HW # 58 Parenting 102

Part 3: Interviews

From what I've heard about my brother's early childhood, I think my parents and Marguerite had similar parenting styles. My brother, who is 6 1/2 years older than I am, was pretty hyperactive. When he was little his teacher said that the classroom could barely contain him. He was always ready to race to the playground. The head of his school wanted to put him on a drug to calm him down. My parents wouldn't allow it. They didn't yell at him. Instead they helped him develop his two big talents, sports and art. They put him in a basketball program at Basketball City when he was only 3 or 4 years old. My mother took him to an art program at the Brooklyn Museum starting at age 3.
I bet Marguerite would've done the same thing. She said that being a parent means making sacrifices like taking the time to figure out what kids need and then finding a way to give them the right experiences. By focusing my brother on what he wanted to do, my parents say he learned how to control his body and not be so wild. He also developed skills really early so that he was able to get a lot of confidence and get better and better at doing the things he loved to do. I think Mr.Marks would do something similar with his son. He said he would develop his interests. I think this means that instead of giving him too much discipline, he will try to get his son to follow his own interests which means learning how to discipline yourself to get better at whatever it is you like doing.

Part 4: Insights on Parenting

When it comes to my own experience about how my parents raised me when I was little. I only remember the end of this little story I am about to tell. First of all, I went to preschool when I was 4 months old. My mom had worked for a French organization when my brother was born that let her have a whole year of maternity leave. By the time I was born she worked for Public Radio which only gave 3 months of maternity leave. When I was about a year old, the head of the preschool told my parents that I should have my hearing tested. It turned out that I was severely deaf in both ears. I had to wait until I was 4 1/2 years old to have an operation that my parents were told would have a 50% chance of restoring my hearing. I learned to lip read, but I didn't speak well because I couldn't hear the sounds that 2 year olds need to hear to learn how to speak. The operation was successful but I had to have 3 years of speech therapy. I took a test for kindergarden, and my parents were told that I had some mental retardation. My mother told me that she did not get upset. She just told the New York City Department of Education that she did not believe it. It turned out that after a thousand meetings and more testing I was allowed to go to a regular public school at the right grade level. I just had to have a lot of speech therapy. At the same time my parents helped me develop the interests I had which were roller blading, soccer, baseball, basketball, and art.

If I were to ever have children, based on how my parents coped with my problems at an early age, I will know how to teach them how to overcome their misfortunes. The primary rule that I have learned from my parents' experience with me is to discover a child's interests, then develop those interests until they become talents that he/she can use for the rest of his/her life. Fortunately, I had interests that my parents helped me develop that allowed me to become a more well-rounded individual. When I was going through speech therapy at a very young age, my speech sounded "different" and I was mocked for my lack of proper enunciation. At that same time my parents took me and my brother to Basketball City on weekends where I learned to play with the help of the likes of Teresa Wetherspoon and Stephon Marbury. I used the skills I learned at Basketball City in my gym class where I could dominate my mean classmates in games like "horse", "Utah", and even full court "5 on 5." This is how I learned the word "confidence," which is something that cannot be taught but can only be built up. I thank my parents and brother for that.

HW # 57 Parenting 101

I have not given much thought to how kids should be parented. In fact, I don’t think I have given any thought to this. Is parented a word? Off the top of my head I think having a sense of humor is a great thing. Little kids are funny. You have to enjoy them as a parent. Otherwise, what is the point? If you have a strange kid, it can be a challenge I guess. Our next door neighbors have three kids. They are half-Chinese. One of them is unusual. He is terrified of my dad, who likes all kids. This kid is afraid of dark skin. His parents are embarrassed about it. He also memorized all the subway train lines and what stops they make when he was about three. He would tell on other kids in his preschool. He had not one friend there. His mother told my mother that she has no idea where he came from. I have no idea about what I would do with a kid like that.


The best part about how my parents raised me was to let me try to keep up with my brother who is six years older. I was allowed to get roller blades and go ice skating before I was three. We would go to Battery City Park and go really fast on roller blades and up and over all the marble steps and benches. There was a great playground there with trampolines. There was also the best ice cream shop. I always had mango-lemon sorbet. Those were the days. I don’t think I was that much trouble. If I wasn’t racing around, I was passed out in my stroller. Maybe the key to great parenting is to exhaust kids. You have to let them get all their energy out.


First I will write abut the Doctor Ferber article. I should first say that my mother hated the whole idea of Ferberization, which was very popular apparently when I was a baby. My mother said that she would let y brother and me cry for approximately half a second before she would come pick us up in our crib. Now, back to our neighbors. Two years ago in the summer their 3rd child seemed to be constantly shrieking night after night. One night three of the neighbors called the police. When the police arrived, about ten of them, our neighbor Vivien (the baby’s mom) said, “We are just trying to Ferberize her.” The weird thing is these neighbors have a powerful spotlight on their garden all night long because they say this child is so afraid of the dark. It seems like such a waste of electricity and it’s annoying for the neighbors (us). I wonder if Doctor Ferber has a plan for this type of problem.

I like the article about the backfiring of giving little kids choices. It's funny because it all seems true. Little kids say what they really think and they learn how to drive their parents crazy and have a little control at a very early age. And when you think about it what's wrong with that? When you're little you are always being told what to do and especially what not to do. It's a good thing to try to get your way from time to time. Otherwise you would be a complete wimp. The good thing about this mother is that she wrote a funny article about her kids. You just have to enjoy them. I think that's the trick.

HW # 56 Interviews & Survey Question

Assignments # 1 / # 2 - The following questions were answered by Maria C.(family friend), Reed M.(brother), and Linda M.(mom)

Approximately how many hours of physical exercise do you have in a week?
M: 7 hours
R: 38 hours
L: 10 hours

Approximately how many hours do you spend in sedentary recreation (TV watching, playing video games, non-academic on computer time) in a week?
M: 17 hours
R: 20 hours
L: 17 hours

Approximately how many servings of fresh fruit do you have in a week. How many servings of salad (including vegetables).
M: 14 servings - fruit 6 servings – salad / vegetables
R: 21 servings - fruit 14 servings – salad / vegetables
L: 20 servings - fruit 14 servings – salad / vegetables

Approximately how many sodas or fruit juice with added sugar do you have in a week?
M: 7 servings
R: 2 servings
L: 0 servings

Approximately how many servings of junk food (potato chips, candy, Mcdonald’s anything) do you have in a week?
M: 1 serving
R: 1 serving
L: 3 servings

Assignment # 3

I happened to interview three people who all felt that they could eat better than they do despite the fact that they probably are much healthier eaters than most people. Two out of three of the people I interviewed felt that they do not get nearly enough exercise. (My brother, the third person gets enough exercise for four people and a cheetah.) These three people all live in a part of Brooklyn where there are lots of stores that sell fresh fruits and vegetables and green markets. Also, there are clean playgrounds and a park, and the neighborhood is safe. It is a lot easier to eat well and get exercise in certain parts of this city as opposed to others.

Assignment # 4

Are there relationships you have with people on a daily or almost daily - people
who work in stores or restaurants or who play music in the subways - that are important to you?

HW # 55

Part 1
Independent research question:

How do the qualities of poor neighborhoods contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic?

Part 2

Julie's question
Why do we as people feel the need to be accepted by others? Why cant people just accept others for who they really are?

These are great questions, but I feel they need to be given a little more focus. Is this really a question about humans' need for conformity? Is it also about a need to belong and a fear about not belonging? I'm not sure this is helpful. It's really late.

Aja's question
"What Distinguishes Friends From Family (And Vice Versa)At what point does a Friend become family? What is that tipping point?

This is an interesting question. I immediately thought about that saying, You can choose your friends but not your family. I think you are talking about adoption of a friend who can then be treated like family and not just as a friend. Are you talking about the friend becoming a member of the immediate family? Wouldn't he/she have to move in?

