There are a lot of angles to take on how to be a parent. Some read the book and try to go by that, and some try and "go with the gut", and do it how they think that they should. Each parent may try a different way, and there isn't one ultimate way that is right. There are parents that treat their kids badly, and the kids may be some of the best people you could ever imagine. The parent may think that the kid is doing something wrong, when in reality, they are the ones too stubborn to think of anyone other than themselves.
For the seniors, college is coming up, which signifies their independence. There may be some of us who have already left the nest, and are living on their own, yet for most this is the first step outside of what we have always known. There are kids that are counting down the days to go until college, excited to be leaving. And there are also the kids who are scared to leave their parents, go to college, and then into the real world. Some parents are doing everything they can to stay in control of their kids until they go to college, where they can do whatever they want.
I feel like I have several different parents. A lot of my mom's friends act like moms to me, and I even have one that I call my "other mother". When my mom isn't there, her friend checks in on me sometimes to make sure that I'm okay. I don't have the movie family of my parents being together forever, since they're divorced. Yet when they got divorced they promised that they'd still be friends for the kids. They also decided to live within a walkable distance from each other to make it easier for my brother and I. The relationship my mom and dad have now is really different from a lot of people whose parents are divorced. There are kids who have to play messenger for their parents, where the mom calls the kid, then the kid has to call the dad.. etc.
The two people that came in for our interviews told us very different stories on how they are parenting, and how they came to be parents. The security guard was telling us how she has her mom and her grandma watching her kid when she's at work, or away. She said how it's helpful that she is able to call them any time she doesn't know what is happening to her kid, no matter what time, since they have kids and experiences of their own. Yet in the end, she doesn't go by the book (which she said sucks) or her family, she goes by what she thinks is best.
Rob told us how it was for him and his lover going about adopting a baby girl. The mother chose him and his guy out of all the people that wanted to adopt the girl, which was very special to him. His daughter is going to grow up with two guys as parents, which doesn't happen for most of us. He was telling us how his family is really strict and traditional, and that they weren't talking to him for a while after he told them he was adopting a kid. His boyfriend's parents are very liberal, and support them. This often happens, one set of parents being happy and supportive of the couple, and one family that isn't. Like in Rent the musical, the white family was snotty and didn't understand their daughter, while the other family was really sweet and welcomed their daughter's partner into their family.
Parenting, as a topic, doesn't really require many insights. We all have parents, if they act like them or not. For me, I got to appreciate how my mom is, and how she is there for me at all times. I got to think about the kids who don't have as strong of a relationship with their parents as I do, and I got to think about my brother and I. But as a mini-unit, it wasn't that interesting. Yes, there are many kinds of parents, and we all have parents. Some wish that their parents acted one way, or another way. And the really scary thought is that some of us are going to go on to be parents of their own.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Homework #57, Parenting, Is There A "Right" Way?
My first thought is that I'm eighteen, and obviously not a parent so I can't speak as one to say the right way to do it. There are also many, many different kinds of of parenting, and ways to be parental. I don't really believe that we will all turn into our parents and parent the way they do when we're older. There are many, many exceptions to the rule.
There are times where parents believe that violence is the way to treat a kid, and that in order to make the kid behave, they really do have to make them behave. My mom's mom treated my mom really badly, both verbally and physically. She believed that when my mom was "bad" that she could take it out on her. She also believed in the 'if you don't eat everything on your plate you have to stay there until you do' method.
Having a mom like that, my mom promised that she'd never treat her kids like her mom had treated her. I know that not all parents are exactly the same, and that how my parents are shifts how I understand or don't understand other parents. My mom is the very nurturing, caring, understanding kind of mom, so I don't understand the parents who treat their kids terribly. I consider her one of my closet best friends, and can talk to her about anything. She gets up in the morning to make sure my brother and I eat, and that we go to school. My brother and I can be who we are, and accepted and loved for that.
Of course, kids think that their parents are embarrassing, and that they're supposed to be embarrassed by them. This happens from a young age, until they are much older. Yet I'm not embarrassed by my mom. So many kids call her mom, and she acts as the mom to all of the kids. If one of Kyle's or my friends are sick, or hurt, my mom will be a mom to them as well. She works with children all the time with her Non-Profit organization, as well as being the mom of two teenagers.
There are definitely kids that rebel against their parents just for the hell of it. If they are told one thing, they may purposely do the other. I don't think using violence as a parent is the way to go. Either the kid goes on to be an abusive parent, they rebel, they're messed up from it, or, like my mom, they promise not to be like their parents were. In Five People You Meet In Heaven, there is a part that says how parents harm their children and affect them negatively: "all parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair" (page 104). I do think that parents affect their kids, either negatively or positively, but I don't think that every parent damages their children. I'm unable to say how a parent should be, but I know that for me, my relationship with my mom has helped me to be who I am today.
There are times where parents believe that violence is the way to treat a kid, and that in order to make the kid behave, they really do have to make them behave. My mom's mom treated my mom really badly, both verbally and physically. She believed that when my mom was "bad" that she could take it out on her. She also believed in the 'if you don't eat everything on your plate you have to stay there until you do' method.
Having a mom like that, my mom promised that she'd never treat her kids like her mom had treated her. I know that not all parents are exactly the same, and that how my parents are shifts how I understand or don't understand other parents. My mom is the very nurturing, caring, understanding kind of mom, so I don't understand the parents who treat their kids terribly. I consider her one of my closet best friends, and can talk to her about anything. She gets up in the morning to make sure my brother and I eat, and that we go to school. My brother and I can be who we are, and accepted and loved for that.
Of course, kids think that their parents are embarrassing, and that they're supposed to be embarrassed by them. This happens from a young age, until they are much older. Yet I'm not embarrassed by my mom. So many kids call her mom, and she acts as the mom to all of the kids. If one of Kyle's or my friends are sick, or hurt, my mom will be a mom to them as well. She works with children all the time with her Non-Profit organization, as well as being the mom of two teenagers.
There are definitely kids that rebel against their parents just for the hell of it. If they are told one thing, they may purposely do the other. I don't think using violence as a parent is the way to go. Either the kid goes on to be an abusive parent, they rebel, they're messed up from it, or, like my mom, they promise not to be like their parents were. In Five People You Meet In Heaven, there is a part that says how parents harm their children and affect them negatively: "all parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair" (page 104). I do think that parents affect their kids, either negatively or positively, but I don't think that every parent damages their children. I'm unable to say how a parent should be, but I know that for me, my relationship with my mom has helped me to be who I am today.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Homework #56, Interviewing People
I decided to make my survey anonymous but to say which gender since that's what I'm researching.
Questions:
-Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
- Have you been in both types of relationships?
- If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
-Which type of relationship was more comfortable for you?
-In which relationship did you feel that you related to the person more?
Female #1:
Q:Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Bi. I bet you didn't think I'd say that did you? I think everybody's bi, which is what Freud's theory..
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: I actually found women much more difficult to be in a relationship with than men. They were more possessive and demanding.
Male #1.
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Gay.
Q: Have you been in both types of relationships?
A: No, I've only been with guys. Because I know men more than I know women. I know how they work better.
Female #2:
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: I'm not sure lol
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: I feel like girls are more understanding of your feelings but they can be just as sneaky as guys. Guys don't try and relate to you as much.
Q: Which were you more comfortable in?
A: Not sure
Male #2:
Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Bi
Q: Have you been in both types of relationships?
A: Yes
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: I'm more sweet with girls
Q: Which relationship were you more comfortable in?
A: Girls
Q: Why?
A: Cuz with girls I'm more lovey and with guys I'm more about the sex
Q: Which did you feel more yourself in?
A: In both
Q: Which did you relate to more?
A: Girls
Female #3.
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: I would consider myself straight, although I have had many encounters with the same sex.
Q: I was about to ask if you've been in both relationships
A: Yes I have. But not neccesarily committed.
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: Emotionally I feel that with a guy I become more attached because of the simple fact that I will never fully relate to or understand men whereas with woman I was never running after them and looking for answers considering I knew most of them being a woman.
Q: Which relationship did you feel more comfortable in?
A: Probably the one with the girl because I was revealing something that was the same to her.
Q: Which did you feel more yourself in? or is that the same thing?
A: Kind of similar but I was never really in a serious relationship with a girl compared to a boy but if I were going to make what I had with this one girl a relationship i am sure I would have been more of myself than with a boy only because I get so shy with boys.
Just to be different..
Male #3.
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Straight
Q: Have you ever had experimented with the same sex?
A: No
Questions:
-Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
- Have you been in both types of relationships?
- If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
-Which type of relationship was more comfortable for you?
-In which relationship did you feel that you related to the person more?
Female #1:
Q:Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Bi. I bet you didn't think I'd say that did you? I think everybody's bi, which is what Freud's theory..
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: I actually found women much more difficult to be in a relationship with than men. They were more possessive and demanding.
Male #1.
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Gay.
Q: Have you been in both types of relationships?
A: No, I've only been with guys. Because I know men more than I know women. I know how they work better.
Female #2:
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: I'm not sure lol
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: I feel like girls are more understanding of your feelings but they can be just as sneaky as guys. Guys don't try and relate to you as much.
Q: Which were you more comfortable in?
A: Not sure
Male #2:
Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Bi
Q: Have you been in both types of relationships?
A: Yes
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: I'm more sweet with girls
Q: Which relationship were you more comfortable in?
A: Girls
Q: Why?
A: Cuz with girls I'm more lovey and with guys I'm more about the sex
Q: Which did you feel more yourself in?
A: In both
Q: Which did you relate to more?
A: Girls
Female #3.
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: I would consider myself straight, although I have had many encounters with the same sex.
Q: I was about to ask if you've been in both relationships
A: Yes I have. But not neccesarily committed.
Q: If you've been in a both kinds of relationships, how are different emotionally?
A: Emotionally I feel that with a guy I become more attached because of the simple fact that I will never fully relate to or understand men whereas with woman I was never running after them and looking for answers considering I knew most of them being a woman.
Q: Which relationship did you feel more comfortable in?
A: Probably the one with the girl because I was revealing something that was the same to her.
Q: Which did you feel more yourself in? or is that the same thing?
A: Kind of similar but I was never really in a serious relationship with a girl compared to a boy but if I were going to make what I had with this one girl a relationship i am sure I would have been more of myself than with a boy only because I get so shy with boys.
Just to be different..
Male #3.
Q: Would you consider yourself gay, straight, or bi?
A: Straight
Q: Have you ever had experimented with the same sex?
A: No
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Homework #55, Independent Research
How are same-sex relationships different from straight relationships?/ How is the comfort level similar or different between dating someone of the same sex or different sex?
It is the year 2010, and there are couples of the same sex everywhere. In high school so many teenagers are experimenting, and trying to find their identity and comfort levels. " For many, questions of gender and sexuality are among the issues on the table." (Defining Me). This is the age where we are all trying to discover who we are, and what we are. We are all trying to form our own identities instead of what our parents tried to make us into, or how others have shaped us.
Sometimes it's about attraction despite the body, and sometimes it's about who understands who more. I was talking to my mom once and she was saying how one of the reasons so many girls are dating other girls at our age is because they understand each other more, and how they "work". It's the same thing with my brother, he told me how he understands men and knows "how they work" while he doesn't understand women. Another thing is that there are times where the guy is being a piggish man and trying to get the girl to do things she doesn't want to do, while the guy still wants her to do it. This can also happen in reverse, or in other couples as well but I'm specifically talking about when this is the case. Then a girl may find another girl, who loves and understands her and wouldn't do anything to make her feel uncomfortable.
There are cases when someone might get married to a person of the opposite sex, have kids with them, and then get divorced and find a gay lover. One of my mom's friends did exactly that. I know a man who was married for many years, and has a kid in high school who is a little younger than me. The dad used to go to PTA meetings, and seem really straight and boring. (Not saying that gay people can't go to PTA meetings or that straight people are boring). He got divorced from his wife and now has one of the sweetest guy lovers. At first we were really surprised because he didn't seem like that at all, but I think it's about who the person is inside, and not always the body that they're in: "For many people of all ages, love is situational, based on the person rather than gender. " (Defining Me).
Like I had said in my blog before: "A year or so ago, I used to talk with my friends Alice and Cleo about relationships, and how it doesn't always matter what body a person is in. It's just about the spirt, and how the person is. I hadn't experienced it at the time, but we used to talk about when you're in love, it doesn't matter about gender, it just matters that you're happy. And once love grabs you by the throat, it really doesn't matter then. There are same sex couples.. In our school, there are tons of them. Gender roles don't matter so much any more. There are tons of kinds of people. There are girly girls and the tomgirls. There are manly men and the soft, sympathetic boys (they're out there somewhere)."
We also don't have to be pinned down: "In general, I'm not fond of boxes and categories. I like the concept that we as individuals have options and that we could be flexible." In the past it was a lot harder for people to experiment and go outside of the norm, yet now "the Gay-Straight Alliance has grown significantly from 4-5 people two years ago to 35 to 40 now." That shows that since two years ago, the GSA at Ithaca has gown 30-31 people. (Defining Me).
"She recalls hearing a girl talk about how it's always OK for two girls to be together as a couple - which many young men find exciting. "'it's harder to be a guy who's feminine than it is to be a girl who's a tomboy. There's much less stigma to being a lesbian - it still fits into the male idea of what a girl should be.' On the whole, while male attitudes might not influence a young woman's orientation, the acceptance makes it easier for her to be herself." (Defining Me). Thinking about it, there aren't a lot of guy couples at our school, and many female couples. In the city? Not sure. There are also the teenagers that think two good looking girls or guys dating is a waste of "hot bodies", while they may be jealous or can't understand it themselves.
The outside forces shouldn't matter as much as the two people in the relationship. Parents especially shouldn't try to control their kids just because they think the same sex relationship is wrong. It doesn't really matter as much how society sees a couple, it matters if they are happy together. Because really, no one outside of the couple has to understand.
Works Cited:
-Gadiel, Karen. Defining Me. 04/27/2005.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14423310&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=216620&rfi=6 A lot of the quotes I used are from here. It discusses how teens are trying to discover themselves but aren't necessicarially trying to label how they are. It says how there are a lot more people experimenting these days than there were before, and discusses how people can get married to the opposite gender then break up and date a person of the same gender. It also says how it may be easier for girls to be together because it's still acceptable, yet if isn't as acceptable for gay guys. An interesting thing it said "[Women] tend to be more fluid, not exclusively genitally focused. "
-The Nemours Foundation. About Sexual Orientation. 1995-2010
http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/feelings/sexual_orientation.html Has a lot of background information and definitions on sexual orientation, homosexuality, heterosexuality.. If people choose who they are attracted to or not, what it's like being a gay teen, coming out, and "the importance of talking". It also talks about how society sees gay and lesbian couples, and the importance of being able to talk to someone. It says "These medical professionals believe that — in most cases — sexual orientation, whatever its causes, is not simply chosen."
-Friedrichs, Ellen. Who Should Be Paying on a Same Sex Date? 2010.
http://gayteens.about.com/od/datingandmeetingothers/f/paying_on_a_same_sex_date.htm One of the things this site was saying is how the relationship doesn't have to be the old-fashioned guy asks girl out thing, since you're dating someone of the same sex. "When two guys, or two girls go out, they have a lot more freedom than their straight peers. Because same sex relationships are new to a lot of people, there are fewer family and societal expectations to live up to. " And instead of one person paying the bill, it said:
"Take Turns. One person pays one time, the other the next.
Split the Bill. There is no shame in going Dutch. Plus, it's a great way to maintain equality.
The One Who Asks, Treats. Many gay teens use the rule that the person who asks someone out on a date is the one who should be paying. " Which makes sense and sounds fair. It's interesting how this website is saying that gay and lesbian couples have more freedom because they are newer.
-Ritch C. Savin-Williams. 'The New Gay Teenager'. 3 September 2008http://www.narth.com/docs/newgayteenager2.html "Early same-sex attractions for many teenagers are sources of great delight, fond remembrance, and lifetime reverberations; they may even be these individuals' most tender and pleasurable childhood memories." This is a whole book with the chapters as different categories on "The New Gay Teenager". It talks about forming an identity, researchers looking at gay teens, models on gay teens, and a chapter called "Early Same-Sex Attractions: A Great Delight". It also says how today teens are pansexual or bisexual, and that they don't have a specific label for what they are. It also says "teenagers are rejecting gender categories in their pursuit of satisfying sexual relationships."
It is the year 2010, and there are couples of the same sex everywhere. In high school so many teenagers are experimenting, and trying to find their identity and comfort levels. " For many, questions of gender and sexuality are among the issues on the table." (Defining Me). This is the age where we are all trying to discover who we are, and what we are. We are all trying to form our own identities instead of what our parents tried to make us into, or how others have shaped us.
