Assignment 1

During my hours of working for Mr. Gonzalez at Hialeah Senior High, I realized that I wanted to teach high school students rather than elementary or middle school students. I also got to see how it is working with a much older crowd and a wider demographic. I volunteered my hours to the chorus teacher. During this time, I assisted in choreographing a dance they did for a competition in which they received first place. It was such a great honor and experience to be a part of that. At first I was nervous because I have never worked with children whose ages were not that far apart from mine. I did not think they would respect me or see me as an authority figure but I was wrong. From the moment that Mr. Gonzalez announced me to the class and explained to them why I was there, they treated me with the up most respect. Not once when I was in charge did they raise their voices to me or disrespected me. This teacher is the kind of teacher I want to be like when I become a teacher and have my very own classroom. I also want to have the same relationship he has with his students. Every single student adored him. They listened to his every word, paid attention to his every movement. It was amazing to see all these kids really wanting to learn and take such an interest in something without it seeming as if it was forced. This was not a very easy class to teach. In the course of seeing them three times at most, the students needed to learn choreography as well as learn the lyrics, harmonies, and melodies to the song, as well as do their daily current events and also learn the proper vocabulary for the class. The class room was very well equipped with the instruments the students needed and the seating arrangement made it very comfortable for every single student to see without being blocked seeing as how they were sitting on levels. I observed that every student learned differently. Some learned much faster than others and Mr. Gonzalez had all the patience in the world to stop and teach whichever student was feeling left behind. Every day that I walked into that classroom I never saw not one student who was not looking forward to learning with Mr. Gonzalez. Every student was helpful with one another and many came to me for my help and I couldn’t help but feel overjoyed because I knew I was playing a small but rewarding role for these students.

Extra Credit

Being a Hispanic and taking pride in this I enjoyed reading the different poems. I am a dance instructor for the City of Hialeah. I work in a park and teach various dance styles. My two favorite classes to teach however are flamenco and salsa. One of the poems is about flamenco and the poem is dead on. Flamenco is such a passionate style of dance that you can clearly see in the eyes of the dancer. It is something that moves them from head to toe. This style of dance is not the easiest. Everything is either one way or the either there is no in between. Whenever I see the outcome of my dances and I see my little girls trying their best to keep up with the technique I have given them, I am filled with pride. The style of flamenco comes from Spain. It is extremely popular for the man to play the Spanish guitar and the woman carries on the beat with her feet as well as the castanets. Like flamenco, salsa is a very passionate dance as well but can be taken in many different ways. Salsa can be a fun happy type of style, or a praising to their god or a sultry heated dance between a man and a woman. A woman dancing salsa always looks very sexy no matter what. Women are meant to move those hips and shake it while the man tries to win her over and then leads her as it is said in the poem. There are many styles of salsa. There is basic, casino, rueda, and much more. Each having their own flavor and their own sense of style to bring out to the dance floor. I absolutely love dancing salsa and I find it very sexy when a man knows how to dance salsa. A person seems more confident when they dance salsa because this is not an easy rhythm to keep up with. Currently at my job I am working on a salsa piece that is combining many of the styles together. I don’t know if anyone would object to that since some styles can be offensive to others but I see it as a form of expressing oneself and just having a fun time dancing. I take much pride in being Hispanic and being able to enjoy the Latin flavor that in instilled in me. I think salsa music has so much life to it that it can get anyone to get up and dance even if they don’t know all the fancy turns just hearing the different beats and the loudness of it all can bring a smile to someone’s face and let themselves go and get carried off into the music.

