The End. Final Portfolio.

I feel I have emerged from this semester’s English class a better writer and a better thinker when it comes to writing. When I walked into the first day of class and learned we would be working with a service-learning agency and what it entailed I was excited to reach out of the box and experience something new. I had signed up for this particular class at the last minute due to some unexpected changes to my requirements for school and was not sure what to expect. After learning we would be doing service learning I felt it was kismet that things worked out the way they did to put me into this class. After reading through the different service learning agencies and what was to be done at each, I knew I wanted to work with the HEP program. I also got my GED after dropping out of high school and not having the best experience in school. I felt I could relate to the students, which could lend to a richer experience. In the end, I think my expectations of the service learning were exceeded.
It took me a while to really come up with a research subject associated with the HEP program, I dabbled in researching different aspects of being an immigrant in the U.S. I was blown away by the information out there, and how I felt our media had most of the facts wrong, or at least twisted them to create sensationalism. When I made the decision to research health care and immigrants, I knew I was on the right path. I am especially proud of the time and effort I put into finding the sources I used and the result from using such great sources. I think the angle I approached my research with is a very different approach than what we are use to hearing through the media. I felt proud to share a new angle that I hope will allow others to become more compassionate and understanding of what is happening in this country in relation to immigration.
My initial website was full of the facts, and not much of my own interpretation of them. After I was done with my site, I found myself sparking conversation with people around me about what I had learned. This helped me to find my own voice on the subject, because at first, I did not want to offend anyone with the information in my website and just wanted to state the facts. I was able to add an entire new page to my website dedicated to my own voice. I included the questions and gave answers to what I found many people were asking or addressing. I really wanted to address what I felt the media’s role is in how we view immigration. Also, the idea that immigrants are here, and regardless of how they got here, we still need to have compassion for them because they are human beings as well. So I suppose that is one of the ways my writing has changed throughout the semester, I am able to do research, extract the necessary bits, and add my own 2 cents on the matter. The blogging we did all semester was especially helpful. It was a place to put down my thoughts on my research in a safe place. I trusted my group members to give me good feedback, and that they were also thoughtful people whom I valued their opinions.
I included an entire page on my website dedicated to the initial research subject I chose. It was compelling to me, but not the direction I chose to go. I included it because I wanted to show how our governments legislation is affecting immigration and health care for immigrants. It goes back to what many believe is the truth. That our government is doing everything in its power to prevent illegal immigration but there are programs in place to allow it. It is an illustration of the misinformation being handed to us. Under the heading “the risks”, I wanted to explore the actual risks to all of us if we do not allow immigrants health care. Give people a selfish reason to want it also. I thought the part I wrote, “There is a direct correlation between poor living conditions created by high poverty levels, and the fact that many illegal immigrants come from countries with higher risks for infectious diseases, that creates a strong potential for a public health crisis. Not only for the immigrant population but also the general community. Illegal immigrants fear deportation and delay accessing care which creates a much higher probability of spreading the infectious disease to others in the community.” Spoke to this quite well.
In the design itself of the website, I wanted it to be easy to follow, and the pictures to evoke an emotional response. I wanted to put faces to the people I was talking about, to give them humanity instead of being a statistic or a number or a problem. The visual element of my website is simple, yet, I feel I chose images that speak well to the subjects on each page. As an example, I chose the image on the questions page to use it as a metaphor for asking questions about a subject with so many aspects. The metaphor is, the question may be simple,(like I stated them with one or two sentences) but the answers can come out like a flood, (like my answers in comparison to the questions were much longer). In unit 2 I used a different template than I did in the final project. The first template I used did not have all the headings along the top, but had a more tab with a drop down. I did not like it and needed to change it. I called on the help of the tech guy at the Co-Op to help me because otherwise I was going to have to find all the images again on google to fill in the pictures. The text transferred to the new template just fine though. My friend was able to show me how to accomplish transferring the pictures in less than 5 minutes. Thank goodness, because the initial website, finding the pictures took me a couple of hours.
This was my first opportunity to do research since my college career began. Initially I was overwhelmed and could not find enough information on my topic. After watching the videos created by the folks at the library on how to better approach research, I used their suggestions and had great results. Using different search titles and especially using the sources of the sources you already found proved to be very helpful. In my last English class we were encouraged to focus on ourselves in our writing for the semester. It was my first experience with writing in 15 years, so it was an easy task to accomplish writing about myself. This English class was a lot different. I had to think outside of my own realm of experience and delve into the unknown. Although it was a new way of writing, I felt I was able to slip into the groove easily. I found myself feeling passionate about the plights of immigrants and enjoyed researching the topics. Working at the HEP program also put faces and personal stories to my research, lending humanity and personal investment to my research.
On a personal note, I will not be returning to BSU for another semester. I was able to find a different path I prefer to take than institutionalized education. So, I did not put forth my full effort into my other classes but felt compelled to do my best in this class. Having a teacher that showed passion for writing was part of the reason, but doing research and exploring an aspect of writing outside of my previous experience was what gave me the most drive. I really enjoy writing and feel I have a better understanding on how to get the most out of the tools afforded to us. Will I use what I have learned outside of my school experience? Most definitely. I know how to design a website and do research. My path of learning has not ended, and I will continue to do research on what I plan to do next. Now I have a better understanding on how to compile the research into a cohesive piece of writing to share with others. I have already helped friends designing websites for their own interests and plan on making one for myself for my next venture. This may have been my favorite class of the 2 years I spent at BSU. It stretched my understanding and thinking larger than any other class.
To view my website visit wealldeservecare.weebly.com

Reflective Letter

Entering into what would have been considered my Sophomore year at Boise State I had very clear expectations of what this English 102 class was going to be like. My initial impression of an English class still stemmed from what I remembered in high school, mostly high level research, drafts of ambiguous papers, bibliographies, busy work, readings, encompassed with pointless and boring lectures that were ultimately unrelated to my life. This is exactly what I remember from working on my senior project in high school. I enjoyed given the freedom to choose a topic I was actually intrigued in, however a general lack of motivation and effort translated into a ten page research paper that regurgitated facts and opinions of a handful of random sources that I agreed with. Up to taking English 102 this was my opinion of all English classes. I had always been frustrated in English classes mostly because I felt Teachers were unjustified to grade my writing based on my ideas or what I had to say. I do understand being graded on the mechanics of a paper and the technical aspects of writing, however I had the opinion that I needed to write my papers to appease the audience of my Teacher or Professor who was handing out the grade. English 102 and Jeremy Branstad presented me with an entirely new angle of writing.

Writing to an audience which was not the teacher of the class, but a defined audience that I was trying to reach, as well as communicating with my sources in a conversation was a very enlightening concept. Never before had I been presented with the idea or opportunity to embrace a voice that I wanted, let alone speak towards an audience that I choose. This helped me to stop focusing on the grade at the end of the class and to start addressing my writing, voice, and research. At the beginning of this course I was at best an amateur writer in the context of this course level. I was able to get my main point across effectively, yet many times ran into road blocks of language as I tried to lengthen my paper and impress my teachers. This was a struggle to over come. I had to worry less about the length of my papers and focus more on concisely delivering my message in a effective manner. Delivering my message effectively to my chosen audience was struggle all itself. While working on my website I lost my audience more than once and complicated my writing with bulky sentences and structure. The habits that I had adopted as a young writer proved to be the hardest part of this class. I am constantly revising and re-revising my sentences to be direct and to the point. Unfortunately this does cut down on the length of my papers substantially. Again I was reminded to not focus on length and simply turning in an assignment. This idea helped me to focus down to what I was trying to present to my audience and redirect my efforts to prepare a stronger argument and stronger paper.

The use of digital rhetoric in this class was an entirely new concept to me. Especially the use of media such as Blogger. Before this course I view blogs simply as another social networking outlet. I had not followed blogs or blogged myself, so I was very naïve to how powerful blogs can be. Once I started using blogger to post my assignments I decided to look at other blogs online and see how people are using them to communicate to their audience. I started out by looking at websites that I frequently visited, most of these sites all used some type of blog to speak to their audience. The majority of the websites I visited were related to bicycling, a major hobby of mine, I instantly noticed that these site were not formal, impersonal pages. The blogs spoke, almost in a conversation, directly to the readers. While reading the blog posts I felt like I was having a one to one talk with the blogger. This concept of a conversation helped me to focus in on writing to an audience. I struggled at first to throw out my old habit of writing to a teacher. I tried to think of my audience as though they were sitting on the other end of my blog reading as I typed, and were actively participating in the conversation. I started to have a more natural flow to my papers as I would have in an almost e-mail like correspondence. I believe this aspect of the writing in a digital rhetoric more than anything helped me find my voice.

