Reflection Time!
Class Life: This week in class, more people gave their AMA presentations, and we scheduled our midterm conferences. Basically, we are going to try and convince our professor to give us the grade we want. We already sent in our pitch, a one page double spaced paper, and now we are just waiting for our conferences to talk about it. So I took a slot for 2:30 pm on Thursday, and my professor and I discuss the grading or 'elevator' pitch, he also said we can talk about publishing a post I wrote. In class, I found out that my AMA still hadn't been due even though I thought it was. I had rushed around like crazy trying to create my video and do the life of a homeschooler section that took forever to write. I'm actually still editing and cutting that down, because I realized that it doesn't truly reflect every week as much as it does one single day that I remembered. More often then not, I used to have very hectic mornings, and I was so busy that my sister had to make my lunches for me. So finding they weren't due yet was a bit of a relief. Home Life: Sunday, was my last work day for the carnival season. We went up to Cacoosing, which to give you a general area, is near Reading. I worked in the cotton candy trailer, which is kind of out of my element. Like I've said in the past, I'm used to working in the sausage trailer. It's a really cute fair. It is very family friendly, with a cute craft show, about five rides, pony rides, and a street fair over the bridge. It's about five hours long, and by the time we're done, its way past dark. Today (October 20th), is my baby brother's fifth birthday. He is obsessed with Spiderman, so we used cray paper to create a giant spider web on the ceiling, then we placed a giant fuzzy, purple spider inside the web and just have it hanging there. We also have a cake covered in frosting and sprinkles with Spiderman's colors. Plus, we have a bunch of Spiderman plates, cups, and stuff like that. We have a tradition the each kid gets to pick out their birthday dinner, so Zach picked both kinds of pigs in a blanket, hot dogs wrapped in bacon on one tray, and hot dogs baked in bread on the other tray. We're just waiting for my father to come home so we can begin the festivities.
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If you caught the first democratic debate on CNN last night, you may have seen Bernie Sander's views on tuition-free college. He said "If our economy is to be strong, we need the best-educated work force in the world." Although this fact is true, I disagree with him when he says that public college's will be free. One, he wants to pay for it with tax payer money. Two, There are too many questions that need answering. Can everyone get into college? Or is it just free for those who can be accepted in to the college. Will going to college become something that is solely based off of a person's grades? After tax dollars, will the government have to pay for it all, or will people have to pay for college once again?
Personally, I don't see how the government could even think of spending any more money. When will they realize that nothing in this world is truly free? I am against a free college. Bernie Sanders says he will only be forcing the rich to pay. But is that really true? How can we know for sure? Eventually, the government would boost everyone's taxes, and we would be paying for millions of people to go to college. That's great for them, but can we seriously afford to pay those taxes ourselves? If they do actually care, then they shouldn't be trying to make colleges free, but instead they should be trying to reduce tuition. Maybe cut it in half. They would still be using tax payer dollars, but it wouldn't be as big of a blow when we have to start paying. That's my honest opinion. What about you? What solutions do you have? What crazy ideas do you have that could change the way we look at a free college system? Say whatever you'd like in the comments, good, bad, or anything in between, I want to hear what you have to say on this matter. Class Life: This week in class, we started our informal presentations of our AMA's. I went in front of the class, had Dr. Mangini play my video, and listened to what people had to say about my assignment. Dr. Mangini completely removed my word count for draft#2, and he wants me to give a day in the life of a homeschool student versus a day in the life of a college student. Although, I think I have to do two days to show the differences in homework as well. I will probably post them to my blog later so that they're still here after having edited my AMA.
