Young Black & Gifted

Race, power, discrimination, oppression and the role they play in student access to education has always been an interest of mine.  With this course, I was excited for the opportunity to dive into critical theory. I knew that the assignments in this class would enhance my understanding of the systems and structures that cause power, discrimination and oppression to occur.  When asked to pick a theory to focus on, my mind went right to a theory that I wanted to explore and is one of the reason I took this course; critical race theory.  I have to admit I have not done any reading on critical race theory despite the fact that own the book, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction for which I am using for this assignment. (Hey don’t judge me, I bought it so it could be a summer read and look it is!).  Critical race theory is a theory used by many researchers when examining the disparities amongst marginalized and oppressed groups.  As exp...

As I move through my summer writing journey, it is important for me to read different types of writings from different authors who will stretch my understanding of writing and expand my intellectual understanding of issues.  Recently, I read an article by Cindi Katz (r ead article here ). Her writing style is very interesting.  The type of interesting, when you can’t think of a good word to describe something and your parents have always told you “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” but you are forced to say something. You know...that kind of interesting.  To say the least, personally I did not like her writing style. I found Katz’s article to be very confusing and hard to read at time.  By her writing, you can tell that Katz is very intelligent, thoughtful and is able to think outside of the box.  In this article, she used the concept of children as spectacles and waste as a metaphor and an actual concep...

This summer I find myself on a writing journey. A few of my pervious posts have been about writing, discovering my writing process and the best way to tackle writing long term projects.  For this post, I will examine Kathleen Nolan’s style of writing and how she uses critical theory and social justice in her writing.  This week, I read two documents by Nolan, who uses critical theory as the foundation of her work. Instead of identifying the theories she uses as a framework for her research, she weaves critical theory throughout in her writing.  As I explained in my pervious post, Nolan uses two main theories reproduction theory and theory of punishment to inform her research.  While conducting an ethnographic study in a low income urban public school in New York, Nolan, explains, in the purpose and goals section of her proposal, that she would like to examine 1. why urban schools are not getting resources they need, 2. how policy makers can be...

Okay so it’s been a week since my last post.  A lot has happened in the world and I have read a lot.  So let’s talk about how the things that I have read connect to what is happening in the world. This year has been filled with a number of school shootings and students protesting the accessibility of guns.  The latest shooting was in Texas at Sante Fe High School. With a large number of school shoots across the country this year, many schools have decided to have armed police officers and/or administration in their schools to help protect the students if there is an active shooter.  I found this to be a very interesting concept, police officers in the school.  Why do we need that?  Is the mental health of students so bad we need to combat it with police officers rather than adding mental health resources to the school?  What role does the  parents play in this active shooter phenomenon?  ...

Trying Something New I am trying several of the new tip and techniques I learned from the Zerubavel's book.  We were asked to write a power paragraph.  So for my power paragraph, I formatted it in an attempt to write an abstract!  Lets see how I did. For decades, student activism has been a major part of college campuses. Students have used their voices to draw attention to many social and political issues happening in their community and nationwide. Student activism is one of the leading influences for student engagement. As students become integrated into their college communities by interacting in challenging social situations with others, they begin to question and challenging the social norms of the university. However, students who identify as first-generation and/or marginalized enter into the college environment at a disadvantage and often do not engage in social activities. Participation in student activism activities can affect the engagement levels and ...

Dear Future Self, I read a book today by Eviatar Zerubavel called, The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books that will be helpful as you begin to write your dissertation or begin a career in writing. In the book, Zerubavel discussed developing writing habits what will help you complete your writing. He suggested several things to consider while developing writing habits for a large project like a dissertation.  He explains that it is best to be disciplined with your writing schedule, honest with yourself about your best writing time and what you require to write and structured so that your writing sessions are productive. Which means you need to plan effectively, organize your time and writing, and work towards deadlines.    While reading this book, I began to reflect on my own writing habits or lack thereof. I realized there is so much I don’t know about my writing habits that I need to begin to observe as I prepa...