Reflection on Surveys

After having done the required surveys, I realized that there were many things I had never really given much thought to until now. Also, I didn’t know where I stood on political views or certain moral standards but now I have a clearer understanding. While taking the surveys there were many questions that I really did not know how to respond to. I live in a household where my mother is very Christian and my father is an atheist. One can imagine the different lessons I have learned about morality and God and living in sin and what is good in the eyes of God. I have always believed in God however when one has a father who is telling you more liberal and scientific things on the other side, it is quite difficult to determine what I really follow. I believe in God but do not consider myself to be of any religion. However, when I was younger I was raised as a catholic and was baptized and had my communion. I would like to keep that with my children but I would let them discover their own religious believes without trying to feed them too much information. The surveys on men and women were relatively easy for me. My opinion on men and women is simple. Men and women are equal and should have the same equal rights. From the people around me and seeing their personality I can say that some women tend to be more emotional than men but that doesn’t place women in a certain category. One of the questions was about women and the way they feel about love and relationships. Speaking for myself, I do not think being in a relationship is the most important thing and after being in one I tend to want to end it because I feel that in a way you lose a sense of independency when you are with someone. The survey about sex and gender was a little difficult for me because I still am unsure about if someone that has both male and female genitalia is considered which sex. I try to have an open mind about it and I have nothing against it I just don’t feel as if I know enough to start passing judgment on that topic. However, I feel very strongly about homosexuality. I do not see it as an abnormality and I consider myself and advocate for the homosexuals. Many of my friends are homosexuals and I have never felt the least bit uncomfortable being near them or when they showed public display of affection toward their significant other. The last survey I took was to find out what my type was. I already knew that I was going to come out as a liberal. I’m very much like my father in that way. My mother quite the conservative although being in a house with liberal and a very strong liberal has softened her up a bit. I feel that I am open minded to almost anything and do not pass judgment as much as others and I am very content with the way I am.

Reflection 20

Having read the articles on intersexuality and transsexuality has given me more insight and a better understanding of what there meanings are. Intersexuality as we discussed in class is when a person has one sex’s genitalia on the outside and on the inside they have the organs of the opposite sex. When I first read this I had to go back and re read it because I was just so confused with the explanation that was given. To further understand I read an article on a person who is an intersexual. When this person was born the parents were given the choice to what sex they wanted to raise their child. They chose to raise their baby as a girl and named her Judy. In the article Judy explained how throughout her adolescent stage she was a tom boy and was not comfortable with herself. She went on living not knowing why she felt this was because she had not been informed until later of what her condition was. While in college Judy slept with a woman and considered herself to be a lesbian, until years later she changed her named to Max and is now living as a man who is married and has a daughter. I can’t even imagine how Judy felt growing up thinking she was abnormal and having possibly much insecurity about herself. I believe that something like this could have a traumatizing effect on someone. I didn’t really know until now the true meaning when someone said something about being a transsexual. To my knowledge now, a transsexual is someone who is born a gender and physically looks this gender and has the genitalia of this gender but emotionally and mentally they feel as if they are supposed to be of the other gender. They feel as if they are trapped inside the wrong body. I recall watching a talk show one day and saw the most beautiful girl as a guest so I start watching to later find out that the show was based on transsexuality and how this beautiful young lady was born a boy. She was only 15 and had already had a sex change. She said that from early on in her life she knew that she was not supposed to be a boy and that God had made a mistake with her. She told her parents what she felt and much to my surprised they supported her and stood by her and watched their little boy have the surgery to become a girl. I was just shocked because I don’t know how the parents could support something like that at such a young age. I am not against someone feeling that way and doing the surgery but this person was merely a child when she had the sex change. What if she were to regret it later in life? I commend anyone who has ever gone through anything like this because it takes a lot of guts to be able to stand up to the snide remarks people will probably make and it also takes a strong person to realize that there is nothing wrong with them for being the way they are.