Part 3

Whelan, Ellen-Marie. Confronting America's Childhood Obesity Epidemic. 10 May 2010. Center for American Progress. 12 May 2010. www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/childhood-obesity-epidemic. htm

Clark, Muriel S. City Can Fix Rising Childhood Obesity Rates in Poor Neighborhoods, Report Says. 23 March 2010. DNAinfo. 12 May 2010.http://dnainfo.com/20100323/manhattan/city-can-fix-rising-childhood-obesity

Weiting, J. Michael. Cause and Effect in Childhood Obesity: Solutions for a National Epicemic. Oct. 2008. JAOA. 12 May 2010. www.joao.org/cgi/content/ful/108/10/545

Ambindar, Marc. Beating Obesity. May 2010. The Atlantic. 12 May 2010. http://www.the atlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/04/beating-obesity

HW # 54

Extroverted (E) 55.88% Introverted (I) 44.12%Sensing (S) 56.25% Intuitive (N) 43.75%Thinking (T) 56.76% Feeling (F) 43.24%Judging (J) 55.88% Perceiving (P) 44.12%Your type is: ESTJ
Accuracy:

ESTJ - "Administrator". Much in touch with the external environment. Very responsible. Pillar of strength. 8.7% of total population

ESTJ
organized, group oriented, focused, conventional, leader, emotionally stable, anal, attention seeking, planner, realistic, fearless, responsible, finisher, decisive, norm following, respects authority, punctual, hard working, stiff, self confident, thinks rules and regulations are important, follows the rules, clean, outgoing, social, content, does not like being alone, normal, regular, does not like weird or strange people / things - intolerant of differences, strict, disciplined, aggressive, assertive, content, happy, proper, formal, strict with self, meticulous, strong sense of purpose
*the descriptions listed here are made up of personality items. people who scored high on this type scored higher on the above items compared to the average. (more info)back to personality types

favored careers:
executive, ceo, supervisor, business consultant, manager, strategist, financial planner, business person, office manager, public relations manager, international business specialist, business analyst, management consultant, operations manager, loan officer, lawyer, marketing, sports management, government employee, investment banker

disfavored careers:
poet, artist, songwriter, musician, novelist, art therapist, theatre teacher, art curator, film editor, video game designer, photo journalist, travel writer, actor, record store owner, camera operator, art historian, music teacher

Having taken this test twice with just minor changes in acouple of questions I was told I was a completely different person. For example, by changing the "I am weird" question -- and some other question (I've forgotten what it is now) I was told that I was very religious and a poet. My feeling about this kind of test is that it really is pretty inacurate unless you are the type of person who can answer all the questions without even having to think about them. The answer is attached to the specific boxes so if you could have gone either way on a few questions and you take the recommended professions seriously you could end up in serious trouble. So as far as using this test to think about your relationships with people, I wouldn't take it very seriously. Appreciating differences and maximizing compatibility go together anyway. With friends we aren't all completely the same or different, at least usually.

HW # 53 Survey Analysis

Part 1 - I did complete the survey



Part 2 - This survey was easy to take due to anonymity. To quote Sandy, " I normally wouldn't feel comfortable answering (certain questions) if the survey was not anonymous." The way I approached the questions in this survey was by acting on impulse and not overly thinking about them. I believe that in some cases, and maybe even in many cases, the more time you give people to think about a question the more likely their answer will fall farther from the truth. A question like "Your parents/guardians know who you really are" made me stop in my tracks for a moment. Then I felt kind of boring because my parents know what I'm doing and where I am 24/7 (school, dance, soccer, at home). I sadly do not have an avatar who could be unknown to my family. The commonalities of the questions that gave me the most to think about were the ones about self--What do I want out of life and how do people see me?

Part 3 - I think it is interesting that quite a lot of people don't do any work around the house whatsoever. Maybe we should get community service hours for helping out at home. It is interesting that quite a lot of us say that we're tired of the people at school. Who do we mean: the teachers or the students? I think we mean the other students. It's interesting that so many people say that they have definite plans for the future. Maybe they think the question meant the near-term future.

Part 4 - It is interesting that our group has a higher drinking percentage than the professional YRBSS survey (36% compared to 26%). Our group has a similar eating disoder percentage compared to the YRBSS group(17.6% vs. 15.8%). Among sexually active students only 45% of our group used condoms compared to 61.5% in the YRBSS group. That's a little worrying. The questions would really need to have been more similar to make a comparison between the two surveys have a lot of meaning.

HW # 52 - Initial Theories of Human Relationships

Our whole life long we are moving in and out of relationships. The good ones last, and it’s important that they do. They are a way of keeping the past a part of your life so that you aren’t just stuck in the present. Good memories are better if you have people to share them with. And it’s good to have someone to share the not so good ones with too.

Relationships start early. Unless we are really unlucky we are all born into families. Before we know it we are in school, especially preschool forming relationships with a teacher and peers. I started preschool at three months old. I actually still know a kid who started at my preschool when I did. We have had a relationship longer than we can remember, literally. It’s a great thing that we can both remember the giant jungle gym and both practically killing ourselves for jumping from the top and having the teacher call our parents at work to come meet us at the emergency ward.

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. A. to our class, is retired, but I still run into her in the neighborhood. She can never believe that I am taller than she is because I will always be this wild little three foot high person to her. She says that she still has a picture I drew of her as a bird on her refrigerator. It might not really be there, but I like thinking that it is.

Then there was Nan O’Shea, my favorite elementary school teacher. She taught third grade, and we had a kid in our class who, if we had been old enough to think about we would unanimously would have predicted would become a terrorist. This kid was so antisocial that his mother had to sit in the back of the class for the whole second half of the year. I remember that we had a parents’ day when we had our work out on our desk, and he drew a toilet on all of our notebooks. He had to write the word “toilet” underneath so you could tell what the drawing was.

Relationships give stability to people’s lives so it’s a good thing to make an effort with them. I think that maybe relationships are a good sign of how a person lives his or her life. To have strong ones it seems to be helpful not to be too self-centered or arrogant or envious. People have to like you for yourself not for someone you are trying to be. That is too confusing. Being yourself and just trying to develop your own strengths no matter what they are and valuing other people for their strengths is a healthy way to go through life. All of these characteristics – not being too self-centered, not being arrogant, not being envious, and sharing are good for nations to have as well as people. Governments are often arrogant with disastrous outcomes. The Shah of Iran was an arrogant guy who had all this oil money and spent none of it on his people, and he had a nasty death squad. So there was a revolution, and now crazy religious fundamentalists in power. The U.S. is afraid of Iran’s capability for nuclear weapons. But the U.S. was the great supporter of the Shah because he was our friend in the Middle East where all the oil is. The U.S. didn’t care about the people of Iran when the Shah was in power. It was only thinking about it’s own selfish needs. It never pays to be really selfish and uninterested in other’s needs. This seems to me to be ethical conduct that wins friends, keeps away enemies, and benefits humanity as oppose to blowing it up.

HW # 51 History(school)

Everyone is worried about the poor reading, math, and writing scores of American kids compared with kids in other industrialized countries. Out of 17 countries, we are dead last. Thomas Friedman wrote about how the next generation of Americans are going to hold the country back because of their weak science and math education. He talked to the CEO of Intel, a top U.S. corporation, who said he would rather hire young Americans but might have to hire better educated Chinese people if he has to. It seems
that there are three parts to any solution to the problem of how to make Americans better educated: change the kids, change the teachers, change the schools.

Changing the Students: In the future this could be a great solution and this is the reason why. Jewish people are only 0.2% of the world population, but 54% of world chess champions are Jewish, 27% of Nobel prize winners in physics are Jewish, and 31% of Nobel prizes in medicine are Jewish (New York Times, David Brooks). In the United States only 2% of the population is Jewish, but 21% of Ivy League students are Jewish, 37% of Academy Award winning directors are Jewish, 31% of the major philanthropists are Jewish, and 51 % of nonfiction Pulitzer Prize winners are Jewish. Being Asian is also
good. Asians only make up 4% of the U.S. population, but Harvard has 17% Asian students, and Stuyvesant High School is nearly 50% Asian. A Chinese/American doctor I read about said, “Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity was the most important…In terms of school achievement, it is better to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.” John Gatto, in his Teacher of the Year speech, said his students were materialistic, cruel, and have no sense of the future. It seems as though kids need to have some Jewish or Asian genetic material to give them an intellectual edge. We might have to wait a couple of decades for this solution to the problem of how to make American kids smarter.

Changing the Schools: A big criticism of schools is that they have a structure that is so rigid it is like a factory. John Gatto says that schools are so full of rules and testing that they kill kids’ curiosity and keep them from using their imagination. Gatto says that when schools were started, they were based on German thinking about how to control the population and keep students from becoming rebels. The government liked that idea because they wanted workers who would do boring jobs in factories and help make other people and the country rich. Gatto thinks the purpose of schools today is still to dumb down future citizens so they won’t cause trouble demanding change and so that they will be uncritical consumers of whatever is marketed to them. There is some truth in this because people bought tons of SUVs when they could get a good deal on them even though they are terrible for the environment and dangerous to drive. Companies also need smart people to train to be inventors and leaders. More of the jobs available are going to be in technology companies that need smart people. If the companies have to be in other countries then the U.S. will lose jobs and money. It is not that easy changing schools to make students get interested in learning and work harder. Some of the ideas Gatto had about how to make schools develop kids better have been adopted by SOF like the community service requirement to gets students out in the real world so they can learn by doing and the exhibition requirements, which are independent study projects where the students have more say in deciding what they want to learn.

