A Collection of Random Thoughts

Jon Kabat-Zinn claims in his book that not knowing is OK. He said we never want to admit we don't know because we don't want to look foolish and that we have been conditioned to think this way. This reminded me of Sir Ken Robinson's argument on how children are taught that being wrong or making mistakes is wrong even though it's part of human nature. He also claimed that even scientists have claimed that they don't know, which is what pushes them to move forward and find answers. As a teacher, I know I can't know everything. Which right now terrifies me, because I don't want to be wrong or make a mistake. If I were making the mistake with myself that would be fine, but if I make a mistake in class then I would be failing my students! I really hope that doesn't happen in class, but deep down I know eventually will. No one can avoide mistakes forever, and I guess I have to make my peace with that. Hopefully, I will have established an enviornment in cl...

Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone  discusses writing in an unfamiliar genre to get kids to step outside of their comfort zones. Cathy Fleischer talks about seeing this project brought to life in class, and a lot of the things she noticed are things that I struggled with. The worst fear that all students share is humiliation, which is exactly what I thought I would feel when I presented my project. I felt really good about it when I was working on my final draft and making it look all nice and shiny, but then came the time to present and my mind started playing tricks on me. Like it said in the book, I started looking at my mistakes and worried about sharing my project with others because I thought it was weird, and I thought it would look like easy work compared to what my classmates did. I was really uncomfortable writing in this genre because I didn't really know what I was doing. Making up the rules as I go along is how I live life, but it just felt wrong doing that for t...

I woke up today, turned on the T.V., flipped the channel to MSNBC, and didn't turn it off until 2:30 which is when I went down to Olde Town Square to participate in Fort Collin's march. The speeches I saw were so amazing and moving; my mother sister and I watched and cried together as the march went on. I loved the fact that only the kids spoke today--no adults! What an amazing sight! This truly is the future generation's revolution. This also meant that people couldn't say that because a Democrat spoke at the march, it was a political thing. This is a life vs. death thing. I am mainly writing today because I wanted to talk about what my mom said while we were watching the march. She said that when she was younger, she used to have the fire that these kids have. She used to fight for people who couldn't fight for themselves, she used to shout when she saw injustice, and that's the reason she became a teacher. She wanted to bring that fire to the future gener...

I think I have improved my project a lot, but it still feels like I should be doing more. I always feel this way when I'm turning in an assignment. Probably because I should  be doing something more. I just can't figure out what that is though, so I guess that means I'm finished. The final product looks a lot better than the rough draft so I guess that's also a good sign. I got great feedback, which helped a lot. The feedback was honest and truthful, but it wasn't rude which is something I'm not used to. I remember getting my essays edited in high school, and they would come back covered in red pen with stuff I should be improving. I remember one time, my paper was so bad that the girl had to get a blank piece of paper to make suggestions. This time though, the suggested edits were awesome suggestions, and they really helped improve my UGP.

I've been feeling so... Under Pressure . Heh! But seriously, this is harder than I thought it would be.  Talking to strangers has it's moments, but now I am working on the aftermath. There are lots of "uhh"s and "Aaand"s I'm getting rid of. I want the transcripts to look smooth, less choppy. But at the same time, I can't aulter what they said. The main resource I'm basing my work off of is " Humans of New York ". I was inspired by them in the first place, so it only seems appropriate to use their examples. I've also looked into other resources to look for inspiration. A great book I used for this was " The Public Library: A Photographic Essay ". Robert Dawson explains how pictures give one more insight on how things are going. For example; he talkes about the pictures he took in college, while the Vietnam War was going on. Students were protesting, and people were shouting at them to keep their mouth shut. Dawson took...

