Teachings From One Student to Another.

In the essay, Transformative College Literacy of Literate Black Women Peer Counselors, Robin Wisniewski introduces us to Lauryn who is a first-semester peer counselor and a senior biology/pre-medicine major and Vania who is a third-semester peer counselor and a senior accounting major.  The essay begins with each of the two girl's definition of what being a literate Black women means.  I agree with both definitions because throughout the whole semester we have been discussing the different ways one might be considered literate.  Wisniewski started this peer counseling program which helped "provide literacy support for college students with disabilities, from low-income backgrounds, and in the first generation in their family to attend college".  In the program, math and writing tutoring was available.  Here, at Spelman, we have upperclassmen that help the first-year students in subjects like world foreign languages, english, math, biology and others.  We have the writing center and language resource center that allows us to get peer counseling from other students who have learned the same thing we are trying to understand now.  I personally like that we have these types of programs because it helps us all to become literate Black women together as peers.  Attending a predominantly Black school, like Spelman College, gives you access to many different literate Black women. I believe that having programs that involve peer counseling at colleges are very beneficial to everyone that is involved in the programs from the peer counselors to the other students. 

Missing A Part of You

In the essay, "Voices of Our Foremothers: Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Woman Educators" by Sunny-Marie Birney, you understand the importance of parents sharing and reflecting their heritage on their children. The essay discusses Birney's dependency on her teachers for understanding of her African descent. She was adopted at the age of 2 by Euro-American people who could not tell her much about the culture because they weren't black. An exert states, "Similar to the unknown author of the negro spiritual Motherless Child, I too found myself "a long way from home. My adopted parents, two people of Euro-American descent, were wonderful people, but I always felt that a piece of me was missing." From this exert, Birney expressed that she loved her parents and they were great but growing up she always felt that there was a part of her missing. Why should adopting parents be of similar ethnicity of the child? Growing up and watching movies such as Raising Isaiah, I didn't understand the importance of adopting a child how had the same race as the parents. I felt that it was not a vital role in parenting. Many of the movies I watched I assumed that the parents or the adoption agencies were just prejudice and did not understand that parenting was beyond the color of someone's skin tone. But now things seem to shine in a new light. I can understand how important it is to understand where you have come from to understand where you are going. Being raised in a African-American household I have gotten the chance to experience culture traditions and festivities. This things have helped mold me into the woman I am today and will definitely have an affect on the woman and mother I will be in the future. When I do have the chance to interact with other African-American students and I find out that they don't understand the traditions and festivities I become completely shocked. I also find myself using sayings as "oh your not black" to make fun of them in a joking way. I never realized how much I characterize someones's ethnicity on their behaviors but I do. I understand that the behaviors we perform and understand reflects who we are as a people. Growing up as a child and not getting the chance to experience this must have a big toll of the life of the child. It must make them feel lost or as Birney stated, "a piece of them is missing". So now when it comes to understanding the importance of being raise in a home where similar culture beliefs and traditions are shared. As the saying goes, "In order to know where you are going, you have to know where you came from".

Mothers Away from Home

Kaitlyn Jackson

In "Voices of Our Foremothers: Celebrating the Legacy of African-American Women Educators A Personal Dedication" by Sunny-Marie Birney, she talks about African American teachers who had a significant influence on her life.  In Part One: Laying the Foreground, Birney said that being brought up by European Americans impacted the way she viewed African Americans, especially since she is African American herself.  But, throughout her education, the African American teachers became her"mothers away from home"(Birney, 51).  It is because of the influence her teachers had that Birney decided to become a teacher and assist in preparing African American students for their futures.  While Birney's African American teachers taught her valuable lessons, they also did one thing that was very important to her development --they cared.  Not only did they care about her academics, but the teachers also cared for Birney as if she was one of their children. While reading this part, I reminisced on my childhood and influential teachers I have had.  One particular African American teacher stands out, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Smith-Willis.  Over the years, Mrs. Smith-Willis has continued to be a valuable member of my life and she has remained a family friend to this day.  According to Jacqueline Jordan Irvine in her article, "The Education of Children Whose Nightmare Came Both Day and Night" (1999), she believes that students "performed their best when they thought that teachers cared for them.  Students said that teachers cared when the laughed with them, trusted and respected them, and recognized them as individuals"(p.249).