Changing the Teachers: Paulo Freire wrote about the bad “banking system” of teaching where the teacher just deposits information in students’ heads, and they just passively receive it. This system is about memorization and accepting whatever the teacher says without thinking for themselves. The better way of teaching is the “problem-posing system that involves more of an equal partnership between the teacher and the students who have dialogs and think more creatively about subjects. The “banking system” is easier for teachers because they don’t have to get as involved with their students. Dr. Lisa Delpit is an educator who talks about the importance of teachers making the effort to help black children catch up on some things like early reading skills that they did not come in knowing without separating them from the white children in the class. It would be easier for the teacher to send them to a remedial class, but that is not good for most of these children who are made to feel slow or stupid when they are not. They just do not get certain skills early at home although they do get other skills from their own culture that the white children might not get.

To make the educational system in this country better, it is necessary to change students, schools, and teachers. Getting students to change on their own is a big challenge (until they can get some Jewish or Asian cultural genes) because not everyone can be that motivated especially if they don’t get encouragement from home. Getting schools to change on their own is hard because they are institutions that have been doing things the same way for a long time. Teachers are the hope for change because they can have the best influence on the students and the school. That means the pressure to make American students into smarter grownups is all on the teachers. They need to get more training if they need it and be paid more so that more smart people will choose teaching as a career. They should also get paid more or get travel grants as incentives when their students show big improvement.

HW # 50 History(school)

Gatto – Against School

John Gatto, who is a retired teacher, describes the whole public school system in this country as if it was a factory that produces kids who can’t think for themselves because that is the whole idea. Schools are individual factories that control kids and teachers with rules and testing that kill kids’ curiosity and any ways of teaching that use teachers’ imagination. Gatto says that when the school system was started, it was based on German thinking about how to control the population and keep them from being rebels. The people in power liked that idea because they needed workers who would do the boring jobs and make other people and the country really rich. Gatto thinks public schools still do this. He also says that public schools are designed not to produce leaders who could cause trouble and that they are also designed to produce people who are great consumers. He calls them “sitting ducks” for marketing things we don’t need like SUVs.

Gatto says that the purpose of today’s public schools is still to create dumbed down citizens who won’t get together and start rioting or something to demand their rights and who will buy lots and lots of stuff to keep big business big. There are only supposed to be a few leaders who will be taught to keep the whole system going. At first I thought that maybe public schools today aren’t the way they are in a negative way (being boring and not trying to develop all the kids) because of evil (selfish) people in power. Maybe they are just out of date because no one has figured out how to change them. When I think more about this, I think he makes a lot of great points. People in power want to stay in power, and they don’t want trouble. People in power also want people who support them to make a lot of money to make the country wealthy. They don’t want a lot of people saying that SUVs aren’t safe and hurt the environment. Now we have Obama in power. It seems like a good time for people who want change in the public schools to make their case now. The things Gatto suggests like “being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then” sound like great ideas to me if I am understanding what he means. I think it’s a great idea for kids to pursue something they are good at or have a real interest in and be given the time to do that. It’s just that it takes some great teachers to help all the kids in a big class discover what it is they could get really interested in.


Gatto – The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

Gatto writes about how he gets awards as a teacher not for teaching subjects that will inspire and develop kids’ minds but for teaching school. He describes how he teaches school by doing what the “central control” wants him to do: 1. has kids stay in the classroom and know their place (smart class, dumb class, something in between); 2. teaches kids to react to bells like a trained animal (show some interest after the starting bell and then drop everything with the ending bell); 3. teaches kids to give up all their individuality and get permission for everything); 4. teaches them the importance of conformity to whatever study subjects and rules he decides; 5. makes kids understand their self-worth based on the evaluation of people who hardly know them or what they can do; 6. teaches them that they are always being watched and should have no privacy or private time.

The irony of this essay is that it is written by a New York State Teacher of the Year who is trashing the whole school system. He describes school as a prison where kids have a number and can’t move around and teachers are the prison guards, keeping them in line. The teacher is a dictator, and kids have to conform or else. As in his other article he makes the point that school is a place designed historically to keep the poor, the middle class, and any creative thinkers in their place. Important lessons like self-reliance and perseverance, and caring about others aren’t taught. Kids today are really doomed because when they go home, they have a limited life there too. They are not having time with their families or community members the way they did in the old days. They are mostly watching television, listing to Ipods, or going online – doing pretty passive stuff. According to Gatto, everybody should be glad that this is what kids are doing: just conforming and not developing much as individuals so they won’t rock the boat and will keep buying stuff I guess.


Gatto – Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech

John Gatto’s Teacher of the Year speech is like a proclamation demanding the death of schools in the U.S. Schools aren’t doing their job because we are 19 in a ranking of 19 industrial nations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. According to Gatto, schools only teach students how to take orders not how to think for themselves. They also create a caste system with homeless people at the bottom so they are a danger to society and to humanity. The combination of school and television for today’s kids is a special killer. Kids don’t learn how to teach or entertain themselves. They are dependent on others. Gatto says his students are also materialistic, cruel, and have no sense of the future. They live in a boring present.

This speech is so anti-school that it makes me think that Gatto was exaggerating to make a point. He talks about home schooling being a great alternative to regular school. And he says that home schooled kids are way ahead of other kids with their ability to think. Home schooling sounds like a terrible idea to me. First of all I think kids should be in social groups of people their own age. Second, many families don’t have a stay at home parent who can do the schooling, and many parents wouldn’t be great teachers. At times Gatto seems to wish it was the 1800s again when a lot of people lived on farms, and kids could have jobs on the farm and learn from adults. Some of his ideas about how to make schools better have been adopted by SOF like the community service requirement to get students out in the real world so they can learn by doing and the exhibitions, which are independent study projects where the students and have more say in what they are working on.


Freire – Chapter 2 Pedagogy of the Oppressed

This whole chapter, which was heavy reading to say the least, was making a contrast between the “banking” concept of education and the “problem-posing” concept of education. The “banking” concept is that the teacher just injects information in the student’s head, who just passively receives it, files it, and stores it. It is an extremely passive process. The “problem-posing” concept involves more of an equal partnership between the teacher and the student who have dialogues and think creatively about subjects to have a deeper understanding of them and try to think in new ways about them. The “banking” system is about memorization and accepting whatever the teacher says. People in power called the oppressors like the “banking” system of education because it trains people to accept the status quo. The oppressors hate the “problem-posing” concept because it makes minds question everything and could lead to the overthrow of them. The teacher who uses the “problem-posing” method of teaching is developing the individuality of students and giving them some power. The oppressors would say forget that.

This was sort of a philosophical criticism of the kind of teaching that produces conformists. That is the “banking” model where information is taken in but not explored or considered in a creative way the could give the student some real knowledge about it. The “problem-posing” model is more of an existential one, where as we actually learned, the student would be creating his own existence and his own humanity not just being an automaton, who is not really human because he or she is not really thinking for
himself or herself. I think the idea is that the only way society can get better is if there is a “problem-posing” education model used. Otherwise, nothing will change because the people in power want to stay in power.


Delpit – Silenced Dialogue

Dr. Lisa Delpit is a educator and writer who talks about the cultural conflict that happens for African-American kids because they don’t come from the “culture of power” that the schools operate on. She talks about how black children don’t come to school when they are very young having as many early reading skills as white children. They can be put automatically in a remedial program when they don’t need that. They just need a little of the teacher’s time to catch up, and they can do that quickly and stay in the same
classroom. She talks about the codes that “relate to linguistic forms, communication strategies, and presentation of self, that is ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting.” Kids who grow up not in the “culture of power” are at a big disadvantage, and it isn’t because they don’t have their own rich culture. It is because the people from the “culture of power” don’t even think about its existence.

I understand completely what Dr. Delpit is talking about. Black kids do come from a different culture that has great strengths but it isn’t the “culture of power.” It think she is right when she says that even liberal white people don’t really want to talk about this fact because it is “uncomfortable.” They want everyone to be treated equally. But black kids do need a little extra help when they are very young, and it shouldn’t be separate remedial help. That makes it seem as though they are stupid or slow. They aren’t. They just need to catch up on some things they weren’t taught at home. Also, I thought it was interesting about the student in the writing class who didn’t just want other students commenting on her work. She said that black culture teaches you to be creative and improvise. What she wanted was help with structure. Cross-cultural understanding is obviously still not so great in schools.

Interview – Mr. Manley

Mr. Manley made the following points about his views on schools and education:
He prefers being at a school like School of the Future that isn’t a Regents school that deals in too much information injection.
He likes the idea of exhibitions and thinks they are way superior to Regents tests.
He went to Columbia Teachers College and learned progressive teaching methods
that are more interactive than methods that are common at other public high schools.
4. He likes to use comedic personality and experience as a comic to communicate as
a teacher.


Mr. Manley obviously is not a fan of the “banking” concept of educating kids, where information is poured or injected into heads and learning is a completely passive experience. He supports the “problem-posing” method of teaching that is more of a partnership with kids contributing to their own learning. He likes dialog in the classroom, and he can get more of it by being funny and getting the kids involved because they are having a good time. He encourages a lot of conversation in the classroom. He also moves around the room a lot encouraging every kid to participate.

