ASL Poetry Slam

On Thursday, October 15, I attended an ASL Poetry Slam at the Bowery Poetry Club. Although it was described as a poetry event, it featured one man sharing a number of short stories, through ASL, that relate in some way to the Deaf community.

Before arriving I had expected there to be no English usage. I was surprised, then, when the doorman verbally addressed me. By the time the show started, the room was packed, with people using both ASL and English. The show opened with a warm-up, in which three audience members were invited on-stage to use the signs for numbers 1, 2, and 3 in new ways. After this, several stories were shared that somehow addressed misunderstandings of Deaf culture. For instance, one story explained how a Deaf man was being followed, as he walked down the street, by someone, not of the Deaf community. This person, not understanding that the man could not hear him, continued to follow him while screaming for his attention and then eventually grabbed the man, thinking that he was simply being rude.

The show then ended with more audience participation, in something called "Guessign." Several people went on-stage, and, in partners, one person stood behind another, while placing their hands in front and signing a story about a vampire, all while wearing "monster fingers."

Because I am only in my first semester of taking ASL, I was lost during most of the stories. However, I was able to understand a few fairly well and was at least able to get the general concept being presented in each. I also learned a few new signs, as well as several items about the Deaf community.

As a future teacher, I feel that an event like this one would be a great way to further address differences, and similarities between a variety of cultures. Although students may not be able to understand items being signed, simply being in the environment can allow students some idea of ways that people using ASL interact. Too often we focus solely on items such as race to distinguish one culture from another and ignore those that may not be quite as obvious. However, it is apparent that there is a need to have students better understand Deaf culture to prevent incidents, like those from the story presented earlier, from occurring.

This video isn't from the event, but I thought it might be cute to use if discussing ASL in the classroom, especially if your kiddies like Miley Cyrus. We should all thank Sarah, who sent me the link. :)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmKnQjBf8wM

Jewel Allison: Let's Talk About Racism

On Friday, October 16th I attended the First Fall Potluck of the Anti-Racist Alliance featuring poet Jewel Allison, presenting her book Stealing Peace: Let’s Talk About Racism. The event took place at the Community Church of NY and was from 5:30-9 pm.

This event started out with a discussion about racism and slavery. Many people were saying that racism was created by white people and can only be done away with by white people. It was interesting to hear this point of view because I’ve never heard anyone blatantly say that white people are to blame and that they’re the only ones who can get rid of it. I think it’s wrong to point out a specific race and put all the blame on them and I think to get rid of racism, all races can work together because white people aren’t the only ones who are racist and not all white people are racist.

The poet, Jewel Allison, came in after to present her book. She started out by saying that her book was an attempt to understand who we are as human beings. One main theme that resonated to me in her poems and her discussion was the idea of labels. She said that labels are a very small fraction of who we are and these labels are what make us think we’re different and this is how we started making ourselves smaller and smaller. The worry now is how we’re going to continue making ourselves smaller by coming up with new labels. Allison believes we need to see ourselves as one race; we are all African. She calls white people, white-skin Africans, who just migrated to a part of the world where there wasn’t much sun so their skin color didn’t need to be dark to protect them from it, which was interesting to me because it makes sense, but I’ve never really thought about it that way. Her poems, “Let’s Talk About Racism”, “From Africa to Europe with Love”, and “Songs of Solomon”, all highlight how racism affects everyone. She also talks about how history tells the story of who we are and how we relate to one another. One line that stuck out to me was “racism is underneath the sheets with us when we go to sleep at night.” I definitely believe this is true and it’s interesting to me because I never really thought about racism and how it impacts me before this class and event.

As a future educator, I want to instill in children that racism does affect everyone and that they can work together to fight against it starting with just acknowledging it for what it is and stepping away from the labels that separate us. It’s important for them to see how racism specifically relates to them and we can show them this by studying history and their own backgrounds and experiences. Also, after this event, I realized just how much poetry could be a really powerful tool to express feeling. It would be great to show students just how powerful they can be with a tool like poetry.

If anyone is interested in hearing a couple of Jewel’s poems, just search her name on YouTube. They’re really great. She’s a talented poet.

2nd Annual MEC Latino Heritage Month Celebration

On Thursday, October 15th I attended the 2nd Annual MEC Latino Heritage Month Celebration. It was at CUNY Medgar Evers College and was organized by the Association for Latin American Students at this school. The event was from 6-9 pm.

