Ira

Ira is talking about being a good teacher. She claims it is easy to be a bad teacher; anybody can go up their, read directly out of a book and then tell the kids to go do some kind of ridiculous paper that has nothing to do with the subject they were just talking about. It is difficult to be a good teacher because getting kids to think is not easy. Getting students to brainstorm, and critical think is not a easy challenge to accomplish. Certain kids struggle with those kinds of things, and a good teacher would know what to say or what to do to make sure every student is successful. A good teacher tries to get the most they can out of a student. Meaning they ask questions and when a student gives a answer they want more and try to get as much knowledge out of their students as possible.
As a future teacher, I would like to use that method. Every class I had that was just an open discussion about certain writers always make me feel better about myself. It makes me feel more intelligent and knowledgeable I have to think more and try to put together facts which is not easy. I feel like a class like that was just a lot of fun to be in also. The atmosphere is a lot more relaxed. All those reasons are why I would like to run my class like that.

Tim Wise

I have to say I agree with Tim Wise a lot. I thought the way he broke down racism was spot on. The first Racism was pretty straight forward, "whites are better than blacks". When I see racism it is usually this kind. I think this one is really portrayed with older folks. For example in the movie Gran Torino, we see Clint Eastwood's character always watching the Asian kids across the street. He always just assumed they were up to no good just because they dressed like "gansters". Eventually they did break into his garage, and he was right, but still he was thinking they were doing bad things before he even caught them doing anything bad.
The second kind of racism he talks about is enlightened exceptional-ism. This kind would be a African-American trying to be like a white man. He might talk like one, act like one, he might live like one, dress like one, but he will still never be one. I guess a example of a person like this would be anybody in politics.

On a side note I think both these concepts or ideas are completely stupid. Racism should be over and everybody should stop judging everybody else.

Unlearning the myths that bind us

I thought this reading was really interesting. Growing up, I never really thought about any of this. I always just saw the cartoon as a cartoon. I never sat down and realized the message some of these cartoon movies are sending out. After reading this piece I felt like my Disney childhood was completely flipped upside down. 
One of my all time favorite movies is Shrek. Right when I read this, I actually realized the message Shrek was sending.... if your not a princess, then you are a ugly ogre. Which is a terrible message to send out. You do not want little girls or boys if their not a prince or princess their nothing. Everybody should be told when their young that everybody is equal. Nobody is better than anybody else.

I actually am glad we go to read something like this because I found it very interesting that a "innocent" company like Disney would portray a bad image for little kids. Everything they say or do seems to be so perfect and nice. I just could not believe Disney could send a message like that.

Oakes

Most of this article kind of came off as jibberish to me. It just seemed like this lady kept on talking and talking about uninteresting stuff. I didn't really like the article but one thing she talked about that I can kind of relate to was when she discussed some of the uneven oppurtunties in the class room. I never realized this as it ws  happening, but all through high school I was always in the lower point level kids. And when Oakes said low-abaililty classes, the teacher spends more time disciplining then teaching the students, and in the higer level classes, the kids seem to be well behaved, so they get taught more. I have to say I toatlly agree with that statement. It seemed like every class  I had, their was somebody getting yelled at for acting up, or talking in class, or making some kind of rutcus, but in the other classes the kids were better behaved and could control themselves easier, so they turned out to learn more in class.

I alwyas thought that the students in the higher level classes were always just smarter than me, but this just made me realize that they had more of a oppurtuinty to learn, while I was getting discplined and had some of my education taken away from me

Convention

I thought the convention was kind of cool. I really liked the fact our class stuck together pretty much the whole time. I really got to know my classmates better an I talked to some kids I do not talk to in class, it was pretty cool.
For my work shop I went to the GLBT and i thought it was awesome. They played this awesome video that was only intended to be 10 minutes long and ended up being a hour! it was a presentation from URI students that are members of the GLBT club at URI. They created a video and interviewed a bunch of people some were gay, straight, lesbian, transgendered and bisexual and they just shared their stories. Most of the stories were about people trying to come out and all the challenges they had to face in their life. Other stoires were about people who supported somebody they loved that came out.
All the stories were really awesome and all of them made me realize the difficulty and the challenge it is to stand up and say your gay. It really inspired me to really stand up for what yourself and everything you believe in.