HW # 49 History(school)

a. In the film I was one of the "smart kids," who were all Asian except for me. I was the token black "smart kid," like Token in South Park. None of us had a speaking part. The only direction I received was to look sad when the teacher told us that we were just as useless as the rest of the class because all we cared about was our grades. As stupid as it sounds, not reacting required acting on my part(in addition to not laughing). In real life I like to make an effort with my work but I don't think about trying to be a smart kid. Of course I like getting good grades in the same way I like winning in sports. But, I don't dwell on the grades or on the wins and losses.

b. The message of our film, directed by Esther and written by Gavin, is that even a super/savior teacher has weaknesses that can get the best of him/her. In this case Mr. C, the teacher who is played by Will, has just lost his wife and
is drinking in the classroom as a result. The idea is that he feels that he has lost
everything, including his will (get it) to teach. I think that this loss is kind of
a gimick to show that teaching isn't easy and that ideally students have to try to
meet the teacher half way. If they don't, it's too much stress on the teacher, and
if he/she has personal life stress too, the teacher can just lose it. The tone of the film is depressing because the teacher is letting stereotypes of the kids affect how he treats them. There are the grade obsessed smart kids, superficial popular girls, the digital world cool kids, and the teachers lets them all have it.
There isn't any realization here on the part of the kids that maybe there is some
truth in what he says and no sympathy for this suffering guy.

c. This film is nothing like Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers where the students respond to their teacher's quirky techniques. In Dead Poets Society, Mr.Kedding teaches the class about conformity through a walking exercise demonstrating how after a couple of steps the 3 boys who are walking in a row will eventually perform the same rhythmic walk. Mr. Kedding's goal during his tenure as English professor at Welton Academy is to teach his boys to come up with their own meaning of life and how they want to live it, in this case their own walking style. In Freedom Writers Mrs. Gruwell lays a long piece of tape across the middle of the classroom telling the kids that if a statement she has read applies to them that they should step on the tape. Mrs.Gruwell's goal through this exercise is to get her students (who are mostly gang members of black, Asian, and Latino descent) to realize that they are a lot more similar than they think hoping to promote a more caring environment in her classroom. Our class film seems so much more depressing in comparison to these films because Mr. Kedding and Mrs.Gruwell are instructing in a positive way while Mr. C is acting all negative. Also, in Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers, Mr.Kedding's and Mrs.Gruwell's students actually care about them. In our film the students don't even react when Mr. C walks out.

d. The teacher/savior is an ideal. When teachers get their teaching certificates, they aren't savior certificates. The teachers aren't social workers (most of them) but in cities and maybe in other places too they might have to try to be to actually teach. So maybe in schools where kids are troubled and don't have parents to encourage them or be able to help them, teachers
should get social work training and be paid more. And maybe in more middle class schools there should be more incentives or penalties for kids to make an effort to meet the teacher half way. These teachers should be paid more too because they have to figure out how to inspire students who just aren't really into it, and that must be a huge challenge too. Teachers should have incentives too. There must be some fair ways to figure out how a teacher is trying to help all his/her kids develop their minds and then getting rewarded for it. It's really annoying to hear what these bankers are getting paid for contributing nothing to others or actually even harming others. People have to decide how important teaching really is and then invest in it just like they have to do with the environment.

HW # 48 Treatment for Savior/Teacher Movie

Mr. _________, a new teacher at __________ High School, an inner-city school in a poor neighborhood, experiments with different techniques to try to get 100% participation from his class. Currently he is projecting students’ writing on the walls and ceiling to give it an importance and make them feel invested in what they say. One student doesn’t want to play along. The teacher tells him to pursue some existential thought and the student says that he did. The teacher asks him to do more, and the kid gives him another short answer. The teacher says that the assignment was not meant to be quite that easy. The kid walks out of the class. The students tell the teacher that he embarrassed the kid. The teacher tells the class that they have to be tougher and be able to try any assignment and accept criticism.

Then the teachers tells the class that like Hercules they are going to get twelve
labors and that if they do them, they will get a special reward. The kid
who had been embarrassed says that the students in the class should be
able to give him - the teacher - twelve labors to do outside of the classroom
and that if he is tough enough to do them, he will earn their respect. The teacher said he should already have their respect because he is their
teacher and he is doing his best to teach them. The kid says respect doesn’t
come that easy in their neighborhood. The teacher accepts.

During one of the labors, the teacher almost gets killed. One of the students has to save him. After completing their labors the students and the teacher learn a lot about themselves and each other and get more respect for each other as well as greater self-respect.

HW # 47 Class film preparation 1

1. In the film, on the first day of class the classroom is darkened and their are bean bags to sit on.

2. There is a computer on a desk in the middle of the room that is hooked up to a projector. There is a normal chair in front of the desk. The teacher asks a student to sit down and type the first sentence or two of an original story. The opening lines are projected onto a wall. Then the teacher asks every student to take a turn adding to the story.

3. The homework assignment is for each student to take the story as far as it goes and complete it.

4. The idea is for students to use each other's ideas to come up with their own ideas.

5. The teacher is like a hyperactive director of a play who who treats the students like paid actors who have to earn their salaries. Students have to contribute to group projects all the time like short scenes from plays, videos, and debates. No one is ever left out. No one can hide in the back of the room.

6. The teacher gives students quotes from books they've read and ask them to interpret them in some creative way on the spot. Kids can respond with humor and even good natured sarcasm.

7. The film focuses on specific kids with distinctive personalities/talents.

8. There are a couple of shy kids, angry kids, and arrogant kids. The teacher manages to get them engaged by acting out their roles and then watch themselves on video being themselves.

HW # 46 Research and Writing

2. Over the break I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. The book follows an outspoken and unorthadox teacher named Miss Brodie and her 6 pupils at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland. Miss Brodie's goal is to turn her students into "the creme de la creme" or miniature versions of her idea of herself. "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!," Miss Brodie arrogantly proclaims. The 6 girls she teaches and that the book follows are known as the "Brodie bunch," and each girl has a distinctive personalty. The principal of the school, Miss Mackey detests Miss Brodie and makes many attempts to get her thrown out of the school by trying to get one of Brodie's bunch to give incriminating evidence against her. The book takes place in the 1930's, and Miss Brodie is a strong advocate of Facism, as is clearly shown by the admiration she shows herstudents for Benito Mussolini. Unfortunately, one student named Joyce Emily, who tries unscucessfully to join the "Brodie bunch" is encouraged by Miss Brodie to fight in the Spanish Civil War only to be killed in an accident when her train is attacked. Eventually, one of Miss Brodie's favorite students, Sandy betrays her and accuses her of Facism to the principal, Miss Mackey who quickley removes Miss Brodie from her school.


3. The subject of my research paper about schooling is about the impact of extraordinary teachers on their students. Since Miss Jean Brodie is an extraordinary teacher, she demonstrates an aspect of my subject and one that I hadn't initially thought about, which is the danger of a powerful personality.

4. This book describes a teacher who does capture the imagination of her students, and she does try to broaden their minds as any good teacher should do. The problem is that Miss Jean Brodie is a self-centered and arrogant teacher who wants to control her students' minds instead of teaching them to understand the world for themselves. The fact that she is an admirer of Mussolini and Facism shows in her totalitarian approach to guiding young girls' minds. Reading this book has made me think about the challenge for dynamic teachers not to let their teaching be too much about themselves and their own passions and prejudices, but about helping students develop their own passions and opinions.

HW # 45 More Big Thoughts on Schools

When I first read Sol Stern's article called "E.D. Hirsch's Curriculum for Democracy," I felt somewhat annoyed by his criticism of proggresive education which seems to focus more on teaching kids how to think as opposed to what he reccomends: learning a whole bunch of facts. The quote that really got to me was, "By now, it should be evident that teaching children in the early grades "how to learn about the Civil War" will not necessarily lead them ever to learn about the Civil War-or about any of the other pivotal events in their country's history." He is also upset that every kid doesn't know who James Monroe is in the first grade. It makes absolutely no sense to me that first graders should be fed a lot of facts about the Civil War. And it seems crazy to say that not learning a series of facts in first or second grade will mean that kids won't be able to absorb facts when they're older. Actually, I think the opposite is true. If kids are thought how to think about important events when they are little, like for instance how different it was growing up in the north as opposed to growing up in the south, then when they are older they will have a context to put the facts they are learning in.

