gayness

This article was definitely thought to read. Realizing the effect some of your comments have on gay people is almost overwhelming. I think some of the information might have been dated but for the most part still holds true.

"...it is not estimated that one third of all adolescent suicide victims are gay, approximately one-quarter of all homeless youth in the United States are gay..."

Theses two stats really surprised me i would not have thought that they would be both such a high number. It really makes you think about how you could have been a part of this with what you thought was a harmless joke.


"Given I have no comment, I'm not even going to get into this discussion. I'm going to keep my opinion to myself"
I think this quote shows how even though gayness has become more acceptable it is still hard for people to talk abut it. I think that it will be a touchy subject fro awhile. I personally if i was a teacher would probably shy away from talking about it.
. "Given the realities of being "out" in high school, this strategic closeting of one's gay identity unfortunately continues to be a safe response, even if it comes at the cost of lying about one's life."
This is hard to read because you know it is true. I believe that this countries majority still is against gayness and it is definitely still frowned upon. But i think that if we just accepted it it would make there life easier and probably wouldn't bother us as much.

Talking point 2

“Without question, it would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom. I would have felt much less afraid. I would have trusted them and responded with ease.

This would be a good way for teachers to go about inviting students of culture into the class each day. But its unrealistic to think that the teacher would have to do that every class and remember the many ways they could have to say hello.

"Because I wrongly imagined that English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically a private one, I easily noted the difference between classroom language and the language at home."

Richard was able to easily make the distinction that at home it was alright to speak spanish fluently but at school he would need to talk english because it the dominant language in school.

I think this article was very interesting, how at home speaking English came so much easier compared to in public. But it made a lot of sense because when at home it is alright to mess up where as in school its frowned upon. I think that learning English is good but i think its important for them to have kept talking spanish also. I think that in schools teachers being bilingual could be very helpful in teaching but also it would give the kids who don't speak good english less of a reason to learn good english?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tIppleeIjk

Kozal and Macintosh

It is weird to think that right in your own country there are people that live in such poverty but Kozol and Macintosh makes sure to point out that the majority of the privilege class does not see this kind of poverty. Is hard to read about the many things in the life's of the people described such as the hunger, crimes, and drug use.

“DOA”If you walk on St.Anns Avenue at night, you will hear dealers call it out. Its like they’re saying Come on over here. Ill show you how to end your life.”

This shocked me how people can even get away with doing this in the first place and never mind that how do they live with themselves its honestly mind blowing.

“At an elementary school that serves the neighborhood across the avenue, only 7 out of 800 children do not qualify for free lunches.”5 of those 7”, says the principal get reduced price lunches, because they are only classified as poor not destitute”

Just taking this all in is scary, that mean every child at this school is not only poor by the standard of poor but they are even worse off. Im just glad even with the large amount of people who need fee lunch that they still give it to all of them.

"Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people - that is my idea of evil."

this is another quote that ties in good with the other pieces discussed because it explains how the privilege race is blind to the fact that if they where to do more that many things occurring in AMerica could be prevented and make everything better but the privileged people are to blind and or not willing to help that it is considered by this writer to be evil.

After reading all of this its hard to think that me myself doesn't really know how bad things are and have the power to help but the majority of the time wouldn't. There are so many shocking things to read for example the amount of people with aids. The only thing worse than that is the amount that are children. Being part of the privileged class is good but learning about the people who are not makes me uneasy. I feel like if we can change the the world can change.