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Tuesday, August 27, 2013
October 28... Inquiry-to-Action Groups (requires posting twice)
Post #1: Share something
interesting/disturbing/etc. that your inquiry to this point has uncovered. What
are some new questions that have arisen as a result of this discovery?
Post #2: Respond/react to a classmate's first
post.
My inquiry to action group is the literacy luminaries. Big shout out to Ryan Dallas and Skyler Arrington on making our group happen! They have talked with an advertising major who is making legit posters for our group and the Richmond Public Library who is sponsoring our event. We have nine boxes going out to the other nine branches of public libraries in the area to help collect books to distribute. We are also collecting books from parents, churches, and other organizations. We are holding our event Saturday, November 23 at 10:30 A.M. at the Richmond Public Library on Franklin and 2nd Street. Come out and get some of our books! Oh yeah and Ryan talked to the woman in charge at the library and she is getting our event "Booksgiving" advertised in the Richmond Style magazine and Richmond Mom. Oh yeah it's a big deal! Thanks to my group members who are doing such a great job!
Brittany - it sounds like this is going to be a successful and exciting program! Glad you are taking part and it will be beneficial to a lot of students! - Rae Clune
It is awesome to see the support your group is getting. I think that it will be a great success from what I have read in your post. I can't wait to see how it turns out! - Eric Hopson
Wow it is wonderful that you guys are getting so much publicity! It sounds like you've given a great deal of though to both gathering and distribution! Great job guys. - Elise
Our group is collecting school supplies for Bellevue Elementary. Rob has been talking with the principal and she is open to the idea of accepting our donations. We have chosen a book to read, Toxic Charity, and we are all excited about reading something new and different. We've bounced around some great ideas and are working with some social groups on campus to get the word out about donating to this great cause. Ashton and Jordan also contacted some of professors that we have had and they agreed to get the word out. A lot of us have spoken to teachers and friends for ideas and we're getting excited to see how many items we will be able to donate. We will go to Bellevue as a group at a later date to donate the items. We hope to organize homework packets to send home with children in need. I'm excited to see this all fall into place. - Rae Clune
Wow that's great that you are getting the word out there about your group and its plans. I like the idea of the homework packets! That sounds great! What will be in them? All of the these things your group is doing really sounds like you will be helping out the schools with school supplies!
Pretty cool how you have your designated school and the idea of homework packets for the children who need them, but how will you know which kids need the homework packets and will there be multiple designs for the packets designated to the variations of children in need? Will the donated items be given to the teachers for in-class supplies or in general to all students? Sorry about the questions...I am just generally quite inquisitive, but other than that, I really like your plan...and the name of your book lol
My group is Project Adventure! We are planning on using the lesson plans in the Project Adventure curriculum and coming up with a few sample lesson plans that incorporate the teamwork/community building activities into a core content lesson plan. We will then write an article explaining our project and the same lesson plans we devised and post it on two websites (The VCU Physical Education webpage and RVA Teachers for Social Justice) as a resource for educators. We are all really excited about coming up with creative ways to incorporate Project Adventure's community building activities into a general education core content lesson plan. We definitely believe they can be useful for teachers and/or student teachers to use in the classroom.
I think this will be extremely beneficial to the students. Teamwork skills are essential for schooling as well as in the real world after schooling. I think this will be a successful project!
Ryan D. - That's a really cool idea Sarah. I really like how you guys are planning on sharing the work you guys come up with the Phys Ed. department and the RVATSJ.
I am in the Literacy Luminaries action group! We have been collecting books to distribute to local families at the Richmond Public Library. It will be called "Booksgiving", which is super cute considering we will host the event November 23rd- right around Thanksgiving! We have been collecting books from all over the area and if any of you have some we would love to have them! We have definitely been working on PR for this event (Ryan and Skyler have been in contact with people to get the word out!) I am excited for our event... I think it will be a great success!!
I love the name! It sounds like you guys are doing a lot, and it sounds like you're really prepared. Could you try going to schools and seeing if they have any books they want to contribute?