As the second unit of the course progressed I was starting to feel comfortable in my writing to my audience, however still struggling. Many of the assigned readings throughout the semester seemed very heavy and abstract to me. I remember reading the first section of Writing Analytically wondering “what the heck does this mean and how will I ever use this in my writing?” however one I started creating my website and directly writing to my audience I realized where everything fell in place. Some of the more helpful readings in the course were those in regards to my research process. Not using a base level approach to finding sources and research really opened up my thought process and complicated my thinking. I used the method of lateral research quit extensively in my research. I relied 90% of my sources from digital media. Again learning how to analyze these sources to determine their reliability was another skill honed this semester. I started by only using sources that appeared from academic, government and educational material. This approach I found to limit my research to exclusively one opinion. Most of these sources shared the same view point, which is fitting as they all related to one another. I then approach other avenues that seems less reputable or traditional, however when I spent my time with each source looking at their intended audience, their sources and their backgrounds, I was able to develop many very powerful sources that were not from the same view point of my other sources.

I spent much time working on the look and feel of my website and became very consumed in making my pages look “pretty” and again lost sight of communicating with my audience. Once I actually started writing the text of my website I had focused so much on the look and feel, I began speaking away from audience, parents, and more towards my sources which were heavily in the academical and professional sector of special education. During the revision process of my website I started out by simply addressing mechanical and technical aspects of my writing. Check first if I had a consistent flow to may work, did my site make the read want to continue to the next section or page. Then I focused closer on how I was delivering my writing to my audience. I had to go back through each section and redraft my ideas and fine tune them to be more concise and straight forward, after all my intention with the site is to inform parents on aspect of minority special education. I found many times I would start my page out simple and straight to the point, but wonder off half way through into a deep and complex issue unrelated to the topic at hand.

Throughout this course the one thing that stands out to me the most of what I learned is consistency. I have made what I believe to be great improvements in my writing and deliverance of my writing to a predetermined audience. Constantly working on addressing the same areas to improve and hone has helped my immensely in my writing. Through the course readings, reflective blogs and in class workshops, peer responses included, has given me insight on where my writing is and where is still needs to go. I am very happy with the outcome of my writing this semester and pleasantly surprised as well. I never expected to make as many changes to my writing as I have during this course, and would like to invite you all to visit my website Challenges in Minority Special Education at http://disproportionaleducation.weebly.com

Reflective Letter

When I signed up for eng 102 I think I had expectations similar to most in regards to what the class would be like. Write paper after paper etc... on topics, learn to refine your writing but ultimately you're just writing to the professor. This class however, turned out to be totally different than I had expected. Instead of doing a bunch of research and regurgitating that information onto a paper in a specific format, we actually used the internet as the "turn in" source for all our assignments in the form of a blog. This media of communication takes writing to an entirely new level, instead of just your Professor reading your paper your entire class and others are able to view your writing. This really causes you to think about what you're writing in a different way. Initially my approach to writing a paper was to find a topic I liked, do some research, and then put it in a standard format. With the introduction of a new media visible to many it adds an element that normally does not exist, the element of peer review and the possibility of potentially offending someone with your writing, or let's face it the potential to look really stupid in front of your peers.

This obviously changes ones approach to writing and causes a person to really put on their thinking cap to produce a product worthy of being read, and potentially judged by their fellow classmates. Our first few blog posts were nothing spectacular or challenging, but as the course went on we had to refine our research and our writing.

The use of Toulmin's model, Wysoki's methods, and our text book Writing Analytically became invaluable resources. I learned a lot through the use of these systems, they helped me to adjust my writing style and skills and to take my thinking to the next level. Learning how to make my sources speak to one another and then interject myself into that conversation was difficult at first, but it became easier as the class moved along.

Developing a website about our research subject was another part that I did not expect from a regular English course. The writing portion for the website was tough, I had to be careful to not accidently offend our service learning partners, but at the same time maintain a focus and dialogue stressing the importance of their program and the people they provide a service for. The technical aspects of the website were annoying; trying to learn how to place this here and that there took hours and quite frankly irritated the hell out of me. But, in the end I got it done and felt really good about the site.

Our next unit was a group assignment and I have to say this is the part I am most proud of. We had to make a video about our service learning partner and what they do. I feel our little group of 3 did a fantastic job working together to produce an outstanding video that portrayed the HEP program well, and its importance. Not only did we have a lot of fun making the video but I feel our working together took us from classmates to becoming friends.

Our final project for the course is our final portfolio. Reflecting on ones writing is not an easy task especially after you have put a lot of work into it already. Going back rereading and rechecking facts is a small part of it, however the hard part is questioning your questions and reevaluating your thoughts. Using feedback from my group mates, I made some modifications to the general layout of the webpage. I changed some of the picture sizes so they had a better impact, and also changed the font size to make it easier to read. Another change I made was to modify the overall theme of the page to one I felt was more appropriate to the topic. Originally I had a cheesy little classroom chalk board like setting with a globe on it, this in the beginning I felt was appropriate seeing as how HEP is about helping migrant workers and their children gain a GED. But now I feel the two hands planting a small tree is more appropriate, it speaks to helping hands and fostering growth for these people, and the true impact the HEP program has on their lives. Lastly, based on feedback from Jeremy, I added another page to the website. He suggested I speak to the rhetoric surrounding immigration and how it has influenced me. I liked that idea so I created the reflections page of the website detailing my life views and experiences with immigrants and the HEP program and how the experience has fostered a change in the way I think, not only about these people but others throughout the world.

In closing, I would like to point out I have tried to keep this reflective letter in an informal format much like a conversation someone might have if asked what they thought about the course and what they gained from it. The tools and lessons I received from this course will be invaluable later on as I pursue my goal of becoming a Veterinarian, from writing letters to prospective Vet. Schools, grant proposals, and many other tasks I am sure to face in my time in college. Below you will find a link to my website please take the time to look it over I hope you gain an understanding of what challenges migrant workers face in there day to day lives.

http://hepsuccess.weebly.com/index.html

 

Reflective blog 3

What a great time it was to experience the HEP program as a service learning tutor. There was such a diverse group of students participating in HEP. It was inspiring to help students who were participating to further their lot in life, to give themselves a chance to experience something new, they had desires and inspirations that I identified with. There were students who were there for... well, not really sure. It seemed they also were there to experience something new and out of their comfort zone.I suppose they wanted to have a normal school experience. Meet new people, party and make a little time for school too. It seemed a chance for them to walk away for a bit from their otherwise tumultuous lives.
Working with a few of the students reminded me of some of the students I had working as a wilderness field instructor with at-risk youth at the SUWS program. Seeing the students struggling, having a hard time focusing and dreaming of other things. Bucking the rules set by the HEP program, allowing themselves to become distracted and unfocused. That was hard for me to witness. I wanted to draw on the in your face almost military style of communicating that I learned at SUWS, but I did not feel it was my place. I wanted to see the teachers stick to the boundaries and have the students follow them. I think it would be a better learning environment if those rules were strictly enforced. There were students there who wanted to be there, to learn, to gain their GED. I found it distracting for myself and the dedicated students when cell phones were constantly going off with text messages and such. Not to go without saying that there were a few instances that I saw the rules being enforced, but in my mind it's all or nothing. Perhaps easier said than done.
The best part of being there was interacting with people I have not otherwise had interactions with. A population that is so often villainized by popular media. It was freeing to be apart of their lives for a brief moment and experience their humanity, no different from you and I.

Final Reflective Blog

When I started this course, I was very skeptical about the course work and also spending 15 hours working with a service learning partner. It was hard for me to open up to the idea of working within a digital rhetoric and also volunteering. Throughout my school career I have always had the ability to sneak by doing just the minimum amount of course work, and very successfully obtain high grades. Sadly enough this method has changed very little within my college course work. There have been very few assignments that I have found to be challenging intellectually.

