Quote for Chapters 1-4

On page 57, middle of the third paragraph comes the quote: "(Mrs. Gerard) plans were approved by the classroom teachers, but showed little coordination with classroom themes."

A familiar feeling...(Chapters 1-4)

Reading Cultural struggle brings back lots of memories from my past. I was someone who left class throughout my younger years to go to "reading rooms". As children described on page fifty-four, Peley and Raji's ESL room was small and dark. It reminds me of my past reading rooms. Often times these were small dark rooms with some posters and a small round table in them. The lack of coordination described between the general classroom and the material in the ESL program was just as I remembered. Looking back, and I think every class had these students growing up, the faces of the children being left out, as described in chapter three, still strike me. I often times blew these children off as most of the children did, something that pains me looking back on it.
"Where cultural conflict exists, struggles abound(p.8)." To me, there is no better description of what has been shown in this book so far. Mrs. Starr cannot understand what is wrong and sometimes, when she gets confused, we see her just move on. She never dug deeper to understand these two students and where they come from.

Karen Paine - Procuring the Book

Hey gang,

Amazon has been delaying the shipment of the book, as it is on back order. In desperation, I have emailed the author, Patricia Ruggiano Schmidt, who lives in Syracuse. My hope is that she'll send me a copy! In the meantime, would it be possible for me to borrow the book from a member? Particularly someone who shares my INCL 502 class, because then I could give it back to you on Thursday? I've been panicking about this...

Thanks,

Karen

Karen Paine - Monocultural but Moving in a Multicultural Direction

After taking the Assessment of My Life Experiences Directions, I was a bit disappointed that I was not officially "Wholly Multicultural." However, with reflection upon the course of my life, I do believe that "Monocultural, but moving in a multicultural Direction" is an accurate assessment. The scale seems to be structured chronologically, beginning with prompts such as family of origin and neighborhood as a child, and ending with prompts such current friendships and neighborhood where I live. What I find encouraging is that the numbers I ascribed to the prompts also increased chronologically. For example, for family of origin and neighborhood as a child, I ranked on the scale as 1 or 2 (heavily monocultural). Respectively, for current friendships and neighborhood where I live, I ranked on the scale as 7 or 8 (near wholly multicultural). I attribute the higher score to a purposeful endeavor to enrich my life with multicultural experiences and to deepen my education by interacting with various people and cultures. Throughout my life, it seems America has become increasingly multicultural, however, without the conscious effort to make my life multicultural, I do not believe it automatically would have become so.


-Karen Paine