Dead Poets Society Notes Day 2

- Knox goes to Chris's party; he gets drunk
- He says Carpe Diem, downs his whiskey then kisses chris on the forehead when Chris is asleep; Chris's boyfriend beats him up
- Charlie submits an article to the school paper about the Dead Poets Society; the directors of the school have an assembly in attempt to find out who wrote it
- During the assembly a phone rings, it is Charlie's; he answers it and says "It's God. He says he wants girls at Walton
- Charlie is whipped in punishment; the dean of the school wants names
- Mr. Keating warns Charlie that there is a time for daring and a time for caution
- Neil's father comes to Walton; tells Neil off for wasting his time acting and deceiving him; asks if Mr. Keating is influencing him to do this; he says he needs to quit the play immediately
- Neil confides in Mr. Keating what happened with his father; Mr. Keating advised Neil to tell his father what he truly wants, instead of going along with what his father wants for him
- Knox goes to the High School to see Chris to tell her he is sorry; he gives her flowers and reads her a poem he wrote in front of her class
- Neil told his father about his acting - his father allowed him to stay in the play, even though he didn't like what Neil had to say about what he wants to do with his life
- Chris comes to Walton to tell him that Chet was going to kill him if he found out; Knox said she had to care about him or else she wouldn't be warning him
- Neil's father comes to the play
- Mr. Perry was furious at Neil after the play; apparently Neil had not told him about the play
- Mr. Perry told Neil he was putting him in Military school, and that he is going to Harvard to become a doctor
- Neil kills himself after the argument with his dad with his father's gun
- The red haired kid cooperated with the administration; they want to use Keating as a scapegoat
- Charlie got expelled
- Todd goes into the meeting with Mr. Nolan and his parents are there; he signs the document essentially stating that Neil's death was Mr. Keating's fault
- Mr. Nolan takes over teaching English; during the lesson Mr. Keating comes in and Todd bursts out that it wasn't Keating's fault; Ketaing was about to leave when Todd stands up on the desk to say, "Oh Captain, My Captain"; about half of the class follows (not including that red haired kid... they're soulless)

THE END

Detailed Example of Mr. Escalante's Teaching (from Madision G, for Group 3)

During a night class when Mr. Escalante was teaching Latin@* adults to speak English, he excused himself from the room when he began to experience some chest pain. The pain turned into a minor heart attack, which had the teacher fumbling down a staircase and finally lying on the ground. In the next scene, at a hospital, a doctor concluded that the heart attack was the result of stress from his multiple teaching responsibilities. Mr. Escalante's wife wanted him to follow the doctor's advice and not teach for a long time. When his wife left the room, Mr. Escalante grabbed a piece of paper with the hospital's information on it and wrote out various algorithms, then asked his nurse what time she would be getting out of work. The next scene showed that very paper being passed around the room by his students, which allowed them to continue learning at their current level instead of whatever their substitute would lower the lesson difficulty to. During the following scene, the substitute teacher had his back turned to one of the classroom doors, through which Mr. Escalante snuck over to one end of the classroom to announce that he would still be teaching them.

