•The distributions of educational resources

• Taipei gets the most annual educational budget from the government.

• Uniforms do NOT decide teenagers’ talents and intelligence.

• Ideology that subconsciously influences people’s opinions.

As for characteristics of different learners influence different teaching approaches, I thought of another class that I've observed in high school today. The second class that I observed right after the first class was a Special Sports Class. Students have to get up at three in the early morning every day and receive their professional training until eight o'clock, and then they start their learning in the traditional classroom. My observation time started at 10:00 AM. Almost every student was exhausted and got their heads glued on tables even the activities were almost the same from the first class, which was a normal class. Therefore, I'd say maybe the teacher should try other teaching methods to motivate the students.

For the politics part, every day I see Teachers College send emails to all the students to remind them to vote. So I can more or less get to know how the political situations influence the whole learning environment. In my country Taiwan, politics is EVERYWHERE. It always depends on which party is the present ruling party in our nation. For example, there was a historical event called "Feb 28 Massacre" , which happened in 1947 in Taiwan. It talks about the ruling party KMT slaughtered innocent people on street back then. However, if we are right now having a government of KMT, then we are not able to see teachers teaching this particular history in secondary school. Although I sometimes worry that bringing political issues in classrooms will make students become more divided, nothing is irrelevant to politics at the end.

With this time's reading, I see this form can deal with so many issues in the contents, and these issues can be related to young adults' life. For example, in New Kid by Jerry Craft, it addresses issues like micro-aggressions, parents' decisions on their children's school, ethnicity, stereotypes fixed on particular groups of students, dualism, always feeling as an outsider, parents/students coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. With the help of visual aids, graphic novels can prompt young readers to create a mental picture in their minds, promote deeper thinking, lead their thinking process, and let them learn to put themselves in characters' shoe to think what if they are one of the characters in the situation? What will they react and how will they deal with a stressed out and totally new school life?

In this graphic novel, it addresses a lot of issues with situations that might happen in students' real life. For example, a teacher keeps calling a black boy student's with a wrong name, for she mistook the boy with another student for they both have black skin. If this happens for only one or two times, I think it's understandable. However, this situation keeps happening for a semester, which hurts student's feeling. Another example from the novel was that whenever teachers mention "financial aids" in class, students will always peep at students of color, and this always bothers them.

So, after reading this audiobook, I think it is important for educators to care more about the whole classroom culture we try to create in the classroom. Being nice to students is not enough. We must create a classroom to let students feel their identities and backgrounds are welcomed and respected.

Down below is the link to the audiobook:

The chapters we selected cover what we call the “3 Is” of stamped- ideas, individuals and image-constructions through which racism and antiracism are explored. Although chapter 9 is very short, it defines the significant “assimilationist” position by exploring the idea of the “Uplift Suasion''- which is the notion of wanting black people to live by white people’s standards. The text highlights how this position is still racist as it indicates people cannot accept black people the way they are . Chapter 13 explores Abraham Lincon as a complicated individual, challenging the idea of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. His three different positions/policies around black folk that catered to both abolitionist and racist groups of voters are explored in the chapter. Finally, chapter 23 touches upon how Black women have been muted in the representation of Black resistance and the civil rights movement by discussing the life of activist Angela Davis. It also discusses representation of black men in the post civil rights climate- like the “southern strategy” and the movie Rocky which had political consequences like the election of Reagan.  

           In the lesson linked to Chapter 9, Sanchez et. al. (2019) takes important figures in the  abolitionist movement and guides students to learn the history of the abolition movement through a role play. The Chapter 13 lesson asks students to think about what the official, real aims or reasons of the Civil War are, analyzing what documents reveal about Lincoln’s war aims . The lesson for Chapter 23 teaches the FBI’s war on the Black freedom movement by introducing COINTELPRO, to let students see the unethical, unjust, illegal and racist tendencies that exist in the US government and the criminal justice system. 

From the beginning of the book, it opens with "There shouldn't be any monsters left in Lucille." The author uses "shouldn't," and I intuitively know that Lucille may still have monsters living in it. However, sometimes people cannot see them when they are so used to the Utopian society which they all let their guards down. Just like a line on page 19 says people always forget, and forgetting how the monsters come back. Also, when I read one scene when Jam asked her mom what does a monster look like, her mom told her that "Monster don't look like anything, doux-doux." (p.12). and also angels aren't pretty pictures in old holy books, just like monsters aren't ugly pictures. (p14). After reading those lines, I think of some of the police violence happened in the US. In those cases, the police has been constantly reported to shot or treat black people violently simply because they think black people look scary. The book keeps using some characters' family background, sexual orientation, appearance, how they behave to "challenge" or overthrow my stereotypes and what I think of as a "normal" society. For instance, Redemption has three parents and Hibiscus is depicted as an image of a soldier but turns out to be the family monster.

Later in this book, Pet keeps reminding Jam to see the unseen and to look harder for things she maybe wouldn't have thought existed. (p.80). This line has been repeating for many times in the book, and I think the author tries to tells us not everything we take for granted and see as normal is something right to do. In every kind of social context, we must remain our own set of judgment (on page 182 when Jam didn't want to kill Hibiscus) and not let people sway us easily when it comes to doing the right things. In the process, I can see Jam and Redemption trying so hard to not let their families to stop them from saving Moss, even though it is so hard to point out someone's fault when he or she is our family or close friends. It teaches us in every situation we should still take things fairly despite the fact that we might be ignored by people or our voices might be erased and disrespected if they are not accorded with the mainstream.

Last, I would say I really like the way how the author gives to every character. Although I can't understand all the meanings of the names, I think there are metaphor, undertone, and special meanings for characters' names like Bitter, Redemption.