Melanie’s Blog

I am so anxious to hear Paul Gorski!  After reading A Framework for Understanding Ruby Payne  and Savage Unrealities, I almost wish I could hear a debate between Payne and Gorski.  I want to hear Ruby Payne’s response to all of this.  I think I remember a few people mentioning the other night that they had never heard of Ruby Payne until now.  When reading A Framework for Understanding Ruby Payne, I kind of laughed out loud.  I have had to take the “Could you Survive Poverty” quiz at two different times during my teaching career as an introduction activity to a brief Ruby Payne inservice.  Many years ago (maybe over six?)  our school gave most teachers a copy of Ruby Payne’s Framework.  I can’t remember if we were to read it in our “leisure” time or if we did some sort of book study, but wonder if the principal at the time knows now what we know about Ruby Payne.  I think our current principal is sending several teachers to a Ruby Payne inservice.  I wonder what the higher-ups in my county know and think of Ruby Payne?  Perhaps this is one of those times I should speak up!   I think it was Katy who wondered if administrators see that a certain speaker is expensive and therefore assumes he/she is really good.  I’m sure she’s probably right.

 How sad it was to read that a teacher, after taking one of Ruby Payne’s workshops, stated she learned that “poor people can’t think abstractly.”  I wonder what other teachers have walked away from her workshops thinking.  When I began reading these articles, I wondered if it could really do any harm to read her books…surely you could learn something from her, but walking away with thoughts such as the one mentioned above is rather scary.  I really liked the last quote in Bohn’s article stating that “It takes schools where students are not just prepared to take and pass standardized tests, but where they are taught how to play a conscious, active role in society, how to recognize and combat racism and other institutionalized inequities, and how to work in pursuit of the dream of social and global justice.”

Since one of my Capstone projects is to write a grant with Jacqueline in hopes of buying more culturally diverse books for our school’s bookroom, I was anxious to read this article.  The article mentioned guidelines to look for that had not even crossed my mind when picking out an appropriate book.  One of the problems the author of this article considered to be the biggest was omission.  The author noted that many times an entire group may be excluded from a collection, which implies that the group is insignificant.  We read an article in class mentioning the number of Asian cultures.  One of the questions one should ask when looking at children’s books is whether or not the book portrays diversity among Asian Americans.  I thought that was good to point out.  The article also mentioned that Asian Americans should not be portrayed as model minorities, which made another connection to our past article.  I liked the statement that “every person from every culture should be portrayed as an individual with unique strengths, weaknesses, interests, lifestyles, and beliefs.”  When mentioning the language in an appropriate children’s book, the words papoose, squaw, and docile are examples that the author of this article listed as offensive terms.  There were many other terms listed that I understood to be offensive, but had no idea the three I listed were considered offensive.  I will definitely keep this article handy as Jacqueline and I prepare to write our grant!