Dead Poets Society Notes Day 1

-Set in the 1950s at a traditional boys prep school in New England; religious; "best preparatory school in the -US"; boarding school
-Graduated 51the previous year - 75% went to the Ivy League
-The boys seem to have come from wealthy families
-Todd Anderson is the new kid - older brother was valedictorian, well known
-Teachers are shown as tough, and have a rigorous schedule; traditional style of teaching (repeating the Latin Roots back to the teacher)
-Mr. Keating seems relaxed - boys are stunned by his behavior
-Tells the students they could call him Mr Keating or "Oh Captain, My Captain" (Walt Whitman about Lincoln)
- Mr. Keating went to Welton
- Carpe Diem - seize the day: "make your lives extraordinary" - Keating
- Has the students rip out an entire introduction of a book because he didn't want his students to think like the author -- teaching them to think for themselves
- "Words and ideas can change the world" - Keating; even if it does not have much to do with business school or med school, it is still important;
- the human race it is filled with passion - poetry, romance, beauty: these things are what we stay alive for
    - "What will your verse be?"
- Another teacher says Mr. Keating should not be encouraging the students to become artists; Mr. Keating said he is teaching his students to be free thinkers
- Keating was part of the "Dead Poets Society" when he was at Walton; inspires students to start the Dead Poets Society themselves
- Todd is afraid of reading the poetry aloud to the others so he doesn't want to go - Neil tries to convince him to still come and to just listen
- Neil finds "Five Centuries of Verse" in his room - it was Keatings old book for the Dead Poets Society
- They meet in a cave for the Dead Poets Society
- Mr. Keating makes poetry fun for his students  - boys are laughing and enjoying the class
- "don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think" - continues to teach his students to be free thinkers
- Mr. Keating says in front of the class, "Mr. Anderson, don't think I don't know this assignment scares the hell out of you." (assignment is to write own poem and recite it in front of the class)
- Neil wants to act after seeing that Midsummer Nights Dream is being put on
- Knox rides his bike to the public school pep rally to see the girl he thinks is the most beautiful girl he has seen. When he sees her with her boyfriend he gets upset and leaves
- Neil gets the part of Puck in Midsummer Nights Dream but he needs permission from his father and Mr. Nolan (he writes a letter to Mr. Nolan as if he were his father)
- Todd says he didn't write a poem when Mr. Keating asks him to recite his poem; Mr. Keating pushes him until he is able to not just recite a poem but make up a poem in front of the class.
- During a meeting Knox says he is going to kill himself if he can't have Kris; the next scene is him calling Kris surrounded by the boys - she invited him to a party at her boyfriend's house
- Todd's parents gave him the same desk for his birthday as they did last year - Neil makes him feel better about it

Stand and Deliver - Day 2

Good Teaching
- Wants to push his students by teaching them calculus. Even though none of the other teachers think the students with fail
- Made his students and their parents sign a contract - they need to be committed to his class
- keeps his students late, gets them in early; committed to his students
- Comes back to his students before the AP Exam
- Encourages his students - makes them believe they can pass the second test

Bad Teaching
- humiliates his students - at first it was a good technique to get the students engaged but Claudia was affected by his humiliation
- Doesn't let the student quit but sends Angel out of the class even though he was helping his grandma at the hospital

"Stand and Deliver" Notes - Day 1

- Set in a city of many Mexican workers, possibly illegal immigrants
- There are students in the class who don't speak English
- School is on the verge of decertification
- The secretary says, "You can't teach logarithms to illiterates"
- Jaime's car was broken into and the radio was stolen after his first day of classes
- "Students will only rise to expectations" - Jaime; if they know they are expected to fail, they will fail
- "Hairnet" takes care of his mother; likes doing his homework
- Girl Student takes care of the kids while her mother and father are at work
- "It's not that they are stupid, it's that they don't know anything" - Jaime said to administrators observing his lesson


Instances of Good Teaching
- Interactive lesson with the apples to teach fractions, percents
- Didn't let the student show his up after the student flipped off Jaime
- Gets the class involved; asks questions; relates the lesson to real life situations; has the class repeat concepts (a neg times a neg equals a pos)
- Testing them to make sure they work hard and know the material
- Anna was going to drop out but Jaime went to her family's restaurant to convince her father to let her come back to school; committed to his students
- Gets the students involved and excited about lessons


Instances of Bad Teaching
- On the first day Jaime was passive; let his students run out of the classroom at the bell
- Humiliating student as punishment for not taking the test
- puts the students down - 'go to wood shop" "you are going to wind up pregnant and in the kitchen"

