It is 7:20 p.m. and I am posting links about women's empowerment. Tomorrow, I will be at the 2nd Annual Global Women's Conference at the Detroit's Wayne County Community College, Northwest Campus. As a panelist with educator Lolita Hernandez and Dr. Sharon Oliver, I will be discussing women's empowerment.
Since I am interested in various subjects such poetry, history, culture, and identity, and work in the fields of education, media (publication, recording, music, radio, film, and television), and community work, I thought it would be a good idea to post additional links for educators, students, or anyone who is interested in what is taking place at an international level regarding women's empowerment.
1. ITVS.org has a page called "Women's Empowerment" that has videos and lesson plans that are downloadable. If you click on the main title, you will see the lesson plans. Then click the title of the video to see the video or learn more about the film.
To see the videos, click this link.
Some of the videos can be shared but others must be ordered. One of the shared videos is
Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai - ITVS
The video "Taking Root..." is about Kenya's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai who started an environmental movement by planting trees.
The "Beyond the Box" page is a blog that has interesting and informative postings.
2. WeDpro is a Filipina feminist site. From their page: "The founders of WeDpro, Inc (founded October 1989) were members of the feminist collective Katipunan ng Kababaihan para sa Kalayaan, popularly known as KALAYAAN (founded 1983). WEDPRO members have a long history of being activists and feminists, whose individual and collective experience has made a mark especially in the early years of the women’s liberation movement. KALAYAAN was one of the very first women’s organizations that took pride in its feminist identity"
3. Pathways of Women's Empowerment is a research site.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Education: Autism, Literacy, and Reading.
A Morning with An Autistic Young Adult: Reading
by Aurora Harris c. 2009
June 11, 2009 9:30 a.m.
I have been awake since 6:00 a.m. While waiting for the bus to pick up my grandnephew, I asked him to read the morning newspaper out loud. As I listened to him read word by word, without fluency, it dawned on me that perhaps part of his lack of fluency was due to being taught how to sight read. As I continued listening to him, I remembered sitting in one of his elementary school classes, with the teacher standing in front of a list of words, pointing at each word, saying the word, and having the students repeat what they heard. After this recollection, the next thoughts I had related to Detroit's high illiteracy rate.
I thought about the newspaper reports in the past few months regarding the poor state of education in Detroit, the students' low test scores, and that up to half of the city's population is functionally illiterate. I looked at my grandnephew, who is a "high functioning autistic," in his twenties, and in a "transitional school setting."
After he read, I asked him if he knew what certain words meant. He lowered his head and said, "I don't know."
"How in the heIl can he get through life just repeating words without knowing what they mean?" is what I thought. Then suddenly, I said to him, "No. You will not go to summer school. I will teach you myself." He looked at me and said, "O.K."
Suddenly, all of the years that I've had him, since he was three years old, flooded my mind. From age three to now, I have been his guardian and advocate. I remembered seeing his early years of odd behaviors like rocking, hitting himself, tantrums, unstoppable crying fits, and, collecting toys and stacking them. I remembered my mother, who was his great grandmother, carrying him on her hip from room to room, as a way to quiet him down. I remember telling my mother and father, "I'm going to find out how we can help him." After I wrote down the behaviors I saw, I drove to Wayne State University and sat down at one of the computers that were set up for community access. As I typed the behaviors into the search engine, each behavior took me to a page concerning Autism or Aspergers. I remember feeling relieved that I had something, some research that I could take to my parents and doctors.
1993. In 1993, I began my long and stress filled journey of caring for an autistic child. By the time he was enrolled in school, I had amassed a ton of research from every available web site concerning Autism and Asperger autism. I was determined to teach him any way I could. I wasn't a teacher or even interested in teaching at the time. I was an unemployed, overworked telecommunications worker with carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, with pain up to my neck on both sides. At that time, with hands in splints, I tapped on the keys of a typewriter or computer keyboard with two pencils turned upside down, so the erasers wouldn't damage the keys. It seemed that the moment I decided to be a poet, I was faced with another challenge. However, in spite of my own inability to hold a pen and physically write due to the splints and pain, I never thought, at any time, that I couldn't help my grandnephew or that he was not teachable.
After he was enrolled in middle school, I remembered the long battle to get him diagnosed as autistic because he had been misdiagnosed as "Learning disabled." The battle was long and hard...I don't have enough time to go into what it took to coordinate three or four schools' IEP's (Individual Education Plans) that were found collecting dust on a desk in an area office, and bring the administrators, social workers, and school psychologists together to get them to agree with what I had been saying all along: "The child is autistic."
