notes from "Dead Poets' Society" day 1 and 2

·         Neil’s Father is demanding and only wants it his way

·         Mr. Keating does not seem like other teachers because he does not have his students in the classroom and cracks a few jokes and is not boring and doesn’t seem like he’s all about perfection

·         Has students rip a page out of a text book because he says you can’t explain poetry in the way the guy in the introduction does

·         Has students interact with him

·         “we don’t write poetry because it’s cute, we write it because we are the human race”… say this when explaining why some who plans to go into business or medical needs to study poetry… what will your verse be

·         Other teachers don’t think students should be free thinkers

·         Dead poets society was a poetry club that administrations did not  approve of so it didn’t exist anymore

·         Group of students want to restart the dead poets society

·         One guy doesn’t want to read but is still invited to listen

·         The boys sneak out of boarding house and try to go to old cave down the road. They successfully make it out of the school and to the cave. The first meeting starts and goes pretty well but they don’t focus on poetry that all tell horror stories to freak each other out. Then tell poetry

·         Stands in different places to see world in different way (stands on desk)

·         Try to push students out of the box and make show they are useful and that there is a poet in all of them… tries to teach them life lessons with the poetry

·         Mr. Keating was warned to stop his unorthodoxed teaching methods

·         Neil killed himself because he felt like he was a disappointment to his dad and that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do in life

·         Friends and Mr. Keating are all in shock and grief… Todd wanted to think that Neil’s father murdered him just to think that he didn’t commit suicide

·         Neil’s death is breaking trust between friends and is ruining a lot of relationships because everyone is having a lot of grief

·         Mr. Keating gets fired because he “encouraged” the boys to start the dead poets society and went against Neil’s parents’ wishes and “lead him to commit suicide”… none of this was his fault

·         Students begin to rebel and stand up for Mr. Keating by standing on their desks and yelling “Oh Captain, My Captain” as he begins to leave the classroom because he was fired…. At the end he says “ thank you boys” and that’s where the film ends

differences between Garfeild and Welton

The schools are different because Garfield was a public school and Welton was a private school. Garfield was coeducation and Welton was an all-boys school. Welton was a boarding school and Garfield was not. Teachers at Garfield were not well educated in their subject and at Welton teachers were well educated and some of them were prior students at the school. Students at Garfield were more openly defiant while students at Welton were more reserved even though they wanted to be defiant. No bar was set at Garfield but at Welton perfection was expected. The pressures at Garfield were to give in to not caring or your nerd and the pressures of home life where the pressures at Garfield were to be perfect and live up to your parents’ expectation. Another difference was that they tried at Welton to make school their whole life and the students wanted to push away from school and try other things and at Garfield school was seen as a joke and students in the end wanted more education.

what I value in a teacher

A lot of teachers think that the only way they can teach is by standing in front of a class and lecture it seems and it makes the class not interesting and makes students not care because it gives off the impression that the teacher does not care about the students. This makes students not want to do homework and not try on class assignments which can effect their grade. What I value in a teacher is that they know how to connect and engage with the students. It makes it harder to learn if they are boring and seem like they have no interest in you as a student.it makes it easier if the teacher is not all business and know how to make the class fun but still have structure in the class and still play the role as a teacher. I feel students pay more attention and learn better that way because they don’t want to fall asleep in class because it not interesting or talk the whole time to their friend because the teacher doesn’t care and there is no structure. If students truly enjoy the class for these reasons they are more likely to succeed in the class and have better grades.

Audre Lorde: comparing and contrasting teachers

Audre Lorde story was very interesting. I thought that her talking about how catholic schools talked about public schools were very much how people who go to public schools see catholic schools. Mrs. Baker changed the way Audre acted and I think that is very important to a child who feels like her parents can’t connect to her. I think Audre felt like Mrs. Baker made that connection. Mrs. Baker praise Audre when she did well and got excited when she learned to do new things that Audre hadn’t been rewarded for in the past. To a 5 year old that is important. Miss Teacher, on the other hand, seemed like she didn’t want to understand Audre’s needs and was stubborn about her ways of teaching and was willing to embarrass Audre into doing something she couldn’t do. How the article helped me was it gave me an idea of how to organize my second paper.it showed me how to compare and contrast teachers in a different way: by telling a story. I found this article very useful and will try to use its format in my second paper.

thought on Ken Robbinson's speech

Education prepares us for an unknown future because we don’t know what jobs will be available in the future. Ken Robinson says that human creativity is squashed as we get older but people who teach us it is wrong to fail. If we are afraid to fail then our creativity starts to go away.  People teach kids that they should have a career in mathematics or English because they are what create good jobs. Ken talked about a little girl who was really fidgety in class and she couldn’t think without moving so her mom took her to a physiologist and the physiologist told her mom that she was a dancer and later in life she became a famous chorographer. Now they would have diagnosed her with ADHD and put her on a pill to calm her down. Ken says that students who say they aren’t good at school and aren’t smart actually are but we focus on other subjects when they maybe good at something more artistic. The arts programs in school are the lowest paid programs. Ken thinks that they should be just as important in the school system. I agree with him and found his speech very insightful.