Stand and Deliver - Apple Scene

THE APPLE SCENE

Scene opens with a male student wearing glasses in class looking towards the front of the classroom, while chatter can be heard in the background. Someone can be heard saying, “He looks like Julia Child, man,” as the scene turns to Jaime, who has an apron and a cook’s cap. He is seen standing behind his desk at the front of the classroom with a knife and a cutting board. The scene cuts to a student looking curiously at Jaime. Jaime is shown again; he dramatically cuts one of the two apples on the cutting board in half. The class is instantly quiet; the clip shows the male student wearing the glasses smirking slightly and Raquel behind him with her both open. The other two students in the shot are too out of focus for their expressions to be shown clearly. Jaime says, “whatchu got?” to a female student (possibly Claudia) with a piece of an apple. She responds, “it’s an apple.” The class laughs. Jaime responds, “How much?” “What do you mean?” She responds. Raquel is in the background still laughing and Jaime asks her, “Whatchu got?” Raquel responds, “Half.” “Good,” Jaime says in a German accent. He then says, “excuse my German accent. He turns to Ana to ask her, “Whatchu got?” Barely audible, Ana quietly says,  “twenty-five percent.” Jaime walks towards Ana and bends down so their faces are on the same level. “What?” He asks her. “It’s missing twenty-five percent,” she replies. He picks up the apple on Ana’s desk, turns it to look at the missing chunk, he then smiles. “That’s right. It’s missing twenty-five percent. Is it true that intelligent people make better lovers?” Jaime asks Ana. The class laughs. Jaime walks away from Ana’s desk to the middle of the classroom to ask Raquel’s male friend (can’t find his name), “Whatchu got?” “The core,” he replies. He is seen holding the core of an eaten apple. Jaime says, “You owe me 100%. I’ll see you in the people’s court.” The class laughs, again. Jaime walks to the front of the classroom to his desk. “Everyone please open your books to Chapter 2, page 26. Work on multiplication and fractions and percentages.”

END SCENE

FINAL DRAFT: Education Narrative

            To begin my education narrative, I need to explain that I was a successful student in high school. Meaning, I earned a 3.9 grade point average, I played three sports, and I was a member of the National Honors Society. The expectation for me was to go to a four-year college, graduate in those four years, then go on to graduate school. When deciding which college to attend I set my heart on a small, private, liberal arts college, called Lewis & Clark College. At the time, Lewis & Clark (LC) was the perfect school for me: it afforded a small class environment where I would get to know my professors, it had a laid-back culture, and I was able to continue playing softball. Even though LC was not the right college for me, it has given me essential experiences. My experience at LC has taught me to go against expectations and that if I am not enjoying the experience I am not going to continue.

            For much of the start of my career at LC I thought to myself, “it’s going to get better”. The first time I thought that was my first day on campus. Now, I had visited LC two times previously but I only had the typical rehearsed speech of the tour guide and the admissions counselor to sell me on the college. On that first day I was able to get a sense of who the student population is for the first time. I went to party that first night with my roommate and a couple people in my orientation group. When I first stepped in I saw around twenty people casually sitting on torn up couches, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, passing around a joint, and trying to impress people with the music they had recently discovered. I knew that the LC population had the reputation for being “Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians” (Princeton Review), and I honestly thought I would fit in with that culture. In attempt to assimilate myself to the environment I grabbed a beer and joined a conversation. I took sips of the warm beer and listened to my fellow classmates’ conversations. I joined in once in awhile but I was content on finding out more about my new peers. I left the party with a bad taste in my mouth: the Pabst was awful. Also, I had not been able to find commonalities with the students I interacted with. I had been unable to relate to anyone I talked to that night. Despite my first LC party experience, I was optimistic that I would find students similar to me: students who I could become friends with.

            My friends at LC came in the form of the softball team. Although I differed from most of my teammates there was strong bond that only comes from being on a competitive team together. For the first year I was satisfied with the friends I had made until I realized that most of the girls only attended LC because of softball. Most of the softball team, and most of the athletes as well, did not like the rest of the “hipster” student population, and only go to LC because they could continue playing their sport at a Division III level. My thoughts on this were confirmed when my coach, after hearing about a girl quitting softball to study in Europe for a semester, said to me, “We recruit you to play softball, not to stop playing because your studies require you to.” This comment had me reevaluating why I was at LC. At the time, I had been considering going to Africa for a semester because LC is known for their Overseas Programs. I decided on LC because the academics and the location appealed to me, and it was a bonus that I could continue playing softball; it was not the other way around. Lewis & Clark Athletics promotes being a student first, but it quickly became clear that student athletes are expected to be as committed to their sport as they are to their academics. This was not the case for me. I knew that academics were far more important than a sport. A sport teaches how to work with others, how to be competitive, and it is fun for those four years. However, how well you do in college academics affects what graduate schools you can go to, and what jobs you can be hired for. Being a successful student was so much more important to me than playing softball that the experiences of having my coach tell me I could not have an academic experience because of softball was completely off-putting.

