codell. Thanks for your reads, thoughts, follows, etc. Now I shall try to find another education book to respond to, or perhaps I will peruse the depths of the internet for things to respond to. Feel free to submit links and such for things you would like to discuss or respond to. I LOVE A GOOD CONVERSATION. The only way I will be a good teacher is by learning and making conversations all the time. Thanks!!! 

[learn2teach-teach2learm-blog]

Esme teaches Sex Ed.

"Birds have eggs, fish have eggs, giraffes have eggs and women have eggs..." I'm not going to lie, when I read this my first instinct was WTF GIRAFFES LAY EGGS?!!

This is a quote from the Sex Ed video shown in Esme's classroom, the one given by the district. It went over how fish reproduce and made the girls feel like they were bound to poop our eggs for a boy to pee on to make a baby. To say the least, the children were confused and asked clarification questions. Subjects such as homosexuality, abortion, and birth control were brought up during this question period and these topics are deliberately not supposed to be discussed according to the school board.... ..Esme said this was difficult for her because she will not say that homosexuality is wrong or unnatural, nor will she say to wait until you're married to have sex, but she prefaced all of her answers with "this is my opinion" and ended them with "You should talk to your family because everyone's values are different" I share the same liberal views that Esme does, and wonder if I will ever come to this crossroads. Sometimes I worry about my liberal values clashing with those of parents and other teachers. Esme also worries about what parents will say if the children mention their talk about homosexuality or abortion, as parents may be upset that she is not teaching the same values they have in the home. This is another example of a teacher as an extension of the family. 

[learn2teach-teach2learm-blog]

Quote response.

Yesterday I posted a quote from my novel Educating Esme about a teacher needing to be everything to a student.

Also, I had a friend over the other day who said that she felt most people that want to be teachers are really people who want to be moms. I have always known that being a mom is something I hold very close and something I know I am meant to be one day but I never thought that my want to be a teacher could be related to that.

It has been for me about working with young adults and being a mother is more about raising a child and I have never had any interest in teaching elementary school for those reasons. I'm not interested in whether or not Jonny can spell an seven letter word by the time he is 8 or recognize all of the dolch words. It's always been about teaching critical thinking skills, adult skills, teaching acceptance and anti-discrimination and the like. These latter things are things I will also teach my child because I believe in them so strongly myself. What do you guys think? Does being a teacher stem from wanting to be a parent?  

[learn2teach-teach2learm-blog]

I'm so exhausted, run down, every day. My whole life is different. When someone asks me 'How was your day?', I never know how to answer. I have thirty-one days every day, a different day with each child. A good day with Ruben, a rough day with Billy ... it's too much. They talk about rewards and gratification in teaching, and there is a share of it, but they don't tell you it's like joining a monastery or going to hell or sleep walking or being afraid, afraid as you were when you were small....They say now in the education classes 'You have to be everything to them: counselor, mother, friend ...'...I don't want to play mama. They need a real mama and they need a real teacher."

Educating Esme

[learn2teach-teach2learm-blog]

Disconnected Discipline and Intracultural stereotyping

B.B. is a rather aggressive student and shares ethnicity with many other students at Esme's inner city Chicago school, African-American. I wrote a post a few days back about mistakenly teaching stereotypes, discrimination and racism through misinformed teaching but what wasn't asked, and came up in reblogs, comments and coincidentally a few chapters later in Educating Esme is intracultural stereotyping.

B.B. called Mme Esme a bitch and a cunt because she broke up a fight he was having in the schoolyard. He was not talked to about his behaviour towards Esme and Mr. Turner seemed to be making excuses for his behaviour. "You don't understand. They're black." and "It's just the way black people are..." are things that actually came out of his mouth. Esme fought for higher expectations, hoping that Mr. Turner would begin treating these students as students and not as "black kids".

Esme fought against Mr. Turner's blanket statement by saying that "kids meet your expectations, good or bad" and the only thing that resulted was that B.B got suspended and Esme felt guilty. She asks "Why don't I feel like I won this one?" Well Esme, you don't feel like you have won because Mr. Turner didn't change and suddenly expect more from the students, he just gave consequences to one student to shut you up. Now B.B. has to stay at home, where he is also unhappy and is unable to come to school, even if he wanted to that day. In a way, Mr Turner is heeding your request, by holding B.B. accountable for his actions, as any other non-black student would have to do, but nothing changed in his mind.  Disconnected discipline disciplines the action but does not fix the issue. The issue may be that nobody believes that these kids can do good because of their ethnicity but keeping B.B. away from school is not going to teach him that you believe in him or change the fact that Mr. Turner may not.

Mr Turner also brings up the issue of stereotyping WITHIN a culture.

Stereotyping within cultures is another large issues, it really isn't other cultures stereotyping each other anymore. Some people are ignorant enough to believe that they represent the normal life for all people of their ethnicity. What makes it worse is that there are very strong similarities and people feel these few bulls-eye interpretations mean they have a person's entire existence pegged. Unfortunately, this just makes the question posed in last stereotypes post more crucial -- how do you trust any ONE person's story as a representation for a culture? You cannot. You cannot even trust many people's stories. You can only make vague generalizations if all of your stories share a similar trait --- this trait becomes a stereotype. 

It is a vicious vicious cycle and a very frustrating one as well. I am a caucasian woman, who is a wannabe educator and an advocate for social justice and social equality for all races, ethnicities, sexualities, genders etc and it frustrates me to think that by trying to teach social justice I could be contributing to it through this very vicious cycle.