Home Life: This week was STORM once again, but my dad had work and he brought my oldest, younger brother with him. My mom also had a bachelorette party to go to, so I was the only other person left to babysit my other two siblings. Babysitting is code for: Pajamas, movies, mish-mosh dinners, and homework out the kazoo. We had some organic, vegetarian, Korean Popstickers. They were kind of tasteless. There was no difference in the flavors, everything tasted exactly the same. So, I kept working on my AMA draft#2 but it's taking a long time to put together the day in a life of a homeschooler, and I haven't even started the day in a life of a college student. I have to get both of those finished, add in some details to the rest of it, and film the new video. Hopefully, I can do the new video before it gets too dark again. Anyway, I actually enjoyed working on my AMA, I was all cozy and cuddled up on the couch with my fuzzy pajama pants, my favorite jacket, and a nice warm blanket. I also watched Shrek Forever After in the background, picking up bits and pieces. I'd already seen it five times so I knew what was going on even with all the parts I missed; same as I'm doing now with Halloweentown II. Great movie if you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it to anyone wanting a good, non-scary, Halloween movie. So, that was my weekend, tell me about something cool you did in the comments below! Reflection Time! Class Life: This was another exciting, interesting week of class, as to be expected when you have Dr. Mangini as your teacher. We had an in class game show... Yes, a game show. Who wants to be a compositionist? We were asked questions based on our past readings, discussion topics, and other little details we have run into along the way. We talked about the word and the world, Anne Lamott, Paulo Freire, the Banking Concept of Education vs. Problem-Posing. We also went over our Adaptive Mindset Assignment (AMA) and negotiated our plan with our teacher. We finally decided to work on our assignment, have it finished by Tuesday, then in class we will do a writing workshop. By Thursday we should have our polished first draft posted to AMA page on our websites. Keep a lookout for it, I will probably post my work directly to my website so you can see the work I do as I go along. I think my biggest issue I face as a student at college, especially a young student, is how I might rank against other students. Do I seem too immature (I know I do in my English class, but in my other classes I'm not quite sure)? Am I going to understand questions asked me even with my lack of 'life experience' so to say? How will I be able to handle my schedule once we really start getting into our major assignments? Home Life: This week my family found our new favorite TV show. Limitless. Basically, Brian, the protagonist, takes a pill known as NZT, and unlocks access to every brain cell for 12 hours. He is used as a resource to the FBI, and does everything he does to try and make his father proud. It comes on CBS Tuesdays at 10pm. It is insanely ridiculous how excited I became after having found out it comes on without any conflict towards my college schedule.
Today, Saturday, I am babysitting my 16 year old friend and we are watching our favorite television show, talking in strange accents, and she is eating Mac N' Cheese with a giant wooden spoon out of a bowl with a happy face on it. I am forcing her to go ahead ten episodes, giving her twenty different clues that are completely ruining her whole television experience. Yet she still considers me one of her best friends. (Hi Camry!) I also set up a Tumblr account to promote my blog, here's the link if you want to look. http://rebekahjwilliams.tumblr.com/ " The results of the Junior/Senior Survey suggest that, during freshman year students often worry about whether or not professors and other students at [school name] accept them. However, the survey results also suggest that most students eventually become comfortable at [school name] and find a family of people at [school name] with whom they are close and feel they belong. In an effort to further understand how the transition to college takes place, we would like to ask you to describe why you think this would be so—that is, why students might feel initially unsure about their acceptance but ultimately overcome these fears. Please be sure to illustrate your essay with examples from your own experiences in classes, seminars, lectures, study groups, and labs." This was a study conducted by Stanford University. We were asked by Dr. Mangini to give our own response to this prompt. This is my answer: Have you ever heard someone say "The more you say something, the more people will believe it."? My dad is infamous for saying this quote. When we are young we begin to hear people in our lives, our influences, say that college stinks, it is hard, it's the worst schooling you'll ever face. So, the more we hear it, the more we believe it. Eventually, as we grow up, we have friends who go off to college, and they tell us it's actually not as bad as they thought it would be, but the bad we've heard still outweighs the good. So we go to college with the bad we've heard. Not only that, but in an attempt to 'protect' ourselves, we close our minds in the process. We're in a place with people we don't know, concepts we don't understand, and new experiences altogether. We are afraid of how we will be accepted, how we will rank among our classmates and our peers, and even just how we will feel going through this new stage of our life. There are numerous reasons why freshmen might be afraid of how they will be accepted. They might feel that people will judge them for being younger or older than the rest