Sometimes it's about attraction despite the body, and sometimes it's about who understands who more. I was talking to my mom once and she was saying how one of the reasons so many girls are dating other girls at our age is because they understand each other more, and how they "work". It's the same thing with my brother, he told me how he understands men and knows "how they work" while he doesn't understand women. Another thing is that there are times where the guy is being a piggish man and trying to get the girl to do things she doesn't want to do, while the guy still wants her to do it. This can also happen in reverse, or in other couples as well but I'm specifically talking about when this is the case. Then a girl may find another girl, who loves and understands her and wouldn't do anything to make her feel uncomfortable.
There are cases when someone might get married to a person of the opposite sex, have kids with them, and then get divorced and find a gay lover. One of my mom's friends did exactly that. I know a man who was married for many years, and has a kid in high school who is a little younger than me. The dad used to go to PTA meetings, and seem really straight and boring. (Not saying that gay people can't go to PTA meetings or that straight people are boring). He got divorced from his wife and now has one of the sweetest guy lovers. At first we were really surprised because he didn't seem like that at all, but I think it's about who the person is inside, and not always the body that they're in: "For many people of all ages, love is situational, based on the person rather than gender. " (Defining Me).
Like I had said in my blog before: "A year or so ago, I used to talk with my friends Alice and Cleo about relationships, and how it doesn't always matter what body a person is in. It's just about the spirt, and how the person is. I hadn't experienced it at the time, but we used to talk about when you're in love, it doesn't matter about gender, it just matters that you're happy. And once love grabs you by the throat, it really doesn't matter then. There are same sex couples.. In our school, there are tons of them. Gender roles don't matter so much any more. There are tons of kinds of people. There are girly girls and the tomgirls. There are manly men and the soft, sympathetic boys (they're out there somewhere)."
We also don't have to be pinned down: "In general, I'm not fond of boxes and categories. I like the concept that we as individuals have options and that we could be flexible." In the past it was a lot harder for people to experiment and go outside of the norm, yet now "the Gay-Straight Alliance has grown significantly from 4-5 people two years ago to 35 to 40 now." That shows that since two years ago, the GSA at Ithaca has gown 30-31 people. (Defining Me).
"She recalls hearing a girl talk about how it's always OK for two girls to be together as a couple - which many young men find exciting. "'it's harder to be a guy who's feminine than it is to be a girl who's a tomboy. There's much less stigma to being a lesbian - it still fits into the male idea of what a girl should be.' On the whole, while male attitudes might not influence a young woman's orientation, the acceptance makes it easier for her to be herself." (Defining Me). Thinking about it, there aren't a lot of guy couples at our school, and many female couples. In the city? Not sure. There are also the teenagers that think two good looking girls or guys dating is a waste of "hot bodies", while they may be jealous or can't understand it themselves.
The outside forces shouldn't matter as much as the two people in the relationship. Parents especially shouldn't try to control their kids just because they think the same sex relationship is wrong. It doesn't really matter as much how society sees a couple, it matters if they are happy together. Because really, no one outside of the couple has to understand.
Works Cited:
-Gadiel, Karen. Defining Me. 04/27/2005.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14423310&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=216620&rfi=6 A lot of the quotes I used are from here. It discusses how teens are trying to discover themselves but aren't necessicarially trying to label how they are. It says how there are a lot more people experimenting these days than there were before, and discusses how people can get married to the opposite gender then break up and date a person of the same gender. It also says how it may be easier for girls to be together because it's still acceptable, yet if isn't as acceptable for gay guys. An interesting thing it said "[Women] tend to be more fluid, not exclusively genitally focused. "
-The Nemours Foundation. About Sexual Orientation. 1995-2010
http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/feelings/sexual_orientation.html Has a lot of background information and definitions on sexual orientation, homosexuality, heterosexuality.. If people choose who they are attracted to or not, what it's like being a gay teen, coming out, and "the importance of talking". It also talks about how society sees gay and lesbian couples, and the importance of being able to talk to someone. It says "These medical professionals believe that — in most cases — sexual orientation, whatever its causes, is not simply chosen."
-Friedrichs, Ellen. Who Should Be Paying on a Same Sex Date? 2010.
http://gayteens.about.com/od/datingandmeetingothers/f/paying_on_a_same_sex_date.htm One of the things this site was saying is how the relationship doesn't have to be the old-fashioned guy asks girl out thing, since you're dating someone of the same sex. "When two guys, or two girls go out, they have a lot more freedom than their straight peers. Because same sex relationships are new to a lot of people, there are fewer family and societal expectations to live up to. " And instead of one person paying the bill, it said:
"Take Turns. One person pays one time, the other the next.
Split the Bill. There is no shame in going Dutch. Plus, it's a great way to maintain equality.
The One Who Asks, Treats. Many gay teens use the rule that the person who asks someone out on a date is the one who should be paying. " Which makes sense and sounds fair. It's interesting how this website is saying that gay and lesbian couples have more freedom because they are newer.
-Ritch C. Savin-Williams. 'The New Gay Teenager'. 3 September 2008http://www.narth.com/docs/newgayteenager2.html "Early same-sex attractions for many teenagers are sources of great delight, fond remembrance, and lifetime reverberations; they may even be these individuals' most tender and pleasurable childhood memories." This is a whole book with the chapters as different categories on "The New Gay Teenager". It talks about forming an identity, researchers looking at gay teens, models on gay teens, and a chapter called "Early Same-Sex Attractions: A Great Delight". It also says how today teens are pansexual or bisexual, and that they don't have a specific label for what they are. It also says "teenagers are rejecting gender categories in their pursuit of satisfying sexual relationships."
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Homework #54, "Personality" Test
ESFP - "Entertainer". Radiates attractive warmth and optimism. Smooth, witty, charming, clever. Fun to be with. Very generous.
P1: I'm really not sure if I would be called an "Entertainer". The word reminds me of singers, actors, dancers.. and also the other kinds of entertainers. I think of myself as shy and quiet more than loud and out there, and my brother as the entertainer. If I already know a person though and feel comfortable around them I feel like I do have the potential to be what the survey considers as an "entertainer".
I took the personality test twice, because I didn't copy and paste it when I was in the computer lab, and I got different results each time. The first time it said I was a leader, and I wasn't sure if I was that either. I don't like the process of taking personality tests, and I've gotten different results on each one. There were a lot of questions that I clicked for the middle one on, because I wasn't sure where I was on the question, and others where I was really sure what to say. Over all the fifty questions or so blurred together, and came out with one answer.
P2: I feel like these tests aren't that accurate because a person can say different answers each time, and it doesn't really reflect how an individual is. People love taking personality tests, especially if it is right but there are only a number of answers for a person to get, and those answers aren't necessarily the right ones for a specific individual. There are so many personality tests and matches on facebook, and before that there were tests on myspace and plenty more on the internet. One student's post said how she felt unique to be in the lower percentage of people to get matched with a certain set of letters, and how she then realized that she wasn't the only one. A lot of other students had gotten the same scores as her as well, which shows how no one is truly unique when it comes to personality tests.
P1: I'm really not sure if I would be called an "Entertainer". The word reminds me of singers, actors, dancers.. and also the other kinds of entertainers. I think of myself as shy and quiet more than loud and out there, and my brother as the entertainer. If I already know a person though and feel comfortable around them I feel like I do have the potential to be what the survey considers as an "entertainer".
I took the personality test twice, because I didn't copy and paste it when I was in the computer lab, and I got different results each time. The first time it said I was a leader, and I wasn't sure if I was that either. I don't like the process of taking personality tests, and I've gotten different results on each one. There were a lot of questions that I clicked for the middle one on, because I wasn't sure where I was on the question, and others where I was really sure what to say. Over all the fifty questions or so blurred together, and came out with one answer.
P2: I feel like these tests aren't that accurate because a person can say different answers each time, and it doesn't really reflect how an individual is. People love taking personality tests, especially if it is right but there are only a number of answers for a person to get, and those answers aren't necessarily the right ones for a specific individual. There are so many personality tests and matches on facebook, and before that there were tests on myspace and plenty more on the internet. One student's post said how she felt unique to be in the lower percentage of people to get matched with a certain set of letters, and how she then realized that she wasn't the only one. A lot of other students had gotten the same scores as her as well, which shows how no one is truly unique when it comes to personality tests.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Homework #53, Click Em And Think About It
Part 1:
It took a while to actually get to the end, but I finished answering the survey.
Part 2:
The survey looked really long, so I tried answering it a couple times, and would run out of time before I could actually submit it. I feel like every time I look at a survey it seems really inhuman and uncaring -on paper or on the computer-, so I wanted to get it done as fast as possible. There were some questions that I didn't have to think about much, because I already knew how I felt about them, yet there were a couple of questions that were like speed bumps to me getting the survey done quickly. I also was using a mouse that would unclick some things, so I'd have to go back and reclick them before going on to the next question. Overall, it didn't feel like anything to take this survey. It felt the same as sitting in an office, filling out forms for the dentist, or doctor.Yet there were other questions that I had to stop and think about, either because I wasn't sure of the phrasing of the question or because I wasn't really sure which circle to click on. I was thinking "do I do this? Do I feel this way" and "if I clicked this, I can't click the other one because these two things would contradict each other while they should go together." Some of the questions seemed to be closely linked with others, so I would realize after I clicked on one answer that the next question would be like a "if yes to a, click this for b" question. Some of the questions were really raw and personal (like they were supposed to be) while others didn't really seem to matter. It makes me think of the therapists in movies who ask their patients how things are at home, and in their lives.
Part 3:
I wrote down a couple questions and scores that I had found interesting:
-Your family would/ do accept you if you were/are gay: 28.8% (15 people) said yes, generally, mostly.
-You wish you were in a different family: 55.8% (18 people) said no, not at all, which felt like a large percentage compared to it being only 18 people out of the 52 who completed the survey. I guess I expected more people to say yes, especially with all of the seniors who are excited to go to college next year.
I really liked the question "You've shared romantic love with someone", which 25% (13 people) said "exactly-always-very much so". While the second largest percentage for this question picked "neutral-maybe-sometimes" (11 people). These answers are in two separate groups: one group which seems sweet and glad to be understood, and the other which is more withdrawn.
A connection that I made is that 35.5% (18 people) said "yes exactly" to the statement "You feel good about getting older and maybe wiser", while 28.8% (15 people) said "yes, quite a lot" to the statement "you feel afraid of death." I think everyone that answered the surveys are different. Some questions may have been more personal to one person than the other, because of their own experiences. Some of the questions I felt similar to the students sitting next to me, while others I felt really different from the other people. It depends on the question and the individuals who answered them.
Part 4:
Oh my. While our informal survey was overall easy to get through and thought provoking, I hardly wanted to look at the other surveys. The formal surveys were focused specifically on "teen health", and teens having sex. While the survey we had to take focused on a couple of different categories: friends, family, the world, short answers, and vital relationships ("partnering"). The two surveys were from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and The national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). These are more like facts, and look more harsh than the survey we had to do in school. The one in school seemed more personal, while those surveys seemed more factual.
Researching can be really impersonal. We all know this, we have to write exhibitions! And sometimes different places have different answers to the same question. It depends where the information is coming from, and who putting out that information. Everyone has a different perspective, so nothing is completely the same.
It took a while to actually get to the end, but I finished answering the survey.
Part 2:
The survey looked really long, so I tried answering it a couple times, and would run out of time before I could actually submit it. I feel like every time I look at a survey it seems really inhuman and uncaring -on paper or on the computer-, so I wanted to get it done as fast as possible. There were some questions that I didn't have to think about much, because I already knew how I felt about them, yet there were a couple of questions that were like speed bumps to me getting the survey done quickly. I also was using a mouse that would unclick some things, so I'd have to go back and reclick them before going on to the next question. Overall, it didn't feel like anything to take this survey. It felt the same as sitting in an office, filling out forms for the dentist, or doctor.Yet there were other questions that I had to stop and think about, either because I wasn't sure of the phrasing of the question or because I wasn't really sure which circle to click on. I was thinking "do I do this? Do I feel this way" and "if I clicked this, I can't click the other one because these two things would contradict each other while they should go together." Some of the questions seemed to be closely linked with others, so I would realize after I clicked on one answer that the next question would be like a "if yes to a, click this for b" question. Some of the questions were really raw and personal (like they were supposed to be) while others didn't really seem to matter. It makes me think of the therapists in movies who ask their patients how things are at home, and in their lives.
Part 3:
I wrote down a couple questions and scores that I had found interesting:
-Your family would/ do accept you if you were/are gay: 28.8% (15 people) said yes, generally, mostly.
-You wish you were in a different family: 55.8% (18 people) said no, not at all, which felt like a large percentage compared to it being only 18 people out of the 52 who completed the survey. I guess I expected more people to say yes, especially with all of the seniors who are excited to go to college next year.
I really liked the question "You've shared romantic love with someone", which 25% (13 people) said "exactly-always-very much so". While the second largest percentage for this question picked "neutral-maybe-sometimes" (11 people). These answers are in two separate groups: one group which seems sweet and glad to be understood, and the other which is more withdrawn.
A connection that I made is that 35.5% (18 people) said "yes exactly" to the statement "You feel good about getting older and maybe wiser", while 28.8% (15 people) said "yes, quite a lot" to the statement "you feel afraid of death." I think everyone that answered the surveys are different. Some questions may have been more personal to one person than the other, because of their own experiences. Some of the questions I felt similar to the students sitting next to me, while others I felt really different from the other people. It depends on the question and the individuals who answered them.
Part 4:
Oh my. While our informal survey was overall easy to get through and thought provoking, I hardly wanted to look at the other surveys. The formal surveys were focused specifically on "teen health", and teens having sex. While the survey we had to take focused on a couple of different categories: friends, family, the world, short answers, and vital relationships ("partnering"). The two surveys were from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and The national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). These are more like facts, and look more harsh than the survey we had to do in school. The one in school seemed more personal, while those surveys seemed more factual.
Researching can be really impersonal. We all know this, we have to write exhibitions! And sometimes different places have different answers to the same question. It depends where the information is coming from, and who putting out that information. Everyone has a different perspective, so nothing is completely the same.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Homework #52, Do you really want to know?
Note: I started writing this when I was in a really bad mood, which shows up in my writing.
My thoughts on life are that sometimes you just have to take a break and slow down. I was walking past a fountain surrounded by flowers, wishing that I could be like the people sitting there, who seemed to have all the time in the world, without as much of the worry and frustration as I was feeling at the time. There have been too many times recently where I've felt bad about taking a break, or worried that I should be working. Which leads me to my theories and thoughts on school.
Because of my current mood, my thoughts towards school aren't too positive at this point. I may look at the kids in class who are either sleeping, or calling out, and I think that at least I'm trying harder than they are. At least I'm not doing what they are. I've been feeling like no matter what I'm doing, it isn't good enough. There's too much work, and once I've completed the work there's more. And that if I feel it's too much now, it's really going to be bad in college. I also feel like I've had enough of high school. Most of my friends and people that I know are leaving, while I'm stuck in high school for another year. Thinking back on elementary school, middle school, and how high school has been so far I'm wondering why we all do it. I know that I don't want to be without an education, but I'm wondering what is it about school that makes me feel like this? Why do other students feel like this as well? What is it about school that makes people frustrated, depressed, wanting to give up? What is motivating us to continue? I'm motivated by the feeling that there will be something better after high school. Hopefully. I know that I'm going to end up going to a college where I can do what I like doing: painting, writing poetry, and being creative. Hopefully I'll actually get the time to do those things then. I don't hate school, I just hate feeling this way. There are some good things that come out of school. I'm glad that I'm at this school, instead of a school that is test based and text book based. There was a time where I got to do art four times a week, which was great. Another thing that is great about this school are the people in it. Without them, I'm not sure how I would keep coming back every day.
Over the course of middle school, and in high school, I have realized the different kinds of friendships. There can be friends that are stuck together, even though they have nothing in common. I'm not really sure how those work out. There are friendships where no one is benefitting from each other at all, and those are seriously lacking something. The friendship may start off young in middle school, where both people are happy, and it feels like they're helping each other. Those two best friends that seem inseparable. Alice and I always used to talk about how there are some friendships where one person may need the other, and the other may just be there. Alice used to be friends with a girl that she hung out with because the girl had money, no friends, and it was convenient for her (Alice) because any time she wanted something she could just ask the girl. Yet Alice felt bad hanging out with her, because she felt like she wasn't gaining or benefitting from hanging out with the girl.
Now I see what I want in my friends, because it's what I have. I can be myself, and they won't tell me to stop. One of my old best friends used to tell me to stop reading every time I'd pick up a book (reading is one of my passions) and she'd tell me to stop knitting whenever I was knitting (another hobby).. She'd call me a granny, or a nerd, or a book worm. And it wouldn't feel like a comfortable relationship. It may be wrong to discuss this on my blog and all. My point is that now I know what I want and like in a friendship. I like where people are all benefitting from each other, and they aren't afraid to be smart. They are smart, and not just smart, but smart smart. I feel a lot safer and more comfortable in this kind of friendship. As a group, we watch out for each other. We all want the other people in the group to eat, and will lend each other money. We realize when something is wrong, and want each other to be happy.
