Alyssa Stuart - FNED 502 Blog

The Statistics  The one thing I regret most in high school is not taking my Spanish class seriously enough. I passed the class by memorizing and not really learning. Now, as a teacher who has come into contact with many students who speak Spanish as well as English, I wish I learned the language, and did not just memorize it. From some quick research it's amazing how little Americans know a second language. Only 25 percent of Americans are multilingual according to this article found on  today.yougov.com . It was also astonishing to see how little students actually take a foreign language which can be seen in the graphic below as well as in this website -  blogs.edweek.org . So, why do so little American's know a second language? It was interesting to read the blog post by the Educational Linguist. I do not think many Americans see the problem with being only monolingual. Most likely, where ever we go we will be able to find someone who speaks English. One of my...

"I think gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe." This is a quote from James Baldwin from "The Last Interview". James Baldwin is a Black gay male who does not use the word gay. He does not associate with it because he sees love as a personal matter, and to classify himself as gay seems impersonal. Love is love and there should not be a label put onto it. After reading the whole interview I found this quote to be particularly interesting, and it made me wonder if this is a common thought for some White gay people. They were born White, and therefore have White Privilege, but is that White Privilege taken away because they are gay? Is this why some gay males are angry about their sexual desires? I do not think being gay takes away from their White Privilege, but it does take away from their Sexual Orientation Privilege. A straight person has privilege because they do not need to worry about ...

While reading Bree Picower's "The unexamined Whiteness of teaching: how White teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies" I became extremely interested in the tools of whiteness. This is an idea that I have never thought of, but yet subconsciously always new was there. I definitely see these tools being used around me, and may have even used them myself at one point in my life not realizing the harm it could have done. It was not until college that I realized how harmful colorblindness is and the tools that go along with it are. It is so easy to say, "I don't see color" or "Color does not matter to me", but as I have come to realize through my education and teaching myself that to say this type of statement is to not acknowledge a part of someone's identity. White people try to combat racism with these tools like, "Stop trying to make me feel guilty", or "just be nice", and even "It's out of my cont...

The hashtag "Black Lives Matter" began as a love letter to black people from Alicia Garza, which I did not know about until I watched this video  How A Hashtag Defined a Movement . It said, "Black people, I love you. I love us. We matter. Our lives matter. Black lives matter." This does not mean only Black Lives Matter, but that Black Lives Matter too. To say all lives matter seems a little silly. Of course all lives matter, but that's not the point. The point is that racism is still in this country. It did not go away when the civil rights movement ended. That was not the solution. Many people want to believe it was, but it wasn't. In the readings this week there was mention of people romanticizing the civil rights movement. We remember what we want to remember and the rest we try to block out. There is a large amount of backlash of the Black Lives Matter movement because of this romanticism of the civil rights movement. There was backlash during the civil ...