of their classmates, they could be afraid that their professors will be too loose or too lax, they might even be worried that they are walking into a setting too over or under-dressed. Plenty of things can stop someone from embracing their first year at college. In my mind, the biggest fear is that they won't connect with another student. Two examples of my own are the first two classes I had. I knew that two of my high school friends would be at the college, one in my psychology class, and another in my statistics class. This left English as the class I was worried about. I went to college completely open minded about my psychology class, the teacher walked in, and not even five minutes through I decided I loved her. Next came English and I was a bit worried, but there was a shock, a disturbance so to say, the teacher walked in, and cracked a joke. This quick, unexpected, remark forced my mind open for just enough time to make me hopeful about the class. Since then, English has become my favorite class, and I find myself wanting to be there when I'm not. I have even managed to make some friends in that class. Freshmen have a lot of reasons to be scared, but once they get through the stress of their first week, it isn't so bad. Not all people allow themselves to open their minds, but by the time they are finished with their freshman year, they have the summer to think about it, and they finally realize it wasn't actually all that bad. Once they come back, they have opened their minds, they know what's going on, they know a few people, they don't feel judged, they decide to enjoy their time. They begin putting together their social circle, they find people with their major, people they might work with one day. They realize that college is okay, and not the end of the world they heard about when they were younger. I know there are plenty of reasons freshmen might feel out of place at college, but this is what I believe. Go ahead and list some of your ideas or fears about college in the comments. No explanation needed, but feel free to write one if you'd like. Class Life: Class this week was pretty interesting. Our professor was mute for the day... Yep, mute. He made a silent argument using videos, he arranged them in the same way he would an argumentative essay, and taught us a lesson using a different genre of text.
Home life: This was a pretty interesting week, as I said above, my grandparents left this week. Actually, it was just my grandpa (Poppop), my grandma (Mommom) left in August. Poppop left on Tuesday while I was arriving at college. Both my grandparents go to Florida every year, they hate the cold, so the go to the sunshine state. We usually visit them in February, but there have been a few exceptions because my dad had to work, or we didn't have enough money. This year we may just have to go early because college starts again mid-February. Anyway, I was also invited to a homecoming dance, but I'm not going. (Sorry Tori!) My friends have heard me say that the only thing I don't like about homeschooling is the fact that I'll never get to go to a homecoming or a prom. Of course, there is a homeschool prom, but there's only one guy I'd want to go with, and he wouldn't want to go with me. Plus it's out in Harrisburg, and that's a long ride. We were coming home from a small group, and my friend's mom was driving me home. She asked what school I would normally go to if I wasn't homeschooled. "Uh... I think, maybe Penncrest?" Came my unsure reply. "What?!?! No way..." You could just tell how excited her mom was. "Girl, I got you hooked up. I can get you into all the dances, I got you covered" Said Emily. Immediately, her and her mom started talking about which boy they should find to be my date. "Oh yeah, that would go great, tell my mom you're getting me a date for the homecoming dance." I said with sarcasm emanating from every word. "What, no, you'll be fine!" Emily laughed. "Yeah right, that'd go over so great." Was my reply. "No, besides, I can just your ticket for you to go, it doesn't have to be with a guy." Emily said, trying to get me to come along. "I don't know, we'll see, I have to talk with my mom. I'll message you, okay?" "Yeah girl, let me know!" I said goodbye to Emily, and thanked her mom for dropping me off, and I went inside. They next day was college, and when I came home, on the stove, was an apple ginger cake my mom had made. Yes, I know, we're still trying to use up those apples. I forget what my family was watching, but I know when it was over, mom brought out a batch of kettle corn she had just made. We convinced them to watch Jack Black's "Gulliver's Travels" from 2010, because they still hadn't seen it, and then we all went to bed. Today, I mostly did homework, and then we had a movie night, we watched the second half of "The Croods" and all of "Hotel Transylvania" and then it was off to finishing my blog. I did most of it, but there's one last thing I want to tell you guys about. It's my favorite place in the world, with college coming in as a close second. My church. Calvary Chapel of Delaware County, CCDELCO, for those of us who are there all the time. Sunday's, we have church, movie theater seats, worship with the band, and the projector slides that help me write down the notes when Pastor Bob goes a bit too fast. Wednesday's, off to midweek at Julianna's house. We used to all get together and do an outdoor thing, but we moved it so that girls are at one house, and guys are a few streets away. Just because of the other stuff going on at the church. We changed the setting a bit too. Instead of John Reilly leading worship (check out his music video with Lecrae here), we sit around with our leader Mrs. Lisa (Love Her!!!), we talk about the