I decided to go to this event in the first place because the words "Hispanic Heritage Month" grabbed my attention from the flyer. I started thinking that I didn't even know it was Hispanic Heritage Month and I thought as a Hispanic myself, it would be great to find out what it was all about. Also, when I went back to my student teaching placement the day after, I realized not one school I have been to celebrates or even mentions Hispanic Heritage Month. I have seen plenty of schools celebrate Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March and I wanted to see how I could change that, starting with finding out more myself.

The event started with an open mic poetry slam. There were 4 people that read poetry about a variety of topics that included racism, being biracial, colonialism, race in general, immigration, and identity. One poem that stuck out to me was one about beng biracial. It was said by a young girl whose name was Nyambi Morgan and it was titled "Mixed and Misunderstood". In this poem she described how difficult it is for herself to claim an identity when she’s biracial . One line that resonated from the poem was about having to mark “other” on applications that ask about race. Morgan wrote she didn’t know what that meant. It was as if “other” meant not human.

Sounds of Earth, a Puerto Rican band, performed. Their music has African roots and they played the drums and the woman wore a traditional costume from Puerto Rico. The dances were infused with both Hispanic and African rhythm. After the performance, they showed two movies that had to do with denied rights in Puerto Rico. “La Operación” (The Operation), was about the sterilization of women in Puerto Rico in the late 30’s. “The Borinqueneers” was about the Puerto Rican Infantry Regiment, the only all-Hispanic unit in the US Army. Both films highlight the injustices and abuse of rights of these groups of people. There was a panel at the end, with students, professors, and activists, discussing the movie and other events that occurred that have to do with racism, discrimination, etc. I had no idea about all these horrible events that happened to the people of Puerto Rico. I had never heard of these events and it made me feel like I need to go out and find out more about events such as this one because I’ve realized that events like this are generally not openly talked about.

As a future educator, I want to encourage my students to learn about their races’ roots, but also one another’s. It would be great to talk about and explore an event like this every couple of weeks to get my students to “open their eyes” to the serious things that happen around the world. After going to this event, I know a lot more about Hispanic Heritage Month and I want to find out more. I want my future students to have that feeling too.

Dance and Movement Workshop!

On Thursday, October 15th, I attended a “Dance and Movement Workshop” on the 2nd floor of the East Building. The workshop was led by Suzanne Carothers, the Director of the Undergraduate Childhood Program in the Department of Teaching and Learning at New York University and Freddie Moore, the Founder and Artistic director of Footprints Dance Company. The participants of this workshop included juniors and seniors in the Childhood Education program at NYU as well as several Steinhardt staff members.

We set some goals for the workshop. We discussed the activities we would participate in and discussed ways to implement them in our future classrooms that we teach. The “movement” started right away as we stripped off our shoes (and some people their socks too) and practiced some warm up techniques to prepare us for the activities. We made sure to stretch all the different parts of our bodies that we would be using throughout the workshop.

The first activity dealt with our experiences with movement throughout the day. We each said how we use movement in our lives and what movement means to us. We made a chart of some themes that were seen from how we described movement in our lives. We then took some of those themes and worked on expressing those movements. Freddie chose about 8 different ideas/themes that we worked together to decide how we show that feeling or idea. For example, one of the words on the chart was “struggle” because some of us find it difficult to move around as often as we should or would like. We came up with a “move” for each of the 8 words and put them together in a choreographed manner. This activity allowed us to be creative as well as working as a group to make a cohesive dance routine.

Then, we discussed some of the ways that we see movement in our student teaching placements. We were then separated into groups of 3-4 people. Each group was given a song (from a CD Freddie brought to class which was a compilation of common nursery rhymes with different rhythms, tempos, and beats than the traditional versions of them). Each group had to choreograph a dance for a 30 second section of our song. My group chose “Hey Diddle, Diddle”. At first, we were thinking way to literally. We were trying to make movements for each word that allowed us to show the story as the song was playing. We realized that the song was too fast and we could not all do movements for every single word. We had to work together to make our moves fit the song. We decided that not all of us in the group had to be doing the same moves at the same time. This task was very difficult for us. Two of the people in our group were dancers while the other two, including myself, had no idea where to start. We learned how to work together and make the dance work for all of us and portray the story of “Hey Diddle, Diddle” in a way that everyone could grasp the idea. After our “planning time”, each group performed for the audience of our peers in the workshop.

