Educational Narrative

A Short-Lived Career: From Start to Finish

            Things like friends, jobs, and various hobbies come and go in one’s life; but a career you have your eyes set on that you work hard at every day of your life is something that many people do not forget. Improvement and practice are two things that we cannot stress enough the importance of, and with this mentality one who strives to succeed will see that you can never get enough of these two things. Learning something new occurs daily; whether we like to believe that “myth” or not. I can remember numerous skills that I have learned over my 22 years of being on this earth; but one of these skills I learned at a very young age kind of shaped me into the professional that I wanted to become, and I would never look back from that day. Soccer was something that was very big in my life from almost the day I was born. My grandfather, father, and sister all played, as well as coached, the sport while I was growing up. Being around this sport daily and seeing the joy that came from people who were also enjoying it made me quickly want to pick it up. And that I did.

            Learning to kick a soccer ball was almost something that I had the urge to do even before I learned how to stand on my own two feet. Before I turned the age of 2, I finally mastered this skill of walking on my own, and when that had happened I quickly knew it was time to kick that ball around like everyone else in my family seemed to be doing. I vaguely remember the very first time I ever learned how to kick a soccer ball; but it wasn’t that first time I learned to kick it that made me have a love for the game, it was the years I took at such a young age practicing on improving, and constantly having the willingness to learn and get better. My second birthday was quickly coming, and all I wanted was a new soccer ball, that I could say was mine. I remember this day almost like the back of my hand; I thought I was the happiest boy on the planet when I ripped that wrapping paper off. To this day I still look at the pictures of this birthday, seeing the joy on my face when I got that new ball, and from that day forward I knew that soccer was something I wanted to learn how to play. It was just a matter of being old enough to pick up the sport, and play for an actual “team” like the rest of my family did.

            My third birthday passed, then my fourth, then my fifth; and all I wanted each year was a new soccer ball from my parents, so I could take it out in the back yard and run up and down on the make-shift field I had created, shooting the ball in the PVC pipe soccer goals my dad had made for me when I was four. Every year I got this new soccer ball I would ask my parents if I was old enough to play yet, and I’m sure by my sixth birthday they got so sick of hearing this question that they went out and found me a league I could play in, and camps that I could attend so I could enjoy the game just like they did. Several Skyhawk’s camps went by and the phases of playing “Micro”, “Mod”, and then being able to play on the big soccer field that I had grown up watching people play on. I was 11 years old now, and I knew that having such a love for this game that everyone saw, including me, I would practice for perfection. By 12 years old I knew almost every rule in the rulebook, and what every soccer term people would yell out as I watched my dad and sister play meant. It was almost as I was brainwashed by the sport, I had such a passion for it that it was all I wanted to do.

            Soccer, to me, was not just a hobby. It was something that I continually wanted to learn new skills, to get better at playing the game, and to be as knowledgeable as I could be about it because one day I knew I wanted to coach this fantastic sport. I had played so much soccer over the first 18 years of my life, and been around the game so much, that I knew I wanted to pursue a career in it, and go as far as I could in life with soccer that my body would allow me. This surprisingly, wasn’t as long as I had hoped. I attended Northwest Nazarene University for 2 years on a full-ride athletic scholarship, all this time and hard work I had put in throughout my life time had seem to pay off. I played two seasons at this school, continuing to practice and strive for perfection every day of my life. Soccer seemed to be my life in a sense. My school schedule had to revolve around it, and my life did as well. The first season went by well, I got a lot of playing time, and continued to work towards my ultimate goal; to make soccer a profession. Those dreams and aspirations quickly ended about halfway throughout my second season playing college soccer. Almost at the blink of an eye my soccer career would be over, and with the injury I sustained it was almost surreal.

            The sport of soccer was something that I had always had a love for, but it wasn’t very clear to me how long I would be playing it and that with the blink of an eye something I had worked so hard towards would now be over. It wasn’t just one day in my life where I learned the art of playing this game; it was throughout the 20 years of my life that I was exposed to the game and began to soak everything in that I possibly could. A skill that has stuck with me throughout my life was not just learned over night. While being exposed to this game for much of my life, I learned that if it is something you love and have a passion for, you can never practice enough, and there is never little room for improvement. Growing up around this sport, and only this sport, made me strive for perfection, because I knew that’s what my family would want. But this skill that I picked up throughout my life time was not something that I knew could wipe away hopes and dreams in the blink of an eye.

