Week 8: Whats Care Got To Do With It!

While reading Dr. McKamey's article, Restoring "Caring in Education" I initially found myself confused with the two caring conceptualizations (caring about and caring for).  It wasn't until I came across Lila and Ruby's stories that I was able to comprehend the framework Dr. McKamey was setting forth. [When we are} caring about, we are putting an emphasis on ourselves and the issues we care about or want to see changed not only for our benefit, but for the people we feel are being oppressed.  Lila felt as though her teacher was excluding her and her peers who did not speak Spanish. She felt strongly about the situation and sought out help from another teacher on how she could combat the inequality within the classroom. Her story illustrates the caring about framework.

When it came to the "caring for" conceptualization, I had to place myself in my youth space (Roger Williams Middle School). I had to look back on the times I entered the school and identified times where I witnessed students being cared for by the school administration. Some teachers will seek out students they know are having a bad day but it is not a consistent approach. However, this is a consistent approach among after school program staff. What's ironic about this situation is, these staff members do not see our kids every single day. Some see their kids two maybe three times a week. In spite of this, there is a level of consistency that is en routed. Lila made an analogy that stood out to me. She said, "I consider myself as a pot, because the flowers inside the pot need water, sun, soil, to grow and become healthy. If it doesn't have these things, then it will not grow and die".  In my eyes, our kids need: respect, opportunities for leadership as well as growth, and support.

In reading 'Caution, we have power, I felt an overwhelming sense of systematic oppression put forth on undocumented immigrants. I found myself flash backing to high school. In particular, 10th grade English Literacy. My English teacher was one of my more rigid educators. He strongly believed the only way to learn English was to speak it during school. He had this rule that I will never forget. He would always say, "If you decide to speak Spanish in my classroom, you will be staying after school and write I will not speak Spanish in Mr. Fuller's classroom a hundred times".  Students would go to the principals office to voice their frustrations but the administration did nothing to support their students. In fact, more and more faculty started to adopt Mr. Fuller's rule. The English Language Learners were being oppressed by their educators. The very people who were vocal about English being the only dominant language in their school.