Takeaways From: Shifting the Paradigm

Talking Points:

Throughout this reading, one point that stood out to me was the importance of modeling an asset-based approach not just for students, but for staff as well. "Asset focused expectations must be modeled with faculty and staff by identifying their assets to determine how they can contribute to the school and community" (p. 24). For the asset model to be incorporated into schools effectively, faculty must be encouraged to foster students' assets. But is this something that can realistically be done? Districts everywhere tend to focus on where students are not succeeding. Think about standardized test scores — specifically math RICAS data. In my own district, scores are broken down by standard, and feedback is centered on where students are the least successful. We spend so much time focusing on "at-risk" skills rather than the skills students excel at. While I appreciate the idea of the asset model in classrooms, I wonder how realistic it is to implement at the district level.

As a middle school teacher, the reading's emphasis on building assets during the middle school years gave me a lot to think about. The authors suggest that mentoring programs be put in place to provide students with a sense of community. In my own school, we use a system called "Check-in, Check-out" (CICO), which pairs students with a mentor figure and is designed to help redirect behaviors. Reading this made me wonder, what if a program like CICO focused more on students' strengths rather than their weaknesses? The structure is already there: students connect with a positive adult figure in the morning and at the end of the day, and are assessed on behavior, assignment completion, and respect. I'm not sure exactly how it could be reimagined, but I do wonder whether consistently focusing on what a student is not doing is doing more harm than good in the long run.

Finally, the reading’s note that students lose the most assets during the middle grades really resonated with me. "It is during the middle grades that students either launch toward achievement and attainment, or slide off track" (p. 25). As a middle school educator, I play a role in which path students take, even when I don't fully realize it. This is a reminder to be more intentional about asset modeling in my own classroom: highlighting student strengths, holding students to high expectations, and making sure that my students leave with more assets than they came in with, not fewer.

Argument Statement: Renkly and Bertolini argue that schools must focus on identifying and building up students' assets to support positive development.

Connections: Reading about the asset model immediately brought to mind the concept of the growth mindset. Mindsets are beliefs about intelligence and ability. A growth mindset holds that ability can improve with effort, while a fixed mindset sees it as stable and unchangeable. In my educational psychology graduate coursework,

growth mindset comes up often, and this passage from the reading felt like a direct reflection of it: "having high expectations for your students, convincing them that these expectations are attainable, helping them remove their fear of failure by encouraging them to fail forward, setting small and attainable goals, and celebrating successes" (p. 26). That is a growth mindset. If you haven't come across the concept before, click growth mindset and take a look at the image to the left. A growth mindset boosts motivation and achievement by orienting students toward learning and improvement. Children with a growth mindset see effort as a path forward, while those with a fixed mindset tend to avoid challenges out of fear of judgment. The asset model and growth mindset clearly go hand in hand, which makes me curious, did the authors of this reading have a growth mindset in mind, or is it simply a gap in their framework? Or maybe I was overthinking it, I'm still curious about the whole idea!

Takeaways From: "The Broken Model": Chapter 2 & A Short History of Public Schooling: Class Dismissed

While reading chapter 2 from The Broken Model and watching A Short History of Public Schooling from Class Dismissed, I made some talking points, observations, highlighted quotes and questions, while making some connections to previous readings. 

❗Talking Points:

1. Why do we operate the educational system with only order and limited curiosity? I understand the idea of a typical classroom model and the importance of having structure to limit student distractions and increase engagement, however, we are limiting students' curiosities and ideas. On page 77 of Chapter 2, Khan discusses how "order trumped curiosity; regimentation took precedence over personal intuition." My wonder is: what if it didn't? I know this is hypothetical, but how as educators can we encourage deeper inquiry and overall questioning?

2. "Geometry cannot be mastered by reading the demonstrations of a text-book, and while there is no branch of elementary mathematics in which purely receptive work, if continued too long, may lose its interest more completely." (p. 79) Students cannot learn math concepts by just simply listening, reading, and repeating. It is crucial to let students explore the material through inquiry and problem-solving.

3. In the History of School video, Laurie A. Couture discusses how school teaches children to be subordinate so they can go into the workforce as obedient workers. This connects directly to how students' imagination and creativity were limited with the Prussian model. While the original model of schooling has evolved in some ways, much has remained the same in regards to curriculum design - we're still prioritizing obedience and memorization over curiosity and critical thinking. For example, current math curriculums typically tell students rules rather than having them discover why rules exist or how they truly work. This limits children's critical thinking skills and trains them to just follow the rules and be subordinate, rather than be curious and innovative - skills that are actually useful in the real world.

⭐Argument Statement: 

Khan argues that the traditional classroom model prioritizes order and regimentation over student curiosity and creativity, which limits learning and fails to prepare students for a world that needs innovative thinkers.

🌎Connections:

This reading about student curiosity and creativity relates to other discussions I have had in classes about student discoveries. Allowing students to explore and make connections on their own is crucial for critical thinking and learning. In most cases, and in my own experience, students are typically nervous or scared to ask questions in schools, which ultimately limits their curiosity and understanding. The chapter states, "Today's world needs a workforce of creative, curious, and self-directed lifelong learners who are capable of conceiving and implementing novel ideas." (p. 80) This made me think of how important it is to allow students to be curious and creative in the classroom. In my class last semester, we learned about how important it is to model questioning. There are so many articles, videos, and research about questions in the classroom. Children need to be immersed in a culture that celebrates and provides multiple opportunities for asking big questions. Responding with questions to students gives them the idea that it is okay to be curious and creative. Read the document below to consider how to make asking questions in school okay. I also attached a link to a TED Talk if you want to watch how to ask purposeful questions.