I think it is great that your group has all these wonderful connections and really seems to have the ball rolling. I really hope your event is a great success but I would take into consideration the date and people being busy with Thanksgiving stuff and maybe going out of town. I would like some advice for the group I am in for having such great connections because I feel we are having a really hard time selling our free services. I am not sure if it is because all the people are really busy around this time of the year, or if no one is interested in what we are trying to do. I have brought up the point to ask what people are looking for and what they would like but we still are having trouble with responses.
I am in the school supplies group. In our book, Toxic Charity, Robert D. Lupton argues that many charities do more harm than good by enabling the poor to stay in poverty by encouraging their reliance on those charities, rather than actually helping them build better lives. He states, “our free food and clothing distribution encourages ever-growing handout lines, diminishing the dignity of the poor while increasing their independency” (p. 4). I understand the concern behind this statement, and the desire to help the poor help themselves, rather than provide them with handouts. But, I wonder, what are we to do about the people who aren’t helped by a supposedly better form of charity that avoids this problem? Should we let them be malnourished? Should we sit back while people, perhaps even in our own country, starve? Perhaps I haven’t read far enough at this point, but I would like to know what Lupton has in mind to replace food and clothing distribution. This is much like our group’s plan to distribute school supplies. Is there a better way to supply children with resources? Lupton talks about giving out microloans, but I have questions about this too. First of all, how is providing loans (with interest) a form of charity? Secondly, how do you go about making sure that people will put the loans to good use. For instance, if you are about to be evicted, and someone hands you money as a loan, would you invest that money into opening a business, or would you use it to stay in your home? In one example, Lupton writes about Nicaraguans using their “meager savings” (p. 13) to help get a well installed. Some of the working poor may not have any savings. What are they to do, then? I get what Lupton is saying, and it is hard to disagree with him on principle, but I have questions about how these supposedly better charities would work in the real world. -Valerie
These are really interesting ideas on charity. I think that's an awesome book for your group to look into and I look forward to hearing about it. I never really looked at charity being an issue before. And its interesting to think about how that relates to what we are trying to do with our IAG--help students. Like are their negative consequences to what we are doing with our work of trying to help students in schools where they don't have any other resources available to them because they are found and are dependents?
I find it interesting that people would advocate against charity in the public school setting but not surprising. I feel the people that are against charitable tendancies in a public school setting have their own interests (their job security) in mind. When those people speak on how charity takes away the supposed public funds they will not receive in the future not true in my opinion), they are forced to examine why they can't be more effective and efficient with the public monies they are already given.
Overall, I feel charity is the cornerstone and benefit of our capitalistic nation and should always be encouraged. If you have people speaking out against charity, I have to pause to ask why and examine deeply their intentions and motivations. If those that feel charity takes away from public education, they need to ask themselves why is public education in such a disarray that they require charity in the first place.
I am in the school supplies group. Over all I am very excited about the project. We have our school and our book now we're working on donations. The problem I'm having is getting people to donate school supplies this late in the year. People are already gearing up for holiday/ winter charity projects such as coats for kids. It's kind of hard to get them to switch gears back to school supplies. - Elise
I'm afraid that this might happen to our group as well. Even though I love books and school supplies, they may not be priority on a lot of people's lists. Hopefully, it will work out! Let's just stay positive.
I have had the same thoughts, Elise. I am worried how my groups event will turn out if we are unable to get the donations necessary. I'm with Skyler, we should try and stay positive though!
I am in the Literary Luminaries group and we have created an event we call "Booksgiving." I love it. We have gotten a lot done so far. We a friend of mine working on an advertisement for the event. I'm pretty excited about it. Ryan gotten RPL on board and has also contacted the local NPR station. We arranged a time with the library to sort the books once the book drive is over and gotten some our professors involved. It's really coming together! The book we chose to read for this project, Literacy as Civil Right, is interesting read. It makes me think, I may not necessarily agree with some of the claims but I'm thinking about the topic of literacy In a different way.
This sounds like a great event! Your group seems to have it all together for this project, way to go! I think that the event is going to be a huge event, and hopefully not just a one time thing!
