January Blog Post #1

Carly Whittaker

30 January 2017

Blog Post #1

                        After reading chapter three, Public Advocacy: Commitments and Responsibilities, a few different ideas about advocacy came rushing into my mind. “But even though we tend to think of advocacy as one person’s responsibility, one person’s actions for or on behalf of another, making a difference is collaboration” (Warren & Fassett, p.40).  After reading this part of the text I really thought to myself what does it truly mean to an advocacy? It turns out it’s more than a one-man job. There needs to be a lot of people who are willing to help solve the dilemma in order to create change. As humans we are constantly communicating with others to create meaning and these all have different type of effects. I liked the teacher example that was given in the book on page 42. They talked about how a teacher should be a role model and advocate for kids to do better. It got me thinking about my third grade teacher and how she was so passionate about teaching. She was the kind of teacher who was able to explain things over and over again one hundred different ways if you didn’t understand it the first time. It was amazing and she was such an inspiration to me. Each time students had a problem she would give insight and have use reflect on the part we missed in order for us to understand. With this idea in mind my teacher was helping us students problem pose, be reflexive, and come up with praxis (p. 44). My teacher really helped me to use my dialogic communication skills, critical thinking skills, and reasoning in order to help me find my voice to one-day advocate and collaborate with others for a common cause.