P. DuPont's Blog Spot

I, too, believe that the new rules regarding ESL learners being proposed by RIDE will do more harm than good.   ESL students need to be placed with ESL certified teachers to guarantee that they are placed in an environment that will give them extensive language support that they so desperately need, and more importantly, deserve.   After reading the article on language diversity and learning, I’m reminded about the importance of placing ELLs with ESL certified teachers.  I have been exposed to many concepts discussed in this article as a result of my continuing education in ESL.  For example, I would not have learned the damaging effects of over correcting an ESL student during the language learning process as mentioned in the article.  ESL trained educators know that over correcting could result in the following: silencing a student straining the relationship between teacher and student causing harm to the student’s affective filter raise anxiety cause...

This week I chose to reflect on James Baldwin’s interview in the article titled The Last Interview .  He mentioned a few things that stuck out to me.  For example, when asked if he considered himself gay.  James Baldwin responded no.  He also went on to say that the word “gay” has always rubbed him the wrong way.  He saw himself as a “homosexual” even though he felt that wasn’t the perfect label for himself.  He went on to say his sexual preference was private and that it was a matter between him and God, which I agree with it.  In this world, we have labels for everything such as our gender, race, sexual preference, religious beliefs and social class.  My questions are, “Why do we have so many labels and are labels beneficial?”  One major con to labeling is that it places us in groups which can have a negative impact on our society causing division and separation. I also admired James Baldwin’s response to Goldstein’s question about wh...

This week's readings were very insightful in regards to learning more about the culture of whiteness and it’s dominance.  I believe that we should discuss all cultures that exist in our classrooms, including whiteness.  I’ve heard a lot about the term white privilege but not necessarily whiteness.  The article, Why Talk About Whiteness, enlightened me on the fact that whiteness tends to fall under the radar and the fact that it’s not really discussed could be a problem for the racial justice movement.  I need to do a better job with acknowledging whiteness as a culture/race that needs to be discussed just as much as different races of color.  My plan moving forward is to continue to read up on the Whiteness Project and possibly look into reading the book, Teaching While White, because the author brought up some very good points in the article.  For example, she stated that making whiteness visible, understanding the diversity and history of whiteness, and...

After reading Why Teaching Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, Pt. 1, I understand why the author believes that the most criticism against the BLM movement stems from a failure to acknowledge the conditions that created resistance in the first place.  I think that for change to happen, we need to be honest as to why the movement was first created.  The BLM movement began after the death of Trayvon Martin in response to brutality on unarmed blacks.  As the movement grew, people became increasingly upset and frustrated because of the countless deaths of unarmed blacks at the hands of the police or people in authority.  I feel as though one of the biggest concerns of the movement consisted with zero accountability, as in most of these recent cases, as police were were not charged or sent to trial.   There was a time when I remember turning on the news and seeing countless other police shootings against unarmed Blacks and thinking to myself, What is g...