HW 41- Initial Internet Research on Schooling: Edited

Student Ethics Correlation with School Structure

Kassab, Monica. "Cultural Exchanges" Honors Today: Crossing Borders. University of Buffalo, December 2009. 13-14.

Its a first person account from an American English teacher in Japan. Monica Kassab talks about what she learned from the experience her three years in Japan as an English teacher. The dual perspective of an American teacher is helpful in comparing how students in Japan are treated and how they behave in comparison to how the American students are treated and behave and highlight cultural values that these methods of teaching are based on. It shows how the students work are influenced by the teaching method.

"Chinese students more organized, less imaginative than American counterparts". University of Florida. 22 August 2006. http://www.physorg.com/news75480082.html

It's a study done by Florida University that basically says that Chinese students prefer to have a more organized learning environment while American students want flexibility and creativity. It includes a little about gender learning preferences in different countries, similarities and differences in learning style preferences in different countries.

I think these statistics reveal a little bit about how the cultural values affect the way things are taught and the student's preferences in learning.

Wan, Guofang. "The Learning Experience of Chinese Students" College Student Journal. March 2001.

This article reports a case study on the cross-cultural learning experiences of two Chinese students in American universities. It described their experiences in the following areas: motivations for learning, frustrations and satisfactions, strategies used to cope with language inefficiency, assumptions of the impact of their learning on their lives, and awareness of cultural differences in classroom and daily life.

This study is helpful identifying the differences in culture, language, and social and political system between China and the United States and how it impacts the experiences of the student.

"Education reform in China: An interview with Aibe Chen". Kappa Delta Pi Record. FindArticles.com. 25 Feb. 2010.

It's an interview with Professor Aibe Chen who is from the Beijing Institute of Education in China. China is trying to adopt an American styled education so it will be less focused on exams and more "quality-orientated".

Aibe talks about the differences between American and Chinese Education and how he hopes the reform will help change the schools in China. I think this interview will help identify the styles and ways each country generally teaches in school.

My mom

She went to school in China and also went as a college student in the US. I think she can give differences in the external structure of the classroom because she knows how it is different, for example in China, the students stay in one classroom and the teachers change and go into the room rather the other way around like it is in the US. I think she can also give her experiences as a student as well.

Dillon, Sam. Study Compares American Students with Other Countries. New York Times, 15 Nov. 2007. Web. 1 Mar. 2010.

A study called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or Timss, that tested foreign countries. The article compare US scores to these of other countries, specifically science and math.

I think the test can correlate to how much each subject is emphasized on to the students in the respective country that took it and I'm planning to research the hours and the study time that students in other countries use to relate to the test scores.

Friedman, Thomas L. A Word from the Wise. New York Times, 2 March 2010. Web.
3 March 2010.
Talks about the lack of U.S. is lagging in developing the next generation of scientific talent as well as the lack of incentives to induce big multinationals to create lots more jobs here when compared to China.

I think this can bring to focus, China's emphasis on Math and Science as compared to America. It displays the cultural values in some ways and how the U.S. is now in terms of teaching subjects in that area.

Education Statistics by Country. Nationmaster.4 March 2010. http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/Education-education
This site give an abundance of statistics on education and a number of other things by country. For example Student Attitude was one of them and the percentage of students that found school boring.

I think I can use this to compare U.S. and China in different areas and find facts and statistics that might contribute to finding out about the education and the students in different countries.

HW 40- Five interviews and What are some things you would change about schools if you could? The freedom of rights. They limit that. What doSynthesis

Middle School Student
How do you feel about school as a student?
Its okay.

What are some things you would change about schools if you could?
The freedom of rights. They limit that.

What do you mean?
Like. You know.

No, I don't. If you make grandiose statements please back them up.
Like when you're in trouble you don't really get to say what you want to say, they're just like oh, too bad and don't listen. Like this kid's watched beeped and my math teacher was like "Get out" and we're like what? its only a watch beep.

You're saying some teachers abuse their power and overreact?
Yes

What rights specifically are they limiting?
They are limiting our rights to speech.

So what would you do to change it?
Nothing. Nothing can be done.

Why do you say that?
Because no one will listen to a kid. They'll believe the adult of course.

