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Hey Vivian,

I’m tagging you for the 8 Things Meme:

http://www.justonemorebook.com/2007/05/30/8-things-meme/

Haha..my first meme. Thanks Andrea…I’m on it!
vivian

The girl in front of me at church on Sunday was dressed in a cute mini skirt with a coordinating top. She had on pink dangling earrings and a pink ankle bracelet above her pink painted toenails. She wore flipflops, heavy eye liner, eye shadow and blush. She sat there - all “tarted” up -during the entire church service coloring a picture. The incongruence between her appearance and her activity was remarkable and I wanted to shake the mother and say, “DON’T YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO YOUR LITTLE GIRL?” but, of course, I didn’t. Parents need to pay close attention to what their children are reading - in books, magazines, online. And they need to stop trying to live their lives through their beautiful daughters.

I absolutely agree with Nathan’s observations and his proposed solutions. I must add to this discourse the boys who are seeing the same messages. The myriad of mental health issues that Nathan describes are some of the effects on girls. Boys see these messages, and interact with girls to whom they are intended, and they react as well. Many of my tenth grade boys are aggressive towards girls but the girls are just as aggressive and often instigate these interactions. I think boys are the byproduct of the marketing campaign to sexualze young girls. Regardless of gender, parents should be involved in the lives of their children. Teachers should be aware of the images their students are exposed to and be open to dialogue.

Thanks for your comments Marilyn and Andrew. You both raise the importance of being attentive, as teachers and parents, to the way in which media positions children. I think once you create a space to engage in these important conversations with children, the easier it gets.

Andrew…sounds like you have a great topic for a clip episode!

Have a good one
vivian

Hi Vivian,

I agree with Charles, the site re-design is very impressive and really does suit the essence of CLIP!

Thank you for give us not critical literacy people a little bit of background an a better understanding as to what critical literacy CAN look like. I know I\’ve been around this subject for as long as I\’ve known you (over 20 years) and it\’s still a little fuzzy around the edges.

Thank you for this show and I look forward to more \”Critical Literacy for Dummies\” in the future!

Andy Bilodeau
http://www.andycast.net

Love the updated postmodern look and design! And thanks for attaching that great article by Hillary Janks, I love having these resources–feel free to attach more! The 100% kids sounds wonderfully promising as well, can’t wait to see and hear how it’ll evolve. Very inspiring Vivian! It’s beginning to stir some ideas for ncte so please keep us tuned in!

Thanks Andy and Anna. I hope to be able to do more and more with CLIP and this site. I’m glad you like it. We recorded the first podcast which was very exciting for the second graders, their teacher and me. They even came up with ‘radio names’ and so forth. Carol, their teacher was telling me that the kids are saying they did some of their best writing for the show…so we’ll see how things unfold in the future.

I’ll keep posting resources !

vivian

[…] In This Show Dr. Hilary Janks’ Interrelated Model for Critical Literacy Upcoming Events and Unconferences […]

Hi

Bye

Hi Professor Vasquez-

I love that you are focusing on the “how to” of critical literacy. Those of us new to the classroom and critical literacy need some ideas from all aspects of this wonderful arena for learning. Most powerful was the quote of Janks, “…changing dominant discourses, as well as changing those that are dominant.” I will have to think about this for a while, how do you change those that are dominant? It is very encouraging to hear that you and Janks also promote such new resources in our classroom. Students, especially my high schoolers love to find things on the Internet, and YouTube has become an integral part of my teaching. I think that both you and Janks would approve.

I love that you redesign your site when telling us about how to redesign our classrooms. Looks great.

Lara