So cool! Seems like you guys are putting together something pretty awesome! The project outcome will no doubt be a major success and I will definitely try to be there on the 23 of Nov. to support you guys! -Maria
I am with the Project Adventure group. Above Sarah described where our project stands as of now with our work on creating team building and physically active lesson plans into general education classrooms. I have learned a lot from this whole class experience with our Inquiry to Action Groups. I have learned that if you have a passion about something, you have the power to make a difference. I think this is a very important lesson to take away because as we have learned with our discussion about the Ayers book, we all have strong opinions about what we believe schools should be like and what we believe needs more attention. As teachers we are responsible for what goes on inside the classroom but our power does not stop there. In fact that is just the beginning, because there we meet other teachers/educators/faculty/staff/administration etc who have their own ideas as well who we can collaborate with and discuss action. I have also learned that obstacles and challenges are bound to occur as we saw with the group who wanted to learn about students opinions on testing. However, that group did show how despite the obstacles they still had a passion for helping students and were able to still make a huge difference by joining the literacy club. Our group is reading The Challenge to Care in Schools by Nel Noddings and one quote I felt relevant to this discussion is this, “ To listen attentively and to respond as positively as possible are the very hallmarks of caring as I have described it”. I think this quote describes our Inquiry to Action groups. We are listening to what is going on currently with our school systems and we are responding as positively as possible by taking action and getting involved….Let's do this :)
I am in the Literary Luminaries group and I really like the progress our whole team has made so far. When we first started, I was really stressed out since it would require a lot of planning and we were under a pretty limiting time restraint in terms of the semester and having to worry about other classes, but everything seems to be falling in place now. The book we choose to read for our topic, Literacy as a Civil Rights, is a collection of academic essays that use critical theory to analyze how literacy is related to power, privilege,identity, and language and how they construct themselves around race in the US. It's an interesting read that is making me think more critically about the world. One of the chapters talked about how those things relate to gentrification which is something I've only ever thought about at the surface level. It just makes me stop and realize how much we're living in history right now and how our actions will be viewed in 50-100 years depending on what we do now. - Ryan D.
The books seems like a good read. I agree that it is important to place yourself within a historical context. The actions we commit today will have some effect for the future especially in a collective sense.
I am in the "The Great Garden" inquiry to action group. The process has been daunting as our first attempt in assisting the YMCA has been disappointing. Basically, the person in charge of the garden centers at the YMCA have not been responding to my emails even though they were interested in our assistance. Thankfully, our professor was kind enough to suggest someone who would be more accommodating to our proposal. As of now, we have a meeting setup with an individual who is suposively heavily involved in garden [projects throughout the Richmond city school district. The book that is chosen to supplement our action group learning is titled, "Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education_ Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life". Its a text that stresses the importance and long-term benefits of teaching through garden centers in a school setting. The benefits seem to be countless which are described in great detail in the text. So far, I am loving this book although the lexicon and level of grammar utilized within the text makes reading and summarizing the text much more taxing and cumbersome.
Overall, the process has been slow in terms of finding a person/group that desires our group's services. Hopefully, after our meeting tomorrow night, we will have a better understanding on what direction our inquiry-to-action group will take.
I think our meeting went great, especially the points of contact are more open. I think Ms. Hall gave of lots of concepts to think about and really helped us know where to focus at and understand the whole process. I think it is great that she was able to suggest another point of contact that Alan knew and was able to discuss our project with. It was great to discuss our ideas with someone who was as passionate about incorporating curriculum and the more in depth of how the service learning process works. I was watching the news the other night and thought that this was very convenient as well http://wtvr.com/2013/10/30/linwood-holton-white-house/.
Literacy Luminaries - What I have found interesting is how some people down in Newport News who want to donate books do not have books that they are willing to donate, but are donating money for books to be bought for children. It is quite interesting how trusting people are these days. I mean pretty much everyone who knows me down there trusts me, but still, I found donating money instead of going out and buying on sale books to donate is rather odd.
I am in the school supplies group, and we are doing fairly well with our project. Like stated by another group member, we are having some trouble getting donations this late in the school year. Most of the stores cannot donate school supplies, but may be able to provide a discount for the supplies. We are relying heavily on the donations from fellow peers and the VCU community, but are starting to get nervous that people will not donate.