As an educator looking back, I can state that there are studies out there, concerning the misdiagnosis of minority students and the late diagnosis and effects on minority children, but my case was different. I came into the school system with all of the research and symptoms from my investigation. After years of being told, "We can't determine what he has, he has too many behaviors," all I could say was, " He copies people. He studies people. He repeats what you say word for word as an answer to a question. He sounds like a robot. He collects things. He can shake a bottle of water and watch it for hours. He has echolalia," until he became "older" and they could "re-test him."
"How did I learn to read?" I asked myself. I remembered that I learned how to read at home, before I was enrolled in elementary school... that I enjoyed pronouncing words, saying them, listening to family members read out loud...sitting at the window seat or at the dining room table in our dining room with either my father, grandfather, or mother holding my hand and teaching me how to write...the pads of wide, green, lined paper my parents brought home for me to write on...the alphabet books in Spanish and English, Dr. Seuss books, the science encyclopedias, the Filipino magazines that were in Tagalog and English that relatives sent us, the hundreds of other books and magazines I was given to read silently and out loud...the heavy, giant dictionary that had a world of knowledge from writing business letters to learning about science, in the back of it. I remember saying and writing, "ventana, manzanas, caballo, bintana, mansanas, kabayo, window, apples, horse." I remembered why it was easy for me to learn Spanish, Tagalog and English. My grandfather lived with us spoke and Castilian Spanish, Tagalog, and Ilocano with my mother and other relatives. He had been a Spanish Teacher who taught at Fort Wayne. My father spoke English, a little Tagalog, Italian and Polish. My grandmother on my father's side was an English teacher. I lived in a multillingual home where speaking different languages, reading, and learning were normal, and, expected. Today, there is only me to help my grandnephew until I find assistance.
The Detroit Public Schools and The Mayor are pushing for students to read. The commercials of little children are great, but do they have reading services for my autistic grandnephew who is in transition? Who nows how to see and say but don't know what the words mean?
Mind you, I do not have a teaching certificate. I do not know all of the theory or technical vocabulary that goes into the science of reading. However, I do have a Masters degree in Social Foundations of Education, I know how to write, and I know how to read.
So, today, I will start like I did before. Grassroots style. I will go on the Internet and list reading resources for parents and caretakers like myself, who are unemployed, lack the funds to pay for reading tutors, or, any tutoring service, and, do not possess a K-12 teaching certificate. Hopefully, folks will pass this blog entry around or copy it for those who don't have access to computers, so other resources can be exchanged.
Later, when my grandnephew gets home from school, I will teach him, the way I was taught: 1. Look at the word. 2. Say/ sound the word out. 3. Write and read the words, find and write the definitions, and, memorize them. 4. Write the word in a sentence.
Resources for parents and teachers ( I will post more later):
Teaching Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders to Read (in Google books)
Reading Rockets: Curriculum and Instruction
Reading Rockets: Fluency
by Aurora Harris c. 2009
June 11, 2009 9:30 a.m.
I have been awake since 6:00 a.m. While waiting for the bus to pick up my grandnephew, I asked him to read the morning newspaper out loud. As I listened to him read word by word, without fluency, it dawned on me that perhaps part of his lack of fluency was due to being taught how to sight read. As I continued listening to him, I remembered sitting in one of his elementary school classes, with the teacher standing in front of a list of words, pointing at each word, saying the word, and having the students repeat what they heard. After this recollection, the next thoughts I had related to Detroit's high illiteracy rate.
I thought about the newspaper reports in the past few months regarding the poor state of education in Detroit, the students' low test scores, and that up to half of the city's population is functionally illiterate. I looked at my grandnephew, who is a "high functioning autistic," in his twenties, and in a "transitional school setting."
After he read, I asked him if he knew what certain words meant. He lowered his head and said, "I don't know."
"How in the heIl can he get through life just repeating words without knowing what they mean?" is what I thought. Then suddenly, I said to him, "No. You will not go to summer school. I will teach you myself." He looked at me and said, "O.K."
Suddenly, all of the years that I've had him, since he was three years old, flooded my mind. From age three to now, I have been his guardian and advocate. I remembered seeing his early years of odd behaviors like rocking, hitting himself, tantrums, unstoppable crying fits, and, collecting toys and stacking them. I remembered my mother, who was his great grandmother, carrying him on her hip from room to room, as a way to quiet him down. I remember telling my mother and father, "I'm going to find out how we can help him." After I wrote down the behaviors I saw, I drove to Wayne State University and sat down at one of the computers that were set up for community access. As I typed the behaviors into the search engine, each behavior took me to a page concerning Autism or Aspergers. I remember feeling relieved that I had something, some research that I could take to my parents and doctors.
