Christensen Chapter 2

I think that Chapter 2's social commentary and exercises are very sophisticated for high schoolers. There is nothing wrong with that, however I did not learn to blast apart negative stereo types until I was in college. And it is heart breaking, isn't it? Having to break apart your comfort shows, books, cartoons, and expose them for the negative messages that they implicitly portray. I myself was raised off of fairy tales. My favorite story growing up was Princess Fur ball, a tale about a Queen in waiting who runs off from her arranged marriage to an ogre, and captures the heart of a prince in a far away land with her carefully planned outfits. Siiiigh, who knows what weird correlation that may have havocked into my subconscious? I do own over twenty dresses....
I like the idea of the praise poem as a follow-up exercise to the cultural expose'. I coached little girls for an after-school program (called Girls on the Run) that infused messages of positive self-image with physical activity. We made something called a "monster box" where the girls would trash all the negative things other people had said about them by putting them into the "monster's mouth"after every lap. The idea was that once those bad things were eaten, then they could focus on what was good. I don't remember why, but this exercise did not work. I don't think the little girls believed in the monster box, they mostly just wanted the Popsicles at the end of the day. Anyway, sometimes I think people are afraid to break apart stereo-types because they can't see the good that comes after the demolition. In chapter 3 Christensen mentions that while it was very beneficial to help students de-bunk stereo types, she realized in retrospect that she should have provided some examples "of people who haven't lost hope, who fight the brawl, and who plan to win," to help ease her students into their now altered worlds.