Growing With Your Peers

Over the course of the semester, we have learned about different literacies and the advantages of being literate. Robin Wisniewski discusses how getting involved with your peers can help you to advance your literacy.  Here at Spelman, we have something similar to the peer counseling program she started at her college. It’s called the writing center, where students help other students to improve their writing skills. At Wisniewski’s college, the peers were not only helping students with writing but also with other literacies as well. It was very interesting to see how successful the program was and the fact that it was very successful due to the students who were giving the counseling. Ms. Wisniewski brings up two particular students Lauryn and Vania who were peer counselors in the program. These two students shared how this particular program helped them with identity issues and how it was ok to be an individual who had her own opinion and voice that was not to be identified with her race. As they began to help their peers find their own identities and transform, they were able to do so as well. They talked about how learning different concepts in their courses was not just about mastering them, but also using different strategies such as flash cards to help them learn more.  Vania felt that understanding her students was the best way to help them to progress. She made them feel as if they had a voice which helped them too to feel like individuals.

This was a very interesting reading as I am able to relate to the things discussed in Robin Wisniewski’s reading. When I go to the writing center to get help with a paper, I feel as if I am not only receiving advice from my peers but also that they take into account what I do and do not understand. They are able to teach us and help us to become better writers, and I feel that programs like these are very beneficial to students as they not only can get help from their professors but also from students have may have had the same trouble that they have at one point in time. 

Appreciating African-American Female Teachers and Professors

In the text Voices of Our Foremothers:  Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Women Educators, a chapter in Reader’s of the Quilt by Joanne K. Dowdy, Sunny-Marie Birney tells of her experiences from being adopted as a small child to finding herself with the help of her African-American female teachers and professors.  Adopted at age two by people of Euro-American decent, Birney, a young African-American woman, felt out of place, lonely, and worthless.  She makes reference to the negro spiritual Motherless Child- stating that she found herself “a long way from home.”  Later majoring in Psychology and Black studies triggered a “cultural and spiritual awakening” which began her journey “home”.  This is the point where she decided to focus her efforts to solve issues involving education in the African-American community.

Birney goes on to mention three African-American female college professors that made a lasting impression on her life.  From these professors, she gained an understanding of her place in the world and the world as it relates to academics.  These professors inspired and uplifted Birney through their levels of commitment and laudable skills.  From these African-American female professors, she felt a sense of care and concern not only having to do with her studies but care and concern for her general well being.  These women inspired her calling to serve the African-American community through teaching.

 A definition of service by Carter G. Woodson explains that service is a necessary part of life.  Author-Freire speaks on the importance of service and how it is beneficial to both the students and teachers.  He explains a style of education “for the practice of freedom” called liberation education.  It involves stimulating the mind through communication as opposed to just giving information.   Like Freire, another author- bell hooks describes education as a practice of freedom.  Birney, looking back on her career as a student, agrees with Freire and hooks in their understandings of education.  Birney’s African-American female teachers and professors throughout her student-hood illustrated the idea that education is about how students could grow as individuals and not just about how much information students can memorize.

Just as we have come to a new understanding of literacy, this text sheds light on an understanding of education that is not dominantly recognized either.  Most people would agree that students are more deeply affected by teachers and professors who seem to care about them.  It is mentioned in this text that more African-American female teachers and professors show their concern for students than other teachers and professors.  They show their dedication and push their students to reach levels of success that they may not have even thought of before their encounters with these teachers.  This text brought more appreciation for the efforts of African-American female teachers and professors.

Using Education to Serve a Community

For this weeks blog I read “Voices of Our Foremothers: Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Women Educators: A Personal Dedication” by Sunny- Marie Birney. In it Birney talks about her experience with her African American teachers and how they became “..[her] mothers away from home...”. In the next section she discusses Carter G. Woodson and how she believes that teaching is a form of service. This caught my attention in the sense that I never looked at teaching in that light, but after her analyses of it I now see that it is indeed a service.

A teachers job is much more than simply teaching a child information about a subject. A good teacher, a true teacher, knows how to expand a mind and actually get their students to think, process and use information that they learn. Teachers hold just as much power, if not more in certain situations, as a child's parent(s). Birney expressing that she saw her teachers as “mothers” shows that the interaction she experienced with them was significant. Therefore, it can be noted that teachers have a major impact on the students that come across their path. A teacher that is successful in not only teaching academics, but helping their students grow as individuals has succeeded in performing a service of educating. 

I feel that the professors I interact with here at Spelman College fall into the description of performing a service. Since being here I feel as if my mind has been expanded and I’ve been forced to think critically about situations and life. Professors here are open and willing to answer questions about both the curriculum and everyday concerns. Being at a school with a smaller population makes building these types of relationships and having these interactions possible and for that I’m thankful.

The Importance of Different Literacies

Dr. Bessie House-Soremekun grew up in Lanett, Alabama with her family who all valued education. From her grandmother Bessie to her parents, she was able to learn different literacies. Growing up, one of her literacies was that of learning the bible and learning about God. It could have been called religious literacy in which she learned from attending church. Because, Dr. House-Soremekun grew up in quite a large family, she was able to learn not only from her parents but from her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She points out how storytelling was a big part of how she learned. Her grandmother would give her knowledge of other literacies that her father learned as a slave. It was interesting that the most important literacy that he learned was that of knowing how to use eating utensils since he was not able to eat with them as a slave. Another literacy that she learned from her grandmother was that of succeeding in life. This is very important. Because blacks were being oppressed, there was a lot that we were not able to do. We were inferior to whites, and they wanted to keep it that way. No matter what, whites tried everything to keep the blacks from gaining any type of knowledge because like Dr. House-Soremekun said “knowledge is power”. They allowed blacks to learn with books, but those books were the ones with missing information and were outdated. Blacks were addressed by their first names while they had to say “Mr. and Mrs.” to whites. 

