(no subject)
it's 9:30 and i'm pissed off cause i can't sleep. i went to bed at 9 and lay there for half an hour thinking about my class and how i am going to encourage dialogue in it. i really want to start discussing things with them. i feel like i am comfortable enough with them and our routines now to add in some controversy. i feel like i'm ready to discuss the reasons i choose not to force them to say the pledge of allegiance every morning, and why i replace it with a mutually respectful greeting in the hawaiian language. i want to talk to them about how proud i am when they choose to work in multi-gendered, multi-cultural groups, of their own accord, and without even thinking of it. i want to ask them what they think about the predjudice that happens on our campus everyday. i want to see what they think about the war we are (basically) in. i told keri today that i am ready to start brainwashing them, and her eyes got all big. i got a little embarrassed and had to explain myself, because really i don't want to brainwash anyone, but i do want to encourage them to think for themselves about all kinds of issues. it's funny that 11 year olds really aren't exposed to a lot of this stuff, or rather, they are exposed but given no opportunity for dialogue, and so they either dismiss it, unconsciously internalize it, or are confused by it, most of the time. some days i am so proud of their inherent sense of 'fairness', when the girls point out that the boys need to stop monopolizing our discussions, and their desire (and ability) to do the manual labor kind of stuff (such as carrying big boxes of books someplace, or whatever), and i love it when the boys volunteer to go down to keri's 1st grade classroom to help with the little ones, or read to them, or something else that a lot of teachers would unconsciously assign to a girl. and other days i hear the boys say something like, 'this place is so messy, we need a girl to come in here and clean it' or 'james is so junk at kickball, he acts like a fag' or the girls see a cockroach on the ground and say, 'ewwwww! get a boy to kill it!'. on those days i feel discouraged and sad that they're already so biased, and i realize that if this world is ever going to get better we need to work on reducing/eliminating bias and predjudice from pre-school on up, because by the time they are in intermediate school it's pretty much ingrained. not to mention their own hormones are making them so wacky by that time that they can barely concentrate at all. on the good days i want to talk to them about how alienated i feel when they ask me if i am married or if i have a boyfriend, and i can't tell them that i like girls, instead, but on the bad days i get so scared that they will find out.
i talked to rice, ipo, and lani this weekend about teaching as a feminist and looking at teaching as a subversive activity, or a way to open minds and push acceptance and celebration of diversity. i need to have more discussions because i have my own issues to get over before i can really help the kids with theirs. i have a difficult time understanding white priveledge (or spelling it, even). i mean, i think i know what it means, but i need concrete ways to help myself counter it, especially in the classroom. i woke up on saturday morning still thinking about it and wondering if it's possible to compare it to hetero priveledge. such as, when you're not a dyke, you don't realize how hetero-centered the world is. things like, i hate the policy of don't ask, don't tell, which is basically in effect in the hawaii dept of ed. i hear all the other teachers talking about their families and friends and weekends, etc, and i hate that MY outside-of-school life has to be private just because it's not the norm.
i had a dream last nite that i had this super rad girlfriend, i don't know who she was, but she was amazing. i remember riding the bus around the island, we were running away from something, and somehow we ended up in waipio, as in, that ghetto valley between mililani and wahiawa where rice used to live. we needed a place to stay, so we were going up to apartment buildings and asking if they had any places for rent that we could move into THAT DAY. everyone knew we were dykes so they said no, until we went up to one stone building (in my dream it was really important that it was made of stone, for some reason) and it happened to be like, an apartment house that was entirely populated by butchie dykes. so of course they let us move in and it was so fun.
stone!
i talked to rice, ipo, and lani this weekend about teaching as a feminist and looking at teaching as a subversive activity, or a way to open minds and push acceptance and celebration of diversity. i need to have more discussions because i have my own issues to get over before i can really help the kids with theirs. i have a difficult time understanding white priveledge (or spelling it, even). i mean, i think i know what it means, but i need concrete ways to help myself counter it, especially in the classroom. i woke up on saturday morning still thinking about it and wondering if it's possible to compare it to hetero priveledge. such as, when you're not a dyke, you don't realize how hetero-centered the world is. things like, i hate the policy of don't ask, don't tell, which is basically in effect in the hawaii dept of ed. i hear all the other teachers talking about their families and friends and weekends, etc, and i hate that MY outside-of-school life has to be private just because it's not the norm.
i had a dream last nite that i had this super rad girlfriend, i don't know who she was, but she was amazing. i remember riding the bus around the island, we were running away from something, and somehow we ended up in waipio, as in, that ghetto valley between mililani and wahiawa where rice used to live. we needed a place to stay, so we were going up to apartment buildings and asking if they had any places for rent that we could move into THAT DAY. everyone knew we were dykes so they said no, until we went up to one stone building (in my dream it was really important that it was made of stone, for some reason) and it happened to be like, an apartment house that was entirely populated by butchie dykes. so of course they let us move in and it was so fun.
stone!