I am in the Great Garden Group, so far the process has been pretty slow where we are waiting on outside sources to respond to our offers to help. We finally got in contact with a teacher at Fairfield Middle that seems to be able to push us in the right direction. Hopefully by the end of this week our group will be able to actually get out and start working on the project. We plan to help whoever needs help to write a grant that will provide monetary assistance to their garden project. The book we chose Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education - Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life" is pretty dense but offers some interesting ways in which to teach schools to promote gardens within their curriculum. Overall, we are just in a process of waiting and hopefully we will have some direction to go in by the end of the week.
I am in The Great Garden group. We have had a slow pace on the part of the Y as it was quite challenging getting through to the right person about the garden. However, as Ryan G. said we do have a meeting proposal that will hopefully get us finally up and going with the project. I really like the book we chose, Learning Gardens and Sustainable Education.., it is a good read and has very practical ideas on how to make gardening work in any school setting. -Maria
I'm part of the Great Garden group. Like Maria said, we're working on meeting with the Y to discuss the grant and see if they're interested. We're all pretty confident about what we can accomplish and we're starting to work on our book presentation now. -Meagan
I am excited that we finally got some feedback from someone for our free services in the garden group. I am excited for our meeting we have set up with Ms. Hall on Tuesday night, so we can get our project rolling. I think our "so we are all the same page" meeting today went well and we were able to discuss our group assignments along with what we think is important to discuss with Mrs. Hall tomorrow. I feel like changing our plan to concentrate on the grant makes our project more focused and a clearer idea to follow. While reviewing the grant and grant making process in our group meeting today I feel we will still be able to incorporate some curriculum ideas and why this project is important to us.
I am in the literacy luminaries group. We have been in contact with quite a few sponsors, as mentioned, and are excited for our event! I feel like our group is on a good track with planning right now, but I am worried about the actual book collection. How will it all play out if we are unable to collect as many books as we would like? I think the idea of donating books to families that are underprivileged is a good idea. However, Kurt brought up a good point in one of our sessions of why is there such a gap in literacy between socioeconomic groups and why are events like this the only way these families gain adequate access to books? I think both of these questions would be interesting to look into during our project.
I think the gap in literacy between socioeconomic groups is a great point to explore and could probably lead to general problems in structures set-up in society. It would be great to know what measures are being taken now to address the literacy gap and what strategies may have at least worked in some neighborhoods or districts to address the literacy gap. I wonder if this could address internet access, library stock and location, type of literature interests, etc. Maybe if certain types of literature or discourse styles were better available in certain areas, families or individuals would be more readily able and willing to gain access to those books or other readings.
My inquiry group is the one who is participating in the collecting of the school supplies for the homework packs, for a school in the Richmond City area. I am very surprised with the lack of donations we have received thus far. I thought people would "jump' on the idea to help out local students when in fact if they don't have something laying around, they simply aren't able or willing to give anything. I am continuously getting the response of oh ill get to it ill get to it, when I have received little to no donations. It is a bit hard to deal with because of the passion from group members and the ideas we had that we jumped right into, and now we are kind of at a stand still because the donations have slowed or even ceased at this point. With a bit more hard work and determination I am hoping we will be able to turn this around, we are a strong, motivated group so hopefully we are able to do so!
The Great Garden Project is pushing forward as we are circling contacts through professors at VCU. We basically returned back to Albert Hill that was mentioned by Dr. Stemhagen in the beginning. Our current plan is to write the grant for Albert Hill to develop their garden and provide curriculum resources for ways to integrate the garden cross-content. One thing that I found to be a strong point as we were looking into locations and implementing garden was that many schools have had gardens installed in the past, but a lot of those schools have let the gardens wither away over a few years since teachers were not using the garden through their curriculum. Many schools (at least in Richmond area) do not have strong support to upkeep their garden for years to come. Ms. Amanda Hall is trying to pool together information for Henrico County and create a central hub to assist with garden projects in Henrico County schools. In our IAG reading, Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education¸I found that other cities have had organizations provide resources and help for all schools within the city or district. This would probably be helpful for Richmond city as well down the road. Hopefully for our IAG project, since we are working with VCU SOE, the garden at Albert Hill will continue to receive support from future practicum students and should be provided with curriculum resources from our group for effective implementation, but this would probably require additional workshops or PD days with the school staff down the road.
