Promising Practices

My first thoughts of this conference was very different than what I experienced. I was very tired when I got there and was not excited for the day at all. It also didn't help that I was trying to get over the flu. I walked in a found a group of people from class sitting together so I sat down with them. Knowing people always makes me feel somewhat better. I felt like we sat there for a while and was kind of wondering when things were going to pick up. My first session was The Impact of Racism on Learning: Stories from Undergraduate Women of Color. Our speaker was Annemarie Vaccaro, a graduate professor. I liked listening to her talk because she actually talked to us, not taught us. It was more like having a conversation about an interesting topic. What she had done is interview a variety of colored women at her school and asked them about racism and if they felt like they were being treated differently because of their color. Surprisingly many of them felt like they were treated like less of a person because of the color of their skin. Racism in schools very much still exists unfortunately. She told us about a video on YouTube called "A Girl Like Me".



This video is about colored women and how they feel in their everyday lives. They are expected to act and look a certain way. There is also an experiment with children about choosing different dolls. The white doll is said to be good and the colored doll is said to be bad. Clearly children are being taught from a young age that being white is better. People need to realize that there is no better skin color than another. It's who you are on the inside that matters. I wish everyone could think the way I do, but unfortunately that will never happen.
My second session was From Tango Makes Three to Hard Love. It was about LGBT literature in our schools. This was my favorite part of the day. It taught me so much that I didn't know before that day. I didn't even know that LGBT children's books were written. I never really thought about it before that day. Tango Makes Three is a book about two male penguins who take care of a baby penguin and raise it as their own. They told us not to be afraid to teach LGBT literature in our classrooms and be brave while teaching it. Some people might not agree with your teachings so you should be able to back them up. They gave us a resource list of more LGBT literature selections and reviews, like The Rainbow Project.
After the second session we had lunch and listen to Dr. Tricia Rose speak. Normally I don't like listening to speakers. They usually bore me and can never keep my attention. Dr. Rose was totally different. She was so funny and was talking about things that I was actually interested in. I really liked how she stood up for herself and didn't back down from a difficult question when someone clearly had different views than she did. Overall I liked the conference. It was interesting and taught me a lot of new things to take into consideration when teaching and even in my every day life.