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?