Promising Practices

Promising Practices

1.)    Describe: Coming into the Promising Practices, I did not realize how many people would be attending this event. When got there I found our class and during that time I stuck with them. When it was time to leave and go to our workshops, I was sad I had to leave our class and go off alone. When I got into the workshop I was surprised to see that I had a class of about fifteen people compared to all those people I saw when I first came to Promising Practices. My workshop was “Anti-Bulling- What Do Middle Schoolers Have to Say?” and “Empowering Youth and Adults to Become Proactive in Preventing Bullying and Hate Crimes in Schools and Communities. It began with two middle school teachers and how they have a project in there classroom to help stop bullying. The first video they showed us was disturbing, it had a bunch of children from when they were born to when they committed suicide due to bullying and pictures of these children, they looked so happy. I personally do not understand why bullying still goes on with all the deaths. These teachers make the students aware of what bullying can lead too such as suicide. They talk to their students and let them know they can stand up for themselves and others. At the end they ended up making a video and a song about bullying in their middle school with the children as there stars. They also talked about how the media makes an impression on students. Then towards the end of the presentation they had two of their students who where seventh graders talk about bullying and what they hear and see in there own classroom and it is sad especially coming from someone so young. This was powerful to me and I did enjoy the knowledge and awareness these people gave to me. The next part of my workshop was a woman who was from Nigeria and she came from a “hate crime” community. Her first story to the class was her niece was just recently murdered with her throat slit in Nigeria because she wanted to help someone out. Just hearing that I could not imagine what this woman had seen in her life living in Nigeria. She went on about how hate crime in our community. Teachers must instill norms for children. There is also a lot of diversity in our school system. Bullying can be from stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, hatred, not understanding, no respect, no tolerance, and no accommodation. For these things I named the women went into how teachers should try and prevent this from happening. The first workshop was more interesting to me and I understood it a lot better. After workshop all the people met in the Gaige auditorium for a presentation from Teen Empowerment. They through bean bags in a circle and played musical chairs, not to be mean but I did not understand the point of it. I guess it was to learn names but I did not find that part very interesting. Then there was lunch and during lunch there was the youth panel was a few people spoke. Once again I found our class to sit with so I did not feel lonely. I was distracted with eating and did not pay much attention to the youth panel I must be honest.  But they were talking about success and people helping to achieve your goals.

2.)    Make Connections: To the first part of my workshop where the teachers took control over the students and was in charge to help them with bullying situation, that would resemble Delpit. This is because the teachers took over the situation to help the students succeed. The first part of my workshop also goes along with Chritensen because they did compare media to the bullying at schools. They students were also asked to do a project to look up media and bullying. When the two girls talked about there project to us they said they were shocked at the information they came across. They also learned from media and other sources that they don’t have to stand back they can help by standing up and staying something like “stop” to a bully. This also goes along with Johnson and how power and privilege and cause or prevent bullying. Kozol went also with the second part of my workshop because this woman talked about Nigeria and how it was a poverty and high hate crime place. Also there were not much individualized choices because I mean her niece was murdered just to try and help.

3.)    Pictures and links: www.trworkbench.com/jpirraglia/antibully - for first part workshop

www.census.gov/compedia/statab/2011/tables/1150318.pdf - for second part of workshop

The video below goes well with the first part of the workshop and how stadning up can prevent bullying.