Who Am I? - Reflection 13

After reading the article “Understanding the Self” a few concepts stuck t me. These concepts hold many truths in what I think of and some of the beliefs that I hold. One concept was, “To thine own self be true…” This is a quote that I heard a long time ago and I’ve repeated it and tried my best to live by it. To me, it means that many things tend to change and not be what you expect them to be and though you may face different things in life stay true to who you really are. Sort of like not forgetting about from whence you came. Another concept that stuck with me was that Goffman believed that often times our mannerisms are simply a “front” that we put up in hopes that it will satisfy the expectations we feel others have for us at the moment. One of the most important concepts that I got out of reading this article was at point number two when the author was describing how humans typically are. One of those points was that “We protest loudly about those matters in life that offend us but remain silent and even unthankful about those things that please us” and I thought to myself that this is so true. People are typically ungrateful for what they have and they often times don’t show appreciation for the good in their lives. I also understood that at one point philosophy and psychology were considered one until psychology evolved enough on its own to be considered a separate entity. Another concept in the article that I gave some thought to was whether or not there is only one self or multiple selves that make up on person. This statement may bring some controversy because people will only believe that they are one self. In reality though, the article made a point by putting out that if there was to be a video camera that followed you throughout the course of one week we wouldn’t only see one self. You would act differently in different situations amongst different people. It’s not that you would be a completely different person each time but there would be slight differences. So it may be safe to say that there is more than one self. I know that I do not act the same around everyone. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I suffer from some type of disorder. It just means different times different behaviors; I’m not saying that I act like a completely different person each time. Now that would just be a disorder.
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Old Sigmund- Reflection 12

Freud’s work on the Theory of Personality is considered important even by those who do not agree with him because he provides them with a base that they are at least able to counter. Other theories of personality often develop only after the there is something to argue against. So even if many people didn’t agree with his personality theory, Freud affected and held importance to them all. Many of Freud’s theories put an emphasis on a driving force that many people tend to disagree with which is sex. Freud basically didn’t sugar coat any of his theories and was very blatant with his ideas. Sometimes people don’t want to believe the truth about mankind. Mankind has a lot aggression and they are driven by a lot of sexual desires. Freud even figured why we go to college to get a degree is actually so that we can attract a better mate with whom we will have offspring that will continue our bloodlines. Everyone wouldn’t look at life like that. But there is some truth to that because with a degree we want to marry someone else who has a degree that way raising children would be a simple since money is coming in from both parties, the child will want of nothing. According to Freud we have different parts of our personality that develops at different stages from birth. They are the Id, The ego and the Superego. The Id is developed at birth which helps the parent to acknowledge the child’s need. When the child’s diaper is yet, or when the child wants to be fed they cry to make that known not paying any attention to reality. They just know that they need to be satisfied at that point in time and make no bones about showing it. The id only cares about satisfying itself and no one else. After about three to four years the Ego is developed and that when reality becomes a part of the personality. The child then understands that other people have feelings as well so reality as come into the picture at this point. The ego still has to be able to satisfy the Id , but it does so understanding that someone else has feelings and wants to be satisfied just the same. Freud goes on to explain the Superego as the part of us which has moral values and constraints. Basically this is the little voice, what we sometimes call it, that tells us what is good versus what is bad. People often hear this as their parents voice knowing that if their parent was there they wouldn’t choose the bad thing to do. Overall, I think that Freud has some pretty interesting theories and though some areas of his theories are false, many of them are true.
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Beliefs -Reflection 11