Working with HEP was one of my more challenging assignments I have had since being at BSU. Not only was working with a service learning partner a challenge time wise, but it also challenged my preconceived ideas of the minority group in which I was working. At first I went to HEP trying to be open-minded but shortly fell back into old opinions, not just of the minority groups but also poor opinions of students in general. It wasn't until I was working closer with individual students at HEP and also with my service learning group to analyse, discuss and interpret each assignment and ultimately our video project, that I started to look at the deeper issues and challenges that these students faced. I grew to have a great appreciation for HEP and I have also grown as a student by being challenged by assignments that I could not simply pump out the night before.

Working within a digital rhetoric was the most challenging aspects of this course. I was constantly challenged to adapt my pervious skills to fit into this new medium and speak to an entirely new audience. My writing "style" more than anything benefited from the use of Blogger and Weebly. I started to drop away from writing to my professor and started to embrace an audience that I wanted to reach. Now I must admit, my audience is obscure and I'm not sure I really have one, other than the random student who stumbles upon this blog. But however obscure this audience maybe, it helped me to develop a deeper thought process about what I was saying and how I want to say it. Creating my website was the most challenging in respects to writing to this audience. I struggled to stay focused on the intended audience, parents of special education student. I began to move away from writing to them an created a tone that was over complicated and hard to relate to.

By revisiting the course readings, I believe that I will be able to come back to these assignments and narrow them into something that is more concise and better directed to my intended audience. Overall this course has provided me with many opportunities that I did not anticipate having from an English class.

Reflective Blog 3

During the course of this class I have been fortunate to participate in what I feel has been a very productive group. I normally avoid working with others when it comes to class assignments because, more often than not, there are scheduling issues, lack of willingness to participate, and several other factors that restrict you from accomplishing the task assigned. Fortunately our group has had very few difficulties in those areas and we have managed to work well together. As we progressed through the semester I noticed as a group we all began to think about our assignments differently than we had in the beginning. Utilizing analytical models such as Toulmins, Wysoki's and the chapters in writing analytically started showing in our approach to our group project. During our meetings we would work together analyzing information and figuring out the best approach to take on our video project and websites.

The critical thinking skills we began developing were growing in strength and I feel it shows in our work. It has been a pleasure not only working with our very cooperative Service Learning partner HEP but also working with each other. I said in another reflective blog that initially I was dreading some of the work load and assignments. Looking back at that statement I feel it necessary to point out that in the future I will be less likely to have similar feelings. The act of applying oneself to a task should not come with a feeling of dread; instead it should promote a positive attitude towards the fulfillment one gets when they accomplish a task no matter how daunting it might seem at first. My own personal growth as a writer and critical thinker will no doubt increase as I continue my academic endeavors.

Reflective Letter GM

I feel I started this unit with a good grasp on rhetorical choice. The research I did prior to this unit and the research I did in this unit gave me a lot to think about and respond to. When it comes to rhetorical choice, we can either choose to take the information to heart and really care about a subject, or we can merely just talk about it. I feel I was at an advantage with this project because I found I really cared about what was being said and done and how it affected people in our world. I found myself feeling very opinionated about health care and how it pertained to immigrants. I practiced my argument by talking to friends and co-workers about what I have learned so far, I say “so far” because there are many sides to the issues related to health care for immigrants, and I focused on one side.
In the beginning I had no qualms about sharing the information on health care with others in a media based format. I did find it difficult to address specifically the audience I intended on addressing. I wanted to reach an audience that was without the knowledge I also started out this project without. I wanted to address an audience that is against health care for immigrants and who felt that immigrants were a drain on our society for various reasons. I feel I researched a topic that many feel passionately about, often against rights for immigrants. The biggest problem I found, however, was creating a web site that people counter to my thoughts and research would be interested in even looking at. The end result of my web site was not what I was hoping for. It was difficult to format it in a way that appealed to that persuasion. How do you appeal to an audience that your information is opposed too? I did not find the magic for that one.
There is a contradiction I feel that happens doing this project, in Petersons “writing for a Web Audience, he says that you cannot have too much text, you need to keep it shorter and simpler as too not bore your audience. My question is, how can 2000 words not bore someone? It is one thing if it’s an article from a journal or a book you find on the internet written by someone who is a scholar on the subject. But making a website that contains 1,750-2000 words and has 4 pages is going to be overwhelming and people are going to skip over it according to Peterson’s ideas. Jeremy was asked in class last week why we are required to do so much work for this class, and why a website? His response was something close to, “To give you experience communicating with others in the community in a more real world situation.” I am paraphrasing there, but you can get the idea. I agree with this idea in a lot of ways, but, I have been endlessly frustrated with the experience of building a website. I also believe I got more “real world” experience talking about the subject to those around me face to face. I was able to have a real conversation, not an imaginary conversation on the internet with a website no one is going to look at except my teacher. I have also had great conversations with my group mates on the separate research we have done. I had a phenomenal discussion with one of the teachers from the HEP Program on Friday that tested my knowledge on what I have been researching. I was able to pull statistics out of my hat and include them in the conversation and ask educated questions. Overall, making a website seemed like a lot of busy work that did not give me an outlet to have a different conversation than I did in any of the experiences mentioned previously.
I had so many technical difficulties with designing my website, I got off track from what my vision was because of the difficulties. I copied and pasted pictures repeatedly to different pages on the website, even though I only wanted to put those specific pictures on that page it would change the pictures on all of the pages! Ugh, I was so frustrated and gave up and was going to just accept a crappy website. That night, I woke up from a dead sleep and realized what the answer was! I turned to look at the clock to decide if it was reasonable to get out of bed to fix the problem. It was 1:49am, I decided to wait until morning. It was the first thing I did when I woke up, able to start my day with a sense of accomplishment. Overall, still not that impressed with the end result, but the research I've done and the people I have talked to regarding the research has made it plenty worth it. www.wealldeservecare.weebly.com

Reflective Letter

As I started Unit Two, I had very little thought put into rhetorical choice, digital media or even my choice of an Audience. When first writing in my English 102 class my main objective was to produce me assignment within the guidelines and focused my audience mainly to the students in class and my instructor. I had a very narrow mind when it came to doing my research and mostly relied on shallow google searches and easily obtained sources. It wasn't until I read the course readings “Let's get Specific”, “The Multiple Media of Text” and “Writing for a Web Audience” that I started to complicate my thinking process when it came to my writing.

After reading Wysoki's model for writing to a web audience I started to really dive deeper into how I researched, especially web sources. I looked at how the pages were being set up and what this said about the author, company, and the overall message of the text. I had not consciously thought through how a website looks in order to directed the reader to certain conclusions. I had however already been drawing conclusions about my sources based how the appearance of their sites subconsciously. By understanding that I was making these observations and conclusions subconsciously I was then able to start consciously dissecting my thought process and analyzing the websites I was using in my research. I believe that this helped me to not only gain more meaningful sources but to also analyze the credibility and purpose of the website more accurately. One source that I was unsure about using was an article from About.com However after reading the article following lateral research methods from unit one, and analyzing the site, I was able to find out a great deal about the author of the article, her credibility and credentials. This method greatly helped me find new sources in unlikely places that provided wonderful information to my research.

After learning how to more accurately and effectively analyze my sources it enabled me to broaden my focus without over complicating or slowing down my research. This broaden focus allowed me to look into different aspects that were involved with the BSU HEP program, and ultimately formulate my research question and guide my research to a narrow and specific area, The Long Term Trends of Disproportional Special Education. Although presented as a single statement this research topic still seems quite broad and vague I was able to complicate my thought process and work through the details that I needed to address in my research by using the Research Draft assignment and the Website Draft questions. Both of these assignments allowed me to write in a fairly informal method what my research was going to be on and how I was going to formulate my argument.

One of the more challenging aspects I found to accomplish while working on my Website Draft was to determine my audience. As I went through my research I was finding mostly academic sources that spoke to the professional educators in Special Education. I wanted to go in a different direction from what most authors in my topic area were focusing. I decided to try and focus my research towards an audience that I felt hasn't previously been addressed in the topic area of Disproportionality, Parents of minority children who face placement in Special Education. At first I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to focus solely on the parents, I tried looking towards both Educators and parents but realized very quickly though analysis of my own website design that these are two very different audience groups and would work against one another. I focused in on parents because while looking through sources I felt that this audience has the littlest support.