In Part Two: The Art of Service, Birney discusses how African American teachers are servicing their community by caring about the well-being and education of each of their students.  Teachers are not doing their community a service because they have to, they do it because they want to see young African Americans succeed.  Carter G. Woodson describes a servant of the community as someone of the people who is a leader in the community and can help others.  Teachers are among those leaders who want to change their communities for the better.  There is a special connection between students and their teachers that cannot be reenacted.  This collaboration between teacher and student is referred to by Friere as "liberation education"(Birney, 52).  I believe that liberation education is the best way for students to learn and that teachers of all races should practice it.  Through a liberal education, students can learn to speak their minds and practice their freedom.

Lessons From Down Under

  Lessons From Down Under was intently informative on the ways African Americans attained literacy in the Civil Rights Era, compared to Bessie House- Soremekum. While I was reading the story of Soremekum I found parallels in her life that reflected in mine. “Lines of strict blood lineage were of blurred as my aunt treated me as if she were my mother.” (60) I began to laugh as I read this quote, for when I was growing up there was no real distinction with discipline; my aunt and grandmother acted as if they were my mother at times.  I hated this growing up but, as I look at it now I view it as a informal literacy of treating everybody equal. Another incident in Soremkum life brought up a moment in my life. “I made the decision, during my fourth-grade year in school that I wanted to obtain the highest degree awarded in academia.” (63) After reading this quote I saw myself when I had made the exact same vow upon my life at an early age. Seeing the parallels in my life with the author made this reading informative about the types of literacies with a pathos appeal.

One thing that appealed to me throughout the reading is how Soremekum used her life experiences to tie back into her meaning of the work. When the author talked about how she “learned everything about succeeding in life” from her great-grandmother storytelling I saw this fact resembling in African American families across the country. There is nothing like a great-grandmother storytelling for they are enriched with history and grand opportunities. Soremekum asserted her passion behind formal literacy with race rules as she expressed how her great-grandmother was not given the respect of her name when whites approached her. In her assertion I gained insight and a scholarly perspective in the account on “separate but not equal.”

Don't Use Your Temporary Crutches Forever.

This week’s reading was a chapter called “Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats” inside of The Destruction of Black America.  My main focus while reading was the section about welfare brats.  My mother is a single parent with three children and she has never turned to the government for help.  She has too much pride to ask for help from anyone.  So when I read about how “welfare recipients are people who feel life is not worth living without a handout from the Great Society” (Parker 128) it is hard to believe that people would actually want to live their whole life on welfare or being “welfare brats” and not show society that they can be independent, hard workers for their earnings is very depressing.  I know that my mother didn’t want to get on welfare after she separated from my father is because society looks at the mother and child as victims when they are “receiving government assistance” (128).   From reading and understanding Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single-Parent Women, I think Sandra Golden is a perfect example to show other black single-parent women how to use support and help from others to build into someone who doesn’t need help anymore.  When someone breaks their leg they use crutches for the support and help to walk and get around but after a while when they heal they don’t need those crutches anymore and can walk on their own.  Welfare should be the crutches for those on welfare going through many struggles but once they get their life together they should walk away from the government’s assistance with a proud, high head.