The thing that strikes me as most important while reading Beliefs, Values and Attitudes is the idea of values itself. Values help to determine a person’s behavior, thoughts and even conditions of being whether desirable or undesirable. Being a teacher, we would have to deal with these different values that each student brings to the classroom and we have to understand that each student isn’t going to have the same values even the ones that we believe to be the most generic. Values are decisions that help us to choose what is classified as good or appropriate behavior. Being that each student will have different values, not only will some opinions differ from my own, but they will also differ between each student. This may cause different situations in a classroom so as a teacher, I believe that we must learn to help our students with the acceptance that not everyone will think like them. The values that people have learned in their homes, families, and traditions will determine how they behave in public and assist them with making decisions in the classroom. Not only will their values be different, but also their attitudes and beliefs. Some children are brought up to believe stereotypical things about other cultures that differ from their own. Being a teacher in a diverse classroom will be a task in itself besides the idea of actually teaching them. I would have to say that the most important thing that I’ve learned after reading the article is that though we are raised with a set of instilled values and beliefs that determine our attitudes, we do not have to stay that way for the rest of our lives because a change can occur within our beliefs, values and attitudes which can allow us to reach multicultural awareness/ consciousness which is the state where everyone should strive to reach being that it would allow us to be enlightened individuals working towards the greater good of the society rather than working against everyone else in the society. Along with positive beliefs and values we also have negative ones that are instilled in us from within our culture and these beliefs are rooted in fear and ignorance. With a change in beliefs overall we would be uprooting the weeds of prejudicial actions and feelings that were once rooted and we can continue on the journey towards multicultural awareness/ consciousness
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Including Everyone (Reflection 10)

Even before reading the article, one can gather a lot of information from the title of it. The title basically lets the reader know that the information in the article will assist with teaching and including all of your students opposed to just one set. The article “Teaching for Inclusion” is a very helpful article in the sense that it gives a lot of insight for a diverse classroom. Classrooms in modern times are always diverse opposed to earlier in the times when teachers didn’t have diversity and weren’t trained on how to handle diversity in the classrooms. If anyone was different from the majority of the students in the classroom, the student was more than likely sent to the guidance counselor for lack of a better way to handle them. With the new information available, I would hope that the average teacher is much more in tuned with his or her students. Luckily we have evolved and matured as a society that we do not have to rely on guidance counselors to handle those kids that rent a part of the norm that we are used to. If that was the case, in a classroom in modern times almost every child will be sitting in the office of a guidance counselor because of their difference. Diversity is a part of the average classroom today. Another point in the article was that the teacher should get to know their students. I believe this is true because getting to know the student will benefit the teacher and the student. The student will be comfortable in the classroom and will be able to do their work accordingly. One thing I would definitely want to implement in my future classroom is setting up ground rules for discussions. Of course I would want everyone to be able to express their own opinions but I do not want it to be expressed at the cost of another student’s opinion. I also feel that by setting these ground rules into play, there would be less controversy especially when controversial topics are being discussed. Another important point that was found in the article was the inclusion of humorin lesson plans and different topics. Humor is a gentle place to walk on because many people do not find the sme things funny. I’m certain there will be topics that you would have to add humor to try and ge the students involved in it but the humor being used may be offensive to some students and not others. So do you just leave humor out of it all together? I am hopeful that in my future classroom I am able to distinguish between the small things like good humor and non offensive humor from bad humor or offensive humor. I am willing to dedicate my time with my students to learn them and their patterns that way they feel comfortable but still knows that the teacher is in charge of the classroom and not them.
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(Reflection 9)

I never knew that there was a difference between awareness and consciousness. I always thought that being aware meant that you were conscious. After reading Transformation: Awareness and Consciousness I learned a few new things. One of those things was that awareness and consciousness are indeed different. Awareness is more than just a thing of the mind and it is not mental. Consciousness on the other hand is of the quality of the mind and is very much mental. Consciousness is also thought of as one of many levels of awareness. The author made a point in describing consciousness and awareness. One point that stood out to me was the example of a person sleeping. When a person goes to sleep their consciousness is also in a resting state. Even though they are asleep they are still aware of sounds around them. This is why people are able to be awaken out of sleep when they hear alert words like “fire!” or when they hear “Help!” The author also went on to say that awareness is the like the background amongst all that happens whether or not we realize it. According to Colin Wilson, there are eight levels of consciousness seven of which he described but the last one he was silent on it and didn’t describe it. This information is new to me being that I never imagined that someone would describe so many levels of consciousness. We are learning about awareness and consciousness for the purpose of transformation. These two things are very important while on the journey of transformation. When we have reached a level where we are both aware and conscious not only of ourselves but of others and their beliefs and opinions at that point is when we can be considered multiculturally aware and understanding that we along with everyone else that inhabits the world may not have the same beliefs and values. Being able to understand our differences and accept each other for them brings us to a point where we are more elevated that some people who feel that their opinions are the only ones that matter. After reading these articles and understanding their concepts, I hope to reach a point where I am transformed from my current being to a much mlore enlightened and aware being.
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Having "The Talk" (Reflection 8)