            I had many experiences similar to these two that pointed me in the direction of leaving LC after the first year, but I decided to stay for my sophomore year. I remembered how excited I was in high school to go to college at LC, and how confident I was that it was the right school for me. The thoughts I had about LC when I was sixteen were overshadowing the experiences I had after a year of actually attending LC. What was also stopping me from transferring were my thoughts on how other people would perceive me transferring. I would let down the softball team and I would let down my professor (who I had started doing research for). So after the first year I told myself again that it would get better, and that I knew LC was still the right college for me. The second year was not better, if not worse, than the first year. I became so distracted and unhappy with how I did not like LC that my grades started slipping and I spent increasingly more time alone. At that point, I let all of my fear about transferring go and dropped out of Lewis & Clark. I did not even have a new college to go to, I just knew that I was never going to be happy attending LC. I broke out of the expectations set by myself, and the people around me, so I could find the place I truly belong. I learned that by setting myself free from expectations I could find who I really am and where I truly belong.

What makes for good teaching?

In my experience, a good teacher is one who understands individuals to help them individually understand the material, or push the individual past the required material. If a teacher just goes through the syllabus to teach the entire class the same, there are going to be children falling behind, and others who are being held back. I remember back to first grade when we started doing math. When I flew through the required material my teacher noticed. She gave me increasingly harder problems for me to solve. In a couple short days she had said she was giving me fifth grade material; finally, I was challenged. Now, if she had not done that I might not have learned of my passion for the maths and sciences. If my teacher had just said to wait until the rest of the class was finished, where would I be as a student today?

In response to Ken Robinson's TED Talk, I do believe it is important to learn the necessary skills for people to respect your life's work. What I mean by this is that people are not going to understand your ideas if you cannot speak well, or write well; in addition, people might not take you seriously. Find your passion, find your talent, but learn the essential skills.

Ken Robinson - How school kills creativity

- Everyone has an interesting education
   - we're invested in our education, it's our future
   - unpredictability of what education is going to be like in the future
- all kids have talents but we squash them
- creativity is as important as literacy in education, treat it with the same status
- children are not frightened of being wrong; if you are prepared to be wrong you will not have anything original
- we stigmatize mistakes
- we are "educating people out of their creativity"
- we are born artists and we grow out of it; the goal is to stay an artist
- Every education system has same hierarchy: Math/English, Humanities, then Arts.
- What is education for? Who are the winners at the end? Goal is the university professors - they are the ones who come out on top.
- Stayed away from subjects you like because you think you won't get a job doing it. (i.e. You like music, but you won't be a musician, etc.)
- Brilliant, Creative people don't think they are because they failed at school.
- Degrees are essentially becoming worthless; degree inflation. Now need a masters, or Ph.D to get a job, not just an undergrad degree
- Creativity comes about through interdisciplinary way of thinking about things
- corpus collosum is thicker in woman - better at multitasking
- we should adopt a new conception of human ecology; we need to rethink they fundamental principles in which we education our children; we are over-mining our mind.
- We need to educate our children's whole being

"And so...?" "I'm just sayin', all this was significant because...."

I hope my readers' main take away from my education experience narrative would be to get a better understanding of who I am, and what has shaped the person I have become. What shapes a person includes their environment, they people they surround themselves with, and their experiences. I touch upon all of these points in my paper so I hope people can get a snapshot of my background, and a glimpse into my decisions, in order to get a better understanding of who I am. Obviously I am not writing my life's story in my educational narrative. I am, however, writing about arguably the biggest decision I have had to make in my life thus far. To understand my decision making process says much about the person I am, and how it has affected me.

Freewrite: How I learned which college was right for me

The process of learning at which school I belonged took me almost two full years. At the age of sixteen when I first started looking at colleges I was set on Lewis & Clark College, a (very) small private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. For some reason I knew that was where I belonged. It felt like I would fit in there, and it was comfortable for me. There were several events, conversations, and experiences, in the first year which lead me to believe that LC was not the right school for me. I disregarded those thoughts after I traveled down to California the summer after freshmen year. During the summer I had said to myself, "This year is going to be better than the last, you will finally love it there." To my little surprise, I disliked it even more my sophomore year. It was easy to entertain the idea of leaving during my freshman year but after a much hate sophomore year I had to make the tough decision to leave such a great opportunity. I don't regret going there, because it was the right place for me for a while, and it taught me a lot about myself. Even though it was such a fantastic opportunity, it wasn't the perfect place for me.