1993. In 1993, I began my long and stress filled journey of caring for an autistic child. By the time he was enrolled in school, I had amassed a ton of research from every available web site concerning Autism and Asperger autism. I was determined to teach him any way I could. I wasn't a teacher or even interested in teaching at the time. I was an unemployed, overworked telecommunications worker with carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, with pain up to my neck on both sides. At that time, with hands in splints, I tapped on the keys of a typewriter or computer keyboard with two pencils turned upside down, so the erasers wouldn't damage the keys. It seemed that the moment I decided to be a poet, I was faced with another challenge. However, in spite of my own inability to hold a pen and physically write due to the splints and pain, I never thought, at any time, that I couldn't help my grandnephew or that he was not teachable.
After he was enrolled in middle school, I remembered the long battle to get him diagnosed as autistic because he had been misdiagnosed as "Learning disabled." The battle was long and hard...I don't have enough time to go into what it took to coordinate three or four schools' IEP's (Individual Education Plans) that were found collecting dust on a desk in an area office, and bring the administrators, social workers, and school psychologists together to get them to agree with what I had been saying all along: "The child is autistic."
As an educator looking back, I can state that there are studies out there, concerning the misdiagnosis of minority students and the late diagnosis and effects on minority children, but my case was different. I came into the school system with all of the research and symptoms from my investigation. After years of being told, "We can't determine what he has, he has too many behaviors," all I could say was, " He copies people. He studies people. He repeats what you say word for word as an answer to a question. He sounds like a robot. He collects things. He can shake a bottle of water and watch it for hours. He has echolalia," until he became "older" and they could "re-test him."
"How did I learn to read?" I asked myself. I remembered that I learned how to read at home, before I was enrolled in elementary school... that I enjoyed pronouncing words, saying them, listening to family members read out loud...sitting at the window seat or at the dining room table in our dining room with either my father, grandfather, or mother holding my hand and teaching me how to write...the pads of wide, green, lined paper my parents brought home for me to write on...the alphabet books in Spanish and English, Dr. Seuss books, the science encyclopedias, the Filipino magazines that were in Tagalog and English that relatives sent us, the hundreds of other books and magazines I was given to read silently and out loud...the heavy, giant dictionary that had a world of knowledge from writing business letters to learning about science, in the back of it. I remember saying and writing, "ventana, manzanas, caballo, bintana, mansanas, kabayo, window, apples, horse." I remembered why it was easy for me to learn Spanish, Tagalog and English. My grandfather lived with us spoke and Castilian Spanish, Tagalog, and Ilocano with my mother and other relatives. He had been a Spanish Teacher who taught at Fort Wayne. My father spoke English, a little Tagalog, Italian and Polish. My grandmother on my father's side was an English teacher. I lived in a multillingual home where speaking different languages, reading, and learning were normal, and, expected. Today, there is only me to help my grandnephew until I find assistance.
The Detroit Public Schools and The Mayor are pushing for students to read. The commercials of little children are great, but do they have reading services for my autistic grandnephew who is in transition? Who nows how to see and say but don't know what the words mean?
Mind you, I do not have a teaching certificate. I do not know all of the theory or technical vocabulary that goes into the science of reading. However, I do have a Masters degree in Social Foundations of Education, I know how to write, and I know how to read.
So, today, I will start like I did before. Grassroots style. I will go on the Internet and list reading resources for parents and caretakers like myself, who are unemployed, lack the funds to pay for reading tutors, or, any tutoring service, and, do not possess a K-12 teaching certificate. Hopefully, folks will pass this blog entry around or copy it for those who don't have access to computers, so other resources can be exchanged.
Later, when my grandnephew gets home from school, I will teach him, the way I was taught: 1. Look at the word. 2. Say/ sound the word out. 3. Write and read the words, find and write the definitions, and, memorize them. 4. Write the word in a sentence.
Resources for parents and teachers ( I will post more later):
Teaching Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders to Read (in Google books)
Reading Rockets: Curriculum and Instruction
Reading Rockets: Fluency
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Education News: Universities, Schools, Public Education
Here's the latest news on higher education and public K-12 education. Click on the sentences to go to the link.