"Cuz we're in love I know it'll be alright" (Refuge (When It's Cold Outside) by John Legend) At the beginning of the school year, my thoughts on relationships was that I didn't want one. I felt like there was too much pain, and that I was better off being alone. My best friend used to ask me why I wanted to be alone, and why anyone would ever want to be alone? I had been in too many relationships that ended badly, or where I had felt miserable most of the time. I didn't want to be in a cage, and I didn't want to belong to anyone. Sounds a lot like Summer, from (500) Days Of Summer right? I've realized that now as well. As of now, my views on relationships have changed (obviously). My thoughts on relationships? I'm happy. Life is good.
Years ago, I read this quote on the paper attached to a teabag: "All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand." (Upon the Sand by Ella Wheeler Wilcox) And I completely agree with it.
There are relationships where the two people have nothing in common, and based mostly around sex (yes, I'm talking about teenagers) like in the book When It Happens by Susane Colasanti: "Are relationships always this complicated? Technically, Cynthia wasn't my girlfriend. So I don't exactly consider what we had a relationship. It was all about sex. We didn't have much in common except for our mutual lust for each other. Which was fine with me, until I got sick of the emotional void." (page 11) You get the gist. This character, Tobey, had been with a girl, but not really with her. He hadn't considered it dating, they would just have sex. Yet he knew what he wanted: "something real". And over the course of the book, he (along with everyone else) is looking for that something.
My thoughts on gender and thoughts on relationships are interlaced with each other. Sometimes, gender doesn't matter. In New York, there aren't really gender roles. Boys can have long hair and skinny jeans, and girls can dress and act like boys. There are also times where a girl by spirt is stuck in a boy's body, or vise versa, like the book Luna (by Julie Anne Peters): "Luna is a gem of a book, very unique in character and style. The book outlines the life of a boy who knows he is really a girl in a boy's body. He is a Transgender." This book is about a boy named Liam, who by day is a boy, and by night is a girl named Luna. Luna/ Liam has a sister named Regan, who is the only one that knows and supports Luna. Though my brother won't read this book, it reminds me of him. Kyle and Luna don't have similar stories, but they really remind me of each other.
My incredibly beautiful brother, Kyle.
A year or so ago, I used to talk with my friends Alice and Cleo about relationships, and how it doesn't always matter what body a person is in. It's just about the spirt, and how the person is. I hadn't experienced it at the time, but we used to talk about when you're in love, it doesn't matter about gender, it just matters that you're happy. And once love grabs you by the throat, it really doesn't matter then. It's 2010, in New York, and there are all kinds of things that are different. People dress differently, and act differently. There are same sex couples.. In our school, there are tons of them. Gender roles don't matter so much any more. There are tons of kinds of people. There are girly girls and the tomgirls. There are manly men and the soft, sympathetic boys (they're out there somewhere).
I know my family really influences how I am. I live mostly with my mom and my brother, and my house is like a universal home. Everyone feels welcome here, and my mom is like everyone's mom. I feel safe where I live, and with my family. I feel free to be how I am, and how I want to be. My brother is free to be how he wants to be as well. I can be how I am at my dad's as well, but I don't feel it as strongly. Not that my dad has a problem with how my brother and I are (he doesn't), I just realize more that we can be what we want to be when I'm thinking about my mom's place. Even at the begging of the school year when my mind was a mess, my mom told me: "follow your heart" and whenever I have a conflict, she will always tell me that.
My thoughts on life are that sometimes you just have to take a break and slow down. I was walking past a fountain surrounded by flowers, wishing that I could be like the people sitting there, who seemed to have all the time in the world, without as much of the worry and frustration as I was feeling at the time. There have been too many times recently where I've felt bad about taking a break, or worried that I should be working. Which leads me to my theories and thoughts on school.
Because of my current mood, my thoughts towards school aren't too positive at this point. I may look at the kids in class who are either sleeping, or calling out, and I think that at least I'm trying harder than they are. At least I'm not doing what they are. I've been feeling like no matter what I'm doing, it isn't good enough. There's too much work, and once I've completed the work there's more. And that if I feel it's too much now, it's really going to be bad in college. I also feel like I've had enough of high school. Most of my friends and people that I know are leaving, while I'm stuck in high school for another year. Thinking back on elementary school, middle school, and how high school has been so far I'm wondering why we all do it. I know that I don't want to be without an education, but I'm wondering what is it about school that makes me feel like this? Why do other students feel like this as well? What is it about school that makes people frustrated, depressed, wanting to give up? What is motivating us to continue? I'm motivated by the feeling that there will be something better after high school. Hopefully. I know that I'm going to end up going to a college where I can do what I like doing: painting, writing poetry, and being creative. Hopefully I'll actually get the time to do those things then. I don't hate school, I just hate feeling this way. There are some good things that come out of school. I'm glad that I'm at this school, instead of a school that is test based and text book based. There was a time where I got to do art four times a week, which was great. Another thing that is great about this school are the people in it. Without them, I'm not sure how I would keep coming back every day.
Over the course of middle school, and in high school, I have realized the different kinds of friendships. There can be friends that are stuck together, even though they have nothing in common. I'm not really sure how those work out. There are friendships where no one is benefitting from each other at all, and those are seriously lacking something. The friendship may start off young in middle school, where both people are happy, and it feels like they're helping each other. Those two best friends that seem inseparable. Alice and I always used to talk about how there are some friendships where one person may need the other, and the other may just be there. Alice used to be friends with a girl that she hung out with because the girl had money, no friends, and it was convenient for her (Alice) because any time she wanted something she could just ask the girl. Yet Alice felt bad hanging out with her, because she felt like she wasn't gaining or benefitting from hanging out with the girl.
Now I see what I want in my friends, because it's what I have. I can be myself, and they won't tell me to stop. One of my old best friends used to tell me to stop reading every time I'd pick up a book (reading is one of my passions) and she'd tell me to stop knitting whenever I was knitting (another hobby).. She'd call me a granny, or a nerd, or a book worm. And it wouldn't feel like a comfortable relationship. It may be wrong to discuss this on my blog and all. My point is that now I know what I want and like in a friendship. I like where people are all benefitting from each other, and they aren't afraid to be smart. They are smart, and not just smart, but smart smart. I feel a lot safer and more comfortable in this kind of friendship. As a group, we watch out for each other. We all want the other people in the group to eat, and will lend each other money. We realize when something is wrong, and want each other to be happy.
"Cuz we're in love I know it'll be alright" (Refuge (When It's Cold Outside) by John Legend) At the beginning of the school year, my thoughts on relationships was that I didn't want one. I felt like there was too much pain, and that I was better off being alone. My best friend used to ask me why I wanted to be alone, and why anyone would ever want to be alone? I had been in too many relationships that ended badly, or where I had felt miserable most of the time. I didn't want to be in a cage, and I didn't want to belong to anyone. Sounds a lot like Summer, from (500) Days Of Summer right? I've realized that now as well. As of now, my views on relationships have changed (obviously). My thoughts on relationships? I'm happy. Life is good.
Years ago, I read this quote on the paper attached to a teabag: "All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand." (Upon the Sand by Ella Wheeler Wilcox) And I completely agree with it.
There are relationships where the two people have nothing in common, and based mostly around sex (yes, I'm talking about teenagers) like in the book When It Happens by Susane Colasanti: "Are relationships always this complicated? Technically, Cynthia wasn't my girlfriend. So I don't exactly consider what we had a relationship. It was all about sex. We didn't have much in common except for our mutual lust for each other. Which was fine with me, until I got sick of the emotional void." (page 11) You get the gist. This character, Tobey, had been with a girl, but not really with her. He hadn't considered it dating, they would just have sex. Yet he knew what he wanted: "something real". And over the course of the book, he (along with everyone else) is looking for that something.
My thoughts on gender and thoughts on relationships are interlaced with each other. Sometimes, gender doesn't matter. In New York, there aren't really gender roles. Boys can have long hair and skinny jeans, and girls can dress and act like boys. There are also times where a girl by spirt is stuck in a boy's body, or vise versa, like the book Luna (by Julie Anne Peters): "Luna is a gem of a book, very unique in character and style. The book outlines the life of a boy who knows he is really a girl in a boy's body. He is a Transgender." This book is about a boy named Liam, who by day is a boy, and by night is a girl named Luna. Luna/ Liam has a sister named Regan, who is the only one that knows and supports Luna. Though my brother won't read this book, it reminds me of him. Kyle and Luna don't have similar stories, but they really remind me of each other.
My incredibly beautiful brother, Kyle. A year or so ago, I used to talk with my friends Alice and Cleo about relationships, and how it doesn't always matter what body a person is in. It's just about the spirt, and how the person is. I hadn't experienced it at the time, but we used to talk about when you're in love, it doesn't matter about gender, it just matters that you're happy. And once love grabs you by the throat, it really doesn't matter then. It's 2010, in New York, and there are all kinds of things that are different. People dress differently, and act differently. There are same sex couples.. In our school, there are tons of them. Gender roles don't matter so much any more. There are tons of kinds of people. There are girly girls and the tomgirls. There are manly men and the soft, sympathetic boys (they're out there somewhere).
I know my family really influences how I am. I live mostly with my mom and my brother, and my house is like a universal home. Everyone feels welcome here, and my mom is like everyone's mom. I feel safe where I live, and with my family. I feel free to be how I am, and how I want to be. My brother is free to be how he wants to be as well. I can be how I am at my dad's as well, but I don't feel it as strongly. Not that my dad has a problem with how my brother and I are (he doesn't), I just realize more that we can be what we want to be when I'm thinking about my mom's place. Even at the begging of the school year when my mind was a mess, my mom told me: "follow your heart" and whenever I have a conflict, she will always tell me that.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Homework #51, School Paper
At first I had been planning on writing a paper on how poetry can be incorperated in schooling, and I had been reading the book Teaching With Fire, yet as I have been writing my exhibition, the topic of this paper has changed as well. Though it isn't finished yet, the paper that I was going to write for this class was also going to be the same as my exhibition. So here's what I've got so far:
Introduction-
In the past, school used to be a place where students would have to memorize endless facts that had no relevance to their daily lives. Assignments consisted of reading textbook pages, memorizing the facts, and then being tested on them, either aloud or on paper. Though they may have good memorization skills, this type of education leaves students frustrated, bored, and disinterested. In order for students to be able to learn, they must be engaged in the material and the process of learning it. The relationship between the teacher and their students is of key importance to the learning process. School should not be a one-sided education, with the teacher talking and the kids being treated as empty boxes to be filled, it should be a process of the students learning from the teacher and the teacher learning from their students. And, in order to learn, teachers must supply their students with the tools that can help them to process the information they’re being taught, and how this information can apply to what they are learning. Instead of teachers trying to shape their students, they must encourage them to learn by inspiring them, providing them with the tools that they need to learn, and to have a relationship with their students that isn’t one-sided. Or Teachers must be inspirational to their students by developing a caring relationship, and to provide them with the tools to help them learn. Or Teachers must develop caring and inspirational relationships with their students, and provide them with the skills to help them learn. Or (I think this one) In order for teachers to successfully engage their students they must develop a relationship which inspires them and to provide the students with the tools to help them learn.
Argument A: Kids must be inspired to learn
In order for students to want to learn, the material that is being taught must be engaging, because: “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” (Mann, Horace. Brainy Quotes) If a teacher tries to teach without catching the students’ interest, it is like trying to shape a metal object without heating up the hammer first. Some teachers have that they can lecture their students and shape them into how they want their students to be, yet this is very ineffective. If pupils cannot be engaged in the material that they are being taught, then they get the feeling of boredom and discouragement. There is this problem in some classes where both the teacher and the students are bored, therefore the teacher does not want to teach, and the students do not want to learn. According to John Taylor Gatto, when students are bored they blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and when the teachers are bored as well, they blame their students. He feels that when the bells ring, it means to stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. (Against Schools) Instead of kids looking forward to when the bell rings, they should be engaged in material that they wish to continue even after the bell has sounded. If material has to relevance to their daily lives, then kids will not want to learn it. When teachers help their students to be able to apply the material to their own lives, the process of learning becomes more hopeful.
If students feel like they can contribute something meaningful to their learning process, it can provide them with motivation to learn: “Write what’s on your mind, push yourself to see the letters that represent the words you’re thinking.” (Push, pages 61-62) In Push, by Sapphire, the main character Precious gets kicked out of school for being pregnant, and ends up in a school that is the last resort for students who have gotten kicked out of the regular schools. The teacher, Miss Rain, encourages her students to keep a journal, and to write down their thoughts and feelings. While they are able to write in a place that they feel comfortable to express their ideas, this also helps them to learn how to read and write. At first, her pupils feel like they have nothing to write about, and are not sure how to write for the time that they were assigned to, yet she tells them to write what is on their minds and what they are thinking. Writing in a journal gave the students a chance to express their own ideas, and to be able to interact with their teacher, Miss Rain, because she would respond to what they had written. This student-teacher relationship is an important part of the learning process, and is the difference between teachers just lecturing their students and students being able to influence their teachers.
Argument B: Learning cannot be a one-sided process
In order for students to learn, there must be an environment in which the students can incorporate their insights alongside their teacher’s insights. There are two different types of possible relationships between teachers and their students in school: "teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers." (Pedagogy of The Oppressed, Page 80) The 'teacher-of-the-students' with the 'students-of-the-teacher' is a relationship where the teacher is doing the teaching, and the students are the ones dutifully memorizing what the teacher is saying, and the students are supposed to be learning. This is called the “banking” method of teaching, “in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing their deposits.” (Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, page 72.) The banking method of teaching, where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it, only allows students to store information without actually being able to process it for themselves. This is very ineffective compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them. Pedagogy of The Oppressed discusses the oppressed -the people being weighed down-, and the oppressor, the figure that is doing the weighing down. The relationship where the teachers and students are learning from each other is much healthier than when the teacher is doing the lecturing and the students are the ones taking notes, because the first relationship has the teachers accepting that the students have actual experiences and insights worth sharing, while the teacher that teaches to be heard treats the students as objects and prevents them from learning. It seems that what As the oppressor, the teacher that is only interested in planting facts in the students', and that the students that are memorizing what the teachers are saying are the oppressed.
There are times where teachers must consider their students, and teach them something useful in life that other teachers may not teach: “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.. Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way.. don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.” (Dead Poets Society) In the Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams plays a teacher named John Keating, who teaches his students how to see the world in a different way. The school is a white, all boys private school, where most of the teachers are old and stubborn to change their way of teaching. The other teachers don’t consider their students as living things, they consider them as useful parts of a robot machine that they must shape. To these traditional teachers, “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider know nothing.” (Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, page 72) Usually, in school, it is against the rules for kids to stand on their desks. Yet John Keating encouraged his kids to go outside of the norm, and to find another perspective for themselves. Instead of the kids just processing information that a teacher has given them, the students are allowed to think for themselves and to develop their own ideas. The pupils not only are given the process their own thoughts, it also gives them the feeling that they are as worthy of considering what they think as the authors are. This also keeps them thinking, even after the students feel like they have found a solution. In order for students to thrive, they must feel like the teacher is both making an effort to understand where they come from, and that they’re being seen. In Dead Poets Society John Keating admires his students, and sees the potential in them. He encourages them to express their thoughts, through poetry, and he encourages them to be what they want to be. This is similar to Miss Rain in Push, telling Precious that she can write every day and that she has something to write about. Instead of teachers thinking of their students as inexperienced and uneducated, they must find the potential within their students and find ways to help them incorporate this into their learning experience. In order to be able to learn to think for themselves, teachers must provide their students with the skills that can help them to learn.
(I'm not going to use the quote from the blog, but this is the outline part still)
Argument C: Teachers must provide us with the tools to think, and how to apply them
“In some ways this same collision played out in the 80s and 90s in the US - between E.D. Hirsch & Ted Sizer.
Sizer was a founder and a leading thinker of the Coalition of Essential Schools - which SOF has always been a part of - and focused especially on the student's development of Habits of Mind. Hirsch was widely known for insisting on the crucial role of a thoughtful and coherent core content - so that students would learn the knowledge that would provide building blocks for their understanding.”
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2005/12/21/habits-of-mind/
OPV 1. Schools conform students
Traditionally education has been about teaching facts
-Gatto: schools conform kids and confuse them
-Programming/memorizing
it doesn’t teach them to think for themselves
Dead Poets Society: “Now I didn't bring them up here to ridicule them. I brought them up here to illustrate the point of conformity. The difficulty of maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others.”
