Immigration issues are not isolated to Latino families. Any family that moves to America from another country is subject to the Americanization that can occur when for example, literacy policies both federal and state are designed to suggest that conformity is the best way to integrate and assimilate to a new culture. This seems to not only minimize and devalue cultural diversity but is also exclusionary. When children from another country enter school they are expected to learn English. Some families do not embark on the literary educational journey with their children, and as a result, communication breaks down, home language loses meaning and a chance to promote diversity gets lost. Those families who do partake in family literacy interventions also risk devaluing their own language and culture my assuming that learning English and speaking in English will help their children gain better access to better educational opportunities.<br> On a side note, the family I interviewed for the next assignment shared with me their expectations of the public American school system. The mother, who is from the Netherlands said that being an immigrant and having her children learn English as a second language has been a big challenge for her since they moved here to Colorado a few years ago. She feels that in public school her son was taken out of the classroom 3-4 a week to learn English, only to miss opportunities to socially engage with peers. I will not go into more detail but it had a snowball effect and the family felt helpless because that was "the way they taught him English" she said. Her desire to engage with the school on a social level of idea sharing and genuine connections was never even a consideration. She figured that language polices were as such and she would not do anything about it for fear of losing her green card!

The excerpt took me quite some time to process and try to understand. As I read it and re-read it I struggled with the idea of a leadership conversation using "dialogue as a dialectic relationship between the oppressed and the oppressors." I understood it to mean that the leadership role is to become one with "the other" at some point in time, and that because one group's humanization is more complete, they are to lead the other to their level of humanization. If this meaning is even close to applicable then it also reminds me of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in so far as one group's humanization is needed for the other group to reach self actualization. The other part of this except that resonated with me was the notion that people in leadership roles assume the goal of empowering others. I never really thought about it this way and if I am trying to think in Freirean terms, embracing that leadership is a necessary power, but it also hinders or possibly negates the goal of shared dialogue and ultimately a shared fate. I also acknowledge that this understanding could be way off and am willing to unpack it with anyone who is willing to do so before Tuesday!.

This particular quote stood out to me as I have just returned back to work mid morning after being with family to attend the funeral of my Uncle. My intention is not to write about mortality or my situation in particular but to highlight the significance of the ebb and flow of the microsystem and how it inevitable has a ripple effect, not necessarily bad or good, on the people and the interactions that occur between those people and the people who are inevitably part another social context by way of a life changing situation. In response to the quotation after the one I highlighted I'd like to point out that the "reciprocal processes" is the altering of the relationship between the others because a single person's state of mind or other state of being has changed. An example of this happened just this morning with the children in one of the classrooms, as well as with my own child who also goes to the school where I work. For the group of children their experience with me was altered based on the way I set up the environment and how I responded to their inquiries. What interested me most, was seeing the children's curiosity peak because there was a suitcase among the materials out for manipulating. This was unintentional. The suitcase was there because I had just arrived to work directly from the airport. This led the class to explore why people go places. There happened to have been a map on the floor as well, which helped add context to the idea of traveling from one place to another to observe and be part of another place, another culture, another way of life. Those experiences whether shared by a child or heard by another child changed their thinking. We also began to talk about other reasons people go from one place to another and how sometimes people stay in those other places and sometimes they come back from whence they came. Most of these children have recently turned 3 years old and some turned three between December and January. Even at young ages children become part of other people's "ecological transitions" which are as Bronfenbrenner states are a "ready-made experiment of nature" (p. 524). On its own, the life changes or "transitions" as the author calls them, are inevitable and have scientific measure. But I am curious to know how those inevitable occurrences can be influenced during the developmental changes in childhood and throughout life.

Hi this reply is for Sam F I can’t get out of this section from my phone sorry if it confuses anyone. Perhaps that is why Bronfenbrenner defines human development in such a specific way, a scientific way so as to encompass the vastness of possible influences that affect ones life. It is interesting to note that his first definition suggests that a child’s growth is affected by their relationships in a given setting. We have been offered a variety of readings and engaged in formal and informal learning experiences from the various courses and on our trip to Reggio on the concept of relationships and their importance in the educative practice. I appreciate you noting that children are “social being[s] in all the richness and variety of its forms.” I also agree that we are all connected in our humanness, in our innate sense of ethical endeavors, in our connection to the environments we create in the classroom and ones that are are created within our communities. When we help guide and scaffold experiences within our schools, with our families and with the world beyond those walls, we are not only preparing children for a future of service but are showing them that they are already part of the greater good. If we honor their contributions, thoughts and actions as young citizens as meaningful now, they will perhaps carry with them a greater understanding and respect for the many systems of which they are an important part.

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On May 8, 2018, at 12:00 AM, Stephanie Leen stephslo17@aol.com wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: Hypothesis no-reply@hypothes.is To: stephslo17 stephslo17@aol.com Sent: Mon, May 7, 2018 07:29 PM Subject: samforeman has replied to your annotation

samforeman has replied to your annotation on “Bronfenbrenner_1977_Toward an Experimental Ecology of Human Development.pdf”:

On 07 May at 00:51 Stephslo17 commented:

Bronfenbrenner was influenced by theorists like Leontiev, who favored the idea of trying to understand ways children can learn, transform and develop - broadening their potential for higher learning. By using Leontiev's idea as a springboard which suggests that children are capable of becoming more complex as their base of knowledge expands one can perhaps better understand why. Bronfenbrenner further suggested that the biological, psychological and environmental factors affect how the child can become not only "what he not yet is" but what he already is in conjunction with what he can become. It reminds me of Freire's notion unfinishedness. We are programmed to be learners and continually become what we not yet are. On 07 May at 23:29 samforeman replied:

This reminds me of a quote I found a little while ago. "that realise a person’s actual life in the objective world by which he is surrounded, his social being in all the richness and variety of its forms" (Leont’ev 1977). I feel that there is so much "space" that relate to a childs devlopment that are not engaged with. This concept makes me feel more imporant in life because wheather we believe it or not everything is connected to one another and those conenctions make us who we are. View the thread and respond.

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Bronfenbrenner was influenced by theorists like Leontiev, who favored the idea of trying to understand ways children can learn, transform and develop - broadening their potential for higher learning.<br> By using Leontiev's idea as a springboard which suggests that children are capable of becoming more complex as their base of knowledge expands one can perhaps better understand why. Bronfenbrenner further suggested that the biological, psychological and environmental factors affect how the child can become not only "what he not yet is" but what he already is in conjunction with what he can become. It reminds me of Freire's notion unfinishedness. We are programmed to be learners and continually become what we not yet are.