Students' Voices


Jose Vilson teaches math in a middle school. These are students who have just reached their teens, yet, Mr. Vilson recognizes the importance of listening to what students have to say. In an article on his blog, "A Quick Note on Student Voice [Because You Need To Hear It ... Again]", Vilson wrote:
"...Rather than constantly finding ways to manipulate kids in ways that don’t help them, let’s teach them how to advocate for themselves in times when they don’t have an adult to back them up immediately. Let’s have kids pick their own projects for school and set the guidelines. Every so often, they have to learn how to make good decisions, and we will just have to be there when they don’t. 
We as educators ought to hope that, when they make good decisions, a domino effect takes place and they continue to make those decisions, but if our hand keeps pushing those dominoes, we never get the full effect. Neither do they."
I wonder what Vilson would say when he sees the following:

The above downloaded from Mon Ramirez Facebook page

Before making a comment, I saw a post on Facebook that led me to a blog by Maine Galvez. The author of this blog has the following introduction ("I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.")
 :
"...I think I'm supposed to say something about me? Well, I'm a collection of molecules named Maine Galvez. I'm not unique nor extraordinary, but I'm a product of billion years of evolution and one of trillion chains of historical probabilities, to which, had any of it turned differently, I wouldn't have existed..."
"P. S. The title of this post, even the title of my blog has something to do with the great Richard Feynman, because he's awesome and I admire him :)"
The title of the blog is "Surely You're Joking, Ms. Galvez". The most recent post on this blog, to which the post on Facebook led me, provides a flow chart that attempts to explain why students burned broken chairs in the Polytechinc University of the Philippines (PUP): 

To read this flowchart, please visit "Surely You're Joking, Ms. Galvez"
Instead of making a comment, I went through the flow chart and checked where I would find myself.

Go ahead. Go through the flow chart and see where you land....





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