HW 47-Class Film Preparation 1.

I would rather not compose 5 to 10 ideas because i have a great idea in which i would like to elaborate on here a little. Ok, my idea as I said in class two weeks ago before break is to have a story base around a teacher that in a way has personal problems in his life that effect his ability to do his job as a teacher. And as the result of this the teacher is an alcoholic and this affects his influence on his class of high school students that he teaches. But as he's going through his problems he is in such a constant depressing state that his students actually start to notice his depression in his life and try to make him feel better by sharing their own problems in their lives. As they are doing this they persuade him share his own problems and in the end of the film I decided to make then confide in each other, the problem ridden teacher and his class of troubled students and they both actually figure out solutions to their own problems and sit down and start a normal class together. I don't know why i decided to use the classic troupe, but it seemed good at the moment when i thought of the idea and wrote it out on paper.

-Brendan S.

HW 40-School Interviews x 3 & Synthesis (Part A & B)

Part A:

Question #1: If you had the power to change your school in any way possible for the better in what way would you change it?

Person being asked this question: "Katy" who was a college girl from Texas but lives in Idaho whom I met on my vacation to Los Cabos, Mexico.

She answered: "Hmmm. Well first off I would change the whole approach that are teachers have to words us as students, they treat us like assembly line workers in a way. I mean like a every other class at the end of the week we have to hand in our assignments and don't even get to talk to our teachers about the work we've done. So really to answer your question I would change my college in a better way by giving the teachers more time or maybe assigned time to talk and discuss our assignments so that we can maybe get a little pre feed back before we actually need to hand in our work. You know what I mean? So here.... like ok... an example could be like if I don't understand the assignment for my Culinary Arts and I want to be able to talk to my teacher after the class is dismissed I should be able to, because I would make a change for all teachers to have a sort of short clarification period after each of their classes. Did that answer you question?"

Question #2: How has your experience of being a student changed over the years as you go on through the last remaining years of High school?

Person being asked this question: "Myself"

I answered: "My experience probably for the most part has changed not so dramatically in referance to my last 4 to 5 years of schooling. What I'm here is that since like 7th grade my entire social atmosphere and experiences changed from a sort of kid mode to a young adult mode. All of my interactions to words academic work, my social status and social experiences began pretty much after the start of that specific grade. But as for the years that began and finished after that the experiences and academic work only increased to a greater extent. So I guess I would say that as you schooling increases everything else that becomes a new to you in your early middle schooling period of life and then on to high school and most likely college. As well once again just to clarify the things I'm referring to increase over these years of our lives are a broader social status, personal experiences increasing with the opposite sex, and academic work increasing in the level of difficulty as you go on through school."

Question #3: In your own opinion do you believe that school is a sort of sorting machine that sets in stone students own future's?

Person being asked this question: "Ariella" My ex-girlfriend.

She answered: "Umm, okay well I kinda, I think that a schools reputation creates it's atmosphere. Like... If the school is considered one of the bests the students that go there know what's expected of them, so they work harder, so then the schools graduates all have similar futures. There are always exceptions but the majority of the kids that go to like an upper class/private school will have relatively similar future's. Does that make sense? I mean thats pretty much it... most people act the way others around them do, it's just how we are. And so if your put in a place where people are successful most likely your gonna mimic that and work harder. (Then I asked a secondary question:So as well your saying the same thing goes for the students in an unsuccessful atmospheres in low income schools?), Yea it's just like they are put in an enviorment with the kids that don't give a shit and the school doesn't either. So yea of course there will be exceptions, that tolken kid that gets out of the ghetto and that rich kid that screws up. But mostly thay are going to have they are going to have the futures that those around them have. In a low income situation the schools don't put the same importance on things that schools that cost 30 thousand a year do."

Part B:

Since I could only get internet on my vacation by the end of it I was only able to get one persons reaction from my time in mexico and then i decided talk to my ex girlfriend and ask myself a question to give me a total of three interviews. Through out all of my interviews I noticed that my questions gave back good responses that for the most part broke down all of the important aspects of the questions that I created and asked. Being that Katy is in college and done with high school I believe she gave a more experienced response because of her college as well. I say this because during the interview she gave suggestions on how to make better schooling comparing how the teachers treat the students through out school for her. And El and I gave sort of less experienced responses to words our questions by discussing the sorting machine and developing experiences that students go through. Now I'm not saying that our responses were worse its just that Katy is going through the next level of schooling and there fore has a better comprehension and can pin point flaws in our schooling system better than we can.

HW 39-First School Assignment

Part A:

INTERESTING: #1. Learned how people interact with one another in classes. #2. Learned new things every day in my early years of schooling. #3. Actually understanding just how stupid and useless some of the things we learn in school actually are.

FASCINATING: #1. How as I get older my teachers have seemed for the most part have been getting younger and younger. #2. That all school water fountain water tastes like rusty metal was poured into the schools water supply. #3. That as you get older the curriculum in school get more rigorous with each year being signified as a stepping stone to the greater challenge.

POWERFUL: #1. How pretty much all teachers love to act upon preforming the dominant role amongst the students throughout your entire experience of schooling. #2. That the social world gets undeniable more complex as you progress each year in school. #3. That someone created the "blessing" our teachers like to call homework, which is meant further our progression of our schooling while we are outside of our mandatory hours of schooling.

Part B:

What I believe is strange about our methods of schooling is that in a way its sort of backwards. I feel that if we speed up the process at a young age and learned more complicated things once we learned the basics we would have much better students then we do today in our society now with all of these kids dropping out and failing while trying not to. What we should do is increase the intensity of our young learners so at an older age they will be able to work in school better and learn more effciently.

