Goal keeper at heart

5 years ago today, Carrie Holmstrom, was in a car accident that changed her life forever.  I used to play soccer with Carrie and she was such a nice person that pushed her whole team to give their best.  When i heard the news about Carrie's accident i couldn't understand why such a horrible thing could happen to such an amazing person.


http://www.pressherald.com/archive/despite-life-changing-accident-shes-still-a-goalkeeper-at-heart_2008-06-29.html


This article is from a few years ago, but now Carrie has lost a lot of weight from doing 6am work outs every morning.  She also has a blog where she updates a lot about what she has been doing and what she feels.  Carrie is one of the happiest people that i have ever met, even to this day.  It is very inspirational how Carrie lives everyday like it is her last.

Education in Politics

Education is Politics
Ira Shor




1. "The teacher is the person who mediates the relationship between outside authorities, formal knowledge, and individual students in the classroom."


 I really like this quote and i do agree with it.  I feel like teachers should balance their time with different aspects of the classroom and also needs to not spend too much time on one thing.  Subjects can not be taught at a really fast pace unless the teachers know that every single student completely understands the material.


2. "He urged teachers to encourage students to question their experience in school: ‘You must arouse children's curiosity and maker them think about school."


 I feel like the most successful students are the ones that want to be there and are interested to learn.  Sometimes its very hard to get students interested in school but the way teachers teach can help.  Learning is not always supposed to be fun but if a subject is taught in an interesting way or by doing an experiment then the students will be more interested.




3. “The students in that media class learned subject matter through student-centered problem-posing in a critical dialogue, not through my lecturing them in a banking fashion.”


I feel like this way of learning helps many students learn and be interested in the topic.  A student being interested in a subject is very important because most student will refuse to try to learn new things if they find it not interesting.




I feel like this reading had some good points about how students should be able to say their opinions but i feel like i lost interest with the reading because it was so long.  I feel like teachers should try to teach in a way where the students discuss more and aren't always taught subjects in a ledture

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

- Jennifer

1)"Community requires a willingness to see people as they are-different perhaps in their minds and in their bodies, but not different in their spirits or in their willingness and ability to contribute to the mosaic of society."

1. This is my favorite quote.  I know plenty of people that claim they are scared of people with special needs and just do not like to be around them.  The best moments for me in the last two years have been when i was around people with special needs.  Being around them has gave me a different out look on many things in life.  They are not given as much respect as they deserve.  The battle obstacles and judgement every day, which i find completely unfair that they have to go through as much as they do because of the special needs clients that i know at my job are some of the most amazing people i have ever met.

2) "“How absurd to be judged by others at all, especially by those who have never experienced a disability or who are unwillingly providing us with support or who don’t listen to the voices we have.”

1. I completely agree with this quote.  I work with people with special needs and nothing annoys me more than when me and the other staff at my job will take them out to eat and to do other activities and waitresses and other people act like they do not have opinions and can not do anything for themselves.  I do understand how some people do not know how to act when they are around people with special needs, but people do need to understand that they have their own thoughts, feelings and most of them are capable of doing plenty of daily activities on their own.


3) "If you came into the room and were told there was a retarded child in the class, a child with special needs, I don't think you would pick Lee out.  The kids really agree that he's as capable as they are.  Intellectually the same."


1.  I really like this quote because there are many people with special needs that are extremely smart and many people do not think that some people with special needs are smarter than most people without special needs.


This reading was by far my favorite reading.  I can relate to this reading more than the others and it is also a topic that i feel strongly about.

“Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon

“Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”

by Jean Anyon

-Jen

1)"In the middle class school, work is getting the right answer."

 1.  I agree with this, I also think it is something that high school students do too.  Most students do not look at what the purpose is on doing certain activities, they just care about getting the right answer.  I feel like if the learning was done like in the second quote on my blog then the students would realize why they are doing certain activities.

2)"While right answers are important in math, they are not "given" by the book or by the teacher but may be challenged by the children. Going over some problems in late September the teacher says, "Raise your hand if you do not agree." A child says, "I don't agree with sixty-four." The teacher responds, "OK, there's a question about sixty-four. [to class] Please check it. Owen, they're disagreeing with you. Kristen, they're checking yours." The teacher emphasized this repeatedly during September and October with statements like "Don't be afraid to say you disagree. In the last [math] class, somebody disagreed, and they were right. Before you disagree, check yours, and if you still think we're wrong, then we'll check it out." By Thanksgiving, the children did not often speak in terms of right and wrong math problems but of whether they agreed with the answer that had been given."

1. I agree with this way of learning.  It makes all the children think and figure out if the answer is right or wrong.  They also learn how to give their opinion.

2. I feel like this way of learning is better for the students then a teacher giving all the answers to the students and not letting them figuring it out on their own.

3) “As one child said, what you do is "store facts up in your head like cold storage - until you need it later for a test or your job."

1. I liked this quote because it is very true.  Almost all students do this.  They learn about a topic until they are tested on it, then they don't ever use it again until it the topic comes up in a conversation or during a job.  Sometimes a topic is never thought about again after the test.

This reading was easy to read and i do agree with some of the points, like how students just store knowledge away in their brains until it is needed again.  Also that most students only care about getting the right answers and don't care about why the activity is being done.