John Taylor Gatto-
He believes that schools confuse children, programming them to memorize things that will eventually be forgotten because they have no application to the kids' real lives. That school is like a rigid "cell-block-style" place, that creates boredom and encourages childishness. He feels like school makes students accept their class position: "It teaches them to accept their class affiliation." For example, a poor kid that comes from a bad home may feel like they aren't worth anything and that they can't succeed in life. Or like the girls in books and movies that accept that they must be prom queens and soccer moms. To Gatto, schools make students indifferent to the outside world and their potential. That kids are constantly looking for approval and rewards in school, which can affect them in their lives outside of school. In Andy's words, John Taylor Gatto feels like the best thing to do is to "Get out of school [because] you're turning into a robot".
Some people believe that schools are the right place to send children to, because it keeps them out of the streets and under the watchful eyes of the teacher. It is like babysitting teenagers, so the parents don't have to worry whether or not their kids are okay, because they know where their kids are. Yet Gatto believes that school conforms students into all being the same indifferent, childish, dependent people. This is another way to think of the school system, compared to all those teacher as savior movies.
Another thing that he said is how the students are bored, and blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and that the teachers are bored as well, and blame their students. That bells mean stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. He feels like there are a lot of successful people that thrived outside of the school system, either by being home-schooled or taught outside of school. (Such as 'George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln') This is a different way to think about schools, compared to the philosophers and films that show school as the best place for people to start.
-The Board Of Education
-Board of Ed: Promotion Policy
-Dead Poets Society: Other teachers
“No. Tradition”
-Learning Spanish in school
Works Cited:
-Gatto, John. Against School. 09/2003.
http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
-Sapphire. Push. Vintage Contemporaries/ Vintage Books. New York City. 1996.
-Dead Poets Society: http://atlas.kennesaw.edu/~phoover/dps.htm
Introduction-
In the past, school used to be a place where students would have to memorize endless facts that had no relevance to their daily lives. Assignments consisted of reading textbook pages, memorizing the facts, and then being tested on them, either aloud or on paper. Though they may have good memorization skills, this type of education leaves students frustrated, bored, and disinterested. In order for students to be able to learn, they must be engaged in the material and the process of learning it. The relationship between the teacher and their students is of key importance to the learning process. School should not be a one-sided education, with the teacher talking and the kids being treated as empty boxes to be filled, it should be a process of the students learning from the teacher and the teacher learning from their students. And, in order to learn, teachers must supply their students with the tools that can help them to process the information they’re being taught, and how this information can apply to what they are learning. Instead of teachers trying to shape their students, they must encourage them to learn by inspiring them, providing them with the tools that they need to learn, and to have a relationship with their students that isn’t one-sided. Or Teachers must be inspirational to their students by developing a caring relationship, and to provide them with the tools to help them learn. Or Teachers must develop caring and inspirational relationships with their students, and provide them with the skills to help them learn. Or (I think this one) In order for teachers to successfully engage their students they must develop a relationship which inspires them and to provide the students with the tools to help them learn.
Argument A: Kids must be inspired to learn
In order for students to want to learn, the material that is being taught must be engaging, because: “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” (Mann, Horace. Brainy Quotes) If a teacher tries to teach without catching the students’ interest, it is like trying to shape a metal object without heating up the hammer first. Some teachers have that they can lecture their students and shape them into how they want their students to be, yet this is very ineffective. If pupils cannot be engaged in the material that they are being taught, then they get the feeling of boredom and discouragement. There is this problem in some classes where both the teacher and the students are bored, therefore the teacher does not want to teach, and the students do not want to learn. According to John Taylor Gatto, when students are bored they blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and when the teachers are bored as well, they blame their students. He feels that when the bells ring, it means to stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. (Against Schools) Instead of kids looking forward to when the bell rings, they should be engaged in material that they wish to continue even after the bell has sounded. If material has to relevance to their daily lives, then kids will not want to learn it. When teachers help their students to be able to apply the material to their own lives, the process of learning becomes more hopeful.
If students feel like they can contribute something meaningful to their learning process, it can provide them with motivation to learn: “Write what’s on your mind, push yourself to see the letters that represent the words you’re thinking.” (Push, pages 61-62) In Push, by Sapphire, the main character Precious gets kicked out of school for being pregnant, and ends up in a school that is the last resort for students who have gotten kicked out of the regular schools. The teacher, Miss Rain, encourages her students to keep a journal, and to write down their thoughts and feelings. While they are able to write in a place that they feel comfortable to express their ideas, this also helps them to learn how to read and write. At first, her pupils feel like they have nothing to write about, and are not sure how to write for the time that they were assigned to, yet she tells them to write what is on their minds and what they are thinking. Writing in a journal gave the students a chance to express their own ideas, and to be able to interact with their teacher, Miss Rain, because she would respond to what they had written. This student-teacher relationship is an important part of the learning process, and is the difference between teachers just lecturing their students and students being able to influence their teachers.
Argument B: Learning cannot be a one-sided process
In order for students to learn, there must be an environment in which the students can incorporate their insights alongside their teacher’s insights. There are two different types of possible relationships between teachers and their students in school: "teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers." (Pedagogy of The Oppressed, Page 80) The 'teacher-of-the-students' with the 'students-of-the-teacher' is a relationship where the teacher is doing the teaching, and the students are the ones dutifully memorizing what the teacher is saying, and the students are supposed to be learning. This is called the “banking” method of teaching, “in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing their deposits.” (Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, page 72.) The banking method of teaching, where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it, only allows students to store information without actually being able to process it for themselves. This is very ineffective compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them. Pedagogy of The Oppressed discusses the oppressed -the people being weighed down-, and the oppressor, the figure that is doing the weighing down. The relationship where the teachers and students are learning from each other is much healthier than when the teacher is doing the lecturing and the students are the ones taking notes, because the first relationship has the teachers accepting that the students have actual experiences and insights worth sharing, while the teacher that teaches to be heard treats the students as objects and prevents them from learning. It seems that what As the oppressor, the teacher that is only interested in planting facts in the students', and that the students that are memorizing what the teachers are saying are the oppressed.
There are times where teachers must consider their students, and teach them something useful in life that other teachers may not teach: “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.. Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way.. don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.” (Dead Poets Society) In the Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams plays a teacher named John Keating, who teaches his students how to see the world in a different way. The school is a white, all boys private school, where most of the teachers are old and stubborn to change their way of teaching. The other teachers don’t consider their students as living things, they consider them as useful parts of a robot machine that they must shape. To these traditional teachers, “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider know nothing.” (Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, page 72) Usually, in school, it is against the rules for kids to stand on their desks. Yet John Keating encouraged his kids to go outside of the norm, and to find another perspective for themselves. Instead of the kids just processing information that a teacher has given them, the students are allowed to think for themselves and to develop their own ideas. The pupils not only are given the process their own thoughts, it also gives them the feeling that they are as worthy of considering what they think as the authors are. This also keeps them thinking, even after the students feel like they have found a solution. In order for students to thrive, they must feel like the teacher is both making an effort to understand where they come from, and that they’re being seen. In Dead Poets Society John Keating admires his students, and sees the potential in them. He encourages them to express their thoughts, through poetry, and he encourages them to be what they want to be. This is similar to Miss Rain in Push, telling Precious that she can write every day and that she has something to write about. Instead of teachers thinking of their students as inexperienced and uneducated, they must find the potential within their students and find ways to help them incorporate this into their learning experience. In order to be able to learn to think for themselves, teachers must provide their students with the skills that can help them to learn.
(I'm not going to use the quote from the blog, but this is the outline part still)
Argument C: Teachers must provide us with the tools to think, and how to apply them
“In some ways this same collision played out in the 80s and 90s in the US - between E.D. Hirsch & Ted Sizer.
Sizer was a founder and a leading thinker of the Coalition of Essential Schools - which SOF has always been a part of - and focused especially on the student's development of Habits of Mind. Hirsch was widely known for insisting on the crucial role of a thoughtful and coherent core content - so that students would learn the knowledge that would provide building blocks for their understanding.”
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2005/12/21/habits-of-mind/
OPV 1. Schools conform students
Traditionally education has been about teaching facts
-Gatto: schools conform kids and confuse them
-Programming/memorizing
it doesn’t teach them to think for themselves
Dead Poets Society: “Now I didn't bring them up here to ridicule them. I brought them up here to illustrate the point of conformity. The difficulty of maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others.”
John Taylor Gatto-
He believes that schools confuse children, programming them to memorize things that will eventually be forgotten because they have no application to the kids' real lives. That school is like a rigid "cell-block-style" place, that creates boredom and encourages childishness. He feels like school makes students accept their class position: "It teaches them to accept their class affiliation." For example, a poor kid that comes from a bad home may feel like they aren't worth anything and that they can't succeed in life. Or like the girls in books and movies that accept that they must be prom queens and soccer moms. To Gatto, schools make students indifferent to the outside world and their potential. That kids are constantly looking for approval and rewards in school, which can affect them in their lives outside of school. In Andy's words, John Taylor Gatto feels like the best thing to do is to "Get out of school [because] you're turning into a robot".
Some people believe that schools are the right place to send children to, because it keeps them out of the streets and under the watchful eyes of the teacher. It is like babysitting teenagers, so the parents don't have to worry whether or not their kids are okay, because they know where their kids are. Yet Gatto believes that school conforms students into all being the same indifferent, childish, dependent people. This is another way to think of the school system, compared to all those teacher as savior movies.
Another thing that he said is how the students are bored, and blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and that the teachers are bored as well, and blame their students. That bells mean stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. He feels like there are a lot of successful people that thrived outside of the school system, either by being home-schooled or taught outside of school. (Such as 'George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln') This is a different way to think about schools, compared to the philosophers and films that show school as the best place for people to start.
-The Board Of Education
-Board of Ed: Promotion Policy
-Dead Poets Society: Other teachers
“No. Tradition”
-Learning Spanish in school
Works Cited:
-Gatto, John. Against School. 09/2003.
http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
-Sapphire. Push. Vintage Contemporaries/ Vintage Books. New York City. 1996.
-Dead Poets Society: http://atlas.kennesaw.edu/~phoover/dps.htm
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Homework #50, School: Theorists And Teachers/The Principal
John Taylor Gatto- He believes that schools confuse children, programming them to memorize things that will eventually be forgotten because they have no application to the kids' real lives. That school is like a rigid "cell-block-style" place, that creates boredom and encourages childishness. He feels like school makes students accept their class position: "It teaches them to accept their class affiliation." For example, a poor kid that comes from a bad home may feel like they aren't worth anything and that they can't succeed in life. Or like the girls in books and movies that accept that they must be prom queens and soccer moms. To Gatto, schools make students indifferent to the outside world and their potential. That kids are constantly looking for approval and rewards in school, which can affect them in their lives outside of school. In Andy's words, John Taylor Gatto feels like the best thing to do is to "Get out of school [because] you're turning into a robot".
Some people believe that schools are the right place to send children to, because it keeps them out of the streets and under the watchful eyes of the teacher. It is like babysitting teenagers, so the parents don't have to worry whether or not their kids are okay, because they know where their kids are. Yet Gatto believes that school conforms students into all being the same indifferent, childish, dependent people. This is another way to think of the school system, compared to all those teacher as savior movies. Another thing that he said is how the students are bored, and blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and that the teachers are bored as well, and blame their students. That bells mean stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. He feels like there are a lot of successful people that thrived outside of the school system, either by being home-schooled or taught outside of school. (Such as 'George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln') This is a different way to think about schools, compared to the philosophers and films that show school as the best place for people to start.
Paulo Freire-Paulo Freire discusses the banking method of teaching (where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it) compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them. His book Pedagogy of The Oppressed discusses the oppressed -the people being weighed down-, and the oppressor, the figure that is doing the weighing down. There are two different types of possible relationships between teachers and their students in school: "teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers." (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of The Oppressed, Page 80) The 'teacher-of-the-students' with the 'students-of-the-teacher' is a relationship where the teacher is doing the teaching, and the students are the ones dutifully memorizing what the teacher is saying and supposed to be learning. While the 'teacher-student' and 'students-teachers' is a relationship where the teachers are learning from their kids, and their kids are learning from their teachers.
The relationship where the teachers and students are learning from each other is much healthier than when the teacher is doing the lecturing and the students are the ones taking notes, because the first relationship has the teachers accepting that the students have actual experiences and insights worth sharing, while the teacher that teaches to be heard treats the students as objects and prevents them from learning. It seems that what Freire is saying is that the teacher that is only interested in planting facts in the students' minds is the oppressor, and that the students that are memorizing what the teachers are saying are the oppressed.
Lisa Delpit- believes that schools should have strategies to be able to teach both the kids that have learned the knowledge that help them to learn other things, as well as schools having to be able to provide that step up for the students who have not been given the information to help them learn. She believes that schools should help those who come from homes that cannot provide the education to prepare them for what's to come in school. One thing that she recommends is that teachers should get to know their students not just as students, but to get a glimpse at how they are outside of school. To speak to people that know them when they aren't in school. She also recommended art, as a way to see "students in a different light, whereas before all they saw was what their children couldn't do". Lisa Delpit is one of those teachers that believe that the teacher should build on how their students as individuals already are, and to incorporate that into what they are being taught. She said how if there is a kid in class that is loud and speaks for themselves, that "teachers can create a curriculum based on strengths rather than weaknesses, then they are teaching to their student's needs." In Andy's words, Delpit thinks we need to change the school so it works for everyone in the school.
This connects to Paulo Freire's theory that teachers should be able to help students thrive. She thinks that instead of teachers just teaching by the book, teachers should understand their students and how they can help individuals learn at their own pace and in their own way. This is also like John Keating in Dead Poets Society, who believes that his students have the potential to do what they feel passionate about and to incorporate that into the process of learning. Both John Keating and Lisa Delpit believe that art should be included in how their students learn. As an artist in a school that provides art class only to students for half the year, and only if they choose it, I wish that our school agreed with these teachers. Having art class as a creative outlet provides another way to think and feel. Yet right now, there is an absence of art in school.
SOF Educator(s) - Our school is an example of a different way to be taught and to teach. Given it's name, it was one of the first schools which had ideas that other schools did not (such as using the Habits Of Mind and The Four Pillars). In especially english and 'history' class, there is no such thing as the oppressor and the oppressed, but that students and teachers can interact with each other as a 'healthy' way to learn. Like a lot of other schools, the teachers and principal have hopes that the school can help its students to become individual and life-long learners. When our principal was being interviewed, he said that he thinks our school "models the student as an individual," and that he hopes that "[teachers have] empowered [us] to advocate for [ourselves] in life" and that "[we] should question everything." He also said that "a perfect education is a life long education. After high school. You should keep learning." During the interview he expressed his hopes that school can help us to become our own individuals, and that we can keep learning for the rest of our lives.
Another hope that teachers have is that their students are able to take what they have been taught, and to process it in their own unique way. For english class we had been reading Hamlet, and after we had finished reading we had an assignment to make films showing our own ideas and versions of Hamlet. And once it was through, Mr. Manley wrote us a letter to thank us: "I forget that, in the end, really I am just so grateful to get to spend this time with you, and I am so thankful to you guys for producing some of the work you do, and sharing some of the insight you have." This is an example of a teacher being affected by his student's work, and grateful that we can share some of what we know.
These interviews have helped me to think about what the principal and our teachers expect out of us. For us to keep learning even after high school, and that we are able to think for ourselves. That there are teachers who appreciate what their students have shared with them, instead of the teachers who don't listen to their kids. This is against John Gatto's idea that schools turn us into robots, and it agrees with Paulo Freire's belief that in order to have a flourishing learning environment it cannot be one-sided.
Resources:
-John Gatto, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto
-The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991, http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
-Paulo Freire, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed.
-Lisa Delpit: Interview with Lisa Delpit:
Discovering Brilliance in Our Children, interview with Nile Stanley: http://www.flreads.org/Publications/quarterly/samples/delpit_interview.htm
Some people believe that schools are the right place to send children to, because it keeps them out of the streets and under the watchful eyes of the teacher. It is like babysitting teenagers, so the parents don't have to worry whether or not their kids are okay, because they know where their kids are. Yet Gatto believes that school conforms students into all being the same indifferent, childish, dependent people. This is another way to think of the school system, compared to all those teacher as savior movies. Another thing that he said is how the students are bored, and blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and that the teachers are bored as well, and blame their students. That bells mean stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. He feels like there are a lot of successful people that thrived outside of the school system, either by being home-schooled or taught outside of school. (Such as 'George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln') This is a different way to think about schools, compared to the philosophers and films that show school as the best place for people to start.