different aspects of the bible, how to get the most out of reading it, how to take notes that mean something, and tons of other subjects. Saturday's are the best things ever. The second and fourth Saturday of each month, we meet at 5, eat dinner together, play crazy games that we have no clue how they ever came up with, we have a live indoor concert, and we listen to John Reilly speak for 15 minutes. Then it's dessert and a dance party, and before we know it, 8:30 rolls around, and John comes out with his famous quote "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." Then we go outside, and we either all hang out or go to our cars... This week, we had Anthony Pagán and John Olgram sit over a tarp (you know it's good if they have to bring out a tarp) and there was a carton of eggs numbered 1-12, nine were hard boiled, and three were not. They took turns calling numbers, they received the egg with the matching numbers, and then proceeded to crack them with their foreheads. The first person to get two raw eggs cracked on their head lost. Anthony was the winner, and he won $20 towards our fall weekend at camp stream side. Lucky ducky! Disclaimer: This may make more sense after having read my previous post - My Mindset.
I believe you’re never too _____ to learn. I left something out, right? I believe you are never too young to learn what you want to learn, if I want to go take college courses as a 15 year old, I am going to be 15 and take college courses. I could be taking just about any courses I want to. I believe nobody is ever too (enter excuse here) to learn. Anyone, anywhere, anytime can learn something, anything. Commit yourself to learning one non-school thing a week, then if you seem to have extra time on your hands, try to learn something extra. If you seem to be having trouble, learn one new thing every two weeks. At least you’re still learning, right? If you understand a fixed versus a growth mindset, you can obviously tell which I have. If you don’t understand it, I will explain it for you. A growth mindset says I have the ability to learn something new, a fixed mindset says what I know is what I know, and I can’t change what’s been predetermined. I personally have a growth mindset. I know I can learn more, and I really want to, and for as long as I can help it, I will keep learning. Math is one of my favorite subjects... when I’m not being pressured to get it done in a certain amount of time. I love learning it, mainly because it’s something a lot of people struggle with, so it makes me proud to know I can understand it pretty easily. The Pythagorean Theorem was my absolute favorite thing ever once I had finally figured out how to do it. I struggled with it for the longest time, I cried over it even. But I knew I had the ability to comprehend it, I just had to want to. So I visited my teacher's office hours, and together we figured it out. After that, I was teaching it to just about everyone I knew. I loved it, I was making up problems to do in my free time, and it literally became a hobby of mine. This is a big part of my growth mindset; I know that all I need is to want to be able to understand something, and I can. I have the ability to learn anything I want to learn, especially in this day and age. Even if its just little by little I can boost my education, I just have to know how to go about doing it. I can ask a teacher, talk to a counselor, receive tutoring, watch YouTube for goodness sake. I am able to learn something. I truly believe everyone should have this growth mindset, and that they are never to ______ to learn. What goes in your blank? What won't you allow to overpower yourself? Let me know in the comments, let's create a discussion. I want to talk with you about these blanks. I want to know what obstacles you choose to overcome. Tuesday in English Composition, we went over a Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset. A growth mindset means that a student (or nonstudent) believes they have the ability and capacity to learn new things and to change their basic, everyday knowledge. A fixed mindset means that a student (or nonstudent) believes that the amount of knowledge they have is predetermined and hardwired into their system, and they will never be able to change, or do anything about it. I personally believe I have a growth mindset in and out of an academic setting. I feel as though I was raised this way, and that my mom was a big part of this mindset. She made everything a learning opportunity, and there was nothing she couldn’t relate to school in some way, shape, or form. Her main motto’s included: “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Isn’t it exciting how you can learn anything, anywhere,” and the number one motto “well, we can learn from it!” Baking was an opportunity to learn fractions, working with my grandma was my day’s math homework, going to a friend’s house usually involved packed homework, and trivia flashcards. It’s actually a big part of who I am though, I never go to hang out with a friend without a new fact or a bit of information to show them, other friends, I actually repeat our professor’s entire lecture so they can figure out how to do their homework.. I am always eager to show them how they can learn from anything. I truly think that everything sticks with you in your subconscious, only to be revealed to you at a later time. Even if it was something you didn’t understand at the time, maybe what you’re experiencing right now will help you to figure out the memory. I hope my mindset never becomes a fixed one, I love to learn, it’s part of who I am. While here at college, I hope to experience things I have never thought of, try some new things, and to rewrite my thoughts a thousand times over.