"Stand and Deliver" obsevations

In the first part of the film I noticed that when the teacher first walked in the room students were doing and saying whatever they wanted to and didn't care about learning. The teachers started joking around with them and would break the ice with a fraction activity that included using cut up apples. When students started to notice that the teacher cared about their learning by talking to their parents and talking about them going to college the students started to care more. In a course of 2 years the student went from 7th grade math to learning calculus and trying to get college credit. One of the things I didn’t like about the teacher was that sometimes he went too far with his jokes and hurt his students when we would talk about their personal lives. I feel that those kinds of conversations belong outside of the math classroom. I did like that he tried to connect to each student and help them succeed as an individual no matter how much they didn’t believe in themselves. He tries to make each student feel like he or she can go to school and have a career no matter their background or the color of their skin. He is a teacher that puts his students over himself and is will to work extra hard to make sure his students get the best possible education.

learning country music

Being a five year old girl with an older sister who doesn’t live with you makes you want to be like them. You want to watch the same movies as them and have the same friends as them but in my case I wanted to sing the music the music my sister Brittany, or as I call her; Britt, did. Britt and I were very close when she would stay with us and I think part of that reason is because we shared a room when she would come to visit for the summer or Christmas. We would have to deal with (and learn to like…as our parents would say) sharing dresser space and the space of the room. Britt is three years older than me so I thought it was cool to have my older sister stay with me (until I was around the age of seven) even though she probably thought I was the most annoying person on the planet.

When I was five Brittany came to visit for the summer like she always would and at the time she was involved in doing beauty pageants. Part of doing beauty pageants is coming up with routines to perform at the competitions. I remember sometimes she would perform her talent acts to my parents but I would never pay much attention to them because I was either outside playing or I didn’t want to sit still but one night I was tired and bored so I sat down with my parents to watch her perform a song named “Why Haven’t I Heard From You” by Reba Mcentire.

I always knew that she could sing because she would sing in the shower or make my stuffed strawberry shortcake pillow sing “My Little Sunshine” when I would go to bed at night, but I had never heard her sing with purpose in front of me like she was standing on a stage. She sounded beautiful with a rich voice that seemed to have as much character as the expressions on her face. I was awed by the performance and only wanted to hear more of this thing she called “country music.”  I had always learned the simple nursery rhymes in school and the songs that we sang in church but had never really been interested in other types of music until Britt performed that day.

The next day, I asked Britt when she woke up if she would teach me how to sing like her so she sat me down at the kitchen table with a printed copy of lyrics and taught me the words of the song by having me recite the phrases back to her. After I had the basic idea of what the words were she got our dad’s stereo and got a white CD with the title “Read My Mind” out of our room. At first I listened to the song. The voice on the CD was much different from Brittany’s. It had a lot more rasp and had a deeper southern accent and was amazed to find I loved the sound of it. Brittany taught me the arrangement of the notes and by the end of the night I knew the chorus of the song. Every day that week I worked on the song and listened to it over and over again. By the end of the week I had the song memorized and perfected it as much as a five year old can and I was so proud of myself. I loved the way Reba sang it and I loved how I could add rasp and be powerful with the lyrics.  About a week after that Britt asked me to sing her and my parents the song because she knew I was excited about learning it. After I was done singing my parents’ jaws seem to hit the floor. My mom said I sounded like a mini Brittany and never thought I would be able to sing too. When Brittany left she accidently left the CD at our house and I slowly began to learn the other songs on the CD. I was hooked on country music.

Fast forward three years to the audition section of American Idol season four. I was sitting in the living room with my Disney princess blanket eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream. As I watch the screen a small town girl from Checotah, Oklahoma with an accent that would be noticeable from anywhere. As my eyes became glued to the TV and the rest of my family disappeared she started to sing, “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Riatt. It wasn’t a traditional country song but this girl added a recognizable tone to it that had made me an excited eight-year-old girl. I told my parents right then and there that she would win the competition.  They didn’t believe me because there were other good singers but all my faith was in this small town girl. A few months later my prediction came true, Carrie Underwood was standing on stage with a smile on her face and tears of joy running down her cheeks. she was a true inspiration and automatically became my all time favorite country artist. About 6 months after that I was learning all the music off her first CD and trying to perfect every song like I had with the Reba Mcentire album. I listened and knew the songs so well that my mom took me to her concert the following summer. I had told myself I wanted to be like her when I grew up.

To this day I still listen to and love country music. It’s actually the only type of music on my IPod. I love singing with the southern twang and even though I have done musical theatre and sang more technically, something always bring me back to the raspy, heartwarming sound of country because that’s where my voice started and where I am comfortable.  If it wasn’t for my sister singing a Reba song eleven years ago and Carrie Underwood being the first country artist to win idol and go on to inspiring success.  I would not love country music as much as I do today. Country music has made a large impact me because it was the type of music I listened to all through my childhood. My mom listened to oldies, my dad listened to classic rock, and a few years later my sister moved to listening to pop music and punk and my younger sister, Sierra, has always like pop music over all. I’ve tried to like other kinds of music but I always find myself changing the radio to the country station. The dream to record and perform country music still lives today. I work on about 5 different songs a week and sometimes record them on my computer. The dream may stay a dream, but if it weren’t for Reba, Carrie, and most importantly, Britt I would not be as connected to music or be as good of a singer as I am today, and for that I am forever grateful.