I designed disproportionaleducation.weebly.com to be warm and welcoming to parents. I wanted to create a feel that fostered a sense of helping. I worked on my site imagery to create this feeling, using pictures and headings that would draw on the emotions of my audience and help them to connect with my text. I believe that my choice of imagery lay out will speak to my reader just as much as my text will. Yes there of course is more content in a text yet, just as Wysocki pointed out, our use of layout, font form and size and imagery all play a major role in web design.

Throughout my unit two course work I worked very hard to expand my research and challenged what I had perviously known about Special Education and what I was learning through my research. Over coming preconceived ideas that I had about Special Education and minorities populations with in these programs was my goal in picking this research topic and I believe I manage to address the concerns I had within my research and provide an interesting argument that is well delivered inside my website.

Reflective Letter

During the course of our unit 2 project my thought process and ability to analyze information went through some changes. In the beginning I really didn't focus on credibility of sites and authors as much as I do now. The first change in how I approached reading/writing was with the use of Toulmins and Wysoki's methods of analysis. Those 2 specific models enabled me to broaden the way I read and looked at articles and web pages. Wysoki's analysis of web pages really helped me to take on a better understanding of what constitutes good websites vs bad ones. I guess the way I used to approach research was with a less critical eye, now I find myself being more critical in my thinking while I search through articles and websites for key information. After using the Wysoki model to determine if a website meets the criteria I'm looking for, I then apply Toulmins model to pick through the text and find out what is really being said. Gaining a better understanding of how to make sources speak back and forth to one another has helped my writing tremendously as well. The method outlined in our "writing analytically" book has helped me to understand the importance of sources communicating together to validate the information, or a point that is being made.

Being aware of one's audience is extremely important, a fact that I used to not consider. Audience awareness changes how a person writes and when used correctly it can turn a drab paper or article into one that people want to read, as opposed to a paper that is casually discarded for lack of credibility or awareness. The improvements I am making in how I approach research and writing is still in its infancy, but as I continue to apply these tools I will no doubt become a better researcher and writer.

Our unit 2 web assignment which is located at ( http://hepsuccess.weebly.com/ )I hope will reflect the use of the course material. I found it difficult to try and take an unbiased as possible stance while creating the website. I guess it is in my nature, as well as others to get somewhat emotionally attached to a subject when we delve deeper into the research and the active participation of such programs as the HEP. The many hours spent pouring over websites and articles as well as the time tutoring the students in the HEP program left me with a better understanding of the trials others go through in their lives, but also an improved understanding of myself.

We more often than not take things such as the produce in our local stores for granted without a second thought to how it got there; we just expect it to always be there. The time spent assisting the HEP faculty has taught me to look at things differently, and to not turn a blind eye, or make assumptions towards others.

 

Website Analysis

1. The audience for my website is going to be focused to the employers and families of the migrants. I will discuss how the employers knowingly hire the illegal immigrants and the persecutions that happen against them when they are found out. Also within this perspective I will discuss how if the government was to increase the penalties against the employers how it would affect the agriculture industry. I think that my website will mainly pertain to employers, workers in the Agriculture industry, and immigrants that come here to find the seasonal work. It will show both of the main perspectives of this topic.
2. With my website focusing more on the agriculture side of things the background that my audience needs to have is the basic idea of the agriculture industry and what the immigrants do during the seasonal work. My website will inform my audience of the different laws against employers hiring the illegal immigrants. My website will just be in charge of giving the readers the facts and they can make their conclusion their own way.
3. My audience will be oriented toward my topic because it is informative and it is a topic that many people overlook. It isn’t just a useless website that has nothing to offer. It will be an argumentative website but it will remain neutral and not sway the reader one way or another. The reader will be able to have enough information to go and talk about this topic with other people. I think that the right audience will be interested in but someone that is living in the suburbs in Hawaii probably won’t worry about my topic. I think that the readers will be agreeable in some way because I am making my website very neutral.
4. The main topic that my sources have been talking about is whether or not the illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from many jobless Americans. One side says the migrants are taking away the jobs and not allowing Americans who are citizens to get a job while the opposing side says that Americans won’t do hard labor and appreciate the jobs like the immigrants do. There are also arguments about whether or not the employers get punished enough for hiring the illegal immigrants and allowing them to work.
5. I think I will capture my audience by just stating facts and using resources that people know and trust. I will avoid sources like Wikipedia and other ones that can be unreliable. My website won’t be flashy because it is an informative one and shouldn’t have bright colors or sparkles. My website’s intention isn’t to get them to “listen” to me it is just stating the facts and letting them draw the conclusion of what they want to talk about.
6. The main viewpoint that I will put forward will be leaning towards the Agriculture side since that is the main job that the immigrants go to. My contribution to the conversation is once again just stating the facts and what I know. Every now and again I will state my opinion but it will mainly be neutral. I will talk bad about either side of the argument or anyone involved in this argument just basically show cause and effect. I chose this topic because I worked on a ranch and see a completely different point of view then many people see and I want to know how the migrant’s lives are affected when they are legal versus illegal. Also how that affects those of us who are American citizens and deal with the repercussions of someone who is an illegal immigrant in the country.

Website Proposal

1. The audience that I will be addressing in my website will be Educational professionals, along with parents and families in minority communities. The focus of this website is to address the needs of minority students within special education, and identify specific cultural aspects that may be negatively influencing their placement within these programs.

2. With focusing on minorities in special education, I am assuming my audience to have basic information regarding special education yet limited experience or knowledge of minority disproportionality within special education.

3. My audience will have a interest in my topic and possibly a personal attachment to the information. Overall I assume my audience will be receptive of the information and argument made within my website, however, some of the information may be against the “normal” perspective of professional educators or those who work within special education. My goal is not to bash or breakdown the special education sector of schools, but to challenge the thinking and current practices within the assessment and placement of minorities into special education.

4. The gist of the conversation from my sources has been that there is a noticeable challenge in placing and assessing minorities into special educational programs, but they fall back as unchanged do to an “overly diverse” demographic that can't be easily approached.The main controversy that arises from disproportionality in special education comes from the ideal that public schools are a foundation of “Americanizing” students from an early age and thus current assessment and placement standards for special education in schools is properly used for “American” children. This however leaves out that fact that many children who are overrepresented in special education programs come from different cultural backgrounds and do not have an “Americanized” home life. These factors along with challenges of prejudices in examiner assessments of test scores is also causing a great debate on which aspects of special education assessments are faulty and which aspects are not.

5. Given that vast accessibility of websites and digital media, I will gain my credibility from drawing upon the already established credibility of my sources. I will use this credibility to strengthen my argument and back up the points in which I analyze. There is truly little I can do to make my audience listen to my perspective. I will work hard to creativity draw their attention to my site, by addressing this topic in a new fashion and by using a family oriented approach. Many sites speak to professionals in Special Education, yet never seem to directly address the families who are effected.

6. In response to my sources I will speak mostly to parents who are involved in Special Education. Using my sources professional background and expertise I will build my argument and give it credibility. My contribution to the study and discussion on minority disproportionality is that of educating and informing minority parents and families about different aspects and situations that effect their children's placement into special education programs. Many aspects of a child's family life, cultural and ethnical backgrounds can cause them to be placed into programs that are not correctly designed from their needs. The inappropriate placement of minorities into special education programs has been linked to underachievement and lack of motivation later on in the students educational years. My goal is to help parents of children who are being considered for special education programs become better educated and aware of environmental factors that can hinder their child's educational future.

Website proposal

 

1) I believe my main audience focus will be students/family members of potential students that might utilize the HEP program and potentially employers of migrant farm workers.

2) A basic overview of the HEP program will need to be provided what it is how it works etc…

3) I think the audience will view the topic as interesting and important, a few might not like it due to the controversy surrounding immigration.

4) The topic is a controversial one because it involves both legal and illegal immigrants and the agricultural business but my main focus will be on the success and necessity of the program and how it directly affects our local and federal economies. As well as the people it directly affects.

5) I will try to take as unbiased a stance as possible and through the use of facts graphs and photographs etc… I will establish a certain level of credibility through the fact that I have worked at the HEP program.

6) I believe programs like HEP have a greater importance above and beyond the obvious education of a minority group. The level of education these migrant workers obtain will directly affect them but it will also have an effect on our economy and the agricultural industry as well.

