Jane+Elliot

Intro to Presentation: Hello! I’m Kendra Kaufman, Amanda Cooksey, Erin Alton, Giovanni Machado, Kelley Garrod, Theresa Romig. Our presentation will be about Jane Elliott a teacher who experimented the idea of racism with her elementary students and is a firm believer in accepting differences. Jean Paiget who is well known for his study of the stages in the development of children’s thought processes and that every child is different in the time they go through these stages. Linda Darling-Hammond is an advocate for highly trained teachers in classrooms across America and that even the poorest children deserve highly qualified teachers. These three innovative people have helped to better education, as we know it. We hope you learn more about the world of education through our presentation about these three people. I've only been able to get 1 minute for the intro, but I will try to work it a little more to add another minute.

Jane Elliott was originally a 3rd grader teacher. She was the recipient of the National Mental Health Association Award for Excellence in Education.

After her retirement she has been traveling throughout the United States giving lectures about discrimination.

She was the fourth child out of 5, and was born on her family's farm in Riceville, Iowa in 1933. Her family didn't have running water or electricity unitl she wsa 10 years old. She went to a one room schoolhouse.

She is married to Darald Elliott

In 1969 she started her brown/blue eyed experiment in response to Martin Luthern King. Jr.'s death to allow her students to experience discrimination.

"We don't need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables - the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers - to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences. "-Jane Elliott

Major Contributions: “Blues Eyes/Brown Eyes” After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, Elliott’s 3rd grade students wondered, “why’d they shoot the King?”. She decided to teach her students about what discrimination feels like and separated her students between brown and blue-eyed students. She then told her students that the brown-eyed students in the room are better people and that theses students are cleaner and smarter. Her students began to separate themselves from each other. The brown-eyed children would make mean comments about the lack of intelligence at the blue-eyed students. Later she switched the power to the blue-eyed students. She noticed that the blue-eyed students were much nicer to the other students. After this exercise her students wrote down how much they learned about discrimination and Elliott became well known for this experiment. Jane Elliott wanted to not only discuss racism, but to show her students the effects that it has on people. She received a lot of positive and negative feedback from parents, students, and peers. Sone of her grown-up, old students have come up to her and thanked her for doing this experiment because it changed their lives. Parents were outraged at the fact that she did this exericise to white children who were not used to be discrimminated against as opposed to blacks who were supposedly used to it all their life. Her ideals were put into a Peabody Award-Winning film, "The Eye of the Storm" where it explores problems of racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, and enthnocentrism.

She uses volunteers and visual aides to help people recognize, identify, and appreciate differences. Videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8gCJ4K4tnE 6:34 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWbxv4vlHe0 2:44

Pictures:

Works-Cited

"Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise" 2003-2006. .

Bloom, Stephen G. Smithsonian;”Lesson of a Lifetime”. Sep2005, Vol. 36 Issue 6, p82-92, 7p, 4 color, 3 bw http://0-search.ebscohost.com.source.unco.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=18018976&site=ehost-live. Academic Search Premier.