My inquiry to action group is the literacy luminaries. Big shout out to Ryan Dallas and Skyler Arrington on making our group happen! They have talked with an advertising major who is making legit posters for our group and the Richmond Public Library who is sponsoring our event. We have nine boxes going out to the other nine branches of public libraries in the area to help collect books to distribute. We are also collecting books from parents, churches, and other organizations. We are holding our event Saturday, November 23 at 10:30 A.M. at the Richmond Public Library on Franklin and 2nd Street. Come out and get some of our books! Oh yeah and Ryan talked to the woman in charge at the library and she is getting our event "Booksgiving" advertised in the Richmond Style magazine and Richmond Mom. Oh yeah it's a big deal! Thanks to my group members who are doing such a great job!
ReplyDeleteBrittany - it sounds like this is going to be a successful and exciting program! Glad you are taking part and it will be beneficial to a lot of students! - Rae Clune
DeleteIt is awesome to see the support your group is getting. I think that it will be a great success from what I have read in your post. I can't wait to see how it turns out! - Eric Hopson
DeleteWow it is wonderful that you guys are getting so much publicity! It sounds like you've given a great deal of though to both gathering and distribution! Great job guys. - Elise
DeleteOur group is collecting school supplies for Bellevue Elementary. Rob has been talking with the principal and she is open to the idea of accepting our donations. We have chosen a book to read, Toxic Charity, and we are all excited about reading something new and different. We've bounced around some great ideas and are working with some social groups on campus to get the word out about donating to this great cause. Ashton and Jordan also contacted some of professors that we have had and they agreed to get the word out. A lot of us have spoken to teachers and friends for ideas and we're getting excited to see how many items we will be able to donate. We will go to Bellevue as a group at a later date to donate the items. We hope to organize homework packets to send home with children in need. I'm excited to see this all fall into place. - Rae Clune
ReplyDeleteWow that's great that you are getting the word out there about your group and its plans. I like the idea of the homework packets! That sounds great! What will be in them? All of the these things your group is doing really sounds like you will be helping out the schools with school supplies!
DeletePretty cool how you have your designated school and the idea of homework packets for the children who need them, but how will you know which kids need the homework packets and will there be multiple designs for the packets designated to the variations of children in need? Will the donated items be given to the teachers for in-class supplies or in general to all students? Sorry about the questions...I am just generally quite inquisitive, but other than that, I really like your plan...and the name of your book lol
DeleteMy group is Project Adventure! We are planning on using the lesson plans in the Project Adventure curriculum and coming up with a few sample lesson plans that incorporate the teamwork/community building activities into a core content lesson plan. We will then write an article explaining our project and the same lesson plans we devised and post it on two websites (The VCU Physical Education webpage and RVA Teachers for Social Justice) as a resource for educators. We are all really excited about coming up with creative ways to incorporate Project Adventure's community building activities into a general education core content lesson plan. We definitely believe they can be useful for teachers and/or student teachers to use in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI think this will be extremely beneficial to the students. Teamwork skills are essential for schooling as well as in the real world after schooling. I think this will be a successful project!
DeleteRyan D. - That's a really cool idea Sarah. I really like how you guys are planning on sharing the work you guys come up with the Phys Ed. department and the RVATSJ.
DeleteI am in the Literacy Luminaries action group! We have been collecting books to distribute to local families at the Richmond Public Library. It will be called "Booksgiving", which is super cute considering we will host the event November 23rd- right around Thanksgiving! We have been collecting books from all over the area and if any of you have some we would love to have them! We have definitely been working on PR for this event (Ryan and Skyler have been in contact with people to get the word out!) I am excited for our event... I think it will be a great success!!
ReplyDeleteI love the name! It sounds like you guys are doing a lot, and it sounds like you're really prepared. Could you try going to schools and seeing if they have any books they want to contribute?
DeleteI think it is great that your group has all these wonderful connections and really seems to have the ball rolling. I really hope your event is a great success but I would take into consideration the date and people being busy with Thanksgiving stuff and maybe going out of town. I would like some advice for the group I am in for having such great connections because I feel we are having a really hard time selling our free services. I am not sure if it is because all the people are really busy around this time of the year, or if no one is interested in what we are trying to do. I have brought up the point to ask what people are looking for and what they would like but we still are having trouble with responses.
