All posts by Tianling

Be the teacher whom students like

Creating Classroom Community

“It kind of ruins a subject if you don’t like the teacher. I never liked history at all. But this year I have a really cool teacher, and so even if it’s hard, even if I don’t do well on tests, I ‘m starting to like it more. BOSUNG” (Cushman, 2003, p20)

It is so true that liking a teacher helps with students’ learning, I think not only with learning a certain subject but also with other aspects such as forming a correct and positive attitude towards learning even towards life. Teachers, undoubtedly, play an extremely important role in a person’s life and can have great influence on that person.
Continue reading Be the teacher whom students like →

Blame on the brain, not on me

Adolescent Brain, Reaching Adolescents and How to Respond

“Certainly social pressures are part of adolescent vulnerability, but perhaps more important is that the teenage brain lends itself to highly motivated exploration of the world in order to learn how to be an adult. This is the time to take risks! Apparently the stage of the brain construction during adolescence makes the brain more vulnerable to addiction that at any other time in life.” (Philip, 2006, p165)

Adolescents are more vulnerable to drug, alcohol and tobacco addiction, and parents usually think that their kids are going through a special stage where they easily get tempted by this kind of things. As it mentioned in the article, there are various reasons why teenagers become addicted, for example stress, emotional problems, family history, etc. Some parents understand that their kids at this age have great curiosity about things that only adults can do, want to explore the new outside world by themselves and enjoy the excitement of breaking the rules; however, the real reason is often neglected by parents that it is actually the brain construction that makes young adolescents more vulnerable. There are a lot of brain changes during adolescence such as loss of neuronal connections and forming of new connections, which lead to teenagers’ impulsive and risk-taking behaviors. Therefore, it would not be helpful if parents and teachers always blame teenagers on the addiction issues because in fact it’s not all their fault, the brain changes are something that they cannot control. Continue reading Blame on the brain, not on me →

Goodbye Guy Code, Hello Friendship

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality, Gender Socialization & Identities

“The Guy Code, and the Boy Code, before it, demands that boys and young men shut down emotionally, that they suppress compassion and inflate ambition. And it extracts compliance with coercion and fear.”  ( Way, 2011,p5)

“The participants who stood with close friends gave significantly lower estimates of the steepness of the hill than those who stood alone, next to strangers, or to newly formed friends. The longer the close friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared to the participants involved in the study. In other words, the world was perceived as less difficult when standing next to a close friend than when standing next to someone who was less close or no one at all.” (Way, 2011, p9)

I truly had strong feelings for both paragraphs above and wanted to combine them to address some issues. The Guy Code, or the Boy Code is not only an American style but also widely applied in China where it is strange to see guys being emotionally sensitive or having intimate same-sex friendships. After reading this article, I feel even more sympathy for guys since I know that guys do need express their feelings and have someone to talk about things yet they are suffering from the Guy Code, the gender stereotype so that they often times shut down their emotions. Speaking of this issue, I do have a lot to say about my dad to whom I always used Guy Code when I was young. For me my dad is a typical example of masculinity. He always takes huge responsibility and protects our whole family, leaving a little for my mom and I to worry about. I’ve never seen him cry or even shed a tear; I’ve never seen him talk to anyone about his sadness or depression. The only way I knew for his expressing sadness was to keep silent. And this led me to conclude that this is what a real man should be. However, as I growing up, I started to worry about him. How did he let go the negative feelings? How was he able to tolerate the huge pressure if he had nowhere to relieve, nobody to talk? Continue reading Goodbye Guy Code, Hello Friendship →

Cultural differences related to identity issues

Culturally, Linguistically, and Socioeconomically Diverse Adolescents in Urban Contexts: Framing the Conversation, Gender Socialization & Identities

“Middle school students are not only ready to examine complex and sophisticated issues of identity but are already forced to tackle the on their own, if nowhere but in the hallways of our school. Racial typing and stereotyping, sexual harassment, and queer-bashing can be witnessed outside my classrooms every day (and this phenomenon is absolutely not specific to under-resources schools.)” (Loren Krywanczyk, 2009)

I was shocked by the fact that middle school students have to deal with this very sophisticated identity issue which I, as a teacher, never thought about addressing to my students. This queer pedagogy the author proposed and employed in his classroom is actually a whole new content for me because of the huge cultural differences related to this kind of issues. To be honest, I’ve never heard the words like “queer”, “dyke” and “fag” until I came to the U.S., and although I did talk about gay when I was in china, I have had some deeper thinking about it since I were here. Continue reading Cultural differences related to identity issues →

Be proud of your identity

Newcomers & Perpetual Foreigners

“Along with the belief that they are in some way foreign, many Asian American youth have internalized the notion that this foreignness makes them inferior to real (i.e., white) Americans. There students hate qualities they understand to be associated with Asianness (i.e., foreignness). In an effort to distance themselves from these stigmatized images, some Asian American youth may reject things that they understand are perceived to be foreign, such as their names or languages.” (Lee, p77)

I always insist that nobody should feel inferior to anyone else, so when reading that many Asian American youth feel inferior to their white peers only because of their identity, I felt sad and disappointed. Some Asian Americans went through a very hard time at school not only because they were not acknowledged by their peers but also because they themselves hated certain parts of them and struggled. I have a good friend who is not really Asian American but moved to America when she’s five, after finishing kindergarten in China. She once shared with me that although she looked outgoing, she had few friends until going to college. With the advantage of speaking fluent English and mandarin, she had no difficulties communicating with either English speakers or mandarin speakers and should have made more friends; however, her American peers didn’t think her as an American because the fact that she was born in China and her “foreign appearance”; her Chinese peers didn’t think her as a Chinese since she behaved more like Americans in many aspects. Consequently, she was not welcomed in either group. Continue reading Be proud of your identity →