Reflective Blog

Throughout the semester I have seen my research skills get a lot better in many ways. Before, I would have Googled everything I was searching for, hoping to find an academic paper to pop up somewhere in that massive load of information. Instead I know use many of the libraries resources, which seem more reliable and have a more meaningful idea than say what Wikipedia, could offer me. With my Service Learning Project being the High School Equivalency Program there are many different branches off of this topic like immigration, employment, Arizona’s Reforms, and so many more. As far as finding information on just the High School Equivalency Program you really need to know how to do the research. You have to actually go out and find the information there is no Google or any other search engine to help you. Since I have learned these skills I have realized that my other classes are easier to find information on. I feel like everything is going good and I am able to now adequately use the resources available to me the best I can. With these newly required skills and changes in my writing, I will use them to inspire myself to accomplish something else whether it is a research paper or a new idea for a marketing projecting. I can’t wait for the rest of the semester to see what new skills there are that I can acquire.

Annotated Bibliography 3, 4

Helman, Christopher, and Susan Radlauer. "Labor Pains." Mohawk Industries Inc. . 185.11 (2010): 26-28. Print.

This article was about an employer who knowingly hired illegal immigrants and many employers are doing this because even though they won’t speak the truth, the immigrants work for less pay and the employers doesn’t give them the benefits that they need. The part that the author is pointing out is that the employers are fighting the persecutions set against them for hiring it illegal immigrants, yet they knowingly hired them with full knowledge of the law. One of the comments in the article brought up by attorney Thomas Green he stated, “If we didn’t have immigrants labor in this country we would all die of scurvy because no one would pick an orange.” I know where he is coming from in this statement because on the ranch my employer hired immigrants and then citizens and all of the citizens quit and the majority of the immigrants stayed. They need and appreciated the job and money more than people unemployed in this country it seems. In the article they talk about different reforms and changes that have been made to try and fix this situation but it isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon and I don’t see the employers changing their ways just yet.

America, RT, Dir. Illegal Workers: Taking American Jobs?. Perf. Hagler, Reverend Graylan, John Romano , and Lauren Lyster . YOUTUBE: 2010, Film. .

In the video right at the beginning of it Lauren directs her question towards John Romano on how in his opinion he thinks that illegal immigrants are taking the jobs of the unemployed Americans but yet (she states) none of the American citizens are stepping and taking charge and trying to fight for those jobs. To Americans the work is too hard and the pay is too cheap. John Romano debates back that because of the immigrants income is lower for all Americans, the jobs were already taken and not able to be fought for. Lauren states that if all of the immigrants were replaced by American workers food prices would be raised and she says Arizona is doing a great job on their new reforms. The Reverend blames the economic system and says immigrants are just America’s easy person to blame. Since our Economic system was failing we just started to outsource, which is why the employers hired the illegal immigrants. So shouldn’t the employers be targeted not the immigrant’s? Since this video is a debate of course you see the three different extremes of views and I personally see all sides but the Reverend has the most middle ground on the opinion of the labor laws and immigrants. There are so many sides and opinions on the immigrants and different points of view where “you can see where they are coming from” but it is interesting to me how the High School Equivalency Programs don’t look at these issues and they are just there to help the student despite where they came from or what their background is. It is such a touchy subject to many in America and who knows what kind of changes will be made just ten years from now.

Website Proposal GM

1) The audience for my website will be those who oppose publicly and privately supported health care for immigrants. I would assume it would be those who are looking for a more complete story of the issues related to migrant workers and health care. It is my plan to include both sides of the issue in a way that could lead more conservative minded people to consider the topic differently. All age groups over the age of 18 could be interested in a controversial subject such as this. I do not think many people would go out of their way to look for this type of information, so I am guessing it will be for those who are also researching the subject or for some reason find it interesting.
2) I am going to assume that my audience has relatively little background knowledge on the subject. It seems that most people I talk to have a one sided view on the subject, and I think there is a way for the 2 sides to come together to make a more complete picture. I will assume that people looking at my website will have their minds made up on the subject. Educated or not, people tend towards strong opinions on issues such as these.
I will have to include a lot of background information and statistics showing that immigrants could pose very little increase in the costs for publicly funded health care, and how the government now has to pay very little in comparison to natives. I would like to include a section that shows other countries who do support their immigrants through publicly funded health care, the costs involved and how they achieve success in their programs.
3) I feel I have already addressed briefly how I think my audience will be oriented towards my topic. My goal is to be of use to people from both sides of the fence, address both sides. There are valid points made from both camps, and I think it is important to bring the two sides together instead of continuing this idea that it is us against them. I do fear that my audience will be more open-minded people, willing to have a conversation. I have found that often times people who are closed minded, when they see even the slightest bit of talk that goes against their own ideas, they turn away and disregard all of what that source has to say. So my goal is to have a little something for both sides, I do not believe this is a one sided conversation, and I think this will be agreeable to both sides yet resist also each side in some ways.
4) There seems to be two different conversations going on. There is one side having a conversation about immigrants deserving health care because they work here just like a citizen, they often face harsh working conditions that predisposes them to health issues, and therefore wouldn’t it make sense to help them? Also, immigrants both legal and illegal support local economies and pay taxes. The idea being thrown around as well is that if we accept the mal treatment of immigrants, then we put ourselves as citizens at the same risk of being mal treated. The other camp is talking about the costs of health care, the burdens put on our medical system, Medicaid, and other government programs that help the less fortunate, by the influx of immigrants coming in because of programs like H-2A and the proposed AgJobs bill.
5) Firstly, using sources that are sound, using statistics and facts that are unrefutable, is a great way to gain the trust of readers. There is a certain amount of emotion on this subject, and giving voice to the emotions from both sides I think is important, but doing so in a delicate and responsible manner. What exactly that will look like will work itself out with the content I include. I do not think I am trying to get them to only look at only my website as a source. Including links to other websites and citing others will hopefully convince others to do more research. I think it is important to use more than one source to gain a better understanding, so I would hope that is what my website will have to offer, a jumping off point.
6) Quite honestly, I do think that immigrants deserve a fair chance at obtaining health care in the same way that citizens do. The plea being made by immigrant supporters is that immigrants should have the same ability to purchase health insurance, and be covered by employers. The big gripe being made by the other side is that uninsured immigrants are exploiting the system and creating an economic drain on the health care system. So wouldn’t it make sense to allow them to become insured to alleviate those stresses? It is the fact that they’re uninsured that is creating a lot of the problems. Give them an opportunity to become a part of the system, so they can work within it, not drive them to make the decisions that have become so costly by not allowing them to be insured. It seems to me that people think there is one side and one side only, you are a democrat or you are a republican and depending on which party you claim, that is the stance you take on issues. I believe there is a different answer, the longer we stick our heads in the sand and look at the issue as if it is black and white, we will never come to a solution that works. We have to work together.

Reflective Blog 1 GM

I started this course very excited to work with a service learning agency, I thought it would be a great way to learn and write about something outside of my range of schooling and personal knowledge. Thus far it has kept with my expectations in that regard. I have only been able to volunteer for a total of 3 hours, and I am looking forward to the rest. My first day with the HEP Program left me feeling excited, I was able to sit in the classroom and be of help with the subject they were learning because it was in my field of education. I thought the teacher did a fabulous job including me in the discussion and using me as a resource. The students seemed engaged and willing to learn. The second and third days were not as fulfilling. I was put one on one with a student needing help and motivation to study math, I mostly just sat there while he listened to his Ipod working his math problems. Not so exciting, I had to wait for him to ask me for help which were moments few and far between.
I have experienced a bit of frustration because I signed up for this particular agency not only for the program itself, though I thought it to be a wonderful program, but because it claimed to have evening hours available. I have a full time job on top of school, and work another volunteer job besides HEP, and I have found it to be very difficult to juggle my schedule to include the required hours at the service learning agency. They after all, do not function in the evenings. So I feel behind in my obligations to the program and my class work associated with the project.
The research I have been doing has drawn me into caring about a subject I never considered before. I like many, had my opinions on immigration and the policies associated with it. Like many of us, I got my information from the news, which I realize now is bias and incomplete in the information provided. I have changed some of my views because of the research I've done, and found I feel passionate about the subject. It is refreshing to get a new perspective on something I took for granted before. I have found enormous amounts of information on my area of focus, which I am glad for in more than one regard. I am glad there is a conversation happening about health care for immigrants, and that there are people willing to put their education to use for others. I am also glad that I can find so many resources to use for my subject.
Overall, I am still looking forward to asking more questions and getting more involved, and thus learning even more.