Ive never really thought about how my parents taught me about class neither about how my social class differs from everyone else. Growing up, I had it very easy, never wanted nor suffered for anything really. My home is a nice size house with four rooms 2 bathrooms and an add on room as well. We have a big backyard and swimming pool and we live in a decent neighborhood. We’ve been living at the same house for twenty-two years and never experienced any necessity like water and lights being turned off. Yet my mom would always say that she was broke. Every holiday everyone always had new clothes, shoes; everyone’s hair was either cut or done by the salon. Yet when asked for money, my mom would always say that she was broke and she didn’t have any. I finally learned that when my mom said she didn’t have any money that was basically code words for she wasn’t giving you any even though she did have it; Only for necessities. Living by the standards of the media, I would say that we were a middle class family. The media didn’t play a big part in determining that, I learned that from seeing the lack of things in other homes and families. I learned to be grateful at an early age and never to be unappreciative because there was always someone who wanted it more than yourself. With the understanding of my gender, of course there were the main things like pink is for girls and blue is for boys but it didn’t go much further than that. I remember being amongst some of my friends and they would talk about only doing inside chores like cleaning and dusting, when at my house, chores were chores, no matter what the gender was. The girls were outside raking the yards, boys were cleaning bathrooms. There were never any limitations. We also knew that girls and boys didn’t have the same privates and you weren’t supposed to let anyone see. That’s as far as it went with understanding of gender in my household. As far as sexual relations were concerned, I never learned about it from my mom and dad. I learned from friends who had learned from their friends and cousins and so on. And then all the myths and such were corrected in biology classes and in human growth and development classes and from me reading about it on my own. I’ve never really heard of island parents teaching their kids about it. You basically just knew when you came of age that you were not to show up in your mom’s house pregnant or that would be the end of days.

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Transformer We Are (Reflection 5)

In the articles entitled Culture: What It Is and Transformation: Creating Context, the author provides the reader’s with information on how many within the same human species are very different ; this information inst totally new to me. And it isn’t too far-fetched to believe that there are some people who believe that everyone in the world is just like them; holding the same opinions and truths as the next person. The author assists his readers with understanding that people have very different points of view that stem from different roots. The author also points out one of man’s greatest flaw, and that is to judge. Everyone does it a great deal of the time. Sometimes it is done and people aren’t even aware of it. By suspecting something without actually knowing and then allowing oneself to believe and react like what you think is actually true, then that is a form of judging a person. For instance, there are many older people, who, when they see a young person with dreadlocks in their hair and they happen to be a person of color, assume that this young person is out to do them harm. They often clutch their bags and plce their hands in their pockets making sure to hold on tightly to their wallets. Who’s to say that this young person is even thinking to do such an ill-mannered thing to another person. But far be it from them to actually think to say just maybe this person is simply minding their own business. I’ve learned that compassion, tolerance and, acceptance are all apart of understanding human diversity. I also learned as much as I believe that I do not care about something and that it has no affect on me, I still would have to generate an opinion which will determine that I do. This rang true because I realized that as much as you don’t like someone or something how you feel still rings true in your expressions whether you try to show it or not. In “Transformation: Creating Context” the author also talks about something that many people try to do and it is very evident and that is to reinvent oneself. To reinvent oneself is basically to try and change physical state and one’s thinking state. This is a simplified version of a definition of transformation which the author strongly emphasizes. After transformation has taken place, one can be an enlightened individual. Yet, what transformation is good transformation?
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