Reflection Time! Class Life: This week in class we talked about The "Banking Concept" of Education. I enjoyed an in class activity we did where we had to create a visual, find a quote relating to a specific parts of the banking concept of education, paraphrase that quote, and tell if the students were spectators or re-creators. Our group had to analyze the Problem-Posing method. We also did an in class free write (which will be posted shortly). There was also this one quote from Dr. Mangini that I loved, he said "Create first, critique later." It kind of reminded me just to go with my ideas, just keep typing, don't worry about capitalization, punctuation, even if the ideas came out properly, just keep typing; get it all down. Then put it all together once you've finished typing. That's something I need to remember when both free writing and when doing my assignments. Home Life: So remember my in my last reflection when I said "expect to hear how I binged watched some show, did some art, or went to the movies with my friends…?" Well, sort of, we tried. We pick a time, a theater, and our exact seats, I ordered the opening day tickets online, and I arrived with the tickets to the theater ten minutes late. Seeing as I have no phone though, I had no way of knowing that my friends decided to go to another theater a few streets away because they were worried I'd make them miss the movie. So I still sat and watched the movie (after ten minutes of previews), and luckily my mom checked online to figure out what time the movie would end so she could pick me up, because otherwise I would have had no way to tell her the movie was over. Also, my friends knew that I was only late because I was busy closing up our pool, and that's hard even with seven of us trying to work at once. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now though. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Our Tuesday assignment is to read, re-read, and re-read again the work of author Paulo Freire. We were asked not only to read The "Banking Concept" of Education, but to rewrite our reading. Dr. Mangini asked us to print out and mark up our pages. He asked us to think on paper, to get our ideas down so we don't lose them. Then to write not only about what the banking concept of education actually is, not only what the contrast of problem-posing is, but also how we have seen one or both of them in our education. The banking concept of education goes as far out of its way as it can to make sure students are not being creative thinkers; it tries to give as much information to students as possible in as little time as possible. Paulo Freire gave us these traits of the banking concept of education: a. the teacher teaches and the students are taught; b. the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; c. the teacher thinks and the students are thought about; d. the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly; e. the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined; f. the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply; g. the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher; h. the teacher chooses his program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it; i. the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students; j.the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the students are mere objects. Problem-posing methods seem to be much more hands-on, try it out for yourself, it seems to ask questions relating to our world and our lives. It seems to show the student how this information could relate to them, and thus why the should understand the material. It tries to relate more to your personal non-school life, which is using association, so if a student runs into a real life problem similar to one they used in class, they will think of it shortly thereafter the problem arises. It turns them into critical thinkers. In my own personal education, I noticed my mom mainly used traits a, c, d, e, f, and h of the banking concept of education. I also noticed a lot of the problem-posing methods in my education as well, she seemed to do a great job of using about half and half. I can also see how different times, different circumstances, called for different methods to be used. There were some days where we would have to leave the house, or we would be on a tight schedule so the banking method of education worked best to help me learn the material quickly, other times we had lazy days where we could cuddle up on the couch with a textbook, or lay on the floor with a white board and do random math problems, practice taking notes or doodle/scribble while mom read to me, giving my hands something to do. Every thing we did was a learning opportunity, she made up a game called pass, we had to answer a random question (now we know they were quiz questions) and try our hardest to get the right answer, if we didn't know, we would pass it along to the next player and see if they could get it. The entire game was more of just bragging rights, we never won any prizes, except for grades she put on papers without us knowing our favorite game was actually a test. We somehow managed to stay pretty well balanced, it think it's part of what helped me to retain as much information as I have. |
Rebekah W
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