https://www.usip.org/public-education/educators/view-window
Firstly all activities are wonderful but I have thought that I should use “view from the window” since the activity is a good way to learn about students’ perspective about something. All students observe the same point and they are constructing sentences but the sentences will be different from each other because the students have individual differences. In this way, students can understand that we are all different and we should respect each other. And this is a good way to teach that sometimes there are many things and we should accept these things. There is another thing is that a window can be a symbol world and teacher may be use it as a symbol of the world, in this way he/she can make a speech about the different perspectives. Finally this is a good activity to teach that others can see what we can't see.
We should know that empathy is a requirement to understand different thoughts, different people and to provide peaceful relationships and this is a pretty nice activity to improve our students’ empathy skills. When we teach our students to interpret events from different perspectives, I hope that the world may be a better place.
" This interview has been held with an Lgbt ally who studied at Atatürk University."
- How is this different in another country? How is it similar?
When we look up the modern and the developed countries, they are respectful LGBTQ communities while our country, there is an excessive disgust, condemnation or prohibition because they deal with every issue on religion. When it comes to similarities, I think there are no similarities. There are very few similarities, if any, but they are never enough for people’s hopes.
- Is it easy to identify someone as gay, straight or lesbian? Why or why not?
In fact this is a stereotyped pattern in people’s eyes. In other words, they are stigmatized into the mold without asking anything because of the speech, movement, clothing, environment, etc. of the other person. We cannot distinguish it. Since a woman’s hair is short or her dress is short or her dress is more masculine she cannot become a lesbian, and you cannot/shouldn’t create such a judgement anyway.
- How safe do you think your university is for LGBT students? How do you know?
Of course, the university I am studying is not a place who cannot lean towards such situations because of the geographical conditions and education level. Yes, if asked if there are people lean towards LGBT members, but of course this means very few compared to the general. Although the university is a place where you can come with certain trainings, people come here with some stereotyped ideas, and no matter how they do not change, they do not want to change them.
- Do you think it is important to be an ally to LGBT students?
Of course we are not different from you, straight people. We are human beings, you should notice this. You should not approach any person with prejudice, nobody should approach. If you approach people with love, they will approach you in the same way. People always think that if I treat LGBT students that people think that they will have different goals but there is nothing like that. Do not approach us with prejudice because this is not a true attitude.
- In Turkey/your university, which gender identities seem natural or acceptable? Which do not? How can you tell?
Muslims make up the majority of people in Turkey. That’s why people only accept heterosexual people. Bisexual people are already able to camouflage themselves easily. There is no problem for them. Guys and transgender people have been excluded from the society for years, battered and never accepted. When you look at it, people will not accept it unless they change their mindset. If we come to lesbian people, they are accepted in a certain part of our society while a certain part hates them, such as gays and transsexuals.
- As we see from this answers, I can say that we do not respect LGBTQ issues because of different stereotypes. In our country, generally almost all people have bias about such issues. Another factor is that religion, our people are generally Muslims; therefore, they do not respect LGBTQ members, these factors block understanding this matter.
If we are talking about gender equality, we should know that gender and sex are different terms. Sex is defined as the state of being a male or female while the gender is defined as the characteristics of male and female persons so, this term is constructed by the society. The society have some expectations from different genders, this term is called as gender roles and gender identity. As we understand from definitions these terms are really different each other. There is an important matter; you cannot choose your sex, but you should learn that being a man or being a woman since it is a cultural expectation. Today, we have a few problematics about the gender issues like that women are weak sex, actually these belief comes from term of Ancient Greek. The society of Ancient Greek has defined the women as “fragilitas sexus”, this belief has been reflected in Ancient Greek Tragedy works such as Antigone. I can say that we have constructed a few gender roles to define the roles of men and women according to social expectations and this belief comes from Ancient Greek times and today, we can see the effects of this belief. For example, we have some gender bias such as women cannot do it, women are weak for this work, women should get nose out of men’s business, etc. These gender bias cause that gender socialization, which means that it is the learning process of cultural gender-related rules, norms and expectations. As a result of the process, we construct a thought about gender roles, this terms starts in early childhood and according to their inferences, children construct a gender identity(according to research studies , by age three children have raised their own gender identity.) Generally, there are important agents in the process of acquiring a gender identity, these might be family, media, etc.
