GLBT "For the Bible tells me so"

I attended the safe schools seminar on October 20th regarding the issue of religion and GLBT. I did enjoy the structure of the seminar with the movie clips and discussion after. I was shocked and disgusted at the movie. I could not believe some of these families stories and how terribly these people were / are treated. For example, one story was of a girl who committed suicide because she felt that she could not be a lesbian and she could no longer deal with everything that came along with that. They gave the statistic that a person who identifies as GLBT is 3 to 7 times more likely to committ suicide than someone who does not identify as GLBT. This breaks my heart honestly and it makes me sad that even today, when I think our society continues to become more and more welcoming and open-minded that people feel they have no way out of the cruel world they live in than to take their own life.

I was also struck by the family that was in politics. The daughter who identified as a lesbian talked about the pressure she felt to be the "cookie cutter" family and daughter in the eyes of her family and society. She even went so far as to getting married to a male and trying to live her life unhappy. Finally, she could not hide it anymore and came out to her parents. What struck me about this story is that dispite the difficulty for the family, the father talked about unconditional love for ALL his children. He described unconditional love in a very simplistic way by saying it is loving someone no matter what the conditions. I think this is so important for families to recognize as well as for people to recognize about God. It is my belief that He holds unconditional love for all of his children, loving them under any and all conditions.

The final piece that I thought was necessary to address was fear. The movie talked about the realness of fear that people in society have of the "other." I think that is absolutely true. We fear what we do not know and therefore fear becomes the scapegoat for people. I also like the parents who recognized that part of why it is hard to have a child that identifies as GLBT is that they are fearful of what that child may face and fearful that they will not be able to protect them.

Overall I really enjoyed this seminar and I think these seminars are a really great way to get future and current teachers informed and talking. They have brought more awareness to me and I really do find them to be influencial on me. I would have liked to see a panal of insiders in various religious groups speak and answer questions about this topic. I think that could be very powerful.

Museum Visit

I really enjoyed going to the museum today and looking at both exibits. The narrative that intrigued me most in the first exibit was about Chita Rivera. She was a dancer and it listed many of her performances and successful career. She was the principal dancer in the musical "Call me madam" and was also lead characters in West Side Story, Bye bye Birdie, and Chicago (just to name a few). I have been a dancer my entire life so I think I found it interesting becuase you do not hear a lot about Spanish dancers dancing in main stream shows and companies. That is why I was so drawn to this piece.

In addition, I found the Mali exhibit to be very interesting as well. I thought that the captions told a very interesting and needed story by this youth and even though they were very simple and brief, they told quite a lot about their social cultures. I thought the Bofohan, Kouara Village photograph really caught my attention because it was of a little girl in a huge chair. She was just very cute and the caption was simple, explaining that it was a young boy's sister. The other piece that caught my attention was the one of a woman who had just given birth. I had not made it over to this photograph yet and Bri pointed out the caption to me. It said that she had just given birth and was cleaning the baby's belly button with rubbing alcohol and rubbing its body with shea butter. It explained that after that hopefully the baby would fall asleep so the mom could go do chores and work. I cannot believe that after this woman had a baby she would be expected to do household chores. It exposed me to a completely different culture that I never knew existed. That is why I like this exhibit in general and the museum experience as a whole.

EVENT FOR EXTRA CREDIT?????

I came across this event and thought it might be cool for everyone to go see. It is photography by African Youth and I think it relates nicely with illustrations and youth literature. I will ask her about it in class tomorrow but here is the information.


"Visual Griots: An Exhibit of Photography by African Youth" (Exhibits (Museum, Kresge, Gardens, ...))


Griot (gree-oh) n. - a storyteller and keeper of the oral traditions of family and village. A new, eye-opening image of Africa will be on display at the Michigan State University Museum, thanks to a group of sixth grade Malian students from two small villages 500 miles southwest of Timbuktu. "Visual Griots: An Exhibit of Photography by African Youth" will be in the MSU Museum's Heritage Gallery, Sept. 15, 2008 - March 15, 2009. "Visual Griots," a project of the Academy for Educational Development, Washington, D.C., sent a team of Malian and U.S. photographers into the villages of Damy and Kouara to put cameras in the hand of youth, empower them to document their lives, and help them better connect with their communities and the world. Promoting community cultural development and mutual understanding are the primary goals of the program.
more information...


Location: MSU Museum, Heritage Gallery [map]
Price: Free

Blindness

In the first article that was on about.com, they say, "Blindness is no more an appropriate 'metaphor' than other physical characteristics, like hair color or ethnicity." I agree with this statement completely. I think that after seeing the trailor for the movie, it seems very offensive to portray blindness as an epidemic which needs to be contained. They also mention, "Blind people in this film are portrayed as incompetent, filthy, vicious, and depraved." This is exactly how I found them to be portrayed in the short movie trailor and therefore I can only imagine how poorly they would be portrayed in the movie as a whole. It is ignorance to think blind people live this way. Not only is it ignorance but it is also offensive and when something hurts a group of people something should be done to stop it. Although this movie seems like it would be suspensful and interesting, after reading the article I do not think I would watch the movie because it is supporting something that is hurting a group of people. That does not seem morally right to me. National Federation of the Blind Condemns and Deplores the Movie Blindness and therefore I think we should listen to this group and take their feelings and objectives to heart. This would not be allowed if we replaced blindness with black people or indians and therefore it should not be tolerated for this cultural group either.

LBGT Seminar

First, I was really glad that I had the opportunity to attend this seminar. I liked that it was geared towards teachers and future teachers and discussed issues that have come up in classrooms. I think that it is important to attend seminars like this one about all and any issues of diversity or any issues that are "difficult" to talk about. The exposure and awareness to these types of discussions are very valuable.

I did not know that about one out of ten people are of GLBT. That was fascinating to me. I also really enjoyed that they provided everyone with a sheet full of definitions. Some of them I had never heard of and I think it is important to identify certain terms when discussing and becoming educated on a topic such as this one. I found all of the panalists to be knowledgeable and important to the discussion becuase they all had different experiences that were very interesting and important in learning.

I found the topic of how to talk with small children about GLBT issues very intriging. The woman who had taught in NY had some great insight into how to handle situations, but I still find myself struggling to think about how to do that. It is something that one has to think very carefully about. The other woman (Dee?) had an interesting story about kindergarteners asking about a girl and a girl getting married. The teacher of that classroom sent those students to the principal and after some thought she came up with what I thought was a really great answer for these students. She said "People are lucky when they find someone to love." I think that sometimes we overthink what we would say to students about these "tough" issues, but really simple answers like this one are sometimes the best. It was some nice food for thought!

A TE348 instructor gave us the name of a blog that provided a diverse set of literature that is constantly being updated. I think this was a really helpful piece of information and a resource that I might use for my final project in this class. She didn't know the exact address off hand but it is called Worth The Trip. Hopefully I can find it and use it as a helpful resource becuase she said it also has insider reviews on books which is very helpful!

Overall, I was really glad that I had the opportunity to attend this seminar. Things like this really continue to open my eyes to issues of diversity and culture. In addition, my friend was on the panal becuase he is a homosexual music education student. It was nice to see him speek about his experiences to a group. My TE250 teacher was also there (running the event) and it was very nice to catch up with her after the seminar!

Link to 448 Blog

http://msute448fs08krohn.blogspot.com/