Action Items (homework due by Monday's class)

This post is the homework due before Monday 2/24/25. For today's lesson see the next post below this one.

Action Item 1:  Kohl's Values Americans Live By

First, the Kohl reading is about American culture.  It was written to help emigrants arriving in America adjust to cultural values that they may not be familiar with.  For Americans, the reading provides interesting insight into the culture that surrounds us.  Like fish who have never questioned water, we are engrossed in our cultural values so ubiquitously that we don't realize it.  This reading will help us take a step back and view the ways that American culture shapes those within it.  As you read, think about examples from your own life that illustrate the values Kohl highlights. 

Action Item 2:  Buettner's Thrive

Second, the Thrive reading is from a book by Dan Buettner.  Buettner travelled the world as sort of an ethnographer writing about people all over the globe.  In Thrive, Buettner focuses on the places in the world that report the highest levels of happiness.  The book focuses on a few happiness anomalies (Blue Zones) around the world: Denmark, Singapore, Mexico and San Luis Obispo (USA). This excerpt is Buettner's concluding chapter in which he tries to make sense of what the places all have in common and what we can learn from them to make our lives happier. As you read, look for areas of happiness that you had not thought about.  Make a note of things that Buettner suggests that you can do right now in your own life as well as things you want to do as you get older.

Action Item 3: Analyze and contrast the two readings using this Google Form. 

Monica Edwards' Pedagogies of Silence at CAST 2025

I was proud and humbled to be a facilitator for the 18th year of the Chicago Area Sociology Teachers (CAST) conference. I am humbled to be around such thoughtful and dedicated teachers teachers - none more-so than my co-facilitator Hayley Lotspeich.  

Our keynote speaker was Monica Edwards who presented on her research and pedagogy published in her book, Pedagogies of Silence. Teachers and professors - I can't recommend this book enough! Her book is both a sociological study and a book about pedagogy. 

With an extensive review of literature interwoven with Edwards' own research and experiences in the class, she interrogates the insatiable need to create class discussion in an era where students are increasingly quiet and teachers are increasingly frustrated. Her book is a call to step back and rethink what our goal is in the classroom and how this goal has often been misled by our own socialization. Often, that socialization leads teachers to silence students, especially those from marginalized identities, but Edwards helps teachers think strategically about their practices so that they limit these implicit slights.

I highly recommend her book for all teachers and administrators but it is especially relevant for anyone teaching:
a required class
a class that includes students with marginalized identities
sociology classes
introductory classes