Strategies for Development

Strategies for development are something that we can never talk too much about. As a writer, we are always looking to develop our ideas and learn new ways on how to become a better writer. Strategies such as using examples, defining important things, comparing and contrasting two or more subjects, and giving a cause and/or effect of why we think the way we do. Just naming a few, our textbook goes into further detail, we can clearly see the main point of these strategies right from the beginning; to make us better writers and to go into more detail. Writing is something that a lot of people struggle succeeding in, and developing on our writing is something that every writer looks to do on a daily basis. Using specific examples and defining things that may come across as unclear to some are two very good ways to develop a paper. The reader cannot argue with the point you are trying to make, or disagree, if you use specific facts and site them appropriately. Also, when some things become unclear many people will begin to turn away from your paper if the confusing parts of them are not correctly defined. When writing about topics that you have your own opinion on, and at times can be controversial, it is important to clearly state what you think something means and what your stand on it is. Two other ways we can develop our papers, and writing, include comparing and contrasting things, as well as showing the true cause and effect. These two strategies allow us to further develop our ideas and give the reader a little more detail on the subject at hand. When showing the similarities two things have, it often makes it easier on the reader to clearly understand the difference of the two. Development in writing is something we constantly look to improve on, and using some of the techniques are book gives us can be successful ways for us to do this.

Mike Rose "I Just Wanna Be Average"

Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” Questions: With regards to our own Ed. Narrative

1.      Describe Rose’s life in Voc. Ed. What were his teachers like? Have you ever had experience with teachers like these? Rose’s life in Voc. Ed. was about as good as he made it out to be. He and his peers were under constant scrutiny about being consistently “below average.” Many of his teachers did not have the desire or will to be role models and educators to their students. They thought their level of knowledge had no room to grow, and that they were going nowhere but down. In my educational experience, I have had a few high school teachers that were like this, but most them were in Voc. Ed. classes. Teachers like Mike Rose experienced in Voc. Ed. are often ones we do remember for a long time, but not for the good, positive, reasons we should remember our teachers for. Life lessons are learned when someone we look up to teaches them to us, if it is not a role model or someone we can count on, lessons often do not stick with us forever.

2.      What did Voc. Ed. do to Rose and his fellow students? How did it affect them intellectually, emotionally, and socially? Why was it subsequently so hard for Rose to catch up in math? Voc. Ed. not only prepared Mike Rose and his peers for the “real world”, but it also made them stronger individuals. They knew they just had to “squeak” by when it came to class, but they always strived to conquer and reach their goals they each individually made. They were often referred to as below average intellectually, so this is how they viewed themselves. This “below average” standard hurt the kids emotionally as well. They knew they were placed in this direction because of their low test scores, but they didn’t know that because they didn’t score so great, they couldn’t improve on it. For example, math was a subject that Rose could never come to a full grasp on, but it was his teachers’ unwillingness to make sure he continually learned this skill and eventually mastered it. Mentors in our life reiterate the importance of practice to us, and if we don’t practice towards perfection it often will be a skill we forget.

3.      Why is high school so disorienting to students like Ken Harvey? How does he cope with it? What other strategies do students use to cope with the pressures and judgments they encounter in school? Students who often view themselves in a negative way, see a negative impact on their lives one they reach middle school and high school. If you are down on yourself, usually that trend will be followed by others. Ken Harvey didn’t necessarily think he should be, along with the rest of Mike Rose’s peers, on this vocational ed. pathway. He struggled to come to terms with the fact he was placed in this realm and often took it out on himself. At the end of the day, he knew he couldn’t change it, and other people’s opinions didn’t matter to him, so eventually he stuck to his beliefs and kept his mouth shut. He had to realize that in a classroom like his, with such a broad range of diversity, everyone had their own beliefs and opinions that often did not match the likes of his. Students often let the pressures and judgments inhibit their learning and bring them down as individuals, but when you set your own goals and stick to your own strict beliefs you can quickly realize the opinion of others does not necessarily matter.

