Celia Suraski FNED 346 Spring 2019 blog

In the following blog post, I will discuss the articles “Theorizing Translanguaging for Educators” by Ofelia Garcia and “Aria” written by Richard Rodriguez. “T ranslanguaging refers to the language practices of bilingual people” (Garcia). For Richard Rodriguez, he spoke Spanish at home for most of his childhood but spoke English at school. These were Rodriguez’s language practices as a bilingual person. Translanguaging is important to these articles because if we do not understand the definition of translanguaging, we will not understand why Rodriguez did what he did growing up and we would not understand the rest of Garcia’s article. This is an example of how someone who is bilingual may feel when speaking. “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. But I would have delayed-for how long postponed?-having to lear...

“Amazing Grace” by Jonathan Kozol was really interesting to me because I did not realize how much race plays into wealth distribution today. “The Number 6 train from Manhattan to the South Bronx makes nine stops...When you enter the train, you are in the seventh richest congressional district in the nation. When you leave, you are in the poorest. The 600,000 people who live here [Manhattan] and the 450,000 people who live in Washington Heights and Harlem...make up one of the largest racially segregated concentra­tions of poor people in our nation” (Kozol 3). Even though Manhattan and the Bronx are minutes away, there is a huge wealth gap between these places and most of the poorer people in the Bronx are Hispanic. There is no reason this should be happening because quite often, the hardest working people are the poorest. People who have minimum wage jobs are not making a liveable wage, no matter how hard they work. In an article in F or bes , Brian Thompson discusses how the...

U.S.A., Land of Limitations? Nicholas Kristof I found the reading, "U.S.A., Land of Limitations?" by Nicholas Kristof very interesting. He talks about how the wealth someone is born into is usually a big factor for how wealthy they grow up to be. Kristof talks about one of his childhood friends, Rick Goff.  Rick was born into a family with not much money and Kristof says that Rick basically raised himself and his three siblings. Rick never excelled in school because his Attention Deficit Disorder was never diagnosed and he dropped out of school by the tenth grade. Rick had enough money to get by usually but did not seem to have any extra. This story was really sad and made me emotional. If Rick’s ADD has been diagnosed, he could have been given the extra help and attention he needed to excel in school and in turn could have gone to college and been given the opportunity to get a well-paying job but it seems like Rick’s family never had the funds to go to a doctor an...

This is my boyfriend Cooper. This was us at the Air and Space museum in Washington D.C. this summer. We drove from Rhode Island down to DC and then to North Carolina.  This is my family. My two brothers and my dad. This was us a couple years ago at a music festival called Riot Fest in Chicago.  This is my best friend Phoebe. This was us at a Patriots game earlier this year.  This is me and my friends from high school when we went bowling for my birthday last year. I learned how to ski last year and fell in love with it! It is so much fun! These are my dogs, Iggy and Birdie. Birdie is half husky half retriever and is 12 years old. Iggy is a jack russell and is 11 years old.