"Don't Bite the Hand that Feeds You"

In the essay, “Black and on Welfare: What You Don’t Know About Single-Parent Women” by Sandra Golden, it explains the lifestyles of black women who struggle with welfare. In the essay Golden states, “The study’s participants noted that they were not against the welfare reform law, rather they resented the discriminatory treatment from their self-sufficiency coaches (SSC)… the disrespect was a manifestation of public assistance are uneducated and lazy.” This statement posed a question in my mind that wonders whether what she studied in her participants is really the causing factor to their disrespect. When it comes to the respect that should be given from a “SSC” to a welfare participate should it be based on their education and personal behavior or simply should it be reflected from the respect given?  From a personal viewpoint I have interacted and I am acquaints to black women on welfare.  In observing their behavior and attitude towards people, majority of the women have a negative attitude to others. How can they expect someone to fully apply themselves in assisting you with the help you need if they treat have a bad temper? To a certain extent I can understand why some of the SSC may treat the women with less respect and it is because they earned it. Many of the women who struggle with financial issues that are single mothers have so much anger bottled up in them that they began to take it out on the people around them, especially those that may be in better situations than them.  Another thing to be mindful of is that many people have to depend on social services for assistance and it has nothing to do with their education. Some people who might have college degrees may be in the same predicament as someone who has a GED but that does not mean they should be treated with a higher degree of respect. It does not matter where they came from or what they have done in the past but it is where they are now. That now is being a single mother on welfare needing help and guide to have the ability to provide for herself and her children. Some of these women believe that the people that are helping them are obligated to help them and that is not true. They need to learn how to be respectful and not bite the hand that feeds them, while in this case help them. You do not need a high school diploma to understand the importance of manners, that should be a given.  I can understand Golden’s point as well as the participants with believing that a lot of mistreatment is rooted from the societal stigma that all black women on welfare are uneducated and have the “welfare mentality”. Some women who are mannerful are treated disrespectful because of that stereotype. Some "SSC" workers like to catergorize everyone in a certain catergory but not all. If you take the time to think about it, a lot of the SSC workers chose that job because they have a passion to help others in need not because they were stuck with it. So their focus is to provide the support that their participants need not to treat them with disrespect.

Literacy Through A Struggle

Kaitlyn Jackson

Unearthing Hidden Literacy: Seven Lessons I Learned in a Cotton Field by Lillie Gayle Smith was a pivotal reading that expressed just how much negative experiences can affect a person's literacy without their knowledge.  Smith told the audience about her childhood of picking cotton in her aunt's field in Alabama.  From the beginning, I noted how much she hated the experience because it just made her a part of a long line of cotton picking African Americans.  Although, as she grew older, she learned in a course titled "Black Women's Literacy"(Smith 37) that her experience actually contributed to her literacy and lifestyle even as a graduate student.  Smith wrote that, cotton picking and slavery had their positive impacts on African American women because these negative, low class actions made them stronger as a race and a sex, than the women who were not working hard to achieve their already positive place in society.
In discussing the struggles of African American women, Smith also discussed the negative treatment of women as a whole.  One of her examples that really struck me was the example involving a male teacher giving the male students special treatment.  The female students dared not address the teacher directly and, instead, chose to drop the class or accept that they would not be equally treated.  At first, I thought that these actions did not help the students achieve the desired goal of being treated equally.  They were giving the teacher exactly what he wanted, a class full of men.  But, as Smith explained, "I now view them as forms of oppositon against the education system where they feel  degraded and diminished"(p.39).  The women of that class thought that they could be valued and treated equally elsewhere.  I learned that if this man could not give them the education that they deserved, these women would find it in someone who was willing to.
Towards the end of her article, Smith realized that her experience in the cotton fields not only contributed to her literacy, but to the literacy of others.  It is for that reason that she decided to look back on it, learn from it and share it with others.  It was from the elders of the cotton fields that she learned the most.  She learned respect, responsibility and religion from them.  They had been active in the Civil Rights Movement and it was those elders that she and the other children looked up to.  Yes, Lillie Gayle Smith was picking cotton, just as African Americans before her had for centuries, but she was also gaining the same literacy as they had through the struggle.