September 29, 2005
Lincoln Elementary
The fact that stands out the most to me is that 93% of the school is on free and reduced priced lunch. Thats a staggering number. That means out of that 600 students who attend roughly 560 of them are on reduced lunches. Another number that jumps out at me is that almost half of the students who attend Lincoln dont feel safe while at school. I would think that feeling safe would be one of the most important things when it comes to when you look at schools next to its education. And lastly, only a little over half (60%) of students are literally comprehensive.
Posted by at 3:28 PM | Comments (0)
Interview
The one on one with the teacher I thought was very helpful. It helped me understand how and what I needed to do to imrove my paper. It's one thing when you're in class and the teacher intructs everyone on what he aspects, but its another thing when you can sit down and talk one on one. It's a lot more benefical I think. I realized that as a writer I dont include enough detail about the important things. Such as for this paper, I didnt give enough background information about my mom, who has been the inspiration for my education.
Posted by at 12:46 PM | Comments (1)
September 22, 2005
"The Things We Carried" by Danielle Williams
The style is very simple. Small sentences without very many run-ons. It starts off with her describing how she thought that how easy she thought English class was going to be for her, but she quickly found out that it was hard due the poor grades she was getting. She then goes out to describe certain events where she was challenged and had struggled. The thing that sticks out is that her teacher was a tough one who was "the type who wanted to follow every rule exactly and precisely". Because I too have had teachers who have been quite strict and wouldnt let up one bit. But through that, you can overcome their challenges and gain mutual respect for one another. As she did with hers. All in all I thought that this ok paper.
Posted by at 3:05 PM | Comments (1)
Peer Editing
I liked how we were given ample time to read eachothers papers and give critiques. What I had been used to in high school was, we would all print out our papers and pass them around in class for like 10-15 mins. This didnt help much because all the things people really looked for were grammatical errors and didnt give much feeback. But since we were given a few days to look at eachothers papers, we had time to ACTUALLY give good comments on how we can improve our papers.
Posted by at 1:41 PM | Comments (1)
September 16, 2005
Reaction to "Aria"
I was really surpised by this reading. It shocked me when he went as far as changing his name just to fit in and not associate himself with his hispanic culture. I think that it is important to learn other cultures outside of your own, but you shouldn't try and abandon you own culture becuase thats basically not being true to yourself and and not being "real".
It's interesting how we learn alot more about old english culture and how they talk without a label other than just "english", but if we were studying african american culture it has a different label, "black english." Just something i found interesting...
Posted by at 1:30 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2005
"Shitty first drafts"
"Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on."
I found this idea to be rather strange. I was kind of caught off guard when the whole mouse and the jar came into the picture. I mean I understand quieting the voices in your head and everything, but that's just pretty random. I would think that imagining people's voices as mice and grabbing them and putting them into a jar would just give you something else to think about and make you lose focus.
Posted by at 3:34 PM | Comments (0)
September 6, 2005
Introducing Yourself
1. I went to Minnehaha Academy located at 3100 West River parkway in Minneapolis, MN. It was a rather quiet neighborhood along the Mississippi river.
2. I didn't like all of the "busy work" that we were assigned. Tons and tons of assignments were completely pointless and were a waste of time. I liked how since it was a small environment, I was able to get to know teachers on a personal level if i desired.
3. My best teacher I had was Ms. Myhre. I took Psychology, Business, and Economics from her. What I liked about her was that she was nice, kind, respectful, and very understanding. She would go out of her way to help others out. My worst teacher was Ms. Hughes. She was my 8th grade Spanish teacher. I don't know why, but I honestly never saw that woman crack even the slightest smile. And for some reason, it seemed like she had it "in" for me. Always making things harder for me when it came to grading.
4. I would say that I received a good education going to Seward Elementary and Minnehaha Academy, both in south Mpls. I think that the opportunity was there for it to be excellent but I didnt decide to take school to seriously and avoided alot of classes that would present a challenge whatsoever basically until senior year, kind of.
5. From as long as I can remember. I don't really remember ever thinking that I wouldn't ever go to college. The thought entered my mind of maybe taking a year off to work, but I knew people who had done that and said that they never got motivated to ever go back and I didnt want that to be me.
Posted by at 3:31 PM | Comments (1)