DeleteI am in the school supplies group. In our book, Toxic Charity, Robert D. Lupton argues that many charities do more harm than good by enabling the poor to stay in poverty by encouraging their reliance on those charities, rather than actually helping them build better lives. He states, “our free food and clothing distribution encourages ever-growing handout lines, diminishing the dignity of the poor while increasing their independency” (p. 4). I understand the concern behind this statement, and the desire to help the poor help themselves, rather than provide them with handouts. But, I wonder, what are we to do about the people who aren’t helped by a supposedly better form of charity that avoids this problem? Should we let them be malnourished? Should we sit back while people, perhaps even in our own country, starve? Perhaps I haven’t read far enough at this point, but I would like to know what Lupton has in mind to replace food and clothing distribution. This is much like our group’s plan to distribute school supplies. Is there a better way to supply children with resources? Lupton talks about giving out microloans, but I have questions about this too. First of all, how is providing loans (with interest) a form of charity? Secondly, how do you go about making sure that people will put the loans to good use. For instance, if you are about to be evicted, and someone hands you money as a loan, would you invest that money into opening a business, or would you use it to stay in your home? In one example, Lupton writes about Nicaraguans using their “meager savings” (p. 13) to help get a well installed. Some of the working poor may not have any savings. What are they to do, then? I get what Lupton is saying, and it is hard to disagree with him on principle, but I have questions about how these supposedly better charities would work in the real world. -Valerie
ReplyDeleteThese are really interesting ideas on charity. I think that's an awesome book for your group to look into and I look forward to hearing about it. I never really looked at charity being an issue before. And its interesting to think about how that relates to what we are trying to do with our IAG--help students. Like are their negative consequences to what we are doing with our work of trying to help students in schools where they don't have any other resources available to them because they are found and are dependents?
Deletethat suppose to say "young" not "found" sorry
DeleteI find it interesting that people would advocate against charity in the public school setting but not surprising. I feel the people that are against charitable tendancies in a public school setting have their own interests (their job security) in mind. When those people speak on how charity takes away the supposed public funds they will not receive in the future not true in my opinion), they are forced to examine why they can't be more effective and efficient with the public monies they are already given.
DeleteOverall, I feel charity is the cornerstone and benefit of our capitalistic nation and should always be encouraged. If you have people speaking out against charity, I have to pause to ask why and examine deeply their intentions and motivations. If those that feel charity takes away from public education, they need to ask themselves why is public education in such a disarray that they require charity in the first place.
Ryan Goulet
I am in the school supplies group. Over all I am very excited about the project. We have our school and our book now we're working on donations. The problem I'm having is getting people to donate school supplies this late in the year. People are already gearing up for holiday/ winter charity projects such as coats for kids. It's kind of hard to get them to switch gears back to school supplies. - Elise
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid that this might happen to our group as well. Even though I love books and school supplies, they may not be priority on a lot of people's lists. Hopefully, it will work out! Let's just stay positive.
DeleteI have had the same thoughts, Elise. I am worried how my groups event will turn out if we are unable to get the donations necessary. I'm with Skyler, we should try and stay positive though!
DeleteI am in the Literary Luminaries group and we have created an event we call "Booksgiving." I love it. We have gotten a lot done so far. We a friend of mine working on an advertisement for the event. I'm pretty excited about it. Ryan gotten RPL on board and has also contacted the local NPR station. We arranged a time with the library to sort the books once the book drive is over and gotten some our professors involved. It's really coming together! The book we chose to read for this project, Literacy as Civil Right, is interesting read. It makes me think, I may not necessarily agree with some of the claims but I'm thinking about the topic of literacy In a different way.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a great event! Your group seems to have it all together for this project, way to go! I think that the event is going to be a huge event, and hopefully not just a one time thing!
DeleteSo cool! Seems like you guys are putting together something pretty awesome! The project outcome will no doubt be a major success and I will definitely try to be there on the 23 of Nov. to support you guys!
Delete-Maria
I love the NPR idea, I think thats awesome and I feel like it will help your group along in BIG ways!