** I found images from Instagram, on passive learning vs active learning.

https://youtu.be/AmAbX3PxhGs?si=6BWXxBSnpdbI3zr6

https://pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Asking-Big-Questions.pdf

Takeaways From: "Colorblindness is the New Racism" & "Color Blind or Color Brave?"

 ❗Talking points: 

"Race remains a formative identity category that impacts the lives of both Whites and people of color, albeit in different ways." (p. 67) This quote from the beginning really stood out to me. Race identity genuinely shapes a person's entire life - from the social structures they navigate, to their daily experiences, to how others perceive them and how they move through the world.

On page 69, Armstrong and Wildman wrote, "Whereas colorblindness urges us not to notice race, color insight says 'do not be afraid; notice your race and the race of others around you; racism and privilege still do affect people's lives; learn more about the racial dynamic.'" I felt like this quote resonated with me a lot as many people ignore the race of everyone around them in hopes that it'll all go away. However, even if race does not impact my life, it impacts so many people's lives on a daily basis. Not having to think about my own race is a privilege within itself. This connects directly to Mellody Hobson's TED Talk, where she says “race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail”. She goes on to say that she had been afraid, but the first step to solving any problem is to not hide from it, and the first step to any form of action is awareness.

"No person is purely privileged or unprivileged; we are privileged in respect to some categories and not privileged in respect to others. Sometimes one strand is dominant, sometimes another. This causes the experience of privilege to be further obscured; the presence of privilege may be further hidden from our vocabulary and consciousness if we focus only on the ways in which we face disadvantage" (p. 70). I felt this quote towards the end of the reading was important because so many forms of privilege and disadvantage exist in the world. It all depends on the lens you are using and how you are uncovering what lies beneath the surface.

⭐Argument Statement: Armstrong and Wildman argue for the application of color insight rather than color blindness as an approach to thinking about race. 

🌎Connections: While reading the "Racial Observation Exercise" on p. 68, I reflected on how race operates in educational settings and recognized both my own privileges and my own defensiveness. Typically a defensive mechanism is a mental process intended to protect us from uncomfortable thoughts or feelings. I made this connection while reading the excerpt on p. 70 about the hands on the seatbelt being white hands. Once, I did an activity in an undergrad class that included a PowerPoint on defensiveness. You had to answer all types of questions, and there were a variety of images. At the very end of the PowerPoint, there was a question about the images and what we noticed. I did not notice that every single picture had a white person. I automatically became defensive, but I also discovered an example of my own privilege in my daily life. This is exactly what Armstrong and Wildman mean when they discuss how privilege remains hidden from our consciousness - I literally could not see whiteness because it was my default lens. If you are unsure of what defensiveness means or how to navigate it, I found an interesting TED talk on YouTube: Link

ChatGPT Connection: Link to AI thread

Takeaways From: Alan Johnson's Privilege, Power, and Difference

 While reading Chapters 1-3 from Alan Johnson’s Privilege, Power and Difference, I made some talking points, observations, highlighted quotes and questions, while making some connections to previous readings. 

❗Talking Points:

“We might not realize how routinely we form such impressions until we run into someone who doesn’t fit neatly into one of our categories.” (P. 20) The illusion connected to difference stood out to me on p. 16, of people being naturally afraid of what they don't know or understand. Which leads to fearing and distrusting people who aren’t like me and in spite of any good intentions, it is impossible to get along with them. However, the author confirms it as a myth. I’m curious if this is true to some extent whether it is subconsciously or not. 

“To be white in America means not having to think about it.” (P. 25) The author defined privilege as “one of those loaded words that we claim so that we can use it to name and illuminate the truth”. It seems that the author’s central point here is how easy it is for people to dismiss privilege and claim that they do not feel privilege so they must not be privileged. However, the act of not being aware of privilege is privilege itself. 

After filling in the Diversity Wheel myself, I recognized how altered my own life would be by changing one part of my identity. For example, changing my gender would completely shift how I navigate careers and passions. It truly drove home Johnson’s point how these categories can shape our own lives even when we don't notice (privilege). I attached the diversity wheel if anyone else would like to go about it. 

The term paradox occurs on p. 35, which indicates a sentiment that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true. Privilege as Paradox: Rather than people, categories are what hold privilege. If you take away the category then you may lose or gain privilege. It matters who people THINK you are. 

⭐Argument Statement:
The author Alan Johnson argues that to change how we think, we can change how we act which leads to changing how we participate in the world or become part of the complex dynamic through which the world itself will change. 

🌎Connections: 

Throughout this reading, the author discusses race, gender, and social class. Something I wonder if he could have discussed was language. Considering how often linguistic profiling occurs, and how speaking less English than the average American makes people look at you in a completely different light. Or if you have an accent that is “not typical”. If you are unaware, linguistic profiling occurs when a listener makes judgments about a speaker's social characteristics (such as race or social class) based on their accent, dialect, or other speech patterns. This is connected to a graduate course I took last summer about teaching English as a second language. If you are interested to learn more, I attached an article and a video on Linguistic profiling. 

Video: Link

Linguistic profiling: The sound of your voice may determine if you get that apartment or not: Linguistic Profiling 

About Me

Hi! My name is Giana and I am a middle school math teacher in Cumberland, RI. I recently graduated from RIC in May with my Bachelor's in Elementary Ed. When I’m not in class I am probably making lesson plans, at the gym, reading books, or watching sports (If anyone has book recommendations, I love trying new reads-I'm open to anything). I have been weight lifting for years but at the end of 2025 I started running and did my first race on New Years Day. 

I love sports, mainly baseball, football, college football and basketball. Go Sox! And Notre Dame Football! GO IRISH! I also have a 12 year old chocolate lab at home, Pennie who I hang out with on a daily basis.