Haley's Blog

Literacy with an Attitude Educating Working-Class Children In Their Own Self-Interest -Patrick J. Finn Talking Points 1. “First, there is empowering, which leads to powerful literacy, the kind of literacy that leads to positions of power and authority. Second, there is domesticating education, which leads to functional literacy, literacy that makes a person productive and dependable, but not troublesome." I never thought about it like this before. One of the reasons I became a teacher was because I tutored an adult in college because he somehow managed to graduate high school while never learning how to read. I saw how much it impacted his everyday life and how much it held him back. One of the driving forces for me to become a teacher was the responsibility I felt for not letting any student graduate without being able to read. Sure, if you can read you can take your driver’s license test, read nutrition labels, read bills, read a prescription from the doctor, etc. but ...

The Problem We All Live With  Painting by Norman Rockwell  I listened to this podcast for the first time back in 2017, when I was enamored with This American Life and was going back listening to all of the past episodes. The part that struck me the most while I listened to it the first time is the same part that hit me the hardest this time, 2 years later listening to this podcast. After Normany lost its accreditation and integration began in Francis Howell. Francis Howell had no say in the matter and they held a town hall in the gym to discuss what was going on. And Mar’Ria and Nedra describe their experience. Hearing the mom’s voice their concerns and when one woman says, “So I'm hoping that their discipline records come with them, like their health records come with them.” and then you hear the whole room clap in agreement… it made me want to throw up. I couldn’t even describe how angry this made me, and I can barely put it into words now, but I guess I just felt ...

In the excerpt that we read from “Other People’s Children,” Lisa Delpit argues that the appropriate education for poor children and children of color can only be devised in consultation with adults who share their culture and because this is not currently happening, children are not being taught how to function successfully in a white-dominated society and they are suffering because of this. Talking point 1: “Many of the ‘progressive’ educational strategies imposed by liberals upon black and poor children could only be based on a desire to ensure that liberals’ children get sole access to the dwindling pool of American jobs.”  That’s the thing, I don’t feel like I use strategies with the purpose of keeping black and poor children unsuccessful in society. However, I do feel like that is what is the result my teaching is producing. I remember thinking at the end of my first semester things like, ‘did I really teach some of these kids anything??’, ‘did I get any of these kids pre...

Margalynne J. Armstrong and Stephanie M. Wildman, “Colorblindness is the New Racism” Armstrong and Wildman have many arguments. The argument I want to address in this post is their argument if so many educators continue to be colorblind and fail to address the normative role played by whiteness then we will all fail in our efforts to dismantle inequality and discrimination. The authors assert that teachers can develop color insight through four key steps: 1. Considering the context for any discussion about race 2. Examining systems of privilege 3. Unmasking perspectivelessness and white normativeness 4. Combating stereotyping and looking for the “me” in each individual I feel as though there have been many opportunities this year for me to not be colorblind of which I have failed to take advantage. For example, I played a video in class about the human genome project. All of the families that were shown in the video, with diseases like Huntington’s, BRCA mutations, and Tay...

Talking Points: Beginning: “I wanted to say, ‘Can we talk about us?’ But I didn’t, because it felt risky…” I want to talk more about this quote because sometimes I do feel uncomfortable addressing white privilege, because I feel like I am pouring salt in the wounds by talking about all of the ways someone else suffers at the expense of my privilege. How do we make it a productive conversation? Middle: “The existence of privilege doesn’t mean I didn’t do a good job, of course, or that I don’t deserve credit for it. What it does mean is that I’m also getting something that other people are denied, people, people who are like me in every respect except for the gender, race, and sexual orientation categories they belong to.” I wanted to mention this quote because I feel like it assuages/rationalizes some of the white guilt that I try my best not to feel, but sometimes still do feel as a knee jerk reaction. End: “What matters is who other people think we ara, which is to say, the social ca...

My name is Haley DeMartin. I teach biology at Hope High School. I am in the Individualized M Ed. program. In my spare time, I go to Orange Theory, I like to rock climb with Ana, and I like to eat food.