What made the decision almost even harder was that if I did decide to leave I had no plans on where to go. I decided to leave during the summer and by that point, the time to apply to the UW (the college I decided was right for me) was a couple months gone. Would I take a quarter off? Would I lounge around in my pajamas all quarter? Although this has nothing to do with my learning experience, this is the outcome of it all… The fact is, I have learned more about where I belong, and who I want to surround myself with, in the short amount of time since I have left Lewis & Clark than I ever would have if I were still there.

5 Visuals Speaking to my Experince

The small school of Lewis & Clark College... tini tiny

Still playing the game of softball in college (I'm #20 in the back)

This represents how professors held my hand at LC

"Take It Easy" by The Eagles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEzTdBJUHO8

This represents how the student population just takes it easy... just living life.

"Temperature" by Sean Paul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW2MmuA1nI4

The song my "friends" and I always sang to on the way to parties.

Successful Prewriting

For me, in the past, I have had to do much prewriting before opening a Word Document to write the actual essay. First, I have generate many ideas about what to write; anything that pops into my head I will write down. From those general ideas I form a loose outline. I will start by writing down the ideas I want to be in each paragraph of the body of the paper (I do not do anything for the introduction and the conclusion until the body of the paper is complete). Then I will write a more fleshed out outline. In a couple classes my professors wanted the students to turn in an outline with complete sentences instead of a rough draft. I have learned to love this style of prewriting because once it is done, the paper is most of the way written. Instead of fragments, which are sometimes are for me to string together to form a well written essay, I have already written full sentences waiting to be copied into my essay. From there, I will write the body of my paragraph followed by my introduction then conclusion.

The Most Important Lesson I Have Ever Learned

The most important thing I have ever learned was how to lose. All of my childhood I had played on winning sports teams: I was always on the championship team, whether it be for recreational soccer, basketball, select softball. During my sophomore year of high school I was a part of the Washington State Softball Championship team. The joy I felt is indescribable. The next year we lost in the championship game. And the next year we lost again in the championship game. I had to realize it was a great feat getting to those games, especially since most everyone doubted we would even make it to state. I learned to lose graciously, and to get back in the game sooner. Learning to lose graciously also has taught me to take criticism and to be shut down. In the real world, beyond participation trophies and a pat on the back for effort, people get shut down. It is the ability to rebound from criticism that makes us great.

Struggles of a Student

This blog post is about the struggle I went through to write a psychology paper in one night.... It is shocking; prepare yourself.

It is a good thing I was so delirious during my time awake because I would never have taken these "selfies" to document my two days awake. On Sunday morning I woke up bright and early at 8am, played a couple of softball games then dedicated the rest of my night writing the paper. I thought the paper was going to take maybe until midnight (I had started it at 6pm) to write. Nope, it took me until 6am the next morning. At that point I was pretty awake with the mass amounts of coffee I had consumed over the past twelve hours so I decided to go on a run and to lift weights. I thought I was going to pass out when I was done with classes for the day, which wasn't going to be until 5pm. But no, of course I did not. It wasn't until 7am Tuesday morning did I fully pass out and at that point I slept for twelve hours straight. 7am-7pm.

Lucky for everyone else, I was taking "selfies: throughout this process. Now, these are not the "selfies" that some people take that say, "how should I look if I were to feel this way?" or "I'm trying to look cute but say at the same time 'I'm in the library and only taking pics to tell other people I'm in the library'". No, no. These pictures tell a story of a girl who likes her sleep but was forced to stay awake. These pictures are real.

3:30am, Monday morning, Going strong. I'm thinking, "Why am I still in the library?" 

4:30am, can't keep my eyes open. My eye started twitching. Need more coffee.

5:30am. The delusional state.

I ate the entire bag Milanos! 

Crying. I never want to do this again.

After my classes, trying to fall asleep. I ate Cheez-Its. 

The time where I started posing with inanimate objects. A plate with balsamic vinaigrette, my 1000 tablet bottle of ibuprofen, and a disposable cup.

I finally showered at 7pm Monday! I hadn't showered after my games Sunday because I went straight to the library. 

7pm Tuesday thinking, "I just made Tuesday disappear. It's like magic."

Forever struggling,

Caitlin