4.      Rose explains in ¶ 16 that high school can be a “tremendously disorienting place.” What, if anything, do you find disorienting about college? What steps can students take to lessen feelings of disorientation? College, in many ways, is a complete different atmosphere than that of high school. College is completely dependent on the student and their effort they put in. Attending class and getting the required material is now up to the student, it isn’t all just handed to them. Some students find this dependence beneficial on their education; others think this is the burden weighing down on their success. It is up to the student and the human being to want to learn, and to learn new things in order to be successful in life. Knowing this, for me, takes the feeling of disorientation away from the college atmosphere; it is what WE make it out to be. If we want to learn a skill, then we will learn it. Students who do experience this sense of “disorientation” often find themselves falling behind.

5.      How does your experience of education compare (or contrast, or both) to Mike Rose’s?

Education for me was never really similar to the one Mike Rose experienced. I always got to choose the classes I wanted to take, and which ones I wanted to stay away from taking. I kind of avoided the Voc. Ed. path through high school and stuck to more of the core curriculum, like math and English, which many students didn’t want to conquer. The teachers I had, thankfully, wanted to make every student they had a better person and they made sure we always were there to learn. They were mostly very knowledgeable at the topic they were teaching, and always could provide real world examples in where we would use some of the things we learned. Teachers always had an impact on my learning, whether it was positive or negative. Many things that have stuck with me today have come from role models that I trusted and knew were knowledgeable.

Prewriting Techniques

Prewriting, according the Webster’s Dictionary, is the “preparatory work for a piece of writing, as idea formulation, an outline, or research.”  Prewriting is a topic that has been stressed throughout my educational career even at the beginning stages of writing in grade school. Teachers and professors along the way have given multiple examples and the pros and cons of about every prewriting style there is on this planet. They then go on to why or why not using that technique would be successful, or often times, unsuccessful. Personally, for me, I only found a few of those topics actually useful in my prewriting process, and then began to narrow it down to just sticking to one technique as my writing career became more rigorous. From our class handout, I found it very useful that they laid out each technique that the author thought could be useful, or has been a popular tool for writers today. Looking at this list, and remembering how I went about things in my past, there were a few techniques mentioned in our handout that were very a very helpful tool for me. Techniques such as listing, mapping, and clustering/branching were extremely influential and educational towards my writing development.  The “clustering” technique I found to be the more useful out of the three listed above. Often times I still continue to use this technique, and/or an outline, to prewrite for many of the papers I have written over the last few years of my education. I find this the most helpful because you can get so many great ideas from a technique that just lets you freely formulate numerous ideas and just throw them down on the paper. Although, in saying these tools were useful to me, there are many benefits to all of the other methods discussed in our handout and I don’t think there is a wrong way to actually prewrite, it’s kind of just what’s best for the writer. In saying that, I do suggest that if you have not tried out almost every method known to man, it would be a good idea! Whether we want to admit it or not, there are some “fun” ways to express your thinking via prewriting activities.

Malcolm X and Benjamin Franklin

Reading the excerpts from Malcolm X and Benjamin Franklin we can quickly see that these two influential historians were two very different men, but they also had a few similarities they shared on their way two being two of the most successful people in American history. First, Malcolm X was not very knowledgeable growing up, unlike Benjamin Franklin, and did not first realize the importance of reading and literature studies until his imprisonment. It took Malcolm X numerous years to begin realizing the importance of literature and it wasn’t until he was sentenced to seven years in prison before he first picked up a novel. Benjamin Franklin on the other hand was a very smart young boy and this was quickly recognized by friends and family and helped him in his pursuit of being a scholar, and eventually the president of the United States. Malcolm X, pursuing to be a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, spent all of his time in prison reading books, including the dictionary. After he was released from prison he then continued his studies, but it was not until the middle of his life that he had the knack for learning. This right here is the main difference I saw between him and Benjamin Franklin, their readiness into the world at a young age. Besides the fact that Mr. Franklin was a lot smarter than Malcolm X growing up, their lives were also set on two very different paths with foreseeable goals that they strived to reach. One thing I noticed similar about the two is that after Malcolm X’s imprisonment, they always both had the urge to learn, and continue learning. They never seemed to give up, nor put a book down for that matter. Their knowledge and willingness to continue expanding their horizons eventually led them to become two of the most influential men of American history; in their own separate ways.