SOF student- Henry
What have you learned from school?
Well I have really learned the most about social graces and how to interact. I have learned about the balance between work and socializing and how sometimes it isn't always crystal clear and honestly I think that a lot of the time the classes are an afterthought because it's all about the people

What are some things you might change about school that you think would make it better?
Well, I really think that's it's not the school so much as it is the student. School needs to have a consistent format and it needs to teach you certain things you might not like learning about because at the end of the day you don't always know what's best for yourself and the system works for the majority of people. If anything, I would say that the classes need to be more open, like more choices. More, shorter classes would expand people's horizons a lot and teach them more in the end if done right

Do you think fewer days per week at school would be more conducive to student learning or more detrimental?
Well I think that it could be either, and that depends on the student. It can work fantastically if the students pays attention and can keep up, but can crash into a wall if the students don't bring their A game. I also think that if this were done, you would need to have school until 5 or so, because a certain amount is needed

In terms of years, is the time spent at school too long and dragged out or is it fine as it is for the amount we learn?
I think that it is dragged out in a way. If you made school more specialized earlier you could teach the stuff that is really important to the people that would need it, while others might not. So somebody who wants to be a physicist could learn science and math while the writer would learn English and history. This would make things more concise in the long run.

How do you feel about school?
I like it. I have always liked it, because at the very least there is something that I find interesting in my day and I surround myself with people that keep it enjoyable. I feel happy about it for the most part. There is nothing that outright bores me or annoys me

Bard Student- Reggie
What are some things you might change about school that would improve it?
Take some of the years off i.e. middle school. Seriously, I learned nothing in middle school. They reviewed everything in high school. Take a year or two off elementary too. I mean how long does it take to teach kids to add and subtract? We spend enough time in school as it is and it just keeps getting longer.

Do you think fewer days per week would be more conducive to student learning or detrimental to it? It would be better. We'll have more time to get things done and sometimes my mind just needs a break and the ratios are retarded too, I mean 5:2?

How many days a week do you think school should ideally be?4:3. 4 days in school 3 days out

How do you feel about how school has changed?
In today's society you can’t really accomplish much without education. Now it’s all about the brand name colleges.

Do you think education focuses on the wrong things, i.e. tests and quizzes?
Yes, some schools base their entire course on regents but that's dumb b/c the regents really doesn’t cover all that much

College Student- Brian
What has school taught you? How to sit down for four hours without moving writing an essay. School teaches you discipline and work ethic.

How do you feel about school? It is a necessary part of society. That said it takes too much of my tax money and gives too little in return.

What are your feelings on middle school and high school? You're going to look back and realize that the days when you had no responsibilities at all were wonderful.

What type of school would you send your child and why? Private school where there are no teacher unions, where the acceptance rate is in the single digits. Unions are a general bane in American society.

Are there any flaws with the educational system? Moral integrity.

What do you mean? A lot of countries have classes teaching their students how to be good citizens and we don't, that’s why they end up being drunken idiots.

What is it doing right? Uhhhh..... well... we have really good literacy rates so obviously our kids can read and write which isn't that bad of an accomplishment.

What have you learned in school? High school or college?
HS be polite to people, you'll make enough enemies don't need to add more just because of rudeness

College? No one gives a crap about you so you better learn to stand of your own two feet. The professors don't give a crap about your excuses, you could be bleeding crawling to the door and the professors will mark you absent.

SOF Teacher- Melissa

How do you feel about school as a teacher?
I feel very conflicted about it. The whole emotion of school, I guess from my own personal experiences as a student and working as a teacher at SOF. I guess it is such a big contrasts. Hopes more opportunity for meaning making in school. I thinks Andy’s class is good for that. I think in some classes it’s not as easy as a Humanities class but I think the teachers in this school try to make it meaningful for students. I definitely feel the structures in school is very flawed. How stuck it is. So many hoops you have to jump through and things that confine you. At least in our world here fluid, we push the envelope even though it doesn’t always work. So much time is wasted experiences that you have to go through. I feel it’s important to question because we always know when it is happening when we’re having these experiences. Having awareness then trying to find ways to make them not occur or shift them in a way that feels more real.

How has your experiences effected your teaching?
So much, one of the reasons I went into teaching. There was no place to think about my own learning in school. My experiences also have shaped my career path and have informed my passion for being in a school where we try to not differentiate from students and put labels on kids and we just learn and grow from each other. I was raised in a tradition stuck setting where you have to muddle through one way. So I feel very strongly that there is not just one way, there are different ways, different entry points for kids to learn, and that will always be my passion for my career.

What is something you would change about the educational system if you could?
Oh my gosh, there’s so much I would change. Flexibility on schools supporting the needs of the student. I don’t think every school should be the same. What makes us successful is that we’re unique and students choose the school. A lot of times it’s the right one for them sometimes its not. I think it’s important for schools to have a vision, to create a diverse community of learners, from all backgrounds and socioeconomic situations and its starts from the schools. Because school is where students become young adults and if you’re in an environment with lots of people who are different from you. It demystifies it. It helps chip away those barriers because you form relations and see how other people live day to day. Its one of the most important aspects of school and I don’t think its valued enough where people learn from differences. That’s why we still have a lot of schools that are so segregated. It’s pretty pathetic.