Paulo Freire-Paulo Freire discusses the banking method of teaching (where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it) compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them. His book Pedagogy of The Oppressed discusses the oppressed -the people being weighed down-, and the oppressor, the figure that is doing the weighing down. There are two different types of possible relationships between teachers and their students in school: "teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers." (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of The Oppressed, Page 80) The 'teacher-of-the-students' with the 'students-of-the-teacher' is a relationship where the teacher is doing the teaching, and the students are the ones dutifully memorizing what the teacher is saying and supposed to be learning. While the 'teacher-student' and 'students-teachers' is a relationship where the teachers are learning from their kids, and their kids are learning from their teachers.
The relationship where the teachers and students are learning from each other is much healthier than when the teacher is doing the lecturing and the students are the ones taking notes, because the first relationship has the teachers accepting that the students have actual experiences and insights worth sharing, while the teacher that teaches to be heard treats the students as objects and prevents them from learning. It seems that what Freire is saying is that the teacher that is only interested in planting facts in the students' minds is the oppressor, and that the students that are memorizing what the teachers are saying are the oppressed.
Lisa Delpit- believes that schools should have strategies to be able to teach both the kids that have learned the knowledge that help them to learn other things, as well as schools having to be able to provide that step up for the students who have not been given the information to help them learn. She believes that schools should help those who come from homes that cannot provide the education to prepare them for what's to come in school. One thing that she recommends is that teachers should get to know their students not just as students, but to get a glimpse at how they are outside of school. To speak to people that know them when they aren't in school. She also recommended art, as a way to see "students in a different light, whereas before all they saw was what their children couldn't do". Lisa Delpit is one of those teachers that believe that the teacher should build on how their students as individuals already are, and to incorporate that into what they are being taught. She said how if there is a kid in class that is loud and speaks for themselves, that "teachers can create a curriculum based on strengths rather than weaknesses, then they are teaching to their student's needs." In Andy's words, Delpit thinks we need to change the school so it works for everyone in the school.
This connects to Paulo Freire's theory that teachers should be able to help students thrive. She thinks that instead of teachers just teaching by the book, teachers should understand their students and how they can help individuals learn at their own pace and in their own way. This is also like John Keating in Dead Poets Society, who believes that his students have the potential to do what they feel passionate about and to incorporate that into the process of learning. Both John Keating and Lisa Delpit believe that art should be included in how their students learn. As an artist in a school that provides art class only to students for half the year, and only if they choose it, I wish that our school agreed with these teachers. Having art class as a creative outlet provides another way to think and feel. Yet right now, there is an absence of art in school.
SOF Educator(s) - Our school is an example of a different way to be taught and to teach. Given it's name, it was one of the first schools which had ideas that other schools did not (such as using the Habits Of Mind and The Four Pillars). In especially english and 'history' class, there is no such thing as the oppressor and the oppressed, but that students and teachers can interact with each other as a 'healthy' way to learn. Like a lot of other schools, the teachers and principal have hopes that the school can help its students to become individual and life-long learners. When our principal was being interviewed, he said that he thinks our school "models the student as an individual," and that he hopes that "[teachers have] empowered [us] to advocate for [ourselves] in life" and that "[we] should question everything." He also said that "a perfect education is a life long education. After high school. You should keep learning." During the interview he expressed his hopes that school can help us to become our own individuals, and that we can keep learning for the rest of our lives.
Another hope that teachers have is that their students are able to take what they have been taught, and to process it in their own unique way. For english class we had been reading Hamlet, and after we had finished reading we had an assignment to make films showing our own ideas and versions of Hamlet. And once it was through, Mr. Manley wrote us a letter to thank us: "I forget that, in the end, really I am just so grateful to get to spend this time with you, and I am so thankful to you guys for producing some of the work you do, and sharing some of the insight you have." This is an example of a teacher being affected by his student's work, and grateful that we can share some of what we know.
These interviews have helped me to think about what the principal and our teachers expect out of us. For us to keep learning even after high school, and that we are able to think for ourselves. That there are teachers who appreciate what their students have shared with them, instead of the teachers who don't listen to their kids. This is against John Gatto's idea that schools turn us into robots, and it agrees with Paulo Freire's belief that in order to have a flourishing learning environment it cannot be one-sided.
Resources:
-John Gatto, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto
-The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991, http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
-Paulo Freire, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed.
-Lisa Delpit: Interview with Lisa Delpit:
Discovering Brilliance in Our Children, interview with Nile Stanley: http://www.flreads.org/Publications/quarterly/samples/delpit_interview.htm
Friday, April 23, 2010
Homework #49, Writing On Film (Or Lack Of Film)
For our film, I hadn't really contributed anything. Other than having to walk in and out of the classroom with my book bag, and to try and be happy to be there on the 'first day of school'. There was the main little group of kids that wanted to investigate and try and save the teacher, and the other people were mostly background people.
Though it never got completed, our film focused mainly on the role of the students as the saviors trying to help the teacher (Jake Westwood) get out of trouble. The idea to have the kids as the liberator is the reverse of how it usually is, in the films we've watched in class including The Dead Poets Society, To Sir, With Love, Blackboard Jungle.. the teacher was always trying to help open their students' eyes. Yet in ours the teacher was a coke-addict, at first secretive but then it was discovered. The teacher was trying to teach "the darker side of history", and the kids were interested. Then there was a rumor circling around about the teacher's addiction, and the kids lost respect for him and stopped paying attention in class. The kids did save the teacher for a while, until the teacher's friend/ brother passes away, and the camera would show the teacher back to his old drug habits again.
The tone is pretty dark. It goes from all the kids being excited to be there, to the rumors spreading. The kids are losing faith in the teacher, and the mood is dimming. The teacher is trying to buy coke.. then gets robbed. This is dark as well, like the dark night Jake Westwood is found on. Then the kids start searching him and the house, and it seems like the mood is getting happier/ positive. It seems that the kids have saved him.. until his brother passes away. And everything goes back to how it started.
Esther's Film Starring Will, Class A, and written by Gavin:
How does the teacher feel about teaching the kids? How does this film compare to the teacher savior films that we watched in class and the theories?
The teacher is a drunk, who stumbles around the room telling the kids that they won't get anywhere in life. It seems like he really wanted to change the kids in a positive way, but they're too into themselves and their friends to notice. So he's frustrated and angry that he can't move them. He's trying to teach the kids about dead poets, and something that can actually help them open their minds to see the bigger pictures in life outside of what they know. Yet the kids keep saying they're bored, and interrupting the teacher. They don't think school is important to them at all, and feel more comfortable staying with what they know.
The students feel like the poets had nothing better to do in life, while they (the students) have purposeful things to do like talking on their cell phones and aim. While the teacher tells them "what these poets realized, and I think that many of you young talents of today don't, is that they had certain nuances of how they talk, they didn't spend their time all on systematic devices such as the one you are sporting right now, to rely on communicating with one another such as a faulty communions so to speak. And how much time do you spend communicating one on one? You're too afraid to do what these dead poets have done, you feel much safer in your cell phone security blankets". Mr. C (the teacher), realizes that the kids won't dare to go outside of the box of what they know. And, he's telling them that the dead poets are braver and more real, because they challenged their thinking and feeling.
The teacher feels like he can predict where the groups of kids are going to be. He pointed out the "smart kids", that don't really know anything about life. He sat next to the "gossip girls" who were talking about prom, and told them that "it's nice to see you doing something that you know, in fact its seems to be the only thing you will know, only thing you can know." And, he predicted where the class clown is going to end up, and identified him with the teacher's own father: "you'll be in a jail cell for twenty years. Say hi to my pop's for me."
This teacher wants to teach his students, yet the process is so frustrating that he has to numb his feelings with alcohol. There are times where he continues to talk, trying to be heard, even when the students are saying "this is boring." A theme that connects to Dead Poets Society, is the teachers teaching about dead poets. Robin William's character (John Keating) recognizes the boy's talents, and looks at them as people, instead of "empty vessels that must be filled". John Keating teaches at a rich private school, filled with white kids. Most of the other professors talk to talk, and don't consider teaching the kids something that will actually help them to get in touch with their own poetential.This connects to Paulo Freire's theories from the Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, where he discusses the banking method of teaching (where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it) compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them.
Though it never got completed, our film focused mainly on the role of the students as the saviors trying to help the teacher (Jake Westwood) get out of trouble. The idea to have the kids as the liberator is the reverse of how it usually is, in the films we've watched in class including The Dead Poets Society, To Sir, With Love, Blackboard Jungle.. the teacher was always trying to help open their students' eyes. Yet in ours the teacher was a coke-addict, at first secretive but then it was discovered. The teacher was trying to teach "the darker side of history", and the kids were interested. Then there was a rumor circling around about the teacher's addiction, and the kids lost respect for him and stopped paying attention in class. The kids did save the teacher for a while, until the teacher's friend/ brother passes away, and the camera would show the teacher back to his old drug habits again.
The tone is pretty dark. It goes from all the kids being excited to be there, to the rumors spreading. The kids are losing faith in the teacher, and the mood is dimming. The teacher is trying to buy coke.. then gets robbed. This is dark as well, like the dark night Jake Westwood is found on. Then the kids start searching him and the house, and it seems like the mood is getting happier/ positive. It seems that the kids have saved him.. until his brother passes away. And everything goes back to how it started.
Esther's Film Starring Will, Class A, and written by Gavin:
How does the teacher feel about teaching the kids? How does this film compare to the teacher savior films that we watched in class and the theories?
The teacher is a drunk, who stumbles around the room telling the kids that they won't get anywhere in life. It seems like he really wanted to change the kids in a positive way, but they're too into themselves and their friends to notice. So he's frustrated and angry that he can't move them. He's trying to teach the kids about dead poets, and something that can actually help them open their minds to see the bigger pictures in life outside of what they know. Yet the kids keep saying they're bored, and interrupting the teacher. They don't think school is important to them at all, and feel more comfortable staying with what they know.
The students feel like the poets had nothing better to do in life, while they (the students) have purposeful things to do like talking on their cell phones and aim. While the teacher tells them "what these poets realized, and I think that many of you young talents of today don't, is that they had certain nuances of how they talk, they didn't spend their time all on systematic devices such as the one you are sporting right now, to rely on communicating with one another such as a faulty communions so to speak. And how much time do you spend communicating one on one? You're too afraid to do what these dead poets have done, you feel much safer in your cell phone security blankets". Mr. C (the teacher), realizes that the kids won't dare to go outside of the box of what they know. And, he's telling them that the dead poets are braver and more real, because they challenged their thinking and feeling.
The teacher feels like he can predict where the groups of kids are going to be. He pointed out the "smart kids", that don't really know anything about life. He sat next to the "gossip girls" who were talking about prom, and told them that "it's nice to see you doing something that you know, in fact its seems to be the only thing you will know, only thing you can know." And, he predicted where the class clown is going to end up, and identified him with the teacher's own father: "you'll be in a jail cell for twenty years. Say hi to my pop's for me."
This teacher wants to teach his students, yet the process is so frustrating that he has to numb his feelings with alcohol. There are times where he continues to talk, trying to be heard, even when the students are saying "this is boring." A theme that connects to Dead Poets Society, is the teachers teaching about dead poets. Robin William's character (John Keating) recognizes the boy's talents, and looks at them as people, instead of "empty vessels that must be filled". John Keating teaches at a rich private school, filled with white kids. Most of the other professors talk to talk, and don't consider teaching the kids something that will actually help them to get in touch with their own poetential.This connects to Paulo Freire's theories from the Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, where he discusses the banking method of teaching (where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it) compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Homework #48, Treatment Film Idea
This is late now but I might as well do it..
Setting: Art Class
It is a new school year, in high school and Cassie is trying to get excited for art class. Every year it has been the same boring things. The kids go inside, and take their seats, and are allowed to do whatever they want for the whole class period. It feels pointless to Cassie, because she really wants to learn something for once, to become a better artist. She takes out her sketchbook and sighs, realizing that half of the class isn't even there. Secretly, Cassie sneaks glances at the students sitting next to her and sketches her. Then she looks at some of her other classmates and draws them as well.
The next day Cassie goes in, and takes a seat in the corner by herself. But instead of taking out her notebook, she just sits there. She is moved by nothing and wishing that there was something to do. There are even less of her classmates in class today, and her teacher seems upset. Then, Cassie gets an idea. She asks her teacher Ms. Mansi why she doesn't teach anything in class, when they're supposed to be learning how to become young artists.
Ms. Mansi is dumbfounded, because she had no idea that that was the reason for the absence of students in her classroom. After school that day, Ms. Mansi sits at her desk and tries to think of what to do. She is conflicted between being scared that if she tries something new she will lose the little amount of students she has left, and knowing that the other students she lost got bored and left.
The next day, Ms. Mansi goes to class, and asks Cassie if she could round up all of the kids that have been skipping for her. She thinks that she has an idea for an engaging activity. The next day, Cassie has successfully managed to round up all of her missing classmates. Appreciating it, Ms. Mansi makes an announcement that the class is going on a field trip, and that the principal has already okayed it. Confused where they are going, there students abruptly start muttering amongst themselves. Looking over at Ms. Mansi, Cassie sees that she is starting to get upset, and calmly gets the class to be quiet. She tells Ms. Mansi that she should tell the class where they are going. Grateful to have the floor, Ms. Mansi tells the class that they are going to be needing their notebooks, because they are going to the butterfly show at the Natural History Museum, to learn how to sketch the butterflies and flowers.
Excited, the students grab their bags and line up, waiting for Ms. Mansi to lead the way. After the subway ride, the class arrives at the museum. Ms. Mansi is leading the way, with Cassie at the back of the group. They try really hard to make sure everyone gets to the butterfly room safely. Once they arrive, Cassie realizes that some of the kids are missing. Worried that Ms. Mansi will notice and get upset again, Cassie excuses herself to go to the 'bathroom'. Wandering around the museum, Cassie comes across some of the students and asks them to go to the butterfly room. They agree to, and Cassie keeps walking. She has the idea to check the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth. Among the crowd of people, Cassie sees some familiar faces of her classmates. Quietly tapping them on the shoulder to get their attention, Cassie rounds up the crowd of couples snuggling in the dark, and the loners. With them helping her, Cassie manages to gather up all of her classmates, and successfully brings them back to the Butterfly Conservatory.
The rest of the day goes well, with all of Ms. Mansi's students intrigued by sketches of butterflies. Cassie and Ms. Mansi round up the kids, and safely transport them all back to school. Once they arrive in the classroom, the students eagerly share their sketches with each other. The day ends, with the class looking forward to and wondering how the next day will be. As Cassie is about to leave, she looks around the class and realizes two people are missing. And, she smiles, knowing right away where they must be: still in the dark room under the stars.
Setting: Art Class
It is a new school year, in high school and Cassie is trying to get excited for art class. Every year it has been the same boring things. The kids go inside, and take their seats, and are allowed to do whatever they want for the whole class period. It feels pointless to Cassie, because she really wants to learn something for once, to become a better artist. She takes out her sketchbook and sighs, realizing that half of the class isn't even there. Secretly, Cassie sneaks glances at the students sitting next to her and sketches her. Then she looks at some of her other classmates and draws them as well.
The next day Cassie goes in, and takes a seat in the corner by herself. But instead of taking out her notebook, she just sits there. She is moved by nothing and wishing that there was something to do. There are even less of her classmates in class today, and her teacher seems upset. Then, Cassie gets an idea. She asks her teacher Ms. Mansi why she doesn't teach anything in class, when they're supposed to be learning how to become young artists.
Ms. Mansi is dumbfounded, because she had no idea that that was the reason for the absence of students in her classroom. After school that day, Ms. Mansi sits at her desk and tries to think of what to do. She is conflicted between being scared that if she tries something new she will lose the little amount of students she has left, and knowing that the other students she lost got bored and left.
The next day, Ms. Mansi goes to class, and asks Cassie if she could round up all of the kids that have been skipping for her. She thinks that she has an idea for an engaging activity. The next day, Cassie has successfully managed to round up all of her missing classmates. Appreciating it, Ms. Mansi makes an announcement that the class is going on a field trip, and that the principal has already okayed it. Confused where they are going, there students abruptly start muttering amongst themselves. Looking over at Ms. Mansi, Cassie sees that she is starting to get upset, and calmly gets the class to be quiet. She tells Ms. Mansi that she should tell the class where they are going. Grateful to have the floor, Ms. Mansi tells the class that they are going to be needing their notebooks, because they are going to the butterfly show at the Natural History Museum, to learn how to sketch the butterflies and flowers.
