Week 10: Social Change

Since this is the last posting for the honors section of our course, I am happy we get to write about everything we have learned and how we are going to make changes because of these things. One of the bigs things that will stick with me is when we talked about gender and how we actually "do gender" and are not born into it. The picture to the left is of a mom and her daughter "doing gender" in Disneyland. I took this picture because I thought it was funny, and now it has been put to use! Ever since I was little, I thought that boys and girls/ males and females were biologically decided and we just made cultural adaptations to accommodate the sex we were born into. However, I have recently realized that we actually create gender and are forced to uphold who we are by giving into the social and cultural norms that show people whether we are male or female. I hope that in the near future there will be change in the gender opportunities for people who are labeled as "transvestites" or "transgenders." Another big area of change for me would be under the category of race. I learned exactly how race is socially constructed and I will take away one important thing with me. People often ask me, "what are you?" and I respond, "what do you mean?" When this happens in the future, I am simply going to respond, "I'm American." Being born and raised in America, I believe that makes me American. If I am asked what race I am, I would like to try and respond something like "race doesn't exist, take a sociology class!" ;) I would love to see what someone responds to that. Another thing is the bystander effect. When we were discussing this, I said that I am hardly ever a bystander and I always speak up in situations that I think could be harmful in any way. The change that I would make using the way we talked about the bystander effect and all the people who remain bystanders is to be even more assertive in dangerous situations and encourage others around me not to be bystanders as well. Overall, I loved this class! Mrs. Huerta, you are an amazing teacher! You say that you have a strong personality, and I like it! Sometimes, people tell me I have a strong personality too. I'm planning on majoring in Sociology and having you as a teacher for this class really enforced my decision! Thanks for everything.

Second TOUCHH Trip

*May 21, 2009 Trip

First off, let me say that I absolutely love these kids! They are great and I love opportunities like this that allow me to interact with people out of my own peer group who are not adults yet either! This time, I worked with the G.A.T.E. after school class again. G.A.T.E. stands for the "gifted and talented education" class. When I walked in, all the kids turned toward the door and began shouting, "I know you!" and "I remember you!" I love working with kids because you almost always get this reaction. They think it is so cool to have a teenager in their classroom that is not a teacher or solid authority figure. I got to be a lot more involved with the class this time. First, I read to them about mummies around the world and actually taught them a bit about what I know about mummies and went over some new vocabulary words in the stories. I felt like a teacher, but most of all, like I was contributing something important to the class. After this, the kids had silent reading time. During this time, I helped with some of their online reading quizzes that they took through a computer program on the I-Mac they had in the front of the classroom. I was impressed at how well the younger ones (4th and 5th graders) knew how to work the computer and fix it if something "went wrong." Following their silent reading was recess! This was always my favorite time of the school day, and the girls kept asking me if I would be there when they came back from recess and I assured them that I would be waiting. They seemed so excited and it made me happy to know that they liked me! When they got in from recess, the teacher told me she had some papers to grade and other things to do, so I could read to the class again. This time, the boys brought me scary stories and I chose a couple to read. The kids were so funny always saying, "That wasn't scary enough...choose another!" So I read about three of four before our TOUCHH group had to leave for the day. I asked the teacher to take a picture of me with the class and the kids were so happy and ran to where I was standing to pose. It was such a great experience and I hope someday I have the chance to go back.

Week 8: Gender

*The picture on the left is my "tom boy look"

*The picture on the right is of me and my older sister competing in the Miss Santa Clara Pageant in January 2009.

I really like talking about gender and how my gender(female) is shown through my personality and way of life. I would consider myself both a girly-girl and a tom-boy at the same time. It's hard to explain how I can be both, but if you get to know me, I think you'll see how this works for me. First of all, being a girly-girl for me entails dressing up whenever I leave the house. This means putting on make-up, doing my hair, and wearing nice, cute, girly clothes. I love being flirty, going shopping and eating politely most of the time. I also dance and have been competing in Miss America preliminary pageants since I was 13. This is a huge contributor to my overtly female side. However, I can also be quite the tomboy. I love going out in basketball shorts and t-shirts sometimes with my hair up in a ponytail because it's extremely comfortable. Also, a good majority of my friends are male and being around guys often makes me immune to their conversations and the way they talk and act in public and in private situations. If I was born male, I think that I could probably do just fine in the world. I might be more accepted in the workplace and through sports because I feel that males still have an advantage, even in our modern day society. I feel like as a female, there are definitely certain advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that you get sympathy and care from others more easily and you are allowed to show emotion most of the time. There are so many disadvantages of being a female that I can think of, but I will just name a few. First, I hate that people think I'm delicate or I need to be taken care of all the time. I love feeling independent and I do not like being treated unequally. An example of this comes with my own family. If I bring up a male cousin or close friend that "got to do something" when he was my age they often say something like, "well, it's different because he is a boy." I always hated this and found it to be very sexist because I do not care if he is a boy and I actually think I am smarter and more capable of handling myself in a bad situation if one were to arise. Another disadvantage comes with holding power positions. Females still aren't accepted in high ranking jobs and positions in our society. We have yet to see a woman president and the majority of CEO's of our nation's largest companies are men. Despite the disadvantages, I love being a female!