Well its been a while since i wrote here and i apologize i need to work on that i know. Lots of different things have been going since i started this blog and i haven't really wanted to write until tonight, i just had a conversation with my daughter; (yes the same one that is wearing a uniform to school) in reference to her grades. she is doing horrible in all the majority of her classes and its obvious that its not any ones fault but her own. I want to make her understand that school right now for her is just more then basic skills but more importantly its about life skills. that the work she is doing right now is intended to be the foundation for her as a young women. one of her assignments English i believe was to look up some words, well some of the words were not in her text book and i asked why she hadn't used the dictionary. well ummmm well is the response. one of the words not in the book was cliche and as i was talking to her and telling her to look the words up in the dictionary i told her that she might be a cliche.
Well after some fighting with her younger brother over the dictionary she finally brings me back the work and i ask her what the meanings of some of them were. she is pretty good with memorization so thats good but her comprehension is not on par so the connections are not always there. i threw her for a loop and instead of asking about all the English words i asked her about her other assignment in social studies. she admittedly has not been reading the chapters instead she just looks for the words and fills in the work sheets. well she has an F in SS and i told her to read the chapter tonight. she did and after some talking she was able to tell me a few facts about ISLAM but she couldn't make the connection between the relevance of Muhammad and ISLAM it was pretty sad. i then jump back to the cliche comment and asked her if she knew what i meant? she didnt. i told her she might be considered a cliche. her best guess at the definition was a stereotype but then she couldn't explain what that was either. finally we get to the point where she saids " is it judging a book by its cover? That was enough for me to work with and i started in with my daddy tangent. i told her as a teacher or unsuspecting adult i might judge her based on her clothes, ethnic heritage and casual attitude toward learning. "she still had a look on her face like i dont understand" I told her that there was a reason i dont let them sit around watching BET or MTV and the like because the majority of the videos dont depict ethnic women like herself in a respectful light in my opinion. She saids "you mean like whoreish" i told her that's not what i meant but it will suffice since you seem to make the connection. i then went on to explain that her cliche is like that of so many kids with her ethnic background that they come from broken homes, and have parents that dont care or cant afford to invest the time in their children and that the kids are more concerned with singing and dancing and wearing the in clothes more then anything else. I told her it was a shame and asked her to leave. as she was walking away i told her her family loves her and will continue to support her and will strive to make her realize her potential as a young beautiful ethnic women.