Reading about Dr. Bessie House-Soremekun’s life and her learning of different literacies shows how blacks have definitely come along way. She took what she learned from her grandmother’s life and her owns and succeeded in life. Although she was always being categorized, she showed how powerful and strong black people and black women are. She is a great model of how we as black women should be no matter how many times people try to bring us down. This is a very inspirational story. 

Looking Deeper, Changing Perspectives

            Sandra Golden recalls her experiences as a 20 year old pregnant woman, with multiple problems, and many fears about life, as she begins her article entitled “Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single- Parent Women”.  I was immediately drawn to the realness of the article, particularly as Golden began to explore negative connotations that society often connects to public assistance, commonly known as welfare. Golden asserts that many welfare recipients are not complacent, lazy, and abusing the system. Instead, her view is that welfare serves to assist you as you rebuild your life and is suppose to take steps to ensure stability through work training and placement programs and the creation of a support system for you.

            This article explores many topics, besides her methodology behind the “stigma” of public assistance.  Golden addresses problems within our system of assistance too. She believes that people are not placed into the proper programs, programs are repeated, and for these reasons and many others, public assistance has not aided in the growth of its recipients as much as it could. What has happened?

            In society today I’m not certain that people understand the meaning of public assistance and what it was created for.  This system was created to help manufacture more independent, self-reliant and stable people by aiding financially. Daily I see people who are in need, so public assistance is a necessity in our society. However, to the extent where people have children to receive more money and are completely abusing a system that was intended to help, it is unfortunate for the people who are truly in need. When this abuse continues to happen, the entire system becomes revamped because tax payers get frustrated because their money is not being used to serve the person who will directly benefit from it.

            Golden really sheds light on how people who may not have achieved high academic literacy levels, are still literate in other ways, including but not limited to survival, communication, and family.  We live in an age where education is pushed and I am definitely an advocate for education and advancing. With this said, it is still important to remember that college is expensive, sometimes support is limited, and everyone does not have the same belief. Sandra Golden wants us to not be so quick to judge but to understand that we all lead very different lives.

Overcoming Archetypes of Black Women on Welfare

In the article, Black and on Welfare: What You Don't Know About Single-Parent Women, Sandra Golden opens with a story about the trials she faced in her experience with welfare as a 20 year-old Black woman while pregnant, unemployed, separated from her husband, and living with her parents.  She uses the words "dehumanized" and "humiliated" when describing how she felt after her experience in a welfare office.

“A Black single parent female utilizes special literacy skills to negotiate with a social context that marginalizes and disenfranchise groups based on gender, race, education, and class.” (Golden 28) 

Golden speaks about young Black women who deal with burns from judgmental eyes.  Assumptions that these women are uneducated or inadequately educated are not the only ideas that are viewed as a common characteristic of the Black women who seek assistance in the welfare office.  People often assume that these women lack the skills and motivation that is necessary to find their way to a better situation in life.  Therefore, these women are given a hard time when they go out and seek help in a welfare office.  Because Black female-headed families have been recognized as inferior to other types of families, unproductive, pathological, and dysfunctional for so long, it is not easy to change those ideas of families headed by single Black women even though many of the situations these women are in do not match the image that was created by the ideas of the past.  Although the purpose of welfare, according to the PRWOPA, is to provide assistance to families in order to avoid unwed pregnancies, end dependence on government benefits, and to promote healthy marriage, it doesn’t seem as if this organization really has the best interest of these families at heart. 

The young Black women who reap the benefits of a welfare program are commonly close to illiterate in terms of formal education but, these women are highly skilled and educated in their respective venues of action.  They put forth a great amount of effort in order to obtain the respect of those around them and even more effort to be the best they can for their families.

A Dialectic Education

In Unearthing Hidden Literacy the author Lillie Gayle Smith discusses how through taking her “Black Woman's Literacy” class she was able to better appreciate her past experience with picking cotton. However, her story of picking cotton was not the only thing that stood out to me. The classroom setting in which she participated is what allowed her to talk about her past and realize that it was nothing to be ashamed of and in fact something to take pride in. 

 In my ADW class we recently discussed the different types of teaching styles that can be experienced in a classroom. The main one we discussed was dialectic. Which is open communication between the students and the teacher. Through dialectic teaching the teacher listens to what the students have to say and embraces their ideas and point of view. This allows for students to express themselves and draw connections between themselves and what they’re learning. And that’s exactly what Lillie Smith experienced.

If it wasn’t for Lillie Smith’s teacher allowing her students to talk and share their stories Smith would have never been able to reach her revelation. She says, “..I would not have disturbed my comfort with memories of repetitive, back-breaking work, which means that I would have ultimately denied myself the awakening that comes only from more fully understanding significant life experiences” (Smith 38). Not only did she help herself, but she was able to bless everyone else in her class as well. 

Here at Spelman College we too participate in a dialectic education which allows us to share our knowledge with one another. Not only do we learn from the teacher, but we also are fortunate enough to learn from our peers. If this was practiced in all classroom settings I believe more people would be able to have experiences similar to Lillie Smith’s.