Reflective Blog 1

After working several weeks with the BSU HEP program, I am still at kind of cross roads. I look at the work HEP is doing and I'm very happy to see a group of individuals who are dedicated to helping students, even nontraditional students reach higher levels of education that they may not have had access to their first time around. Then another part of my is asking why are these students here in the first place? We live in the 21^st century, one that is filled with technology and opportunity at every corner, and these students has definitely been given many opportunities to succeed. However are the “same” opportunities enough for students who are coming from a very different background? In public schools, teachers are hit with every category of student inside their classrooms. Are teachers to blame when it comes to students who don't find success in education, or is there an even greater factor that is holding certain demographics back. As I work through my research I am looking further and further into these questions and how they can, and should be addressed in public schools.

The HEP program falls under the classification of special education in the public school system. This aspect is one that has fascinated me very much. The idea that there is such a need within the migrant working community for there to be a specific program to educate these students is some what a concern to me. The demographic of the students I have worked with are not those impeded by a migrant system but one that is more impeded by prejudices and inadequate resources.

Annotated Bibliography 3&4

Skiba, Ph.D, Russell J., Lakeisha D. Bush, and Kimberly Knesting Ph.D.. " Culturally Competent Assessment: More Than Nonbiased Test." Journal of Child and Family Studies 11.1 (2002): 61-65. Print.

In this Article Culturally Competent Assessment: More Than Nonbiased Test, Skiba, Lakeisha, and Knesting; address several different aspects that are currently being debated and researched on disproportionality in minority groups. The study of test bias, examiner/teacher bias as well as item bias are directly discussed in this article. The authors point out that through their research many times test bias is small and often isolated factor and may not contribute to the larger misrepresentation of minorities in special education. However, item bias along with the bias of the examiner is contributing more to minority disproportionality. The individual items addressed in an assessment has been seen as bias due to underling socioeconomic factors that effect the student. These factors have been noted as hard to eliminate in the goal to create an unbiased test. However by helping those who administer and evaluate the test results to become unbiased is currently being used to more closely represent minorities in special education. This article aids to my research by shedding a new perspective on what factors are contributing to the disproportion of minorities.

Cross, TL. "Disproportionality in child welfare." Child Welfare 87.2 (2008): 11-20. CINAHL with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 10 Mar. 2011.

Cross, in her article “ Disproportionality in child welfare” addresses how disproportionality is effecting her field of Child Welfare. In child welfare services Cross points out that there is an equal representation of both white and ethnically diverse families who are considered a threat to child maltreatment, however in many situations over threes times as many African American, and American Indian children are placed into child care over white children. Cross relates this statistic to the idea that many social workers are resting their decisions on underlying prejudices that they are not aware of. She states that many times when a social worker investigates whether or not a home is safe for a child they revert back to considering whether or not this environment is “safe” in general, they many times disregard different family and social communities that offer a greater environment for the children to be raised in opposed to foster care. This article speaks to my research in addressing a different aspect of minority disproportionality. For there is be evidence of disproportional treatment of minorities in other child centric environments out side of schools leads me to believe that there maybe more behind hidden and underlying prejudices that previously thought.

Reflective blog 2

I have been tutoring for a few weeks now at the HEP program and managed to get to know some of the students and the teachers. I guess when we first enter into a new situation we have to feel it out for a bit before we open up and or get really involved. I admit at first I was a bit ummmmm irritated by the way some of the students behaved. Some act like they really don't want to be there and they cause distractions for those that are really trying. The ones really trying are who I focused on helping first then after some time there and some lengthy conversations with the teacher I began focusing on the others as well. I realize now what irritated me so much about the situation it was exactly the same situation I face every day in some of my college classrooms, the complete disregard for others that people have sometimes. You know the kid playing World of whatevercraft on their laptop while the rest of us are trying to listen to the professor. However with that said I have taken the time to figure out the different personalities and find ways to help them focus on what they should be doing. I have to give credit to the folks that teach at the program they have a difficult task and they do it well with what they have to work with.

At the beginning of this class I was really not looking forward to this topic, and the volunteer time at the HEP. I would have preferred to do my English assignments on topics that are closer to me and my interests. I still dread the long time it takes to wade through the refuse of websites and articles trying to narrow down information on something I personally do not have a lot of interest in. But I have enjoyed the time tutoring at the program and have learned a lot from the experience. I guess forcing myself to be more open minded and learning to work through my own reluctance in the long run is going to benefit me more.

Annotative bibliography 3, 4

Huang, Gary G."What Federal Statistics Reveal about Migrant Farmworkers: A Summary for Education." Ericdigests.org. ericdigest, n.d. Web. 2003-2004.

This article is a good compilation of data on migrant farm workers. Unfortunately it is just a regurgitation of the only data to currently be found on migrant farm workers and their situation. This speaks volumes in my opinion. This is a good example of how our current systems are not working as well as they could, unless we gather the appropriate information how can we ever hope to improve on an antiquated educational system such as the ones currently in place for migrant workers. Huang writes "With federal efforts underway to leave no child behind, a new study could provide essential information to U.S. educators as they plan educational reform for this marginalized group of students. " His statement and conclusion drives home the importance of reforming old systems to meet the needs of these people in our modern world.

"The Plight of Farm workers." Farmworker Movement Documents. Web. 10 Mar 2011. <javascript:popUp('http://farmworkermovement.org/media/video/players/valdez_monologue.swf')>.

The video "The Plight of Farm workers." By Luis Valdez is a short documentary of life as a farm worker in the 60's and 70's it shows there living conditions, lack of education, and how they are viewed by their employers and the public. This coincides with the data compiled by Gary Huang in 2003-2004. These two articles really emphasize the needs to reform the current programs. It appears that over a span of 50 years only the current children of migrant workers are beginning to really break free of what was once considered the only option for these people. Luis' video brings into perspective that migrant farm workers are ghosts in the fields, looked at the same way now as they were 50 years ago.

Annotated Bibliography #4 GM

Ortega, Adrianne. "And Health Care For All: Immigrants In The Shadow of The Promise OF Universal Health Care.". American Journal of Law and Medicine[serial on the internet].(2009,Mar),[cited March 10, 2011];35(1):185-204. Academic Search Premier.

This article gives an argument for extending medicare coverage to non-citizens, and to allow non-citizens to purchase employer-based insurance coverage. If the US passes universal health care coverage, congress should repeal the prohibitions of the Welfare Reform Act to allow this to happen. Ortega gives an extensive argument for extending health care coverage to non-citizens, she gives an overview of the uninsured non-citizen population and the goals of the US health care policy. Ortega states, "Legislation guaranteeing affordable and accessible health care coverage for all should provide affirmative health care coverage for immigrants." Ortega provides a background of current health care laws, and the burdens caused by federal legislation. She argues that excluding immigrants from public health services has created a burden on states and hospitals without any evidence of actually deterring illegal immigration.

Annotated Bibliography #3 GM

Stimpson, Jim P., Wilson, Fernando A., Karl Eschbach.
"Trends In Health Care Spending For Immigrants In The United States."
Health Affairs. v29n3(2010 03 01):544-550. Web. 3/09/11

This article is a study that compares the national trends in public spending for health care of adult naturalized citizens and immigrant non-citizens relative to U.S. natives. It does not attempt to directly measure health care expenditures for undocumented immigrants. It includes the study data and methods, data sources, study limitations, and study findings including, the findings for total health care spending, publicly funded health spending, and uncompensated care. Overall the findings concluded that immigrant expenditures were lower than expenditures for the native-born relative to their share of the population. Immigrants were less likely than native-born to use public sources of funding for health care.

Annotated Bibliography 1 & 2

Bechtel , Gregory A, Ruth Davidhizar, and Wanda R Spurlock. "Migrant Farm Workers and their Families:Cultural Patterns and Delivery of Care in the United States." International Journal of Nursing Practice. (2000): 300-306. Print.