Excited, the students grab their bags and line up, waiting for Ms. Mansi to lead the way. After the subway ride, the class arrives at the museum. Ms. Mansi is leading the way, with Cassie at the back of the group. They try really hard to make sure everyone gets to the butterfly room safely. Once they arrive, Cassie realizes that some of the kids are missing. Worried that Ms. Mansi will notice and get upset again, Cassie excuses herself to go to the 'bathroom'. Wandering around the museum, Cassie comes across some of the students and asks them to go to the butterfly room. They agree to, and Cassie keeps walking. She has the idea to check the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth. Among the crowd of people, Cassie sees some familiar faces of her classmates. Quietly tapping them on the shoulder to get their attention, Cassie rounds up the crowd of couples snuggling in the dark, and the loners. With them helping her, Cassie manages to gather up all of her classmates, and successfully brings them back to the Butterfly Conservatory.
The rest of the day goes well, with all of Ms. Mansi's students intrigued by sketches of butterflies. Cassie and Ms. Mansi round up the kids, and safely transport them all back to school. Once they arrive in the classroom, the students eagerly share their sketches with each other. The day ends, with the class looking forward to and wondering how the next day will be. As Cassie is about to leave, she looks around the class and realizes two people are missing. And, she smiles, knowing right away where they must be: still in the dark room under the stars.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Homework #47, Brainstorming For Class Film
Ideas (in no specific order):
**It could just be something written on the board, and the writing keeps changing. Like the video for Bad Day (closer to the end of the video, starting at 2:24ish). Somehow making it look like time has gone by. An example couple be a blank board, except for in the middle someone could have written "school is_____" and the word in the blank could keep changing.
*A paper ball fight set in Andy's classroom. This is a good example of chaos. Except for instead of just being paper balls they should be opened at some point to reveal surveys. Like.. do you like school? what is your favorite class?
* It should be like the walk around advisory last semester, where the class is walking around the city and the teacher is trying to get the class' attention, by stopping in random buildings and parks and teaching the class.
*An empty classroom with only Andy in it. The film should show only Andy, talking, and then the camera should zoom out and show that no one is sitting in any of the seats. And there should be that corny cricket noise in the background when the film shows that Andy is really talking to himself.
*Andy at the front of the room with all the survey questions on the board. "Raise your hand if you like waking up and going to school every morning?" etc. (we already did this once).
* A game of telephone that is school related as well as being school appropriate.
* Something set in the hallway. Students sitting and the teacher walking around being annoying and trying to get the classes' attention.
* A film comparing a classroom that does by textbooks (kind of like Ms Vasco's class when she was mad) compared to Andy's class where the students get to participate more.
* The mood of the film could be really calm and peaceful, so the kids would have to be busy writing or taking a survey or something.
*Somehow get the mood across as all the kids being antsy, and hardly being able to sit still (eager for class to be over before lunchtime as an example).
**It could just be something written on the board, and the writing keeps changing. Like the video for Bad Day (closer to the end of the video, starting at 2:24ish). Somehow making it look like time has gone by. An example couple be a blank board, except for in the middle someone could have written "school is_____" and the word in the blank could keep changing.
*A paper ball fight set in Andy's classroom. This is a good example of chaos. Except for instead of just being paper balls they should be opened at some point to reveal surveys. Like.. do you like school? what is your favorite class?
* It should be like the walk around advisory last semester, where the class is walking around the city and the teacher is trying to get the class' attention, by stopping in random buildings and parks and teaching the class.
*An empty classroom with only Andy in it. The film should show only Andy, talking, and then the camera should zoom out and show that no one is sitting in any of the seats. And there should be that corny cricket noise in the background when the film shows that Andy is really talking to himself.
*Andy at the front of the room with all the survey questions on the board. "Raise your hand if you like waking up and going to school every morning?" etc. (we already did this once).
* A game of telephone that is school related as well as being school appropriate.
* Something set in the hallway. Students sitting and the teacher walking around being annoying and trying to get the classes' attention.
* A film comparing a classroom that does by textbooks (kind of like Ms Vasco's class when she was mad) compared to Andy's class where the students get to participate more.
* The mood of the film could be really calm and peaceful, so the kids would have to be busy writing or taking a survey or something.
*Somehow get the mood across as all the kids being antsy, and hardly being able to sit still (eager for class to be over before lunchtime as an example).
Homework #46, "Teaching With Fire"
"Teaching With Fire" is a book of poems that have been submitted by teachers. "Through electronic mail, networks, and word of mouth, we spread the word that we were seeking poems that mattered to teachers". So it is a book compiled of poems that matter to teachers. The book is separated into eight sections, and each section has a different idea. Or something. Everyone who submitted a poem has a page about the first time they came across the poem, or how they feel about the poem, or both. Some of the pages also say where in their classroom they keep the poem, and how it has motivated them to teach. Some of the sections in this book include why teachers were inspired to teach, the struggles they faced while teaching, and how teachers make a change in the world.
One of my favorite poems in this book is Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
This poem makes me think of how some things that are good can't last forever. Like a tree that is in bloom with beautiful flowers now might not be here when the seasons change, but that it will be back again.
My topic was how can poetry be incorporated into school/ how do teachers use poetry. "Teaching With Fire" is a whole book on how poetry has inspired and influenced teachers. To teach with fire is to go outside the box (or in this case book), and to teach differently. One teacher in the book read the poem Fueled by Marcie Hans to her students, and had them go out on an outing to interact with nature. She says in the page before the poem "We discussed the poem, memorized it, and vowed to celebrate whatever 'springtime miracles' we found". This is an example of teaching differently, and having students do an activity based around a poem. This is also similar to the poet Taylor Mali, who I spoke about in this post. While the teachers that haver submitted poems picked poems that were not by themselves, Taylor Mali happens to be a teacher as well as a poet. He writes poems about his students, and how he teaches.
Another idea from the poem From Preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Witman is (it's the first visible paragraph):
"Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem" this is similar to the saying "Question Authority". To actually process information that is given to you and to have your own opinion on things. This can also be used for teachers who do their own thing while they're teaching. There is a way to teach like the traditional teacher, yet people (students in this case) get bored of things that are always the same. The films that we watched in class where the teacher comes in, and the students are either bored, and or chaotic and then the teachers find ways to get the kids' attention.. is a good example of teachers doing their own thing. What I'm trying to say is that I wanted to see how poetry can be brought into a classroom and used to teach students, and "Teaching With Fire" is a good example of how teachers have been influenced by poetry.
One of my favorite poems in this book is Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost:
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
This poem makes me think of how some things that are good can't last forever. Like a tree that is in bloom with beautiful flowers now might not be here when the seasons change, but that it will be back again.
My topic was how can poetry be incorporated into school/ how do teachers use poetry. "Teaching With Fire" is a whole book on how poetry has inspired and influenced teachers. To teach with fire is to go outside the box (or in this case book), and to teach differently. One teacher in the book read the poem Fueled by Marcie Hans to her students, and had them go out on an outing to interact with nature. She says in the page before the poem "We discussed the poem, memorized it, and vowed to celebrate whatever 'springtime miracles' we found". This is an example of teaching differently, and having students do an activity based around a poem. This is also similar to the poet Taylor Mali, who I spoke about in this post. While the teachers that haver submitted poems picked poems that were not by themselves, Taylor Mali happens to be a teacher as well as a poet. He writes poems about his students, and how he teaches.
Another idea from the poem From Preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Witman is (it's the first visible paragraph):
"Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem" this is similar to the saying "Question Authority". To actually process information that is given to you and to have your own opinion on things. This can also be used for teachers who do their own thing while they're teaching. There is a way to teach like the traditional teacher, yet people (students in this case) get bored of things that are always the same. The films that we watched in class where the teacher comes in, and the students are either bored, and or chaotic and then the teachers find ways to get the kids' attention.. is a good example of teachers doing their own thing. What I'm trying to say is that I wanted to see how poetry can be brought into a classroom and used to teach students, and "Teaching With Fire" is a good example of how teachers have been influenced by poetry.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Homework #45, Education in the good old days..
If you dig deep enough, there are bits and pieces of these articles that are interesting, yet as a whole it's hard to get into. There are these two philosophers, E.D, Hirsch, and Theodore R. Sizer, and they both have different opinions on the direction students should be taught. Sizer thought that schools should focus on teaching students how to think using the Habit's of Mind (like our school), and Hirsch thought that we should learn the things that will help us learn other things.
Coming from our school, and having been there since sixth grade, I've had to work with the H.O.M's a lot. Yet the main time teachers make us use the Habit's of Mind are when we're doing our exhibitions. When we don't include the Habit's of Mind in our exhibitions, we get points taken off. I'm not at all complaining, but we aren't told a lot to use the Habit's of Mind in our daily school routines. Yes, we need evidence in science when we're doing experiments. There are mostly no alternatives to solving math problems, since math is based around formulas. We may use the habits of mind subconsciously, but we are not constantly told by our teachers to use them.
In a way, it doesn't seem like Hirsh and Sizer's ideas contradict each other at all. They both thought that students should learn in a certain way. For Hirsh it says "Hirsch, whose campaign for cultural literacy has resulted in several hundred whole schools designed around his specific nuggets of information all children should be expected to learn". And for Sizer, he expects us to learn based around the Habit's of Mind.
It's hard to balance Sizer and Hirsch on a perfect scale, because Hirsch mainly focused on elementary schools, and Sizer focused mainly on high schools. At the moment I can't remember who was saying this, but someone said how there was a teacher that used to be a teacher at college, yet they felt like instead of working with the unprepared students in college, they should be working in high school and to prepare the kids for college. That kind of sounds like Hirsch and Sizer both, but Hirsch because he focused on elementary school.
Something that I really agree with Sizer on is when he said "we have to stop equating serious education with test scores." There are so many ridiculous tests like the S.A.T's and the regents, which shows if students are good test takers or not. I feel like Hirsch would agree with him here, because Hirsch wrote in his book The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them "Second, Romanticism concluded that a child is neither a scaled-down, ignorant version of the adult nor a formless piece of clay in need of molding, rather, the child is a special being in its own right with unique, trustworthy impulses that should be allowed to develop and run their course." There are teachers out there that want to play the hero, and shape students (us young people) into how the teacher wants us to be. Yet Hirsch wrote that we aren't clay that needs to be molded. We have our own individual shapes, and our own unique selves.
Something that I found kind of funny is how Sizer had written “Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.” The 'then get out of there way' part makes it seem like we're all going to sprint towards some piece of knowledge and tear it apart, or eagerly tear into it. I do agree with him though, sort of. We need to be inspired, then it's up to us what we do with our knowledge.
I think that both of the theories could definitely be 'adapted to work together'. They're both concerned with the same thing::the education of students. Sizer wants us to use the Habits of Mind, and Hirsch wants us to be able to learn the building blocks so that we can acquire other knowledge. Yet in a way the H.O.M's are a building block to a way of thinking, so those theories are kind of meshed together already.
Yet in the end, it is up to every individual how they chose to absorb information that is given to us, and every individual has their own perspective and way of pursuing what they want to pursue.
Coming from our school, and having been there since sixth grade, I've had to work with the H.O.M's a lot. Yet the main time teachers make us use the Habit's of Mind are when we're doing our exhibitions. When we don't include the Habit's of Mind in our exhibitions, we get points taken off. I'm not at all complaining, but we aren't told a lot to use the Habit's of Mind in our daily school routines. Yes, we need evidence in science when we're doing experiments. There are mostly no alternatives to solving math problems, since math is based around formulas. We may use the habits of mind subconsciously, but we are not constantly told by our teachers to use them.
In a way, it doesn't seem like Hirsh and Sizer's ideas contradict each other at all. They both thought that students should learn in a certain way. For Hirsh it says "Hirsch, whose campaign for cultural literacy has resulted in several hundred whole schools designed around his specific nuggets of information all children should be expected to learn". And for Sizer, he expects us to learn based around the Habit's of Mind.
It's hard to balance Sizer and Hirsch on a perfect scale, because Hirsch mainly focused on elementary schools, and Sizer focused mainly on high schools. At the moment I can't remember who was saying this, but someone said how there was a teacher that used to be a teacher at college, yet they felt like instead of working with the unprepared students in college, they should be working in high school and to prepare the kids for college. That kind of sounds like Hirsch and Sizer both, but Hirsch because he focused on elementary school.
Something that I really agree with Sizer on is when he said "we have to stop equating serious education with test scores." There are so many ridiculous tests like the S.A.T's and the regents, which shows if students are good test takers or not. I feel like Hirsch would agree with him here, because Hirsch wrote in his book The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them "Second, Romanticism concluded that a child is neither a scaled-down, ignorant version of the adult nor a formless piece of clay in need of molding, rather, the child is a special being in its own right with unique, trustworthy impulses that should be allowed to develop and run their course." There are teachers out there that want to play the hero, and shape students (us young people) into how the teacher wants us to be. Yet Hirsch wrote that we aren't clay that needs to be molded. We have our own individual shapes, and our own unique selves.
Something that I found kind of funny is how Sizer had written “Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.” The 'then get out of there way' part makes it seem like we're all going to sprint towards some piece of knowledge and tear it apart, or eagerly tear into it. I do agree with him though, sort of. We need to be inspired, then it's up to us what we do with our knowledge.
I think that both of the theories could definitely be 'adapted to work together'. They're both concerned with the same thing::the education of students. Sizer wants us to use the Habits of Mind, and Hirsch wants us to be able to learn the building blocks so that we can acquire other knowledge. Yet in a way the H.O.M's are a building block to a way of thinking, so those theories are kind of meshed together already.
Yet in the end, it is up to every individual how they chose to absorb information that is given to us, and every individual has their own perspective and way of pursuing what they want to pursue.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Homework #44.
From the Obama video:
-They have a high school student to do the whole introduction speech on how important school is.
-If I wasn't pursuing my education I wouldn't be here. We'll continue to have support.
-Teachers have to get us inspired, parents have to get us away from the tv, and OUR responsibility is to go to school and to put in the hard work that we're expected to do.
-"You have the responsibility for yourself to discover what that is." "You might not know that until you write that english paper... you might not know it until you do that for the science class."
-"I guarantee you'll need that education in order to do that. You cannot drop out of school and drop into a good job. The future of America depends on YOU." <-- but not pressure.
-We need every single one of you, to do this, to help us. "You're quitting on your country", if you quit school.
-"There is no excuse for not trying. Here in America you write your own destiny, you make your own future."
-"You believe what I believe."
I zoned in and out of his speech, but the things above are some of the things that I noticed. He's saying that as a mass of students, he's expecting all of us to do our best. That there's no reason for us to not try, and that if we quit school then we're quitting on the whole country. Yet I don't really know how if one student drops out of school, then the whole world will be altered? I don't think so. He says that we can't be successful if we don't have an education, yet I feel like there must be some people out there that are very successful and have either no education or not as much as we're forced into having.
From the Liberal Arts Education link:
-"..for developing the kind of intellectual power and propensity for action that the world needs to tackle the daunting challenges we face."
- if we read good works of literature, including Shakespeare, then it "can help clarify our own ideas and values and better understand the perspectives of others." So reading helps us understand our thoughts and the views of others.
-Science helps us test what we think and to analyze data.
-Studying art helps us appreciate diversity and "human imagination."
-It's not really what we learn in specific classes, but what we get out of it. And though 'our culture' tells us to focus on what we want to be, yet a lot of CEOs are looking for employees that have multiple skills.
-"The leaders of the future" are most likely going to be flexible.
Both of these articles expect us as a whole to help the world. They expect us to go to school, and develop our skills. I understand that we're the generation that is going to run things, and that adults are expecting us to go to school. But they all speak as adults expecting the kids to try hard in school so that they know they will be in good hands in the future. Obama acknowledged that students may have problems, and he named some examples of students -including himself- that overcame those problems. And, he said that there is no excuse for not trying. I don't like that both of these people are expecting US as a WHOLE to be GREAT.
-They have a high school student to do the whole introduction speech on how important school is.
-If I wasn't pursuing my education I wouldn't be here. We'll continue to have support.
-Teachers have to get us inspired, parents have to get us away from the tv, and OUR responsibility is to go to school and to put in the hard work that we're expected to do.
-"You have the responsibility for yourself to discover what that is." "You might not know that until you write that english paper... you might not know it until you do that for the science class."
-"I guarantee you'll need that education in order to do that. You cannot drop out of school and drop into a good job. The future of America depends on YOU." <-- but not pressure.
-We need every single one of you, to do this, to help us. "You're quitting on your country", if you quit school.
-"There is no excuse for not trying. Here in America you write your own destiny, you make your own future."
-"You believe what I believe."
I zoned in and out of his speech, but the things above are some of the things that I noticed. He's saying that as a mass of students, he's expecting all of us to do our best. That there's no reason for us to not try, and that if we quit school then we're quitting on the whole country. Yet I don't really know how if one student drops out of school, then the whole world will be altered? I don't think so. He says that we can't be successful if we don't have an education, yet I feel like there must be some people out there that are very successful and have either no education or not as much as we're forced into having.
From the Liberal Arts Education link:
-"..for developing the kind of intellectual power and propensity for action that the world needs to tackle the daunting challenges we face."