In Turkish society, we can see many examples of gender bias and gender stereotypes like you know that we have a few common gender bias such as woman should do domestic works, woman should babysit or we cannot buy a bus-ticket if a woman has booked the side seat since our society will not be seen dead the situation. Another matter is that women are generally commercial tools for ad agency, companies etc. all over the world but we should remember that women are not tool, they are human being.
When it comes to gender equality in education, there are a few drawbacks like the teaching materials, cultural gender bias, non-educated families, cultural and social expectations from genders, child marriage, low value placed on girl’s education. Today, we can see the problems in Turkey but taking education is a social right for everyone, isn’t? We should make provision against gender inequality in education process. There are a few ways to prevent gender inequality in education, which are selection of textbooks, providing more interactive classroom exercises, giving equal chances to students, showing different examples in contrast to gender bias. In this sense, a teacher should provide positive images for both girls and boys, revision of curricula, improve the educational aims; by the way, the teacher can create a democratic and equal future for both genders. At the same time, Ministry of National Education(MoNE) should inform both families and society about the gender inequality. We should remember that we are human being, We must go beyond gender bias, social norms, gender stereotypes and gender socialization and we should prepare a equal future for everyone, regardless of gender.
Generally, the selection of coursebooks is a demanding issue for teachers because of the responsibility they should take in identifying the authenticity and appropriateness of the material regarding multidimenaional side of language education; therefore, many of the public schools prefer to use the ones published or suggested by Ministry of National Education(MoNE). Because of this tendency in the selection of books published or suggested by MoNE , I would like to analyze English Language Book for 5th graders by MoNE to look for how social justice issues are dealt in this book. In the contents, there are some units that seemingly embody relevant points regarding the social justice phenomenon.
The first unit, “Hello”, is one of parts in which, through the listening activities about countries and nationalities, teacher can give some messages about "respect and equality" like that "we should respect every culture and every nation because we are different but equal. "
Another unit of the book is "Movies". In this unit teacher can prepare short movies which are related to gender, poverty, access to education, etc. Then teacher can ask questions like "What is the topic of the movie?", "Which one is the favourite for you?", "Can you summarize the movie?" etc. So, students should have got ideas about social justice issues in implicit way, and also teacher can acquire information from students' answers about what they know or not about these issues. In this way, students will be able to both linguistic items and a few new ideas about social justice.
The ninth unit of the book is "Animal Shelter". In this part, we can argue with students about animal rights, we can talk about the natural environment of the animals, and also we can prepare shelters for street animals, which travel around the school. In this unit, students will be able to learn animals' names, their natural habitats, their rights; therefore, this topic can be useful to teach that social justice is for every animate creatures.
The last unit of the book is "Festivals". In this unit, we can teach students different religions, different beliefs, different customs and traditions, important days like "Earth Day" all over the world as well as with linguistics items they need to learn. So, they can learn that they should be respectful to different societies and their beliefs.
When we look at the specific details in the book, we can change and vary a few examples like that "Sally is cook." but we must show that "Mike can be a cook." When the teacher provide a few messages about such and such like messages, students can develop their perception on the issues.
In this teaching process, we should use real life objects and authentic materials to teach both linguistics items and current social justice issues. Since the 5th grade students have got concrete thinking system; therefore, we must provide them a meaningful learning environment in both senses, during this process, both teach them foreign language and make them truly beneficial to society and nature by transforming abstract things into concrete. Apart from the fact that students are not accustomed to abstract thinking, these topics of the book are quite suitable to integrate social justice issues into language education, but first of all we should be a role model for our students.
 My name is Selçuk Özçelik. I was born on January 1, in Samsun. I was graduated from Akpınar Anatolian High School . During my high school years, I tried to understand world by reading different works and I have adopted principle of being beneficial to society and I have education in ELT Department of Atatürk University as a senior.
When I started university I have believed that I should leave a mark to be useful for society and I tried many things to understand people and society’s problem, I wrote many stories about them and I am still writing a novel about the common problems of the world. When I had understood that language is the most effective thing to express ourselves in our life, I started working on sign language since I am interested in Linguistics. And I decided to participate this project to show that we can educate English teachers who use sign language.
Actually, I love dealing with social problems, because these are our problems as an individual. I believe that we will live in an equal world if we overcome the social problems; therefore, I am in this project. Additionally, I am a cheerful person who likes research and enjoys learning/acquiring thing, and I believe that such and such things that will be useful to create equal world for every person and nature.
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