From the beginning of the workshop to the end, I realized a lot about movement and myself in general. I realized that dance does not mean that you have to be trained, fit, talented, and coordinated. Dance is a form of expression that is spontaneous at times and can be used to tell a story. I would not say I am the most graceful dancer, but I was able to move in a way that told a story to my colleagues. I realized that movement is something that happens at every moment, whether it is planned or not. Some people struggle to find ways to move, some people are handicapped in ways that restrict their movement, and others are moving all the time without even noticing. Movement is a part of our lives and it will be a part of every child’s life that we will teach in the future. This workshop provided me with ways to discover how I can use movement as a motivational tool for students as well as a way to refocus their attention or just relax them if they are stressed. The workshop provided me with strategies to coordinate ways for students to use dancing and movement in a productive way throughout the school day.

At the end of the workshop, we were given a certificate of achievement for completing the workshop. We were also given a picture book called Beautiful Ballerina by Marilyn Nelson and Susan Kuklin. Ballerinas from the Dance Theatre of Harlem were the inspiration for this book. The book includes the text of a poem written by these young ballerinas with graceful photographs of the girls. This book will serve as a great way to celebrate dance and movement in my future classrooms.

Dance/Movement Workshop

Yesterday, I, along with ten or more others, had the opportunity to attend "Dance and Movement Workshop" in the Cochrane Room in the East Building. The workshop was led by Freddie Moore, a Founder and Artistic Director of Footprints Dance Company.

First, we set goals for the workshop and outlined what was to come in the next three hours. We then took off our shoes before stretching and getting comfortable in our own bodies. This was an importance step, for it was emphasized that as teachers, we must be comfortable with our own bodies before teaching our students to be just that.

We introduced ourselves around the room and expressed our feelings by using body movements. Even though it was a bit awkward at first, we soon began to truly feel comfortable under our own skins and no longer felt self-conscious. We made a good three minute dance routine together, using the ideas that each of us came up with. It was exciting to see that most of us were untrained/unskilled in dance, yet we were able to contribute to the creation of such movements.

Freddie then played this Youtube video for us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHDyxTRCwQ0 We first watched it with the sound off, and observed the children's movements. We discussed our guesses as to what was happening in the video and how the children seemed to feel through their body languages. After the brief discussion, we watched the movie again with sound. It was eye-opening to see that children who looked so disengaged and inattentive were actually actively participating and listening to the teacher (which we could only find out the second time with the sound on). *YOU SHOULD TRY THIS ACTIVITY TOO!*

Next, Freddie split us into groups of 3-4 people and played a nursery rhyme song to each group. Each song represented a different genre or style of music. For example, "Ms. Mary Mac" was a powerful, hip-hop like song, while "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" was a soft-jazz song. Each group had to take their nursery rhyme and create a dance movement in about 30 minutes and perform it in front of everyone else.

The purpose of this activity was to show that children could become more self-confident and comfortable with self through dance and movement. It was also surprising to see the dances come together, because each person in the group had such different ideas.

At the end of all the performances, we gathered around and discussed what we had learned from the workshop. We were all excited to implement dance and movement in our future classrooms. All of us agreed that this workshop should have been required for all education majors to attend, because it was not only exciting and fun, but such a beneficial tool to have as future educators.

The main ideas I got out of this workshop were:

• Dance/movement does not discriminate. No matter who you are, what your background or ability/disability may be, anyone can participate and express themselves using movements.
• If a child feels disengaged or uncomfortable and does not want to participate in the dance, the teacher could still make that student feel like he/she is a part of the dance. No matter what the movement is, it can be incorporated.
• Dance/movement can be a powerful motivational tool.
• A child sitting still does not always mean attentiveness. The opposite can actually be true - a child who is fidgety or moves around a lot could be very engaged and attentive.
• National Dance Standards can be applied to any subject or lesson in the classroom.
• Dance/movement is a necessity for children. It is a natural part of our lives.

I know Suzanne is trying her best to have this workshop again for next semester, so if you werent' there this time, I hope you can make it to the next one. It was truly inspiring and beneficial :)

Urban Word

I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the Preemptive Education's Urban Word poetry slam. What I enjoyed most about the poems was the fact that they were young adults and teenagers who had used the English language to express feelings and play on words. My goal in attending was to see how I can use different methods of expression that are not generally used in the classroom setting today. Many of the students who performed became involved in slam poetry by chance and not because it was part of any curriculum in their school.
What I found most interesting was that, slam poetry gave these students the medium to fully express something that was missing in their lives. This urban fire allowed them to fully convey their inner thoughts about misfortunes going on in their neighborhood/nationally as well as personal issues that plagued their minds.
I definitely loved the powerful poems called Queens and Switch which talked about a girl from Queen who felt she was a queen and Switch was about gay men violently killed because they walked and talked with a switch. Like the poet said, he felt compelled to tell the story and he feels like a vessel in which he is used to reach the masses in his freedom of expression. I thanked him for his expression and wished I had more courage to lay out what really matters to the youths I work with today in such a thought provoking manner.