DeleteI am with the Project Adventure group. Above Sarah described where our project stands as of now with our work on creating team building and physically active lesson plans into general education classrooms. I have learned a lot from this whole class experience with our Inquiry to Action Groups. I have learned that if you have a passion about something, you have the power to make a difference. I think this is a very important lesson to take away because as we have learned with our discussion about the Ayers book, we all have strong opinions about what we believe schools should be like and what we believe needs more attention. As teachers we are responsible for what goes on inside the classroom but our power does not stop there. In fact that is just the beginning, because there we meet other teachers/educators/faculty/staff/administration etc who have their own ideas as well who we can collaborate with and discuss action. I have also learned that obstacles and challenges are bound to occur as we saw with the group who wanted to learn about students opinions on testing. However, that group did show how despite the obstacles they still had a passion for helping students and were able to still make a huge difference by joining the literacy club. Our group is reading The Challenge to Care in Schools by Nel Noddings and one quote I felt relevant to this discussion is this, “ To listen attentively and to respond as positively as possible are the very hallmarks of caring as I have described it”. I think this quote describes our Inquiry to Action groups. We are listening to what is going on currently with our school systems and we are responding as positively as possible by taking action and getting involved….Let's do this :)
ReplyDeleteI am in the Literary Luminaries group and I really like the progress our whole team has made so far. When we first started, I was really stressed out since it would require a lot of planning and we were under a pretty limiting time restraint in terms of the semester and having to worry about other classes, but everything seems to be falling in place now. The book we choose to read for our topic, Literacy as a Civil Rights, is a collection of academic essays that use critical theory to analyze how literacy is related to power, privilege,identity, and language and how they construct themselves around race in the US. It's an interesting read that is making me think more critically about the world. One of the chapters talked about how those things relate to gentrification which is something I've only ever thought about at the surface level. It just makes me stop and realize how much we're living in history right now and how our actions will be viewed in 50-100 years depending on what we do now. - Ryan D.
ReplyDeleteThe books seems like a good read. I agree that it is important to place yourself within a historical context. The actions we commit today will have some effect for the future especially in a collective sense.
DeleteI am in the "The Great Garden" inquiry to action group. The process has been daunting as our first attempt in assisting the YMCA has been disappointing. Basically, the person in charge of the garden centers at the YMCA have not been responding to my emails even though they were interested in our assistance. Thankfully, our professor was kind enough to suggest someone who would be more accommodating to our proposal. As of now, we have a meeting setup with an individual who is suposively heavily involved in garden [projects throughout the Richmond city school district.
ReplyDeleteThe book that is chosen to supplement our action group learning is titled, "Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education_ Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life". Its a text that stresses the importance and long-term benefits of teaching through garden centers in a school setting. The benefits seem to be countless which are described in great detail in the text. So far, I am loving this book although the lexicon and level of grammar utilized within the text makes reading and summarizing the text much more taxing and cumbersome.
Overall, the process has been slow in terms of finding a person/group that desires our group's services. Hopefully, after our meeting tomorrow night, we will have a better understanding on what direction our inquiry-to-action group will take.
Ryan Goulet
I think our meeting went great, especially the points of contact are more open. I think Ms. Hall gave of lots of concepts to think about and really helped us know where to focus at and understand the whole process. I think it is great that she was able to suggest another point of contact that Alan knew and was able to discuss our project with. It was great to discuss our ideas with someone who was as passionate about incorporating curriculum and the more in depth of how the service learning process works. I was watching the news the other night and thought that this was very convenient as well http://wtvr.com/2013/10/30/linwood-holton-white-house/.
DeleteLiteracy Luminaries - What I have found interesting is how some people down in Newport News who want to donate books do not have books that they are willing to donate, but are donating money for books to be bought for children. It is quite interesting how trusting people are these days. I mean pretty much everyone who knows me down there trusts me, but still, I found donating money instead of going out and buying on sale books to donate is rather odd.
ReplyDeleteI am in the school supplies group, and we are doing fairly well with our project. Like stated by another group member, we are having some trouble getting donations this late in the school year. Most of the stores cannot donate school supplies, but may be able to provide a discount for the supplies. We are relying heavily on the donations from fellow peers and the VCU community, but are starting to get nervous that people will not donate.