Throughout the article it talks about the lifestyle of the migrant workers, it explains how the woman is supposed to mainly bear children and the man goes out and does the seasonal work. Professor Bechtel talked about how “disabilities” are a sign from God that they workers shouldn’t work in that field anymore or on that ranch and so many of them will get up and leave. The essay talked about the hazards and difficulties that the migrant families go through as well as the environmental and social hazards that they have to be aware of each time they get up and go to work each day. The whole point of the essay was to show that the Giger-Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model is a way to show the interactions for these migrant workers culturally. I liked how the model was showing the positive and negative effects of how these families live but I wanted more information on the expectations of each family member. This essay showed me that I want to see how the High School Equivalency Program transforms with the family and how it actually accommodates each family with their unique needs.

Martinez , Yolanda G, and Ann Cranston-Gringas -. "Migrant Farm Workers and the Educational Process: Barriers to High School Completion ." High School Journal . 80.1 (1996): 198. Print

Once again this academic journal explain what migrant workers were and what their lifestyle’s consisted of. They also talked about a Migrant Equivalency Program, which basically helps them get through any levels of grade school. It went into depth about the reasons many of the migrants drop out and what ages it is usually expected of them. The migrant program talked about different ideas and tests that they have done on migrant students to try to keep them involved in school. Two of the main reasons were work and lack of interest in school that they dropped out. I think that by finding out these two main points helps the program find a direction to try and accommodate each of the students involved in the program. I think that the fact that they pointed out that work is an inescapable factor in trying to keep these students in school was something that needed to be said. The main idea that I took from this article is that culture comes into education as much as any other factor and somehow the High School Equivalency Program needs to and tries to break down that barrier and try to find a way to make the lives for these full time workers become students also.

Annotated Bibliography

Logsdon, Ann. "Disproportional Representation - Disproportionality in Special Education Programs." Learning Disability - What is a Learning Disability?. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .

In this article Ann Logsdon, a school psychologist who specializes in helping parents and teachers support students disabilities, and has over 18 years of experience in special education. Logsdon in this article uses her extensive background in special education to address very concisely what Disproportionality is and how it is effecting students and schools. There are many hidden implications from disproportionality in special education. Logsdon highlights a few such as, hindering scholastic development, breed negative stereotypes of minorities, and create a continuing lower expectations of students who are misrepresented. This article does a very good job at providing valuable information to not only professionals in education but also to parents, who often time feel out of the loop.

"Oklahoma Parents Center." Oklahoma Parents Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .

The Oklahoma Parents Center, Dictionary is a compilation of all academic definitions for special education. This website is run and maintained by professionals in Education dedicated to training parents and families to help support children with disabilities. This website provides a vast amount of valuable information to parents and professional to help train them in many aspects from developing IEP's to Bully prevention. With limited resources to help educate and assist in the advancement of children with disabilities the Oklahoma Parents Center is a vital part of helping parents.

Annotated Bibliography 1 and 2

The Sinking Life Boat: Uncontrolled Immigration and the U.S. Health care System.
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_researchba61&gclid=CLPR__7os6cCFR9NgwodZCmU-A. Web3/3/2011
This article talks about the costs put on the health care system, its hospitals, and tax payers because of what they consider to be illegal immigrants seeking health care. It talks about the federal governments laws and regulations put on the health care system and how these rules affect insurance premiums for those who have insurance, and the effects it has on local systems. It gives a variety of statistics on states that have a high immigrant population on average loss hospitals acquire from treating those without the ability to pay. It strongly states it is the federal governments responsibility to reimburse those local health care systems that lose money from a high number of patients unable to pay, because the federal law states that no person shall be denied medical treatment regardless of ability to pay. The article is expressing the point that we need to increase border and immigration control to put a stop to ever rising health care costs.
This article gives a flip side to most of the research I have been doing. Most of the information I have found relates to the need to provide immigrants health care, regardless of legal status. That immigrants perform a much needed job and should be given the same rights as native born citizens in relation to health care.

Advocacy Needed on Health Care for Immigrants
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2010/02/advocacy-needed-on-health-care-for-immigrants.html.Web3/3/2011.
I chose this article because it shows a concern for the need for health care options for immigrants both legal and illegal. It is a great contrast to the last article. I feel this one offers other answers to the issues the previous article addressed.
This was a plea to progressive leaders to ask the president and congressman to consider the needs of immigrants while writing the health care reform bill. This article is addressing the need to enact health care reform that provides affordable health insurance to more families including immigrants. There are 2 major points they are asking for. 1. Removal of the 5 year waiting period for legal immigrants into medicaid, 2. Allow undocumented immigrants to purchase private health insurance through the new exchange programs. Overall, improve health care equity for immigrants.
This touches on where my research is going, what is being done to ensure everyone has adequate health care that is affordable. How is the current system addressing the issues faced by lower income families and immigrants?

Annotated Bibliographies 1&2

Milton, Katherine, and Jack Watson. "Distance Education for Mexican-American Migrant Farmworkers." (1997): n. pag. Web. 3 Mar 2011. <http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598geold97/Spring97/10/migrant.html>.

Milton and Watson have compiled a great deal of statistics regarding the characteristics, educational needs and opportunities concerning migrant workers. Most importantly to my research is the data concerning the successfulness of the current educational programs for migrant workers. The information concerning HEP programs across the country shows it as the most successful program assisting migrant workers and their educational needs. But according to Milton and Watson this isn't enough due to the mobility of migrant workers a program that can travel with them such as an online course would better fit the needs of the students and probably facilitate a higher success rate. The addition of a central administration of student records would also be a huge step in the right direction as well (Milton, and Watson). It is however unfortunate that most of the references in there article are outdated, thus taking away from current credibility. With that said the statistics still shed light on the difficulties and success of the educational programs for migrant workers.

 

Wu, Huei-Hsia. "Silent Numbers the economic benefits of migrant labor." By The Numbers. Boise state university Idaho issues online, 2005. Web. 3 Mar 2011. <http://www.boisestate.edu/history/issuesonline/fall2005_issues/5f_numbers_mex.html>.

Wu's article on the benefits and importance of migrant workers both documented and undocumented has a lot of facts and statistics pertaining strictly to Idaho. The main focus is the necessity of these migrant workers and how crucial they are to Idaho's agricultural industry. The section of his article pertaining to the education levels of these workers shows just how important it is to revamp our antiquated educational assistance programs to meet the needs of the migrant labor force. The information presented by Wu speaks well with Milton and Watson's paper concerning the education programs for migrant workers.