Another thing that was annoying to me about Hirsch's thinking, according to Sol Stern, is the way he thinks about the connection between education and democracy. Hirsch, he says, thinks kids should learn the same facts based curriculum in every grade so that they would all think similarly. " The school would be the institution that would transform future citizens into loyal Americans...It would teach common knowlege, virtues, ideals, language, and commitments." This kind of teaching doesn't sound good for democracy at all. It sounds more like what a totalitarian government would do. Ted Sizer, the progressive education guy, says, "Students should leave school well-informed skeptics, able to ask good questions as a matter of habit." In other words, kids should develop their well-informed opinions and not just be taught one way to think. Sizer also said, "If democracy is about responsible freedom, it depends on a citizenry which sees the world clearly, which is repectful of past ideas, but never their prisoner..." This way of thinking is obviously a much better way to think about how to develop citizens who can participate in a democracy that will work. Hirsch's idea that he and the Founding Fathers had more in common than the Founding Fathers and Sizer would've had also sounds pretty crazy to me. I don't think the Founding Fathers were thinking about a lot of diversity in the voting pool. They weren't thinking about how young black kids, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and Jewish kids whose grandparents had been killed in the Holacaust could all feel a part of being American.

As far as coming up with a way that Hirsch's theory of a good education and Sizer's theory could work together, it is important to know that Hirsch focused more on the earlier grades and Sizer focused on high school grades. It seems to me that there should always be an emphasis on teaching kids how to think about specific subjects at all grade levels. Obviously, facts need to be learned as well. Just learning facts is not only boring but it's also not effective because they will be forgotten if they are not in a context. The context would be an argument or a way of thinking that uses the facts the student has learned. I think the problem in the difference in their thinking has to do with testing. Hirsch believes in a lot of standardized testing at younger ages, and wealthier kids have always done better on these tests on the whole. Sizer's approach is fairer for kids from different economic and ethnic backgrounds. All kids need to learn a lot of facts, but they also need to learn how to develop ideas and opinions so that they can develop their minds and contribute to their society and also be smart voters.

HW # 44 Big Expectations for School

President Obama's back to school speech is actually a motivational speech to kids in which he tells them that although the goverment, the teachers, and their parents all have responsibiltity for their achievement in school, kids themselves have the greatest responsiblity for their own education. He tells them that it is up to them to discover their special talents, which they all have, and that they need to do thi not only for themselves but for their country.
He acknowledges the fact that some kids have disadvantages that make it hard for them to do well and talks of specific kids who have fought great odds to succeed. There are two quotes that really stick out for me: "And no matter what you do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it," and "If you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country." Both quotes have this "or else" aspect to them with a little fear and guilt built in. I think this is a pretty great speech on the whole especially coming from a young and exciting president especially in comparison to what we had before. Also, Obama had to overcome a lot to suceed so he has a lot of credibility. Kids need to hear a speech like this although it obviously does not let government, schools, and teachers off the hook for their responsabilities to kids.

Even though it's true that some kids overcome incredible odds to succeed, this doesn't mean that other kids with the same problems can overcome their obstacles. Some kids can focus and tune out problems and distractions and others can't. As Obama says we all have different talents. For most kids going to a bad school with teachers that have a hard time staying motivated themselves it just is not going to be possible to do well. In Thomas L. Friedman's article he talks about how the next generation of Americans are going to hold the country back because of their weak science and math education. He is talking to the CEO of Intel, a top U.S corparation, who says he would rather higher young Americans but will higher better educated Chinese people if he has to. I found this other article about an Chinese/American doctor who says "of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity was the most important.... In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Aisan than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time." This quote really stuck me. I know for example that Stuyvesant High School is nearly 50% Asian and that Harvard has 17% Asian students, and Asians only make up 4% of the U.S population. Also, Jewish people, who make up 3% of the U.S population, make up 21% of the Ivy League student population. The point I am trying to make is that if there is an emphasis on academic achievement in your culture, that is a big advantage. Black and Hispanic kids whose parents and grand-parents are often not that well educated can be at a disadvantage. Governments and schools have a responsibility to teach all kids, and all cultures contribute a lot to society. In Bob Herbert's article about the amazing educator Deborah Kenny, he talks about how succesfull her Harlem Village Academy schools have been because they develop great teachers. In a way the kids who go to these schools are getting the special culture they need to do well academically.

My reaction to the article by Robert Kiyosaki, who says he wants to create the U.S Buisness Academy for Entrepreneurs, which would be run like a military academy, is that it probably wouldn't work. Don't you need a lot of freedom and independence to become an entrepreneur?
Wouldn't it be better to just have huge grant awards for people with great ideas to start new businesses? I like the reaction of the guy whose comment said, "I'll take wages that both Henry Ford and Bill Gates would drop out of your military school faster than a cockaroach runs from light."


.

HW 42 - Significance

The challenge of how to get a whole classroom of kids to be involved in whatever is being taught is what I want to explore. I started looking up descriptions of National Teachers of the Year because I thought these teachers might have something to say about techniques that work for a whole group. I notice that a lot of these teachers are history teachers and that maybe I should focus on ways history teachers have found projects that make history come alive and get kids excited and want to understand more.

The worst thing in a classroom is to have a lot of bored kids. The bored kids are useless contributers and the non-bored kids can feel self-conscious and overly animated in a room of the living dead. When I think back to my middle school years, classroom memories that stand out are times when we had big group projects like creating a walk-in Egyptian tomb. The great thing about the project was that it used the skills of every kid in the class. The tomb was so amazing that the whole school came to visit it including some outsiders from the community. There wasn't a single kid in that class who wasn't proud of the tomb and the work he or she did on it.


A classroom should act more like a team rather than like a group of individuals fending for themselves. When you're on a team, the pressure not to let your team down is much stronger than the pressure not to let yourself down. A team is always stronger than its individual parts. We learn from interaction with each other just as we learn from our coach or teacher. The ability not to let your partners down is not only a tool that can be used at school, but a tool to be used your entire life. School should be preparation for life in society. Group experience with shared humanity early in life can lead to taking responsibility to contribute to society in positive ways as a grownup. This is how we grow as individuals and create our own essence, as existentialists would say.

HW 41 - Initial Internet Research on Schooling

Anthony J. Mullen 2009 National Teacher of the Year
http://www.ccsso.org/projects/national_teacher_of_the_year/national_teachers/13292.cf

This source is interesting because this teacher of the year went to work on a factory assembly line after high school to support his family and then became a new York city cop for 20 years and then put himself through college, majoring in Criminal Justice. He’s a special education teacher for 9th through 12th grade students at an alternative school in Connecticut. His reputation is that he can teach any student, especially those who have behavioral and emotional problems. The source is interesting because this former cop talks about the keys to his success being passion, professionalism, and perseverance and describes what he means by all three. He uses his life experience to help him connect with his students.

Interview with Bill Bigelow
http://history matters.gmu.edu/d/6433

Bill Bigelow teaches high school history in Portland, Oregon. He make certain that his students do not think about history “as a series of dead facts.” He wants his students to understand that history consists of choices that real people make under certain circumstances, and he has them re-enact historical events. This article describes in detail how a creative teacher inspires a whole class of students and gets them to feel passionate about changing their society for the better.

2005-2006 Teacher of the Year – Jason Kamras
http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/teachyear/year2005.htm

Jason Kamaras entered the Teach for America program after graduating from Princeton and went into an inner-city school in Washington D.C. He made the students feel proud of the fact that the desegregation of all Washington D.C. schools came about because of a challenge that came from their school. He raised the math scores incredibly by giving the kids access to technology and using real-world problem solving. This article is a good source about the power of the passion of one teacher to change the whole culture of a school. Although he left the school for a couple of years to earn more advanced degrees, he returned to the school where he continues o teach and is treated like an assistant principle.

Philip Bigler – National Teacher of the Year
http://www.ccsso.org/projects/national_teacher_of_the_year/National_Teachers/188.cfm

Interview with Maurice Butler
http://history matters.gmu.edu/d/7122

Interview with Michele Forman
http:historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6830

Welcome to History Matters
http://.history-matters.com/

This site gives a way of studying an event in history that can be really interesting because it is based on formerly secret documents that are now declassified by the U.S. Government because a certain amout of time has elapsed. The event discussed here is the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. The documents show evidence of conspiracy and show why there was a cover up. I think a study like this could engage a whole class and give a much deeper understanding about truth and lies and mysteries in the history we're taught.

Making History on the Web Matter in Your Classroom
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/34.3/schrum.html

History Matters seems to be a great resource for teachers to make history come alive in the classroom. One of the things History Matters does is give all the best websites for U.S history teachers to use. We all know that one of the drawbacks of the web is that there is just too much information and so it is really time consuming to sort out the good stuff from the garbage. This site does it for history teachers and it gets its funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I think this means it must be pretty good. Also, the way I found this site was by looking for articles about the best teachers in the country. Some of the National Teachers of the Year winners are featured on it.

HW 40 - School Interviews x 5 & Synthesis

Part A

Questions on School

1. Name a teacher who inspired you in elementary or middle school and talk about how this teacher helped you.

2. Name a teacher in high school or college who had a strong influence on you, positively or negatively, and talk about the effect of the teacher and the course on your life.