Educational Narrative: Learning from Ferros

Reading how people got to where they are today can often be a useful thing for us. Given the opportunity to read about Feross’s first years in computer programming often makes us go back in time and think about how we began doing some of the things we love doing today. Reading about his start from the age of 11, and his ongoing practice and pursuit of something he loved, brings us back to some of the fondest memories of our childhood. This article and website can help us a lot in our first writing assignment; an Education Narrative. This article, in a sense, gives us a framework on the important details we need to include and how we came about those. Reading this article, we can clearly see the Feross included all the important steps he took to get to the programming world he is in today. When recalling on something we learned, we must also do this. It is often hard to recall events that we mastered at a young age, but when they have a lasting impact on our lives we can almost give you exact details on what we did to continue building that knowledge. Feross provides us with this step-by-step layout that he recalls on what got him into being a successful computer programmer, and reminds us that in order to succeed at something we must not be afraid to try it and we must also continually practice this skill until it is mastered. Using this article in terms of our education narrative, we must pick an activity or event that we love doing, because clearly Ferros loves what he does, and this is why he can remember almost every detail that brought him to where he is today.

Education in America

Education in America

Education is America has been an extremely controversial subject in society for a number of decades. Topics under constant scrutiny from society range in funding to “important” core curriculum in which our students should be taught. Throughout history, educators have wondered why education gets little recognition and popularity; when it all reality, it is probably the most important factor surrounding our youth today. Why is this many of us wonder? We need to look at things like the amount of funding received to teach our kids, what we should be teaching them, and the important pieces that will get our children ready for what we like to label as “the real world”. Being a prospective teacher for a number of years I have had the opportunity to take a look into this topic in depth as to why children are not up to par with the rest of the world. The question we must raise is how do we quickly improved these flaws with our government and school districts and put our students first, not our checkbooks.

Many parents today are faced with the tough decision on whether to enroll their child into public schools, charter schools, and even homeschooling in some instances. Watching the video Back in Black: An education crisis, Mr. Black comically portrays to us how far behind we are compared to other countries in the rest of the world in important core subjects like math and science. Personally, I think we do not view our education as a priority like many countries across the globe do. Not only are our students seeing this, but our teachers are also affected greatly by this as well. For example, we can look at the teacher’s strike that has been recently revolved in Chicago. Teachers expect a larger income for the job that they are doing that our government consistently gives them little to no credit for doing. One of the most important jobs in society today is a teacher, in my opinion. Whether it is a teacher at a public or charter school, they are feeling the burden placed on their shoulders as one that should be looked at in a more positive manner. I found it very interesting in Mr. Black’s video that the students selected for these “up-tempo” charter schools are selected at random through a lottery process. I think this choice should be given to the students and their knowledge and willingness to learn. Government has provided school districts with the funding necessary to excel and build around the common good of their students; it’s just how these districts disburse their money, and many of them are taking the wrong steps in doing this. Another real world example we can take a look at on this topic is the recent construction and renovation that has occurred in Allen, Texas. Allen High School recently just constructed a 6 million dollar football stadium for their football team. Many questions have been raised as to why they chose to use this huge chunk of money solely on athletics. With the current teacher strikes across the nation, in my opinion, this money should have been used to restructure and improve academics, not athletics. It is up to society as a whole to give schools like Allen High School are full attention and input on to how this money should be fairly distributed.

Education in America is such a controversial topic that we could sit here and talk for hours on how to improve it. Test scores have been on a steady decline, teachers jobs have been at a constant risk, and the student’s well-being has not been the priority that I feel it needs to be at. Learning and willing to learn, whether in public or charter schools, should be a higher priority than we are currently seeing it be. Funding should be approved and supported in a fashionable manner, and students should be one of its main priorities. In order to succeed, students need should be given an equal opportunity to learn, and with how society has portrayed academics today I feel this is not the case. The importance of a proper and adequate education should be the focus of school districts today; and sadly to say I feel that it’s not as high on their list as it should be. Saying this, we must properly take steps discussed previously to make sure that our students are all received an equal opportunity to learn and succeed.