Word Life: A Performance and Conversation on Language, Identity, & Power

Last Friday, I attended The Preemptive Education series' performance and panel discussion on "Word Life," organized by Hip-Hop Theater Festival and Urban Word NYC. The performance was held in Silver Center's theater in room 703, which could have easily been filled with more of us future educators out there.

Three panels were on stage as each of the 3 poems were presented then later analyzed and discussed by one panel per poem.

The poems in order were:

1) Diaspora - about being an African-American woman, struggling with race/ethnicity

2) Switch - about being a homosexual male (See video below)

3) Queen - about living as a beautiful young woman in the city and being objectified by men

Each poem was then analyzed for more in-depth discussion by the panel and the poet(s). There were some very interesting comments during the discussions they had and here were some of the highlights.

• In regarding education and ignorance: "danger is not there to tie us down but it is a prerequisite for courage."


• On the discussion of vulnerability (in performing a highly-disputed piece like Switch): "You have to be willing to be as vulnerable as the students. Students are going to ask questions and push your buttons. Be open to the 'button-pushing.'"


• On the discussion of Queen: "Entertainment industry is very political. There is no 'tabula rasa.' Queens may be queens, but they are still seen as if they are below Kings."


• On language: "The language we have created is used against us to oppress us. So what do we do? I think certain words are worth fighting for and claiming back (like the N word).


• On education: "Teach not by the books but by what you know that your students already know. My teacher brought in Tupac in order to teach Frost. Practice what you preach. Lead by example. This can be the bridge between knowledge I have and the education to be had by others."

As a future educator, I took all of these topics discussed to heart. Hip hop, def poetry/jam, rap, movement, dance... everything that this performance involved helped these students speak out about important, heart-felt issues that they felt passionate about. It was clear that these students began to think differently and began to be proactive and speak up about some of these issues they were so passionate about. If I could have my kids become anything as a teacher, it would be passionate. It was truly inspiring to see these poets/students (and some professional performers) reach out to future educators and other students to show that one's voice can be heard--not when they are loud enough, but when they are passionate enough and heard by enough people who are just as moved.

*** Finally, I thought the second performance piece Switch was extremely powerful. So I found it on Youtube. PLEASE WATCH THIS. The whole thing. The climax happend around 1:50. You will not regret watching it. In fact, you might cry, cringe, or get goose bumps as you watch this powerful piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsNGe12Y2r4

Preemptive Education

On Friday, October 2, I attended Preemptive Education: Language, Identity, and Power, hosted by Urban Word NYC and held in the Silver Center. The poety event last night kicked off a weekend of panels and workshops geared toward addressing important issues in new, innovative ways, including spoken word poetry and hip-hop.

The event featured three young poets presenting their own written work about some very strong and important ideas including being brave and reclaiming words/identity. After each poem, a panel discussed the significance of the ideas/issues presented and how these can possibly be addressed in the classroom setting.

Like the rest of the audience in the packed auditorium, I was incredibly moved by the words these individuals shared and the way in which they did so. "Switch," for example, a poem about being homosexual and brave in the face of opposition, brought everyone to their feet and several people to tears by the way it was perfectly choreographed. Another poem, "Queens," talked about what it means to be a woman and was based on the poet's experience on a bus one day, in which some very young boys said, in so many words, that girls were only good for sexual purposes.

It was incredible to hear such powerful emotions coming from such young individuals. From this, although it seems almost obvious, I learned that too often the abilities of students to address important issues is underestimated. People believe that students in high school, or even younger, cannot eloquently discuss items like those presented in the poetry slam, when, in reality, they may do even better than individuals working at it their entire lives.

Thinking about the event as a future teacher, I realized how necessary it is to change the ways in which information is presented and discussed/shared. Instead of having students simply write poetry, they should be able to use such a unit to cover social justice issues like those from this event and/or from class. Students need to understand that they have a voice which deserves to be heard, and it is the teacher's job to ensure this happens. As much as it may seem daunting and even impossible to even start talking about topics such as racism or sexism, it can and needs to be done.