3. If you had a chance to relive your high school years, what would you do differently? Academically? Socially?

4. If you could design the perfect high school for you, what would it look like?

5. Was/Is there a special teaching technique that has been most effective for you?

6. If you were the U.S. Secretary of Education, what would you do to make schools more effective in preparing more students for college?



Reed Bye (family friend)


1. Mr. Penny, eighth grade English, opened me to reading literature. Had us read aloud in class and discuss points from the book as a class, as well as write written reports. Reading as a collective class enterprise made the experience of the books livelier and less solitary. I remember reading A Tale of Two Cities this way in particular.

2. I‘m embarrassed that I can’t remember his name, but he too taught English and U.S. lit, and, while very reticent and shy as a teacher, introduced us early to U.S. postmodern poetry and somehow made the world of writing seem very interesting and eccentric without doing anything to glorify or artificially romanticize it.

3. I was not a good student in high school. I couldn’t focus on and stay with the texts in any subject very well. That may seem surprising because I began to read and write quite a lot in my twenties and have continued to do that throughout my life. I think I needed broader personal experience of the world before books and academic information could hold my attention and mean much to me. A more active social life might have helped a bit with
triggering academic interest, but really I just wasn’t intellectually activated in any particular direction enough to get very engaged with school work

4. It would include compulsory work projects—these could be of any nature-- scientific, artistic, mechanical, constructive, scholarly—that students would work on both individually and as part of a group. And it would be good if some of these involved specific off-campus assignments—interviews or other information gathering, viewing and note-taking, listening, etc.

5. Those that promote direct interchange between teacher and students, raising provocative questions grounded in the details of particular texts or issues. In general, teaching methods that excite general inquisitiveness as well as relaying personal passionate interest in a topic or subject.

6. I would want to implement a curriculum balanced between developing fundamental arts of expression-- reading, speaking, writing, singing, dancing (?!)—and the presentation of basic knowledge in particular disciplines oriented toward opening up those disciplines so they appear both open-ended and exciting with real questions and possibilities. That would require the enticement and employment of good, engaged teachers.





Marc Rodriguez (friend)



1. In middle school, my humanities teacher pushed me to do better. The reason being that he mentioned that I was barely passing his class and eventually I turned it around when I realized that I should to better and followed his advice and managed to do better and I had a major improvement.



2. In High School, I think my 10th Grade English was a major influence on me. See, I was not a person who was able to be present my work to people in my class and I was afraid to perform. It seems that afterwards, I wasn't afraid of performing or sharing my ideas and work to others, I felt that everyone is afraid and that you just need to have some charisma.



3. Since I'm still in High School, what I could have done prior to the grade I'm in I would've Probably talked more to people or talked more and not be embarrassed about what others said about me. Academically, probably not given up on some of the assignments back in Freshman year and not have been distracted.



4. I would have a school where the students are actively involved, have students that are willing to learn and won't just sit there and make fun of the quiet/dumb kid. Also a school that was more advanced than other schools, and one that isn't so hard to get into.



5. I think that having a teacher who doesn't go in-depth and at least explains work in a simple way has the best potential. A teacher who pushes you (by being encouraging) has best potential. I have seen this first hand, as I interned at an elementary school, where students have ideas of how teachers teach and how one can act to encourage students to work before having to deal with a higher quality of work in Middle School and High School.



6. Have a system in which schools only raise tuition based on need and also have a system in which there would be percentage increases every year that wouldn't make the price skyrocket.





Reed Morgan (brother – in college)

1. Ms. Murphy, my fifth grade English and History teacher, inspired me to work
harder because of her dynamic teaching style and her interesting assignments.
We had to create books and illustrate them: two fiction books (creative writing),
a biography, a cookbook, and an ad campaign for a favorite book. She showed
one of my books to a friend at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and this led to
my involvement with one the exhibitions.

2. Dr. Edith Balbach, who taught a community health course my freshman year and became a mentor to me. With her guidance I applied for a summer internship at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, where I was allowed to develop a program for children in Harlem. She encouraged me to major in public health and to apply for an international travel grant. I was able to work at an orphanage in Kenya and had an amazing experience.

3. I would have taken Spanish instead of or in addition to French in high school. I thought about saying that I would have worked harder, but actually I wouldn’t have wanted to work any harder. I would have liked even more time playing basketball.

4. I think all public elementary, middle, and high schools should have the same standard equipment and resources to create greater fairness. I’m talking about playgrounds, libraries, classroom equipment, music, dance, and theater classes – everything.

5. Hands-on learning experiences like internships have been great for me.

6. If I were the Secretary of Education, I would get rid of a lot of the testing in the lower grades and have kids read more in school, discuss books, and write their own stories.





Linda Morgan (mother)

1. Madame Seide was my French teacher in 7th, 8th, and 9th grade, and she made me love learning the French language and reading French literature. Because of her, I ended up majoring in French in college and spending my junior year in France.

2. Mr. Pierce taught an English course about James Joyce’s Ulysses, which was one of the most entertaining and stimulating classes I ever had in college. He taught us how to appreciate great works of literature.

3. I hope I would try to be more experimental with my ideas and writing and not worry about what others might think.

4. A perfect school would work to discover students’ individual talents early on so
so that they could be developed from a young age.

5. As part of my French classes, reading magazines in French, listening to French music, and going to French restaurants and speaking French all helped me become more fluent.

6. As Secretary of Education I would demand a much bigger budget to give all
the schools standardized resources so that there wouldn’t be the giant inequities
between rich and poor schools.

Devin Morgan(self - in high school)

1. Mrs. Nan O’Shea was my year-long 4th grade teacher, and she is the elementary school teacher I will never forget. She was the most dramatic teacher I ever had with her sweeping gestures and booming voice. She was a great storyteller and really knew how to connect with her students.

2. Ms. De Rothschild taught my 9th grade English class, and she really pushed me and all her other students to try to write consistently well every time. In her class I made graphic novels and wrote poetry and a lot of papers. What made her one of the best teachers I’ve had was her method of making detailed suggestions of how to improve a paper and then giving us a chance to get a better grade by redoing it.

3. For my freshman and sophomore years I would definitely try to get more sleep. I would go out for the soccer team both years so that I could get to know more kids.

4. The perfect high school for me would look more like a college campus with buildings located around a huge green lawn. It would be called Sports Tech (yes I’ve put a lot of thought into this), and it would be dedicated to improving the athletic talents of kids in sports ranging from basketball, soccer, swimming, tennis, football, track and field, baseball, and lacrosse.

5. An effective teaching technique for me is having a chance to revise a paper once the teacher has made corrections. In this way the corrections sink in better.

6. If I were the U.S Secretary of Education, I would have classroom helpers in middle school for all kids, not just for special needs kids. These helpers would spot academic weaknesses with each student and arrange one on one meetings daily to prepare them for highschool.

Part B

For me, and obviously for others, teachers are the focal point of school. Teachers have to feed kids' natural curiosity and find creative ways of getting kids to learn. Kids don't all learn the same way so teaching require a big bag of tricks, especially in the early years. Teachers are huge role models for kids and often get them interested in a subject they want to pursue for the rest of their lives. Adults always remember the teachers who inspired them the most. They would also remember the teachers who made life miserable for them. Our society should pay teachers much more to attract more of the best people to become teachers.

HW # 39 - First School Assignment

HW #39

Part A

Questions:

1) How much does school mold us? A much as our families?
2) What is it that makes some kids hate school?
3) Do the schools we attend have a big part in determining our future?

Ideas
1) I wonder if teachers realize at the time what a powerful influence they are over students’ lives.
2) I wonder if some teachers don’t want to take that much responsibility for the influence they have over students’ lives.
3) A lot of famous and successful people say that their big regret is that they didn’t work harder in high school. When kids here this, why don’t we find it that
motivating.

Experiences
1) Dealing with kids who think their school is superior to theirs
2) Realizing that acting the same way to kids who are considered cool or who think they are cool and to kids who aren’t considered cool or who think they’re not cool is important to the way you think about yourself and to your whole community.
3) Questioning the fairness of the GPA grading system, making it so that even one bad grade freshman year can affect how colleges look at you your senior year.

Part B

When I was in 8th grade biology, I cut off the tip of my finger which flew across the room. Someone screamed, and I looked down to see a fountain of blood shooting up from my left pointer finger. My teacher, who was very athletic and regularly did well
in marathons and other competitions, swooned. She almost passed out. I think she
actually did. I yelled out, “Sombody find my finger.” I heard groans, and someone
said, “Oh gross!” One of my friends said, “I’ll get T-Bone, a teacher aid with dreadlocks and tattoos, who was afraid of nothing. T-Bone organized the search for the bloody stub and bandaged my finger. The problem was that it wouldn’t stop gushing.