- if we read good works of literature, including Shakespeare, then it "can help clarify our own ideas and values and better understand the perspectives of others." So reading helps us understand our thoughts and the views of others.
-Science helps us test what we think and to analyze data.
-Studying art helps us appreciate diversity and "human imagination."
-It's not really what we learn in specific classes, but what we get out of it. And though 'our culture' tells us to focus on what we want to be, yet a lot of CEOs are looking for employees that have multiple skills.
-"The leaders of the future" are most likely going to be flexible.
Both of these articles expect us as a whole to help the world. They expect us to go to school, and develop our skills. I understand that we're the generation that is going to run things, and that adults are expecting us to go to school. But they all speak as adults expecting the kids to try hard in school so that they know they will be in good hands in the future. Obama acknowledged that students may have problems, and he named some examples of students -including himself- that overcame those problems. And, he said that there is no excuse for not trying. I don't like that both of these people are expecting US as a WHOLE to be GREAT.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Homework #42, The Importance Of Our Topics
Part B:
At first, I was wondering if there was an actual guide-book to how to be a teacher, so that's my first paragraph in part a. Then I decided to change my topic again to see if it was possible to be taught through poetry. So my question is how can education be found through poetry/ how do schools teach students through poetry?
For five years that I can really remember, and probably even before then, I've been really interested in reading and writing poetry. I remember when I was younger I got obsessed with poetry and my mom bought be a huge stack of poetry books. I had stayed up really late each night reading them. I don't write as much poetry as I would like to in my daily life, but when I do I enjoy it.
I am a poet, and it is part of my life. When I was in sixth grade I submitted a poem to a poetry website, and to my surprise it was published in a book among other poets. Then a couple years ago, I got published in another poetry book by the same people.
There are times in school where the teachers decide to have a poetry unit. In eighth grade the teachers had us create books of poetry, through collages as well as through typing up poems. We had students from the high school come in and help us, as well as to perform poetry that they had written. There was also another grade after that where they had us doing a poetry unit.
I cannot answer how poetry will change the world, but I know that it is in my life, it is sometimes in school, and there are a lot of poets in the world.
At first, I was wondering if there was an actual guide-book to how to be a teacher, so that's my first paragraph in part a. Then I decided to change my topic again to see if it was possible to be taught through poetry. So my question is how can education be found through poetry/ how do schools teach students through poetry?
For five years that I can really remember, and probably even before then, I've been really interested in reading and writing poetry. I remember when I was younger I got obsessed with poetry and my mom bought be a huge stack of poetry books. I had stayed up really late each night reading them. I don't write as much poetry as I would like to in my daily life, but when I do I enjoy it.
I am a poet, and it is part of my life. When I was in sixth grade I submitted a poem to a poetry website, and to my surprise it was published in a book among other poets. Then a couple years ago, I got published in another poetry book by the same people.
There are times in school where the teachers decide to have a poetry unit. In eighth grade the teachers had us create books of poetry, through collages as well as through typing up poems. We had students from the high school come in and help us, as well as to perform poetry that they had written. There was also another grade after that where they had us doing a poetry unit.
I cannot answer how poetry will change the world, but I know that it is in my life, it is sometimes in school, and there are a lot of poets in the world.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Homework #41, The Joys Of Researching.
How to become a teacher:
Dr. R. J. Kizlik, "Tips on Becoming a Teacher" http://www.adprima.com/tipson.htm, Updated February 13, 2010:
"Good teachers: are good at explaining things, keep their cool, have a sense of humor, like people, especially students in the age range in which they intend to teach, are inherently fair-minded, have 'common sense', have a command of the content they teach, et high expectations for their students and hold the students to those expectations, are detail oriented, are good managers of time, can lead or follow, as the situation demands, don't take things for granted, have some "hard bark" on them..." You get the point. I was wondering if there was an actual guide to how to be a teacher, and what tips would be recommended, and I found these things in the bold print of the website. I'm still wondering if teachers actually read things like this, or if it's all just taken for granted.
I know that our school is sort of unique, and how the teachers do their own things. Well, mostly. Like our whole digitalization unit, and how instead of desks we sit around in a circle so that we can all awkwardly make accidental eye-contact with each other. We have internship, and no school on thursdays. We have a roof garden. We have days where students teach mini-lessons or act.. etc. I guess every teacher does something different, but if anyone needs help that website might be useful.
A great lesson to learn, for inside school AND outside school. You can watch the video, or read it.
I saw this guy perform once upstate new york one time, and he was as amazing as he is here. So check it out, here. Or the words, here. I just thought this poem was a great example on why people can't always just use spell check, and how they still need to read over what they type to try and catch the mistakes as well.
I think this website is a great source, and that finding out things about learning in school is a great way instead of reading text books. A good lesson is that wisdom can be found everywhere, in books, in poetry, in painting, not just in school. Also, this guy Taylor Mali is a teacher, and has a great attitude towards teaching, and his kids. He has a whole book on poetry called What Learning Leaves, which discuses how it's like being a teacher and how it's like to be a student as well.
The problem with teenagers these days, and their lack of thinking and expressing themselves:
The video, here here. Words, here. This whole poem captures the way a big percentage of teenagers talk these days, on purpose or just because they were infected by the way other people speak. After I saw him perform this I realized how much I say "like", without even meaning to. He has stickers that say "this is a like-free zone", and stickers with the word like in a circle with a slash through them. Some lines that stood out to me are: "it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you're talking about? Or believe strongly in what you're saying?" I know how in movies there's often the really smart character (like in Grease) who gets laughed at by the not so smart characters. It depends on the group, but sometimes the incredibly smart people get laughed at, and the other people don't.
And this whole other chunk:
"I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too." This poem should really be read by all teenagers. This is a really good example of what Jacara said, that "we just dumb ourselves down". There are also a ton of movies for example with the girl who dresses in a way that shows too much skin, and purposely acts like she doesn't know anything, but then she comes in wearing her glasses and carrying books and the other kids look at her and think "Woah, what happened to her? She's a hot mess." What's happened to us? Why is it considered by a large amount of us that it's uncool to be smart?
"What Teachers Make":
video, here. Words, here.
Chunks of this poem:
"I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best."
and..
"I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).
Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?"
He's a good example of a teacher who has the right kind of attitude. I remember sitting there and feeling like he was calling me out for something that I'd done wrong, even though I hadn't done anything. I was really sick this day and my dad had dragged me out of bed to see him perform, which I was so grateful for him doing. Taylor Mali is a very passionate poet, performer, and from his poetry he seems like a very passionate teacher as well. I got to speak to him for a couple minutes and he seemed like a really great person. This is a great example of being a teacher that is largely out of the box, instead of teaching the typical text book stuff. He makes a "goddamn difference! What about you?"
Robert Frost once said, "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper." found here. Patience and to be able to hold your temper are some very important things to have, that a lot of people aren't very capable of doing. Robert Frost is saying that to be able to listen to anything without getting mad is to be educated. To be able to listen to stories, or lectures, (or anything else,) without getting mad, is what education is according to him.
This reminds me of the "In Death" series by Nora Roberts that I've been reading. The main character Eve is able to sit and interview tons and tons of people daily, and she has to keep her temper even when she's talking to people who piss her off, or who she thinks are the killers. Because if she and the other characters in the book weren't able to keep their temper while interviewing murderers, then they'd scare them away and they wouldn't be able to build a case against them because they'd have no evidence.
Wisdom, found once again in poetry:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. " works to the rest of The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, here. This poem tells a story of someone standing at a fork in the road, and seeing one path that is over grown, and one that's been walked on often. Then, instead of taking the road that everyone else traveled, he took the road "less traveled by." Taking this metaphor into real like, he's talking about there are so many times where people take the easy road, that everyone else has already taken. Because it's the easy way out, or because people know that other people have taken that path and been okay. Yet he decided to make his own way in life, instead of doing what everyone else before him had decided to do.
This is like how it would be for a kid in a family of dentists and lawyers to decide to become a poet or a musician instead of to continue along with the family tradition. The parents had probably decided that the kid would follow along in their footsteps, so the kid's decision to become an artist would be taken as shock and disappointment. This situation is told a lot in many stories. But instead of deciding to do what everyone else has already done, it is more important to follow your dreams, and/ or your gut, and do what you want to do.
Dr. R. J. Kizlik, "Tips on Becoming a Teacher" http://www.adprima.com/tipson.htm, Updated February 13, 2010:
"Good teachers: are good at explaining things, keep their cool, have a sense of humor, like people, especially students in the age range in which they intend to teach, are inherently fair-minded, have 'common sense', have a command of the content they teach, et high expectations for their students and hold the students to those expectations, are detail oriented, are good managers of time, can lead or follow, as the situation demands, don't take things for granted, have some "hard bark" on them..." You get the point. I was wondering if there was an actual guide to how to be a teacher, and what tips would be recommended, and I found these things in the bold print of the website. I'm still wondering if teachers actually read things like this, or if it's all just taken for granted.
I know that our school is sort of unique, and how the teachers do their own things. Well, mostly. Like our whole digitalization unit, and how instead of desks we sit around in a circle so that we can all awkwardly make accidental eye-contact with each other. We have internship, and no school on thursdays. We have a roof garden. We have days where students teach mini-lessons or act.. etc. I guess every teacher does something different, but if anyone needs help that website might be useful.
A great lesson to learn, for inside school AND outside school. You can watch the video, or read it.
I saw this guy perform once upstate new york one time, and he was as amazing as he is here. So check it out, here. Or the words, here. I just thought this poem was a great example on why people can't always just use spell check, and how they still need to read over what they type to try and catch the mistakes as well.
I think this website is a great source, and that finding out things about learning in school is a great way instead of reading text books. A good lesson is that wisdom can be found everywhere, in books, in poetry, in painting, not just in school. Also, this guy Taylor Mali is a teacher, and has a great attitude towards teaching, and his kids. He has a whole book on poetry called What Learning Leaves, which discuses how it's like being a teacher and how it's like to be a student as well.
The problem with teenagers these days, and their lack of thinking and expressing themselves:
The video, here here. Words, here. This whole poem captures the way a big percentage of teenagers talk these days, on purpose or just because they were infected by the way other people speak. After I saw him perform this I realized how much I say "like", without even meaning to. He has stickers that say "this is a like-free zone", and stickers with the word like in a circle with a slash through them. Some lines that stood out to me are: "it has somehow become uncool to sound like you know what you're talking about? Or believe strongly in what you're saying?" I know how in movies there's often the really smart character (like in Grease) who gets laughed at by the not so smart characters. It depends on the group, but sometimes the incredibly smart people get laughed at, and the other people don't.
And this whole other chunk:
"I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too." This poem should really be read by all teenagers. This is a really good example of what Jacara said, that "we just dumb ourselves down". There are also a ton of movies for example with the girl who dresses in a way that shows too much skin, and purposely acts like she doesn't know anything, but then she comes in wearing her glasses and carrying books and the other kids look at her and think "Woah, what happened to her? She's a hot mess." What's happened to us? Why is it considered by a large amount of us that it's uncool to be smart?
"What Teachers Make":
video, here. Words, here.
Chunks of this poem:
"I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best."
and..
"I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).
Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?"
He's a good example of a teacher who has the right kind of attitude. I remember sitting there and feeling like he was calling me out for something that I'd done wrong, even though I hadn't done anything. I was really sick this day and my dad had dragged me out of bed to see him perform, which I was so grateful for him doing. Taylor Mali is a very passionate poet, performer, and from his poetry he seems like a very passionate teacher as well. I got to speak to him for a couple minutes and he seemed like a really great person. This is a great example of being a teacher that is largely out of the box, instead of teaching the typical text book stuff. He makes a "goddamn difference! What about you?"
Robert Frost once said, "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper." found here. Patience and to be able to hold your temper are some very important things to have, that a lot of people aren't very capable of doing. Robert Frost is saying that to be able to listen to anything without getting mad is to be educated. To be able to listen to stories, or lectures, (or anything else,) without getting mad, is what education is according to him.
This reminds me of the "In Death" series by Nora Roberts that I've been reading. The main character Eve is able to sit and interview tons and tons of people daily, and she has to keep her temper even when she's talking to people who piss her off, or who she thinks are the killers. Because if she and the other characters in the book weren't able to keep their temper while interviewing murderers, then they'd scare them away and they wouldn't be able to build a case against them because they'd have no evidence.
Wisdom, found once again in poetry:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. " works to the rest of The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, here. This poem tells a story of someone standing at a fork in the road, and seeing one path that is over grown, and one that's been walked on often. Then, instead of taking the road that everyone else traveled, he took the road "less traveled by." Taking this metaphor into real like, he's talking about there are so many times where people take the easy road, that everyone else has already taken. Because it's the easy way out, or because people know that other people have taken that path and been okay. Yet he decided to make his own way in life, instead of doing what everyone else before him had decided to do.
This is like how it would be for a kid in a family of dentists and lawyers to decide to become a poet or a musician instead of to continue along with the family tradition. The parents had probably decided that the kid would follow along in their footsteps, so the kid's decision to become an artist would be taken as shock and disappointment. This situation is told a lot in many stories. But instead of deciding to do what everyone else has already done, it is more important to follow your dreams, and/ or your gut, and do what you want to do.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Homework #40, Interviews And Other Thoughts
Part A:
Questions:
For kids/other:
-What is your favorite part of school, that makes it more unique than other schools?
-Can you name three (positive) things that you like about school?
- Borrowing/using one of Jacara’s questions: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
-Do you think you learn more from school or from social interactions?
-What would you spend your time doing instead of going to school?
-What are some things that you’ve learned outside of school that are more important than things you’ve learned in school?
-What are some qualities that make up your favorite teacher?
-Least favorite teacher?
-If you could pick a class that you could eliminate, what would it be?
-If you had the choice to create a class, what would it be?
-What is your favorite time of the school day?
Adults:
- What is one of the memories that you cherish the most from high school?
- If you’ve taught before, or are a teacher, what are some things that you’ve decided to teach differently instead of following by the books?
-As a teacher, what are some important qualities that you have found in your students?
- Can you name three skills that you learned in school that you use in your every day life as an adult?
A short, informal interview with Janet:
February 20th, 2010:
I was talking to a woman in Florida who had taught English for high-schoolers for thirty-two years.
Q: If you’ve taught before, or are a teacher, what are some things that you’ve decided to teach differently instead of following by the books?
A: She'd told me how she'd taught a course on passion in literature, and her students had studied relationships between characters in books. Then the headmaster at the school had told her that she had to change the course name so that it didn't say "passion", and was instead named “relationships found in literature," since her boss obviously couldn’t deal with thinking about passion. She had felt that instead of going by the books, she wanted to teach her students a different way of thinking.
Q: How could you teach high-schoolers for thirty-two years? It must have been hard.
A: I actually liked teaching your age group. I’ve had other people ask me that before, but I thought it was a great experience.
Q. As a teacher, what are some important qualities that you have found in your students?
A. She told me how I seemed like an intelligent individual, who knew what she wanted and how to express myself. And my mom had said, “There you go Hannah, coming from a former English teacher that must be a good thing.”
Interviewing myself:
Q: As a student, can you name three (positive) things that you like about school?
A: The best thing that has come out of school is the people that I’ve met. Well person I’ve met. It’s the reason that keeps me going to school –and staying in school- on the days that I don’t want to be there. I also really enjoyed having art class four times a week, and getting to do something that I enjoy doing during school hours. I also liked when we got the chance to read for a period in English class, since it was like a break from the usual routine.
Q: What is your favorite part of school, that makes it more unique than other schools?
A: Something that I like about our school is that we’re basically a non-regents school. Instead they prepare us for college by making us write exhibitions. I feel like being able to write a big important paper and present it is better than taking some tests.
Q: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
A: Frustrating.
Q: Why?
A: Because it consumes eight hours of the day that we have to be in school, and then teachers insist on giving us homework to do when we’re outside of school. We’re teenagers! We have social lives that exist outside of school! Plus, teachers have to create the work and grade it!
Q: Do you think you learn more from school or from social interactions?
A: I think I learn some interesting things in school, but that I also learn a lot of fascinating things outside of school. Over vacation I’ve been learning a lot of different facts from my grandpa, and hearing how life has changed since he was my age. Overall, I’d definitely say I learn more things from social interactions/being outside of school.
Q: What would you spend your time doing instead of going to school?
A: I’d spend my time reading, writing, and doing artwork. I’d get to paint a lot more. I feel like I would spend some of the time exploring new places, and re-visiting old places. I’d also spend even more time with my loved one.
Q: If you had the choice to create a class, what would it be?
A: I think it’d be free time. I know some other schools have at least an hour of study time/free-time, where they get to just hang out or do their homework.
Interviewing my brother Kyle:
Q: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
A: Artistic.