Reflection 19

Homosexuality is something that I learned at a very young age. I had never even heard of the word gay until one day in elementary school, a friend of mine told me in secrecy that he was gay. I had no idea what that meant so he proceeded to explain to me. I didn’t go home and tell my parents because I didn’t know how they would react hearing what I told them I heard in school and I promised my friend I wouldn’t say anything. A couple years later I joined a dance team and there was a male in the team. He later told his friends that he was gay. I didn’t even give it a second thought. It seemed to me like being gay was not a big deal because I had so many male friends who were gay. It wasn’t until later when I was at work one day and one of the older students who is gay came to my job with a band aid on his forehead. When I had asked him what happened he told me that he was gay bashed in school. He was walking down the hall way and students started throwing rocks at him and one of them cut him in the forehead. I felt terrible. I hadn’t really realized that until then how differently homosexuals are treated by some people. There have been opinions on how a person turns gay. Some say that it is a choice they make when they start to realize their sexual desires. Some say that they are born that way and that they are gay from the minute they are born. I have asked many of my gay friends when did they realize they were gay. I had one friend who told me he knew ever since he was a little boy. He always played with his sisters barbies and he would wear makeup. However, I had another friend who told me he didn’t know until after he had been in a relationship with a woman. Whatever the case may be, we need to respect them and their choices. They are just like us, average people who shouldn’t be shunned just because of their sexual preference. There are laws against homosexual marriage and giving their partner rights. I don’t find that fair and I believe that should be changed. My closest male friends are gay and I wouldn’t change that at all. I respect those people who have certain opinions about homosexuality however, those people shouldn’t act upon their opinions or feel uncomfortable if they are near a gay person. Gays are just like us and should have every single right that we have.

Reflection 18

I believe that any act of racism should be charged as a case. I find it disgusting to see how we treat others just because they were not born in the United States. Every single person deserves the right to want to make a better life for themselves and their families. Immigration has been going on for quite some time now. I don’t know how many times I heard on the news about Cubans who were found in the ocean, detained and then sent back home. The most famous story of this was the story of Elian Gonzalez. This was a little boy whose mother died trying to get him to America from Cuba. The boy had family here and there was a huge fiasco for the boy to stay. I remember seeing a picture of him on the newspaper where he was being torn away from his aunt and the police were taking him away. The face on that child was heart breaking. It really bothers me that it doesn’t seem to be a big deal about how these immigrants get treated and no one cares about the families that are kept away from each other or the children who lose their parents and are traumatized from such events. Recently, a man retired from the CNN news crew, I couldn’t be happier when I heard the news. That man was against anyone trying to come here that was not a U.S. citizen. So many immigrants are turned away everyday and what not many people notice is that these people risk their lives and give up everything they have in the hopes that they can come here the “land of the free” the “land of opportunity” to have the life that so many of us take for granted. The Haitians are turned away, mistreated, humiliated, and it’s sickening to think that we just don’t care enough about others. How is this supposed to be the land of opportunity if we only give the opportunity to a few fortunate people? My parents were immigrants and if they would not have risked their lives to come here they would not have met. This generation is basically the first generation of the United States because most of our parents were not from here and immigrated when they were younger. I strongly believe that something should be done in order to give everyone a chance to live the American dream.

Reflection 17

Racism is an issue that surrounds our world every day. It is something that can be visible but at times people will not show it even though they feel very strongly about it. Although some people choose to be blindsided about the fact that we are surrounded by racism every day, it is something that can become very dangerous. People need to get over whatever issues they may have against a certain race because no one is better than anyone else. I remember one time when I was about sixteen years old my family and I vacationed in Sarasota Fl. The demographic there was older white people. I didn’t think anything of it because I didn’t realize there was racism toward us. We walked into a restaurant to have some lunch and there is when it was very obvious that we were being stared at. From the moment we walked in I felt extremely uncomfortable. No one wanted to serve us and the looks we were getting were very ugly. I had never felt so out of place and a little bit scared. It was after that incident that I realized the true ugly face of racism. At that moment I knew what many people probably feel on a daily basis. This wasn’t even a fraction of what the African Americans went through and I felt terrible. I was a bit ashamed also because I felt embarrassed of being who I was because of all the negative attention. Racism is not a pretty picture and people need to start realizing that when they act upon their racist feelings, it can be very hurtful and at times live threatening to people. There is a very popular documentary on how they blacks were treated and it could bring people to tears. You see the police hosing them down with high pressured hoses and letting the dogs attack them and it is just brutal and disgusting to think that we did that to our brothers and sisters just because of their skin color. We need to stop acting so barbaric toward one another and grow up. Racism is uncalled for and all it does is segregate people and make them feel badly about themselves. We as a society have come a long way from the beginning of time. With our technology and how we are evolving I think it is embarrassing that we act like such stupid little kids continuing to be racist toward each other. You would think that we would grow up by now. I hope that one day people can finally be amongst each other without having any negativity toward anyone.