The next thing I knew I was at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where Dr. Ho immediately inserted three needles into my minifinger with no warning whatsoever. The microsurgery was successful, and since Dr. Ho happened to be a plastic surgeon as well as a hand surgeon, I have hardly any scar. For weeks I had this huge bandage on my finger with a splint, and everyone I passed at school would put up a pointer finger in a mocking “We’re number one” gesture. I got the same reaction at soccer practice with my huge digit. My teacher apologized a thousand times for being such a wimp at the time of the accident. I told her that if I hadn’t already had ugly accidents like breaking my arm and wrist in three places each during soccer games and having my leg pierced by cleats, I probably would have passed out too. It also came out that I was running with scissors at the time of the slicing so all the school scissors didn’t have to be replaced.

Homework 38

Home work 38

HW 38 Art Project Cool



1. I wanted my graphic story (true) to illustrate the hot and cool aspects of the cool culture from West Africa that has affected African-American culture and I think probably almost every culture’s idea of cool. The cool part of cool is the detached attitude that shows a feeling of calm and strength, and the hot part is the energy and power of movement or action. These two sides of cool are obvious in jazz music’s hot and cool sides and in African-American dance, where the head stays cool and the body gets wound up. Our cool cultural heroes are usually detached in that they stand apart from everyone else, and powerful because they show great energy in some area. I tried to show in this graphic story how just focusing on the cool side of cool, the detached side, can be a negative thing. The players on the soccer team who don’t work hard have their idea of being cool on an underdog team that involves not listening to the coach and not making an effort. When the team starts winning and standing apart in its own way, these players start working harder. What I am trying to get across here is that just acting detached from whatever you don’t want to be a part of or what you want to stand out from in order to be perceived as cool and not using your energy to develop some part of yourself is self-defeating because this is the part of cool that gives you more self-esteem.

2. I decided on a graphic story because I didn’t have enough to create a video at
School. I chose to write about the SOF soccer team because it lost all but two games the last year and won all its games (on the field) this year. I decided on how many graphics I wanted to have to tell the story, decided on the sequence of the action and what I wanted the coach and players to say. I completed each graphic before going to the next one so that there would be continuity and then added color at the end.

Creating art is extremely cool because when you are drawing,
painting, singing, acting whatever), you are expressing yourself and your own originality.
An existentialist might say you are creating your essence, what makes you you. This means you are developing your own potential separate from anyone else and giving your life some meaning. In African tradition it is the hot part of being cool.

HW # 37 - Cool Paper Final

"Stay Cool "


“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is hear no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Macbeth act V scene V

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Hamlet act I scene iii

When it comes to describing “cool,” Shakespeare has something to say worth hearing from a once cool guy, Macbeth, who makes terrible decisions and becomes extremely “uncool” and from an uncool guy, Polonius, who is manipulative and full of himself but comes up with advice about how to be cool that still sounds right after 400 years. In his quote Macbeth, a great war hero, sums up the meaninglessness of his life when he is about to be revealed as a murderer of his king and friends due to his lust for power and pressure from his ambitious wife, who has just committed suicide out of guilt. Polonius on the other hand has this “cool” moment when he tells his son Laertes, who is about to go out into the world on his own, to always to be honest with yourself so that you will always be honest with others because if you are not honest with others, then you would be being dishonest with yourself. Shakespeare’s plays have lasted because he wrote about human nature and he understood people’s weaknesses, that is their desire to elevate themselves in their own minds and everyone else’s. If having an awareness of a need to be cool is a part of our human nature and our competitive social environment, and there are serious dangers involved with trying to be cool, then our society needs to help us appreciate our own individuality and responsibility as a member of something bigger than our own social environment, and that thing is humanity. Three of the biggest dangers of trying to be cool are living a life that is short-term cool, having an identity that depends on what other people think of you, and having an identity that is completely selfish. When we give in to these dangers, we give up having meaning in our lives and any chance of looking back on our life and considering that we were actually “cool” people.

When Gwendolyn Brooks talks about her poem that begins “We real cool. We left school,” she says that she was trying to get inside the heads of some local boys in her community who were playing pool when they should have been in school. She said they were “thumbing their noses at the establishment.” It’s almost always cool to go against the establishment. It’s what many heroes do if the establishment is bad, and it’s what makes certain outlaws very cool like pirates and other outlaws who don’t fit into the establishment. It is also protective armor. Langston Hughes said, “Stay cool and dig all jive, that’s the reason I stay alive.” If school doesn’t seem like a place where you can be cool (get self-esteem), why make the effort? For black kids in poor inner city communities I think their special kind of coolness is something they can feel proud of because they own it. These kids have been trend setters for America and the world with songs, dances, language, clothing styles and gestures and body moves (pounds and chest bumps). And they should get credit for holding onto it. As Orlando Patterson says, there is also a lot of respect coming from white society and white corporations for this inner city culture. When establishment white people start talking about “in the house” or “in the hizzle”or learn the crip walk and corporations put the language and the moves in commercials, then the black kids often from the Bronx or L.A. come up with new expressions and new dances like “the jerk.” They stay ahead of the corporations who make fortunes making cool stuff mainstream and shortening its cool life. Unfortunately, except for successful athletes and hip hop artists, who are able to bypass college and make lots of money, for a lot of inner city kids no matter how talented their coolness is short-term because of a lack of good education. Unlike middle class kids who go to college because they are expected to go and go to schools and get the help to enable them to go, inner city minority kids don’t plan on going to college because they don’t go to good schools and they don’t get expensive tutors and help from well educated parents. These cool jive kids can often only stay cool by taking huge risks as they get older living in communities where drugs and guns make their culture a really dangerous one. In huge numbers they go to prison or get shot. Very uncool.

Another danger of coolness is trying too hard to be cool and it is illustrated by the character Ivan Ilych from Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, who suffers from an extreme fear of death which leads him to be critical of the way he has lived his life as he looks back at an earlier, happier time in his life before coming to the realization that he has cared too much about money and social status. The way Ivan lives his life Ivan is contrasted with other characters in the story who are more open and honest about the way they live their lives, the peasant Gerasim for example, who truly cares for Ivan. Ivan, a judge who does not live for himself but for the purpose of social climbing blindly adopts values of an aristocratic society. He believes that if he emulates the materialistic life of high society he will find meaning in his own life. He marries not because of love but because he has found a woman who socially acceptable and decorates his house with fancy material objects to try to cement his upper class status. The Death of Ivan Ilych is a sophisticated psychological story about a man who is having what seems to me like an existential experience trying to figure out his own nature. Tolstoy is using Ivan Ilych to illustrate the moral that to have a good life people have to care about their fellow human beings and not be focused on trying to be "cool" in other people's eyes in a way that makes their world revolve only around them.

Having an identity that is completely selfish and shuts out other people is a third kind of dangerous way of trying to be cool is completely un-cool. Bullies, for example, make themselves feel good at the expense of others. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian Junior, a Native American freshman who upon entering an all-white high school was told by as a senior named Roger “You know Indians are living proof that niggers fuck buffalo.” Roger, the bully had claimed the spotlight for that ten second span and the laughter that would follow was enough to satisfy his ego for some time. His reward was Junior’s pain. In the novel, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Ebenezer Scrooge starts to reflect on a life he has not lived well because of a supernatural experience when the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows him his own grave thanks to a visit from his dead partner Jacob Marley, who does not want Scrooge to suffer his fate of spending eternity in chains because of the greedy life he led. He has been shown by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Present and of Christmas Yet to Come what a selfish miserable life he has had. Ivan has to reflects on his selfish life all on his own after an accident begins to cause him great pain and slowly kills him. He is searching for meaning in his life because he knows it is going to end and, as he says "... I did everything properly." He means that he did everything he thought the society he wanted to be in expected him to do. After shutting out society for so long Scrooge finally becomes a member of humanity.

Shakespeare’s advice, “To thine own self be true,” seems to me to be a lot like what the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” Making something of ourselves gives meaning to our lives. Whether there is a god or not, we are all part of humanity, and our actions should be humane to be cool. Being arrogant or dishonest or cruel is not cool and neither is an unfair world where some are not given the advantages to make something of themselves.

HW 36 - Triangle Partner Help (Aja H.)

Thesis - Trying to be cool in other people's eyes makes us feel like somebody and gives our lives meaning.


Main Idea - Why is it that we humans desperately need other people's approval and commit so many uncool acts to get attention? Take the bully for example. In a twisted way he gives meaning to his life by inflicting misery upon other people. He finds a weakness in his prey like shyness, for example, and then exploits it by trying to put the person in the spotlight in some uncomfortable situation. Or take the braggart. She has always had a better experience doing anything than anybody else.