Race, Class, Gender; Why Students Fail Peter McLaren

Race, Class, Gender; Why Students Fail
Peter McLaren


-Jen


1."Just as male resistance in the schools often serve to more firmly cement the boys in their low-caste status, female resistance often means rejecting the culture of the classroom only to be positioned in a culture in which girls are viewed as sex object."
1) I feel like this quote is very demeaning for women.  It is saying that no matter what women do with their lives, they will only be viewed as sex objects


2."The Corridor girls started to "go" with boys as early as age twelve.  If in the process of "making out
 they responded to the boys' advances too readily or indiscriminately, however, they were labeled as "sluts"  Such names, employed viciously and randomly, were also bestowed on girls who were physically unappealing.  Girls often found themselves in the double bind of losing their group status if they engaged in "too much" sexual activity, or of being rejected as "cold
 if they engaged in too little.  Boys' status however was fundamentally enhanced by similar incidents of increased sexual engagement.  This double standard has existed historically of course and feminists have consistently and rightly attacked it."
1) I feel like this quote is disturbing.  I feel that at age 12, no one should "go" with anyone else.  At that age I feel like that they are too young to understand what a relationship really is about.
2)Also, I feel that the double standard for girls and boys is completely wrong.  Boys can do what they want with who they want, but if a girl happens to do it she is looked down upon.


3."Specifically blacks and similar minorities believe that in order for a minority person to succeed in school academically, he or she must learn to think and act white."
.... I understood this quote two different ways.
1) This quote is sad.  Its sad that people feel that they need to think and act white to succeed in school.
2) Also, i feel like this quote could mean that if a minority that does not speak English very well and they live in an area that does speak english, they need to learn english so they can fit in with the whites.




This reading had some disturbing points about it where certain genders and certain races are put down

A Particularly Cheap White Whine

A Particularly Cheap White Whine: 
Racism, Scholarships and the Manufacturing of White Victimhood 
By Tim Wise
-- Jennifer





1)"Consider a few things that have happened in the past month-and-a-half, in no particular order: First, comedian Michael Richards goes on a racist tirade at an L.A. comedy club, screaming the n-word at two black audience members, over and again for several minutes. Then, white students at four entirely different colleges dress up in blackface or throw "ghetto" parties, at which they mock low-income African Americans: next, a group of Muslim clerics are thrown off a plane because passengers get nervous after seeing them engaged in evening prayers prior to boarding their flight; and finally, New York police fire fifty shots at a group of unarmed black men, for no apparent reason, killing one who was due to be married the next day."
1. After reading this quote it made me think of what could have been going through these people's heads when they were doing all of this.
2. What the comedian did was very rude and unnecessary.  The incident with the new work police is just wrong. I don't understand how they could shoot people that are unarmed for no reason.


2)"white students are twice as likely as their African American or Latino counterparts to be taught by the most highly qualified teachers and half as likely to have the least qualified instructors in class being taught by highly qualified teachers is one of the most important factors in school achievement."
1.This quote does not make sense to me.  Whites are considered "privileged" so they get the best teachers, but the students that are considered unprivileged get the teachers that aren't as qualified.  It doesn't make sense to give the students that might need more help with the less qualified teachers. 
2. Also, I don't understand why a certain group of people get more qualified teachers over another group of people.


3)"It ignores the fact that the average white student in the U.S. attends school with half as many poor kids as the average black or Latino student, which in turn has a direct effect on performance, since attending a low-poverty school generally means having more resources available for direct instruction (5). Indeed, schools with high concentrations of students of color are 11-15 times more likely than mostly white schools to have high concentrations of student poverty (6)."
1. I think that if there are many poor students in a school and it effects the performance of the other students that something should be done.  It is no one fault, but it isn't fair for the students that are poor and it isn't fair for the students that are not.




This reading had a a lot of good information even though the first quote i used was very disturbing and crazy how things like that can happen and people can get away with treating other people so horrible.

"In the Service of What?" by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

"In the Service of What?"
 by Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer

Jen

1."Educators and legislators alike maintain that service learning can improve the

community and invigorate the classroom, providing rich educational

experiences for students at all levels of schooling. Service learning makes

students active participants in service projects that aim to respond to the

needs of the community while furthering the academic goals of students.

Students in a service learning project might analyze and monitor the

composition of nearby swamplands or produce an oral history of their

community. They might work with the homeless or initiate a cross-age

tutoring project. In addition to helping those they serve, such service learning 

activities seek to promote students' self-esteem, to develop higher-order

thinking skills, to make use of multiple abilities, and to provide authentic

learning experiences—all goals of current curriculum reform efforts."

1) I agree with this quote.  Taking part in a service learning project is very helpful in different ways.  You learn many different skills and also help other people which is very rewarding.  A tutoring project is  a very good way to not only help someone with school work, but also be a friend to someone that could really need someone.

2. Some projects require a student to use what the learn in the classroom in a real life situation which is a good way to learn more about topics.

2."One student in Mr. Johnson's class, for example, volunteered at the Veterans'

Memorial Senior Center:

For Thanksgiving this year my stepmother and I helped serve the

seniors their Thanksgiving dinner. This was a very rewarding

experience helping others in need. It seemed that the dinner was

something special to them; it was a chance for them to get

together with their peers. Many don't have families in the area and

are all alone for the holidays. This made it a little less lonely,

which feels great. Thank you for giving me the chance to help!"

1.I feel that many students should be part of a project where they help make people's lives better.  I agree with what this student said about how great it felt to brighten the holiday for these people that might not have family around.  In high school my chorus would go sing at the aci and at a few senior centers.  Some of the staff told us how many of the people never smiled when they are there, but once we show up they are all smiling and singing.  It feels great to make a difference in someones life.

This article was confusing sometimes, but the meaning of it is very important.  Volunteering has been a big part of my life and i understand how you need to talk to the people that you are helping.  It makes the experience better and you can also help them out better if you know some things about them.