Nick DiPaola's FNED 346 Blog Fall 2018

The article titled "In The Service Of What? The Politics of Service Learning" written by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer discusses the purpose, goals, and outcomes of service learning projects for students. For this blog post, I've chosen three quotes I found important from the article and explained their relevance. Quote #1 - "Educators and legislators alike maintain that service learning can improve the community and invigorate the classroom, providing rich educational experiences for students at all levels of schooling. Service learning makes students active participants in service projects that aim to respond to the needs of the community while furthering the academic goals of students" I chose this quote because it explains in great detail what a service learning project does for not only the community, but the student as well. It also appears at the beginning of the article and introduces the topic. In our class, we are helping the Providence communi...

The 2016 Presidential election was highly controversial for several reasons. For this post I decided to go with option #2, where I read and responded to three of the graduate student's blog posts.  Find the link to them  here . #1) "Election Issues 2017" by Al DiFazio.  Al's post opens up with the statement that this election has become a question of character. Who are the candidates? I agree with this notion, and I also think that these two candidates were a couple of the worst options we've had for president in recent history. I say this because Donald Trump isn't your standard 'politician' and his rough-around-the-edges personality rubs many people the wrong way. As for Hilary Clinton, she's created serious trust issues between herself and American citizens. Al says that the most important problems that presidential candidates are faced with are jobs, the economy, education, the environment, immigration, tax policy, foreign poli...

Leaders of an LGBT club at a high school pose behind their pride flag to support the cause. The article titled "Making Schools and Communities Welcoming to LGBT Youth" written by Annemarie Vaccaro, Gerri August, and Megan Kennedy discusses the discrimination and marginalization against members of the lesbian, gay, bi, and trans community. For this blog post I've decided to personally reflect on my experiences with this issue. Firstly, I come from a "traditional" American family where my parents believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. They were raised this way by their parents, and I'm sure that they want the same for their own children. With that being said, my two siblings, both heterosexual and male, are similarly close-minded to the LGBT community. Growing up, I've heard "you're gay" or "that's gay" countless times from them, often directed towards me because I was (being the middle child) a bit different ...

The children's book titled "No, David!" was influential to my childhood without me even knowing it. This post features extended comments from our classmate Nick Berling's blog which can be found here: http://nberlingblog.blogspot.com/ I really like the way Nick summed up the main idea of "Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us." He mentioned how Linda Christensen argues that children are programmed very early in their childhood through literature such as books, magazines, movies, cartoons, etc, that give them opinions on different types of people and how our society works. I've been exposed to this argument in previous college courses and I must say that I agree. Honestly, I feel like the media controls everything in terms of the way we view the world. For example, the basic plot behind countless movies in America involves the male protagonist character succeeding the antagonist, thus 'saving the day.' Since we've read and seen this so many ...