Synthesis
I think I got a pretty varied responses but for the most part people seem to agree that there are certain parts of school that are not needed and things that could be changed because its not perfect. I did different ages and schools, mostly students to see what they thought about it. I think the most interesting insight was from the perspective of a teacher. To see what they thought about it and why they do it. One insight, that made sense to me was that by choosing our schools we're kind of choosing what learning style that we want and that different students will learn differently there is no one set way to doing things. I think most teachers do care a lot more than we think they do about teaching and they want students to be able to learn from them. All the interviewees were in a consensus that school has become a necessary part of our society, their reactions were interesting. Most excepted it, and even if they didn't want to, they dealt with it in one way or another. Some people like that and some people don't. It seems that its easier to point out the flaws than to say what it is doing right.

Hw 39- First School Assignments

Part A:
Ideas
-People go to school just to have something to do even though they don't like it
-We become socialized through school
-People base their success in school with their success in life.

Questions

-When did school become the main route to success in our society?

-What types of schooling is better, homeschool, public, private, charter, boarder, or unschooling? Where would we be without school?

-What ways does school make us smarter and what ways doesn't it?

Experiences

-At moments I enjoy it, though now, I'm kind of looking forward to the next step already and feel like its been prolonged.

-There are the teachers, and then the students who all the other students go to for help to for class

-I get to know different people from school and mannerisms from school and learn social cues

Part B:
Please explore one aspect or moment of school in a 2-4 paragraphs. Show us what's strange or great or awful about it. Talk about how you feel about it - how do you think it came to be - what consequences it produces.

One theory I heard in class that was interesting was Rachel's theory that school is the government's way of civilizing us so that we will fit into society. Perhaps that wasn't the original intention but that is certainly a byproduct of school, becoming "civilized" and taught the right and wrong way to behave according to the rules of our society. Children are taught to behave and be compliant with authority figures. We learn the conducts of behavior. This relates to what Beatrice said about school being "a big kid day care center" which is what it feels like sometimes because we are always here during the day, out of our parents way so we're not left at home alone and we're given something to do and looked after by the teachers. Jakob said about school serving two purposes- to occupy and condition, which relates to what they both said. We're conditioned to fit into our society, we're socialized to get along with people, and school occupies our time while doing all of the above and more.

The way society is set up, school is the main option available to us because we can't get fully paying jobs without a high school diploma and studies show that the degree that you get is directly correlated to your salary; so its set up that the main way to succeed in our society is by going to school.

HW 38- Art Project Cool

I made a MV to represent cool with a bit of what it means to be uncool as well. In the first half of the video I shot people in the park to show real life cool and the second half is a clip from a trailer of an action movie to show how media represents cool to contrast it with how people actually are in real life.People usually get ideas about what's cool and not cool from media and that doesn't always fit them. I guess what I hope that people will realize from seeing this clip that there are many different ways to being cool and not to let a label define them and find something that they think is cool thats real for them, their own personal cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKMAvJjuD4M

I thought the filming was fun. I got one of my friends, Regina, to help film and I kind of surprised them with it but they were into it and thought that it was a fun project. We basically trolloped throughout my neighborhood looking for people who were doing something that people might find cool or that was cool to them. When my friend and I were at the park she suggested we go to the soccer field since people were playing and I asked the players if I could shoot them. They were okay with it and I thought it was pretty cool. I think they played it up for the camera which I'm grateful for since I got to shoot someone scoring. The guy who was filmed doing martial arts was learning from another guy, I also got permission to film them beforehand. The trailer half of the video was not originally going to be in it but I thought it might fit well with the video and the song.

I was listening to music while I was adding the clips and this song seemed to go with it. It was a little difficult editing everything because finding a free editor took awhile and I'm not much of a techie in the first place, but my brother who had to do a video project as well found one online and downloaded it and I basically used that one after he was done. Lagging was a huge problem with my computer and the video editor I got, which was actually not that bad in itself, but every minute or so, a particularly bad lag would shut the editor down and I'd have to make sure to save or lose a chunk of work. It might be surprising but that 3-4 minute clip took around 3-4 hours to make and I think its mostly because of the lag and choosing what clips to use took some time too. I had shot a lot of other clips with my friend, some which didn't get included in the video. I think overall it turned out alright for the first try at it.

At first I thought it might not be cool because I wasn't sure what to do for it but I've always wanted to try making a music video so I thought I would do that for this project. What's surprising is that I actually liked it. It was a lot of fun editing and shooting everything in spite of the technical difficulties. I liked making the video and the whole process that it took to do it. Getting the timing of the clips with the music right felt pretty good. I spent the past few days doing something that I might not have done otherwise and it was something I had a great time doing too. I think its cool to try something new because drawing would've been a fallback for me since that's what I did last time and I didn't want to do that again for that reason. I feel pretty happy finishing this video.