Now I argue this because at a young age we are programmed at birth to naturally take in knowledge to a better extent then we would at an older age. So as we are now learning harder things at an older age and easier things at a younger age we are basically cheating ourselves when we could be learning so much more while we are younger. If we did this it would benefit us tremendously in and outside of the class room. We would be smarter individuals whom would achieve more and probably give 50% more effort to words accomplishing our studies. I would like to discuss this further in class tomorrow.

-Brendan S.

HW 38-Art Project Cool

Cool Project from julie asencio on Vimeo.

This is Julie an I's video project on the reality of cool in our school of School of the Future. Julie and me decided to create this project in a sort of collage type of way with a meaning full song about the experiences of the American youth. I'm very pleased with the way that Julie and me worked together on this project with me putting getting all of the pictures from peoples facebook's and getting the song to use for the audio of the video. But most importantly it was Julie who actually but it together when I sent everything to her on friday. But overall we both had jobs in our project of equal importance that we both accomplished successfully. I hope you enjoy the video with the song, "The Youth of the Nation" in the back round. I feel it reflects the reality of cool in our school to the utmost extent.

PLEASE COMMENT!

HW 34 - The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

I feel that all of these patterns that people follow are solely based on what social atmosphere is around them. In other words what the people around you do to be cool in their own perspectives the person growing up with these people tends to follow and do the exact same technique to try to be accepted by the rest. You can't deny it because it's true for every culture in society, black, white, spanish, asian etc. Every society has an image of cool that is known to the masses of the society some images positive and some negative. It just depends on the choices the person makes that will define what he or she is gonna do in their lives follow the norm or go down their own path, (their own path being a different image of cool that isn't the image that their culture has pressed upon them).

In my own experience I guess I'm following my own white cultural image of cool. Me being a typical italian kid who plays sports gets good enough grades and follows what his family has taught to him to do in his future. What I mean by this is that my father in his younger years was a marine and when I was a little kid I always dreamed of being just like my father as a kid. As well as I got older my perspective changed a little to words what my brother did, a lacrosse player just as my brother was. So to basically sum it all up my own experiences are a great example of how people follow an image of what they believe to be cool. But as well as people progress in their own lives their images of cool constantly change depending on the people that they are surrounded by and chose to be influenced by. 

 Now the reasoning to support that the fact that people follow what they believe is to be cool from a young age and their own image of cool constantly changes based on the people they chose to be surrounded by is simple. Just look at young people in general and all of these stupid trends that they follow through out their lives, thats a great example. the reason being is that these kids jump back and fourth between old and new trends which they feel is cool at the time being. Then the next month or however long the kids will change their own out look of cool based on the other kids choices of cool that are around them in society. It's an ever changing cycle that will never change, these are my thoughts on the subject of cool which is also an ever changing topic.

HW 33-Cool Paper Outline

Introduction:Introduce my thesis. Then describe definition of coolness and I plan on elaboration on the meaning of cool deeply for the entire intro  as well as to introduce my arguments supporting my thesis. (I still am working on a thesis).

5 Body Paragraphs:Next I plan on writing 5 big paragraphs on discussing the arguments with 5 examples that support my thesis in each paragraph. I plan on using examples form the Hair resource, using the poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, Goffman, and my own life.

Conclusion:I plan on restating my thesis and wrapping up my paper with my arguments as well as restating my own thoughts on cool, and ending the conclusion with a witty sentence about  the role of coolness in our lives.

HW 32 Tattoos & The Presentation of the Self

Tattoos are all instances of cool some people simply chose to resist from this so called trend and some chose to embrace it deeply through out their lives. To me tattoo's signify many different meanings like love, pride, being religious, reckless or even just trying to be a bas ass. I personally have many friends that have tattoos, one of them was trying to get closer to his religious roots in his family and got his name, (Bilal) tattooed on his arm in arabic. He I feel in fact was doing it for the sole purpose of trying to be different from everybody else, trying to basically be "cool".

 In some situations he benefitted from having the writing on his skin like when I was at a party with an few of my friends and him ask he was talking to some girls he was trying to get with he was succeeding in doing getting their numbers because he seemed interesting to the girls. One big sign I'm sure of them thinking he was interesting enough to hook up with on a prior ocassion was his tattoo. Now another situation he went through that didn't turn out so well was a job interview that he went to to work  a public libary. When he went to the interview he covered up the tattoo with a jacket and a sweatshirt but as the interview progressed to to words the end of the interview he was asked if he had any tattoos or body piercings. So they told him to show his forearms and shoulders because they would be pretty much the only visible part of his body that would be exposed to customer so he didn't get the job. Now I'm one hundred percent sure that he didn't get the job because of him having the tattoo because why else would he not get it he's a smart kid. Because of him getting his tattoo there was both a positive and negative effect that his tattoo had on people in different atmospheres , he seemed to achieve what he wanted in his social aspects but not the professional aspects of his life.

So i guess is Bilal's mind he thought that it was cool to get in touch with this religious roots by getting a tattoo but I think that he really didn't think about it before he got it. Before he got it he was telling me that he was planning on getting one and the day before he got it I was trying to tell him to think about it for another day and not to get it on your fore arm but he didn't listen to me. Not yet I bet he regrets getting it but as he gets older I'm sure he will think back and see just how uncool and stupid it was to a tattoo on your forearm for the world to see. After witnessing and hearing about him going through those positive and negative situations I personally learned from his actions enough to at least get a tattoo somewhere else where people can't see it. Right now in my life I'm not sure if I would even want to get a tattoo of my owe because my definition of tattoo's being "cool" is not yet clear to me. Maybe one day I will get one maybe I won't, only time will tell and change my perception of cool in the future.