Blogging- What would be better...

I think it would almost be better if we all could blog on the same page... It might be better because than everyone can see everyone's comment instead of going to each individual blog. I still like the idea of having your own blog to get out ideas that might not go on a certain thread of the blog.

I think an interesting thing we could do in class would be a poetry slam, or have someone come in who knows how to actually read poetry in that way. It might be fun to get more creative in class with poetry, because like we learned in TE 348, a lot of classes don't learn poetry just because the teacher doesn't like poetry.

On a side note, I looked up Nikki Grimes' website, and I have to say it was very informative and it was very interesting to look at too!
I thought these things were interesting:

I order and review the creation of teaching guides for my books. I ship galleys of each new book to key librarians around the country to help promote my books. I design, print, and ship postcards to promote my books.

This was all found at nikkigrimes.com

Insider/Outsider Debate

I think there is a clear difference between who is an insider and who is an outsider. Someone is an insider to a particular group when they have the same characteristics- Whether it be a race or a culture... That someone is the same race or is apart of the culture. Someone is an outsider to that group when they are not the same. They don't have the same characteristics or the same everything.

Now whether someone should be able to write about a group, in my opinion, does not depend on whether they are an insider or an outsider. If you are educated in something, you study it, you should be allowed to write about whatever you want to write about.

In class, we read a book called Encounter by Jane Yolen. She is European American but the story was about Native Americans. The thing about this story is that it was about a Native American group that was not around anymore; she did study them and was educated, but as educated as anyone could be about something not a lot of people knew about. If it was about a culture that was around now, it would have been totally fine for her to write about it, if she researched and talked to people who are in the group.

To wrap up, I basically think there is a definition on who is an outsider and who is an insider to a group, but that doesn't make it wrong for an outsider to write about an insider! :-)