ReplyDeleteI am in the Great Garden Group, so far the process has been pretty slow where we are waiting on outside sources to respond to our offers to help. We finally got in contact with a teacher at Fairfield Middle that seems to be able to push us in the right direction. Hopefully by the end of this week our group will be able to actually get out and start working on the project. We plan to help whoever needs help to write a grant that will provide monetary assistance to their garden project. The book we chose Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education - Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life" is pretty dense but offers some interesting ways in which to teach schools to promote gardens within their curriculum. Overall, we are just in a process of waiting and hopefully we will have some direction to go in by the end of the week.
ReplyDeleteI am in The Great Garden group. We have had a slow pace on the part of the Y as it was quite challenging getting through to the right person about the garden. However, as Ryan G. said we do have a meeting proposal that will hopefully get us finally up and going with the project. I really like the book we chose, Learning Gardens and Sustainable Education.., it is a good read and has very practical ideas on how to make gardening work in any school setting.
ReplyDelete-Maria
I'm part of the Great Garden group. Like Maria said, we're working on meeting with the Y to discuss the grant and see if they're interested. We're all pretty confident about what we can accomplish and we're starting to work on our book presentation now.
ReplyDelete-Meagan
I am excited that we finally got some feedback from someone for our free services in the garden group. I am excited for our meeting we have set up with Ms. Hall on Tuesday night, so we can get our project rolling. I think our "so we are all the same page" meeting today went well and we were able to discuss our group assignments along with what we think is important to discuss with Mrs. Hall tomorrow. I feel like changing our plan to concentrate on the grant makes our project more focused and a clearer idea to follow. While reviewing the grant and grant making process in our group meeting today I feel we will still be able to incorporate some curriculum ideas and why this project is important to us.
ReplyDeleteI am in the literacy luminaries group. We have been in contact with quite a few sponsors, as mentioned, and are excited for our event! I feel like our group is on a good track with planning right now, but I am worried about the actual book collection. How will it all play out if we are unable to collect as many books as we would like? I think the idea of donating books to families that are underprivileged is a good idea. However, Kurt brought up a good point in one of our sessions of why is there such a gap in literacy between socioeconomic groups and why are events like this the only way these families gain adequate access to books? I think both of these questions would be interesting to look into during our project.
ReplyDeleteI think the gap in literacy between socioeconomic groups is a great point to explore and could probably lead to general problems in structures set-up in society. It would be great to know what measures are being taken now to address the literacy gap and what strategies may have at least worked in some neighborhoods or districts to address the literacy gap. I wonder if this could address internet access, library stock and location, type of literature interests, etc. Maybe if certain types of literature or discourse styles were better available in certain areas, families or individuals would be more readily able and willing to gain access to those books or other readings.
DeleteMy inquiry group is the one who is participating in the collecting of the school supplies for the homework packs, for a school in the Richmond City area. I am very surprised with the lack of donations we have received thus far. I thought people would "jump' on the idea to help out local students when in fact if they don't have something laying around, they simply aren't able or willing to give anything. I am continuously getting the response of oh ill get to it ill get to it, when I have received little to no donations. It is a bit hard to deal with because of the passion from group members and the ideas we had that we jumped right into, and now we are kind of at a stand still because the donations have slowed or even ceased at this point. With a bit more hard work and determination I am hoping we will be able to turn this around, we are a strong, motivated group so hopefully we are able to do so!
ReplyDeleteThe Great Garden Project is pushing forward as we are circling contacts through professors at VCU. We basically returned back to Albert Hill that was mentioned by Dr. Stemhagen in the beginning. Our current plan is to write the grant for Albert Hill to develop their garden and provide curriculum resources for ways to integrate the garden cross-content.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I found to be a strong point as we were looking into locations and implementing garden was that many schools have had gardens installed in the past, but a lot of those schools have let the gardens wither away over a few years since teachers were not using the garden through their curriculum. Many schools (at least in Richmond area) do not have strong support to upkeep their garden for years to come. Ms. Amanda Hall is trying to pool together information for Henrico County and create a central hub to assist with garden projects in Henrico County schools. In our IAG reading, Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education¸I found that other cities have had organizations provide resources and help for all schools within the city or district.
This would probably be helpful for Richmond city as well down the road. Hopefully for our IAG project, since we are working with VCU SOE, the garden at Albert Hill will continue to receive support from future practicum students and should be provided with curriculum resources from our group for effective implementation, but this would probably require additional workshops or PD days with the school staff down the road.