Q: What is your favorite part of school, that makes it more unique than other schools?
A: The fact that we have studios that divide the students, for example: we have dance, drama, fine arts, and etcetera.
Q: Can you name three (positive) things that you like about school?
A: The people, the building, and the location.
Q: What is good about the location and the building?
A: The school is in a brand new building, sponsored by Tony Bennett, and it’s in Queens..
Q: Do you think you learn more from school or from social interactions? (Like outside of school)
A: Social interactions.
Q: Why?
A: Because in school we learn things that won’t be necessary in life, and outside of school we choose what we’re going to talk about.
Q: What would you spend your time doing instead of going to school?
A: Mm.. Make-up and.. Hair.
Q: If you could pick a class that you could eliminate, what would it be?
A: Global. I f**king hate global. Actually no English. Wait math, because we’ll never need to know any of that bull***t.
Q: If you had the choice to create a class, what would it be?
A: Make-up! Or nap-time. Oh. Fierce 101 with Kyle F.
Q: What is your favorite time of the school day?
A: Lunch? *Laughs* No actually, I like art, because I have two hours of it, and it’s nice and relaxing.
Interview with my grandpa:
High school, beer parties, being pinned
My grandpa talks a lot, but there are times where the things he’s saying are actually interesting. Or parts of them.
Q: What is one of the memories that you cherish the most from high school?
A: I remember there was this one time, there was this event that you had to ask a girl or boy on a date to. And it was fancier or more sophisticated to have a girl shipped in form another school. So I asked this girl that I had hung out with at summer camp if she would be my date. I’d never dated her at camp, or outside camp, but I could never stop thinking about her. So, I met her at the train station, and she was waving and screaming “Barry! Hello, hello!” Then we took the bus up to the campus together. And on the bus, I remember her telling me that she was pinned.
Q: Pinned? What does that mean?
A: Pinned is like promising yourself to someone. It’s like: I’m going to go buy the ring next week when I’ve saved enough to buy it. This was very serious in our day. She had promised herself to another man, and then agreed to be my date, forgetting to mention that she was pinned until she was on the bus up with me! So, I’d told my buddies, and they sympathized with me, because everyone knew it wasn’t cool to be pinned and let a guy spend his time and money on you while you were already pinned. So, my friends' solution was to get me drunk. I was a freshman in college, and they were older than me. I don’t think I spent one day with her the whole time she was there.
Q: Why did she come as your date if she was already pinned?
A: She had told me that her mom had told her to go, as a good learning experience to get to see the campus. Not considering the guy that was taking her as his date, but because it would be a good learning experience for her daughter.
Q: Huh. Is there a specific tradition that your school used to do?
A: There was this one tradition that our school had. There was a bridge between the campus and where the living cabins were, and it was a tradition for couples to come and kiss their dates in the middle of the bridge. I remember offering to walk her back to her cabin one day, and trying to kiss her on the bridge. And it was a suspension bridge, so it was kind of scary. She had told me that she wasn’t going to let me kiss her, because her mother had told her to wait until the sixth date until she kissed him. So I took her out on the second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day.. And then on the sixth day I tried again, and she let me kiss her in the middle of the bridge.
He also suggested that I should never take a college class at 8am, because everyone is tired then and no one feels like working. Also because when you have a choice to pick what time you can take classes, why would you chose a class at 8 in the morning? I found this to be a good piece of advice.
Another really interesting thing about my grandpa and schooling is that he teaches a class every year to the other people in the community that he lives in here. He teaches a whole course on Gilbert and Sullivan, where he shows plays by Gilbert and Sullivan, and he also holds lectures on them.
Q: What is the main difference between teaching a course to high-schoolers, versus teaching people my grandpa's age?
A: He'd told me how it's "absolutely silent when I'm showing a movie." and that he would just sit there while they were watching a movie, and he'd listen to the silence. "At my age they've been taught to be disciplined, and to behave like adults." He also said how there was one woman out of the whole class that left after act two, and how he had thought "oh well, you win some, you lose some", but that she had come back inside three minutes later. "I think that she had gone outside to blow her nose or something!"
Interviewing my mom:
Q: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
A: Am I allowed to say education? It seems obvious.
Q: What is one of the memories that you cherish the most from high school?
A: Every day at ten of four, my crew would meet in the cemetery, across the street from school, and hang out, and talk, and hang. To this day, when I look at a clock, and I see it's ten of four, and I think about those guys. Therefore, it's not a memory that has anything to do with being in school..
Q: If you’ve taught before what were some things that you decided to teach differently instead of following by the books?
A: I taught social work graduate students for many years. What I liked best was that when I taught them the theories I also helped them learn to apply the theories to real people. What was important and different about that was that it helped to train them to understand real people and made the theories come alive. A lot of teachers just teach theory, and never teach their students how to question them, understand them, and apply them to the real world.
Q: As a teacher, what were some important qualities/good that you found in your students? Or can you describe one of your old students?
A:The best and most important quality in a student is the ability to wrestle with an idea until you understand it, and then, to hold it up to the real world, see if it works for you, and have the courage to reject it if it doesn't, no matter how famous the person who said it was. I was an awesome teacher.
Q: Can you name three skills that you learned in school that you use in your every day life as an adult?
A: I like that question. Um, one, what I just discussed, about the importance of questing everything, no matter who said it. Two, from psychology, the ability to read people's behavior, and analyze both their conscious and unconscious thoughts, intentions, and meaning. The third one is the ability to research, which I think is one of the most important things you -hopefully- learn in school, and need for the rest of your life.
Q: Can you name three (positive) things that you liked about school?
Um, I liked having my preconceptions challenged. That's one, two, I liked working in groups, collaborating. Can I say lunch, no I'm kidding, that was just a joke.. The moment when you understand an idea.
Part B:
Something that I had thought about before, but also am thinking about even more now because of the interviews is how important it is to take what teachers are trying to teach us, and question them. Like how my mom said to be able to disagree with anyone's ideas, no matter who said it. There are some things that you can't really question about school, like formulas in science class to find density, or how to find the change in electronegativty etc that work when you use them, but there are other classes/things that it's important to question and synthesize what we're learning. A good motto to have, even in school, is to “dare to be remarkable”. To be able to speak up when the teachers are saying something wrong, or just to be able to disagree with another student and to speak one's mind.
Another thing that one of the interviews made me think about is how cool art class was two years ago, because Ms Kaye taught us art and art history. While I was interviewing Kyle I felt like he would of said something about school being boring as his one word, yet he said it's artistic since he goes to an art school. Another other thing that I found interesting were all the stories my grandpa was telling me about traditions like being pinned, and kissing on the bridge, and how our school doesn't really do anything like that. So, there are some positive things that our school does, like not being test taking school, but where are the interesting things?
Questions:
For kids/other:
-What is your favorite part of school, that makes it more unique than other schools?
-Can you name three (positive) things that you like about school?
- Borrowing/using one of Jacara’s questions: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
-Do you think you learn more from school or from social interactions?
-What would you spend your time doing instead of going to school?
-What are some things that you’ve learned outside of school that are more important than things you’ve learned in school?
-What are some qualities that make up your favorite teacher?
-Least favorite teacher?
-If you could pick a class that you could eliminate, what would it be?
-If you had the choice to create a class, what would it be?
-What is your favorite time of the school day?
Adults:
- What is one of the memories that you cherish the most from high school?
- If you’ve taught before, or are a teacher, what are some things that you’ve decided to teach differently instead of following by the books?
-As a teacher, what are some important qualities that you have found in your students?
- Can you name three skills that you learned in school that you use in your every day life as an adult?
A short, informal interview with Janet:
February 20th, 2010:
I was talking to a woman in Florida who had taught English for high-schoolers for thirty-two years.
Q: If you’ve taught before, or are a teacher, what are some things that you’ve decided to teach differently instead of following by the books?
A: She'd told me how she'd taught a course on passion in literature, and her students had studied relationships between characters in books. Then the headmaster at the school had told her that she had to change the course name so that it didn't say "passion", and was instead named “relationships found in literature," since her boss obviously couldn’t deal with thinking about passion. She had felt that instead of going by the books, she wanted to teach her students a different way of thinking.
Q: How could you teach high-schoolers for thirty-two years? It must have been hard.
A: I actually liked teaching your age group. I’ve had other people ask me that before, but I thought it was a great experience.
Q. As a teacher, what are some important qualities that you have found in your students?
A. She told me how I seemed like an intelligent individual, who knew what she wanted and how to express myself. And my mom had said, “There you go Hannah, coming from a former English teacher that must be a good thing.”
Interviewing myself:
Q: As a student, can you name three (positive) things that you like about school?
A: The best thing that has come out of school is the people that I’ve met. Well person I’ve met. It’s the reason that keeps me going to school –and staying in school- on the days that I don’t want to be there. I also really enjoyed having art class four times a week, and getting to do something that I enjoy doing during school hours. I also liked when we got the chance to read for a period in English class, since it was like a break from the usual routine.
Q: What is your favorite part of school, that makes it more unique than other schools?
A: Something that I like about our school is that we’re basically a non-regents school. Instead they prepare us for college by making us write exhibitions. I feel like being able to write a big important paper and present it is better than taking some tests.
Q: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
A: Frustrating.
Q: Why?
A: Because it consumes eight hours of the day that we have to be in school, and then teachers insist on giving us homework to do when we’re outside of school. We’re teenagers! We have social lives that exist outside of school! Plus, teachers have to create the work and grade it!
Q: Do you think you learn more from school or from social interactions?
A: I think I learn some interesting things in school, but that I also learn a lot of fascinating things outside of school. Over vacation I’ve been learning a lot of different facts from my grandpa, and hearing how life has changed since he was my age. Overall, I’d definitely say I learn more things from social interactions/being outside of school.
Q: What would you spend your time doing instead of going to school?
A: I’d spend my time reading, writing, and doing artwork. I’d get to paint a lot more. I feel like I would spend some of the time exploring new places, and re-visiting old places. I’d also spend even more time with my loved one.
Q: If you had the choice to create a class, what would it be?
A: I think it’d be free time. I know some other schools have at least an hour of study time/free-time, where they get to just hang out or do their homework.
Interviewing my brother Kyle:
Q: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
A: Artistic.
Q: What is your favorite part of school, that makes it more unique than other schools?
A: The fact that we have studios that divide the students, for example: we have dance, drama, fine arts, and etcetera.
Q: Can you name three (positive) things that you like about school?
A: The people, the building, and the location.
Q: What is good about the location and the building?
A: The school is in a brand new building, sponsored by Tony Bennett, and it’s in Queens..
Q: Do you think you learn more from school or from social interactions? (Like outside of school)
A: Social interactions.
Q: Why?
A: Because in school we learn things that won’t be necessary in life, and outside of school we choose what we’re going to talk about.
Q: What would you spend your time doing instead of going to school?
A: Mm.. Make-up and.. Hair.
Q: If you could pick a class that you could eliminate, what would it be?
A: Global. I f**king hate global. Actually no English. Wait math, because we’ll never need to know any of that bull***t.
Q: If you had the choice to create a class, what would it be?
A: Make-up! Or nap-time. Oh. Fierce 101 with Kyle F.
Q: What is your favorite time of the school day?
A: Lunch? *Laughs* No actually, I like art, because I have two hours of it, and it’s nice and relaxing.
Interview with my grandpa:
High school, beer parties, being pinned
My grandpa talks a lot, but there are times where the things he’s saying are actually interesting. Or parts of them.
Q: What is one of the memories that you cherish the most from high school?
A: I remember there was this one time, there was this event that you had to ask a girl or boy on a date to. And it was fancier or more sophisticated to have a girl shipped in form another school. So I asked this girl that I had hung out with at summer camp if she would be my date. I’d never dated her at camp, or outside camp, but I could never stop thinking about her. So, I met her at the train station, and she was waving and screaming “Barry! Hello, hello!” Then we took the bus up to the campus together. And on the bus, I remember her telling me that she was pinned.
Q: Pinned? What does that mean?
A: Pinned is like promising yourself to someone. It’s like: I’m going to go buy the ring next week when I’ve saved enough to buy it. This was very serious in our day. She had promised herself to another man, and then agreed to be my date, forgetting to mention that she was pinned until she was on the bus up with me! So, I’d told my buddies, and they sympathized with me, because everyone knew it wasn’t cool to be pinned and let a guy spend his time and money on you while you were already pinned. So, my friends' solution was to get me drunk. I was a freshman in college, and they were older than me. I don’t think I spent one day with her the whole time she was there.
Q: Why did she come as your date if she was already pinned?
A: She had told me that her mom had told her to go, as a good learning experience to get to see the campus. Not considering the guy that was taking her as his date, but because it would be a good learning experience for her daughter.
Q: Huh. Is there a specific tradition that your school used to do?
A: There was this one tradition that our school had. There was a bridge between the campus and where the living cabins were, and it was a tradition for couples to come and kiss their dates in the middle of the bridge. I remember offering to walk her back to her cabin one day, and trying to kiss her on the bridge. And it was a suspension bridge, so it was kind of scary. She had told me that she wasn’t going to let me kiss her, because her mother had told her to wait until the sixth date until she kissed him. So I took her out on the second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day.. And then on the sixth day I tried again, and she let me kiss her in the middle of the bridge.
He also suggested that I should never take a college class at 8am, because everyone is tired then and no one feels like working. Also because when you have a choice to pick what time you can take classes, why would you chose a class at 8 in the morning? I found this to be a good piece of advice.
Another really interesting thing about my grandpa and schooling is that he teaches a class every year to the other people in the community that he lives in here. He teaches a whole course on Gilbert and Sullivan, where he shows plays by Gilbert and Sullivan, and he also holds lectures on them.
Q: What is the main difference between teaching a course to high-schoolers, versus teaching people my grandpa's age?
A: He'd told me how it's "absolutely silent when I'm showing a movie." and that he would just sit there while they were watching a movie, and he'd listen to the silence. "At my age they've been taught to be disciplined, and to behave like adults." He also said how there was one woman out of the whole class that left after act two, and how he had thought "oh well, you win some, you lose some", but that she had come back inside three minutes later. "I think that she had gone outside to blow her nose or something!"
Interviewing my mom:
Q: If you had to describe school using one word what would it be?
A: Am I allowed to say education? It seems obvious.
Q: What is one of the memories that you cherish the most from high school?
A: Every day at ten of four, my crew would meet in the cemetery, across the street from school, and hang out, and talk, and hang. To this day, when I look at a clock, and I see it's ten of four, and I think about those guys. Therefore, it's not a memory that has anything to do with being in school..
Q: If you’ve taught before what were some things that you decided to teach differently instead of following by the books?
A: I taught social work graduate students for many years. What I liked best was that when I taught them the theories I also helped them learn to apply the theories to real people. What was important and different about that was that it helped to train them to understand real people and made the theories come alive. A lot of teachers just teach theory, and never teach their students how to question them, understand them, and apply them to the real world.
Q: As a teacher, what were some important qualities/good that you found in your students? Or can you describe one of your old students?
A:The best and most important quality in a student is the ability to wrestle with an idea until you understand it, and then, to hold it up to the real world, see if it works for you, and have the courage to reject it if it doesn't, no matter how famous the person who said it was. I was an awesome teacher.
Q: Can you name three skills that you learned in school that you use in your every day life as an adult?
A: I like that question. Um, one, what I just discussed, about the importance of questing everything, no matter who said it. Two, from psychology, the ability to read people's behavior, and analyze both their conscious and unconscious thoughts, intentions, and meaning. The third one is the ability to research, which I think is one of the most important things you -hopefully- learn in school, and need for the rest of your life.
Q: Can you name three (positive) things that you liked about school?
Um, I liked having my preconceptions challenged. That's one, two, I liked working in groups, collaborating. Can I say lunch, no I'm kidding, that was just a joke.. The moment when you understand an idea.
Part B:
Something that I had thought about before, but also am thinking about even more now because of the interviews is how important it is to take what teachers are trying to teach us, and question them. Like how my mom said to be able to disagree with anyone's ideas, no matter who said it. There are some things that you can't really question about school, like formulas in science class to find density, or how to find the change in electronegativty etc that work when you use them, but there are other classes/things that it's important to question and synthesize what we're learning. A good motto to have, even in school, is to “dare to be remarkable”. To be able to speak up when the teachers are saying something wrong, or just to be able to disagree with another student and to speak one's mind.
Another thing that one of the interviews made me think about is how cool art class was two years ago, because Ms Kaye taught us art and art history. While I was interviewing Kyle I felt like he would of said something about school being boring as his one word, yet he said it's artistic since he goes to an art school. Another other thing that I found interesting were all the stories my grandpa was telling me about traditions like being pinned, and kissing on the bridge, and how our school doesn't really do anything like that. So, there are some positive things that our school does, like not being test taking school, but where are the interesting things?
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