The first article "Higher Education Without Democracy?"
is written by Henry Giroux and Chronis Polychroniou. Source: Tikkun Magazine
The second article "Report: Tough Times Ahead for Children of the Great Recession"
is written by Sarah Garland. Source: Education Week
The first article "Higher Education Without Democracy?"
is written by Henry Giroux and Chronis Polychroniou. Source: Tikkun Magazine
The second article "Report: Tough Times Ahead for Children of the Great Recession"
is written by Sarah Garland. Source: Education Week
Environment: Revisiting Destruction of South Central Farm; BP Oil Spill; The Plastic Garbage Island in the Pacific
Every spring and summer for the past five years, I look at the flowers that my mother and father planted. l think about how we farmed and sold our vegetables for many years at the Eastern Farmers Market. I think about the backyard gardens I planted so we could have fresh food. This morning I wondered about what happened to the urban farmers from the South Los Angeles farm that was bulldozed.
A few years ago, the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, California was bulldozed after a dispute between the farmers and the landowners. The farm was the largest urban garden project in the US. Right before the farm was bulldozed, I went through a similar experience in Detroit, with the project I worked on and invested a great deal of the grant I received. With my project, instead of food, flower gardens that children planted were bulldozed.
In one of the films that I watched earlier this morning, one of the women who planted at the farm stated that the young children that planted and grew up with that farm were psychologically damaged when the authorities bulldozed it. I believe her. There is nothing like remembering all of the hot summer days that were spent planting, the care children took to select the flora they would plant and arrange in pots...and then one day find everything in one bulldozed heap of brick, crushed plants and organic soil. This is one reason why "lived experiences" are important.
Here are three videos about why the garden was started, what happened to the land, the farmers, the families, and the organizing efforts.
1. The Destruction of South Central Farmers:
2. The Garden (Movie Trailer, from YouTube)
3. A YouTube Project Report by Tracy Chung: South Central Farm Revisited
For over a month, I have been asking my friends, "Why don't they call Jacques Cousteau's family?" "They did all those documentaries on the sea, they can get the diving equipment..." Well, I was informed last week the the grandson of Jacques Cousteau has been in the gulf. Here's a clip from May 27, 2010; ABC's Good Morning America report:
Here is a report on the giant garbage island that floats in the Pacific Ocean. It is twice the size of Texas:
A few years ago, the South Central Farm in Los Angeles, California was bulldozed after a dispute between the farmers and the landowners. The farm was the largest urban garden project in the US. Right before the farm was bulldozed, I went through a similar experience in Detroit, with the project I worked on and invested a great deal of the grant I received. With my project, instead of food, flower gardens that children planted were bulldozed.
In one of the films that I watched earlier this morning, one of the women who planted at the farm stated that the young children that planted and grew up with that farm were psychologically damaged when the authorities bulldozed it. I believe her. There is nothing like remembering all of the hot summer days that were spent planting, the care children took to select the flora they would plant and arrange in pots...and then one day find everything in one bulldozed heap of brick, crushed plants and organic soil. This is one reason why "lived experiences" are important.
Here are three videos about why the garden was started, what happened to the land, the farmers, the families, and the organizing efforts.
1. The Destruction of South Central Farmers:
2. The Garden (Movie Trailer, from YouTube)
3. A YouTube Project Report by Tracy Chung: South Central Farm Revisited
For over a month, I have been asking my friends, "Why don't they call Jacques Cousteau's family?" "They did all those documentaries on the sea, they can get the diving equipment..." Well, I was informed last week the the grandson of Jacques Cousteau has been in the gulf. Here's a clip from May 27, 2010; ABC's Good Morning America report:
Here is a report on the giant garbage island that floats in the Pacific Ocean. It is twice the size of Texas:
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Idlewild, MI: Aquarius Press and Broadside Press Writers and Poets Conference
DEAR FRIENDS,
AQUARIUS PRESS AND BROADSIDE PRESS ARE HAVING A WRITERS AND POETS CONFERENCE IN IDLEWILD, MI THE 2ND WEEKEND OF AUGUST. AUGUST 12-14, 2010. PLEASE SEE THE HOMESTEAD LINK AND PDF BROCHURE INFORMATION BELOW FOR DETAILS.
peace
aurora harris
You don't want to miss this conference
www.idlewildconference.homestead.com
AQUARIUS PRESS AND BROADSIDE PRESS ARE HAVING A WRITERS AND POETS CONFERENCE IN IDLEWILD, MI THE 2ND WEEKEND OF AUGUST. AUGUST 12-14, 2010. PLEASE SEE THE HOMESTEAD LINK AND PDF BROCHURE INFORMATION BELOW FOR DETAILS.
peace
aurora harris
You don't want to miss this conference
www.idlewildconference.homestead.com
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