Discourse Analysis

Anne Wysocki introduces her article by pointing out that all page and screen-based texts are visual and we (as readers) have certain expectations that each texts needs to be. Example of the expectations are how some are for children (bright colors), some are towards adults and getting them to purchase something (weight loss commercials) and academic pages are very formal. Texts change and transform constantly to capture the reader that they want. Anne Wysocki states, “Visual arrangements do some of the work of the genre. This means, then, that the visual arrangements can be analyzed in terms of the genre work they do.” (Wysocki 124) This brought up the main point of her article to answer the question why do we expect the academic or literary pages to be professional looking the web pages that are academic or literary to be creative and inspirational. Her first point of view is that the visual elements and arrangements of the text are what people link towards first, like the logo or the headers of a paper. Wysocki also points out those attitudes towards the visual aspects of texts change over time. In the middle ages the educated believed that the visual presentations of pages were to make for a reading process where readers moved slowly through pages using the visual presentation of the pages as an aid to memory but today we want quick outlines or layouts to help us get what we need with no distraction or slowing down. This specific visualization leads to the reason we only use certain types of typefaces for certain papers. She also talked about different ideas that you can do with a web page and many different kinds of texts.
Like every program the High School Equivalency Program has its flaws as well as its strengths. The first video that I watched on YouTube was talking about the benefits of the program and According to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW9YI2dIrvE most people get the wrong idea of “migrant workers”, most people expect that the workers are from Mexico or Central America and either Latino or Mexican. In all reality many people come down Canada or are around the United States who is just looking for the seasonal farm work and that is all they really know. It’s usually a big diverse group all working to the common goal; to make a living. So the student featured in the video goes on to explain that the program tries to support them in many different ways. The program is trying to help them to their General Education Degree so they support them by providing transportation, child care, a general stipend at the end of every week, and they also remain as flexible as the can be to address any problems that come their way in order for these workers to be successful. The program just tries to help out in any way possible. Also the program assistants in the video just hopes that the word about the program spreads to reach people that need the help. Everybody has interacted or knows someone who could benefit from this program. One thing that the assistant doesn’t talk about is about the different problems that you can come across when volunteering in the program.
High School Equivalency Program for Recent Dropouts; Smith, Franceska B. 18 AUG 2006 Volume 1984 Issue 21 Pages 41-54 March 1984. Was an article that talked about how there are still big dropout rates throughout the country despite all of the programs that we have offered to address many of the different issues presented throughout the country. It addressed the dropout rates among the High School Equivalency Program showing us that we the program does not have a one hundred percent success rate, many times the students have to move during seasons before they can finish their schooling. Another problem was just like regular high school drop outs and they give up on finishing their education because the class material was too hard or another problem came up. Many times the students found it hard to balance work, family, job, end everyday life which can definitely be a difficult task and need some good work ethic as well integrity to finish the schooling. Without getting the text book this was all of the information it would give me. I find looking for information on this subject very frustrating because none of it goes into depth and there are very few websites about the program. There is though in fact plenty of information about different branches off of the program, for example immigration, migrant farm workers, education, volunteering, and you can still take a look at many different ideas on what to write about.
An online article located at http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/migrants.html was talking about today’s migrant workers here in the United States. It informed us that according to the United States Department of Labor there are approximately 1.3 million U.S. Citizens that migrate between the states making a living by working on the farms and the agriculture industry. It gave all of the usual statistics about have they live a hard a life with little education, tough work and harsh living conditions. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration list agriculture as the second most dangerous occupation in the United States. The Farm worker Health Services Program reported that the average life expectancy of a farm worker is lower than the national life expectancy of the United States population. There was many different articles and information on the past history of migrant farm workers but it talked about how today the workers are 88 percent and alone working in the United States because they work in the states and send money back to their families back at their home. Only 55 percent are married and 71 percent are not living with their spouses. Many of them don’t change jobs and started this work in their early 20’s and just work until they are not physically capable of doing the farm work anymore. The workers usually have no more than a sixth grade education on average. 93 percent are foreign born, and 65 percent are working here in the United States illegally. This statistic then gets into the subject of border control and on whether or not the employers in United States should be punished for hiring migrant workers knowing that they do not have the correct documents to be citizens here in the United States. The migrant workers have generic paths that they follow when doing their seasonal work; In the East the workers start in Florida and work their way up through Ohio, New York, and Maine following crops that range from citrus to tobacco to blueberries, the Midwestern Stream starts in Southern Texas and moves through every state in the Midwest., and the workers in the west start in Southern California and move up the coast to Washington and North Dakota. They follow these patterns either because of the seasons, economy, and different crops patterns.
I still feel like each of the informative texts could have explained more on the program and about its strengths and weaknesses, Wysoki talked about detail and explanation in each of the multimedia texts and each of these could have used more of that. Each of the articles were boring and it took me a while to get through it, the assistant in the video talked about how they wanted to get more information out about the program so how about a specific informative website about the High School Equivalency Program that isn’t just for the students but also for the volunteers that want to be involved with the program. I feel like the HEP Program could use a marketing plan and actually put the ideas to use.

Unit 2 Discourse Analysis

"Disproportionality The Disproportionate Representation of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Special Education." EMSTAC. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. .

Logsdon, Ann. "Diagnosing Minority Children - Ensuring Appropriate Diagnosis for Minority Children." Learning Disability - What is a Learning Disability?. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .

Logsdon, Ann. "Disproportional Representation - Disproportionality in Special Education Programs." Learning Disability - What is a Learning Disability?. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .

"Minority Disproportionality, Safe & Responsive Schools Project, Indiana Education Policy Center." Indiana University. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2011. .

"Oklahoma Parents Center." Oklahoma Parents Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .


Reading Writing Analytically and Wysocki's The Multimedia of Texts contributed to the writing of my discourse analysis mostly by helping to focus my thinking and judgments while I read my sources. Before reading these two texts I had little awareness of my own thought process of how and why I drew conclusions about my reading. Writing Analytically helped me to see different patterns and underlying formats within a text that the author was specifically using to address and manipulate, in a way, their message. At first everything about discourse analysis seemed abstract and very confusing, however as I continue to complicate my research and thinking process, the models provided in the two texts do help and make more sense. Wysocki's model I feel is going to be very beneficial with my website, which I will be starting soon in my course work. Overall addressing Wysocki's model for discourse analysis does still seem extremely vague when applied to an academic paper, or one that is formatted as a single screen with “typical” page format. I am trying harder to look at both the text and visual aspects of the work as both being “visual” in using Wysocki's model and this has help some. By in large the two readings in unit two has aided me in developing my thinking as a better writter.

To focus my research from the large topic of Minority Education and programs such as BSU HEP, I started to look into different aspects of Minority Education. One topic that jumped out at me was the argument over the disproportionality of racial and ethnic minorities in special education. I became concerned with this topic first because it was an issued that I had never thought about before. And second because its has lead me to ask the question if disproportionality is causing a negative educational disadvantage through the generations in the minority communities. Disproportionality, is defined by the Oklahoma Parents Center website as, “...the over or under representation of minority students in special education. In other words, there is a disproportionate number, either a significantly larger or smaller percentage, of students from a specific minority background receiving special education services than the percentage of that minority in the population generally. Typically, African Americans and Hispanics are over-represented and Asians are underrepresented. IDEA ’97 specified that disproportionality needs to be addressed by state and local districts.” (http://www.oklahomaparentscenter.org/Dictionary.html)

The advocates of Special Education have worked hard to address the concern of disproportional minorities in Special Education. The main concern with disproportionality is the over-representation of minorities in special educational programs. According to Ann Logsdon, a school psychologist and the current administrator for disability services at Kentucky State University, a minority group is considered over-represented and disproportional when there is a statistically greater number of special education students within this demographic than there is in the general population of the school. EMSTAC is a federally funded organization which helps to develop and implement new strategies to improve the outcomes of students in Special Educational programs. EMSTAC provided the chart below illustrating the statistical over-representation of minorities in special education.



(http://www.emstac.org/registered/topics/disproportionality/intro.htm#top)

What this chart shows, specifically with Black (non-hispanic) students, is that the percentage of black students in special education is 136 times greater than the general population of black (non-hispanic) students.

The academic community approaches disproportional demographics with two main schools of thought. One, disproportionality happens in minorities because there is inadequate testing oversight and placement procedures for special education programs that meet the cultural differences of minorities. Second, is a question of whether or not the growing number of diverse classrooms is skewing the statistical data, based on socioeconomic conditions. This second question is one that is harder to track and debate. It's being debated that socioeconomic situations, such as poverty, family educational background and family status, is a greater factor in over-representation of minorities in special education. However this is met with great opposition stating that the socioeconomic demographics that are being over-represented are also the same demographics that are being classified as minorities. This argument is taking place mostly between Administrators, Education boards and the Teachers to special education students.

Many times in my research I feel the author of a given text is trying to easy into the idea that our current assessment process for special education is on the boarder of being race bias, and thus risks being seen as racist. I believe this topic more than the two view points above are an area of greater concern. Neither group, schools nor the schools boards want to openly address the idea there may be a racists assessment happening in their schools. This tip-toe method of dealing with race in special education has made the climate of disproportionality a very political issue. In 1997 when the IDEA bill was reauthorized, it clearly mandated that State Departments of Education address and report on the issue of Disproportional programs in special education. There is an obvious concern shown in the Educational communities for this problem and many programs are being designed and changed to lessen disproportionality in special education.

Most documentation and discussion on this topic is happening within the schools and the Educational communities, then also in political circles while new legislation is being passed. The discussion specifically addresses the need to change current programs and assessment standards. Logsdon brings up a interesting point that many are not talking about, the idea that there is a lack of communication and responsiveness with families who represent the disproportional minorities. This lack of communication leads me back to my question of a generational cycle of disadvantaged minorities in the educational system. Logsdon states that disproportionality can, “...Result in a type of racial profiling that places minority students at a disadvantage throughout their school year; Result in lowered expectations among teachers, parents, and the students themselves;...” I believe this aspect alone is causing a generational continuance of poor educational statistics among minorities. Logsdon currently is my only source which clearly speaks to parents and the affected demographic. This disassociation between parents, the community, and schools I find can be a huge contributor to the continuing and growing number of disproportionated minorities in special education programs.