Ideas for next draft

item # 1 - Try to answer the good question that you ask about what we humans are missing that causes us to need to be cool in other people's eyes so badly.

item # 2 - You make great points about Ivan Ilych and about tattoos. I think you could be even clearer about what can be cool and uncool about getting tattoos.


item # 3 - I think you should talk about another character in a book or another way people try to be cool and give their lives meaning.

HW 36 - Triangle Partner Help (Julie A.)

Suggested thesis: For most teens their idea of being cool is a reflection of how their social group of peers act out their idea of being cool.

My brother has a friend whose older brother is a rapper. That is to say the older brother is nocturnal animal who hangs out in nightclubs. My brother's friend thinks it's cool to be around his brother. This means that he is constanly surrounded by a group of jeans falling, thug looking, cash on hand "homies" chilling at the bar and getting high on anything they can. They watch other people dance because they're too cool to dance. Even though they're not rich they buy the most expensive drinks. For my brother's friend trying to fit in with his brother is completely uncool for him. He isn't doing much homework and is missing a lot of school. Unlike his older brother, he is not developing a talent or earning money. He is just adopting habits that could take a lifetime or at least a long time to undo.

Ideas for your next draft

Item # 1 - Affect(meaning to have an effect on) is the verb and effect(meaning a change that is a result of an action) is the noun. If effect is used as a verb it means to cause, to happen or to bring about.

Item # 2 - Discuss paradox you bring up about parents. Teens rebel against parents to try to be cool, but what if parents drink too much or even do drugs. Shouldn't the teens not drink and smoke to be different from their parents? It seems this isn't usually the case.

Item # 3 - Why do you think girls are more party animals than guys?

HW # 35 - Cool Paper Rough Draft

Cool Paper Draft (To Be Edited Tonight)


“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
Macbeth act V scene V

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Hamlet act I scene iii

When it comes to describing “cool,” Shakespeare has something to say worth hearing from a once cool guy, Macbeth, who makes terrible decisions and becomes extremely “uncool” and from a truly cool guy, Polonius. Macbeth’s quote sums up the meaninglessness of his life when this former war hero is about to be revealed as a murderer of his king and others due to his lust for power and pressure from his wife, who has just committed suicide out of guilt. Polonius on the other hand can be thought of as a “cool” guy for sharing his wisdom with his son Laertes, who is about to go out into the world on his own. Polonius’s most important advice is always to be honest with yourself so that you will show yourself as honest to others and be honest with them. Shakespeare’s plays have lasted because he wrote about human nature and he understood people’s weaknesses, that is their desire to elevate themselves in their own minds and everyone else’s. If having an awareness of what it is to be cool is a part of our human nature as well as a product of our own social environment, and there are serious dangers involved with trying to be cool, then our society needs to help us appreciate our own individuality and responsibility as a member of something bigger than our own social environment, and that thing is humanity. Three of the biggest dangers of trying to
be cool are too much consumption of “cool” products, having an identity that depends on what other people think, and having an identity that is completely selfish. When we give in to these dangers, we give up having meaning in our lives and any chance of looking back on our life and considering that we were actually “cool” people.

Today, for too many kids the use of cool digital products like Ipods, Iphones, Facebook, and video games takes up too much after school and weekend time. For younger kids their addiction to video games is dangerous because they are not developing their coordination through team sports, individual sports, dance, or even just recreational activities like throwing a football, swimming, or playing ping pong. They are not developing the habit of exercise which is necessary for a healthy life. Having physical activity everyday is also important because it helps refresh the brain. For older kids violent video games involve them in dangerous action that is probably more apt to lead to aggressive behavior than listening to some violent rap songs and watching violent movies. Another problem for older kids with this emphasis on being cool is that the use of texting, Facebook, and Twitter get our minds in the habit of writing in an abbreviated way. The aim is for speed so the thinking is off the top of our heads. Being asked to write a five-page paper with thought-out analysis is torture by comparison. If I were texting a friend to say “It was nice to see you,” I would write “It wz (smiley face) to c u.” The goal is to shorten words and sentences as much as possible to get a message out as fast as possible and get one back. The article, “British Researcher Says Facebook A Brain Drain” by Robert Mitchum, says that an Oxford neuroscientist thinks that online social networking could be dangerous for our brains and behavior. She predicts that "the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilized, characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity." M. T. Anderson’s book, Feed

A second danger of trying too hard to be cool is illustrated by the character Ivan Ilych from Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, who suffers from an extreme fear of death which leads him to be critical of the way he has lived his life as he looks back at an earlier, happier time in his life before coming to the realization that he has cared too much about money and social status. The way Ivan lives his life Ivan is contrasted with other characters in the story who are more open and honest about the way they live their lives, the peasant Gerasim for example, who truly cares for Ivan. Ivan, a judge who does not live for himself but for the purpose of social climbing blindly adopts values of an aristocratic society. He believes that if he emulates the materialistic life of high society he will find meaning in his own life. He marries not because of love but because he has found a woman who socially acceptable and decorates his house with fancy material objects to try to cement his upper class status. The Death of Ivan Ilych is a sophisticated psychological story about a man who is having what seems to me like an existential experience trying to figure out his own nature. Tolstoy is using Ivan Ilych to illustrate the moral that to have a good life people have to care about their fellow human beings and not be focused on trying to be "cool" in other people's eyes in a way that makes their world revolve only around them.


Having an identity that is completely selfish and shuts out other people is a third kind of dangerous way of trying to be cool is completely un-cool. Bullies, for example, make themselves feel good at the expense of others. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian Junior, a Native American freshman who upon entering an all-white high school was told by as a senior named Roger“ You know Indians are living proof that niggers fuck buffalo.” Roger, the bully had claimed the spotlight for that ten second span and the laughter that would follow was enough to satisfy his ego for some time. His reward was Junior’s pain. In the novel, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Ebenezer Scrooge starts to reflect on a life he has not lived well because of a supernatural experience when the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows him his own grave thanks to a visit from his dead partner Jacob Marley, who does not want Scrooge to suffer his fate of spending eternity in chains because of the greedy life he led. He has been shown by the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Present and of Christmas Yet to Come what a selfish miserable life he has had. Ivan has to reflects on his selfish life all on his own after an accident begins to cause him great pain and slowly kills him. He is searching for meaning in his life because he knows it is going to end and, as he says "... I did everything properly." He means that he did everything he thought the society he wanted to be in expected him to do. After shutting out society for so long Scrooge finally becomes a member of humanity.

HW # 34 - The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

When Gwendolyn Brooks talks about her poem that begins “We real cool. We left school,” she says that she was trying to get inside the heads of some local boys in her community who were playing pool when they should have been in school. She said they were “thumbing their noses at the establishment.” When you think about it, it’s almost
always cool to go against the establishment. It’s what many heroes do if the establishment is bad, and it’s what makes certain outlaws very cool like pirates and
other outlaws who don’t fit into the establishment. If school doesn’t seem like a place where you can be cool (get self-esteem) because you don’t have the role models to inspire you to work hard or you don’t have the help you need to do well or, like the working class boys in the “Learning to Labour” article, you think society isn’t going to let you get rewarded for your hard work the way higher class people get rewarded, then why make the effort?

Regarding black kids in poor inner city communities I think Orlando Patterson is right
about the importance of cultural explanations for behaviors that hold a lot of them back from being successful in this American society. Obviously, when it comes to feeling a
part of a middle or upper middle class family where there is support for you and money
for you and career expectations for you, they don’t. I don’t think there is a big difference
between the kids themselves. The majority of us do what we are expected to do in our
communities. Most middle and upper middle class kids plan on going to college because that is what is expected of them. Most poor black kids don’t plan on going to college because they are not expected to go. And their communities have created a culture that
is highly successful for some like athletes and hip hop artists who bypass college and make tons of money. As Patterson says, there is also a lot of respect coming from white society and white corporations for this inner city culture especially for music and sports stars, but that is not all. These kids have been trend setters for America and the world with songs, dances, language, clothing styles and gestures and body moves ( pounds and chest bumps). And they should get credit for holding onto it. When establishment white people start talking about “in the house” or “in the hizzle”or learn the crip walk and corporations put the language and the moves in commercials, then the black kids often from the Bronx or L.A. come up with new expressions and new dances like “the jerk.”

Unfortunately, the downside of this culture is very down often resulting in prison and
early death. The fact that selling drugs is so profitable and guns are so available makes the culture a really dangerous one. The cool aspect, that is the tryingto be cool aspect of cool, is really strong because it is so hard to get self esteem inpositive ways if there aren’t good role models around. The assignment asks about who to blame or what to do. I blame racism for the good and bad in black culture. Slavery produced the blues and racism helped produce jazz and hip hop. I think there have to be more organizations that give kids good role models and opportunities to develop talents and do well in school on a daily basis. Some of my brother’s friends who have done well in school say that if it hadn’t been for Boys Clubs, they would never have even gone to high school.