I'm getting better at interviewing people. I went to the library and the park to interview people yesterday and to Olde Town today. Each location gave me a different experience. When I was at the library people were brief, and didn't really want to talk to me because they were reading or working. I was only able to interview three people there before running out. The park was fun. I interviewed some kids, which was a really fun experience. The kids were very honest about what they were seeing around them and were more opinionated than I expected them to be. Olde town was probably the worst place I could have chosen to interview people. I only talked to two people there, because everyone else was either scared of me or didn't want to talk to me. I think I will spend some time writing down their transcripts and work on my people skills.  I found an article that might help with my situation. " How to Conduct an Effective Job Interview " is a guide for employers to...

You might have noticed a theme here. I highly support students and their right to safety. It is my belief that having regulations on automatic assault rifles will make students and citizens safer when they step outside their house. I know there are plenty of arguments against that, and I'm sure you've heard them all. But I think we should at least try to do something about this issue before we decide to just give up and offer "thoughts and prayers". Today student walked out of class at 10:00am and protested weak gun laws in America. I don't usually watch the news but I was glued to the TV today as news anchors talked about the student protests across America. I was so happy to see students getting together and fighting against this unjust law. In my opinion, today disproved an age-old argument; kids are too young to understand, so better not even try to explain anything to them. Saying "you're too young to understand" is just an excuse adults use t...

The other day in my Literacy of the Learner class, the teachers asked us if discussing tragedies in class would be appropriate. Should we talk about personal tragedies like loved ones passing away, or national tragedies like school shootings, or both? My opinion is that we should talk about tragedies in schools because as soon as kids get out of school they will be exposed to this topic anyway. There is no point shielding kids from troubling news because they do have a life outside of school, and opinions you don't get to hear in classrooms. School is supposed to make students ready for "real life", and in "real life" we are free to discuss controversial topics and give our own opinion. Personally, I'm still not used to the freedom in I have in CSU. I can share my opinion without a teacher pulling me aside and asking me not to do that? I can discuss a controversial topic in a polite manner? What?! If I had been exposed to this type of behavior earlier, I...

Turns out, just walking up to someone and recording the conversation you have with them might be difficult. Some people are very talkative and sharing--happy to have the opportunity to share a bit of their story with someone. Other people are less willing to share their story and don't give too much detail.  The first mistake I saw myself doing was not explaining to people that I have questions picked out for them to answer. I mean, I don't mind if they answer their own questions but some people ended up sharing less than they could have if I had asked them my questions. I need to come up with a new, more confident approach on how I introduce myself and my project to complete strangers. The first person I talked to shared with me about her water conservation project, and a meeting she is having a month from now. I loved hearing about the details of her project, it was clearly something she couldn't stop thinking about so I was glad she got to talk about it to someone. I ...

I have a better idea! Since most people are doing short stories for their UGP, I thought I should be a bit more original. So I went to a place of inspiration...Facebook. I follow a page on Facebook called " Humans of New York " where these random stories are collected of people from New York. (Right now they are traveling in Asia.) And I thought I could do something like that! My idea is that I will talk to at least 25 people over the week, and ask them to share a bit of their story with me. (This will take about 5 minutes of their time.) I will write down their story, and put them in my "classroom". Then, I will write a proposal or essay on how I would teach these people if they were in my English, Literature class. I want to come up with a specific example of what I would teach them, but I'm still working on that. Mostly I'm just making up the rules as I go along. I want to get a diverse crowd so I can get an idea of what it would be like to be in a typi...

So when I grew up in India, I experienced a very different schooling system. The teachers I had thought that if they could shame me enough, I would learn. But the more they shamed me, the more I hated them, and the more I hated them the more I did not do the work they assigned me. This gave me a never-ending cycle of embarrassment. Every day I would come into class--without having my homework done, and without an excuse as to why--and the teachers would ask me to stand in front of the class so that they could show the other students what a lazy person looks like. Me! Hello! But that didn't mean I did their work, in fact after every incident like that I would hate them more. My parents got notes home saying "Your child is not paying attention in class" or "Why does Mudita never do her homework?" But my parents didn't care. My mom would come down to talk with my teachers, and when they would tell her how horrible I am as a student--she would point out how horr...