Tat's Diaries

 For this blog, I chose to evaluate the book "Skin Again" by Bell Hooks. In this book it says that the skin you're in is just a covering and not the way we're described or who we are, in order for others to know who we are or about us, they need to open their hearts and see who we are, as well as opening our own heart to see others. For the full story, you can listen to it linked below. I feel like this book does a pretty good job of teaching kids how to look at someone's character and heart instead of looking at the color of their skin. You don't get to know who a person is just by looking at them, you have to genuinely sit down, listen, and get to know someone from within, listen to their stories. Something I feel like would be important to be aware of is the crowd that I'm reading it to. It's important for students to know about diversity and how we can look at and discuss about race without being negative or uncomfortable. This book I feel provides...

  For this blog, I chose to reflect on the lesson plan linked below, "Using picture books to explore identity, stereotyping, and discrimination". I really liked this lesson because for each 45-minute session (8 of them), students are either defining, connecting, sharing personal thoughts, or collaborating with one another, and if not one of those there is a class discussion happening. I feel like all of those components are important when it comes to teaching a good lesson. Throughout the lesson, I like that there is questions listed that can help guide the classroom discussion, to keep it flowing with the topic of identity, stereotyping, and discrimination. One thing that I truly love that ties all 3 books together to the objective is the chart that is being filled out throughout the lesson. For the chart, students, as a class, are filling in the ways that the characters from the books are expressing identity, being stereotyped, and being discriminated against. I feel like t...

 For this evaluation I chose the book "Becoming Vanessa" by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. In this book, a girl named Vanessa prepares for her first day of school with an outfit that has all of her favorite clothing items. While she's at school she becomes self-conscious about being herself because her outfit is seen as a distraction by her classmates with all the questions and pointing out; but her teacher loves it. She also becomes self-conscious about her name because her classmates names aren't as long, so she tries to say that she is a different name. Once she's home she tries to avoid the day by ignoring that it happened at all. The next day, Vanessa wears an ordinary outfit that doesn't have the "personal touch" of Vanessa, and her mom helps her remember why she is so unique and how she doesn't need her favorite clothes to show that she is unique in her own way. Once she is reminded of the importance of her name and why she is unique and special...

When it came to drawing my self-portrait I wasn't really worried about the facial features or the shape of the head, because even if I'm not the best artist, one thing I wasn't sure about was what to draw for my hair. I'll come back to the hair ideal in a little bit, but first I want to talk about the other things I consider to be as part of my identity. One of the biggest things I feel that makes me who I am is my family. My family literally means so much to me, including my extended family. With being a military brat me and my mom constantly would find new friends who became our extended family, who helped with raising me as well, because as they say, "it takes a village". Friends are another big one for me, because like my family I feel like they all have had an impact in helping me recognize and become who I am today.  School is also a really big one for me as well, because I knew that I wanted to achieve great things growing up. With that achievement mind...

Hello, begin at newer posts above :)  (beginning in July) Posts below are older posts- feel free to read if you'd like though :)