Kid in the red shoes

   
 Every student has just as much responsibility as the teacher but has much more to lose. The teacher has less motivation for a child to understand the material, they get paid either way. What qualities make a good teacher? One that quality that should come first is someone that takes their job seriously and understand how important their job is. Not every student is the same, each child is an individual that may or may not learn like the rest. These are the future of america and the people get molded into in school are the kind of people they are going to grow up to be. A good teacher needs to put in more time than they thought they would have to. Students are at a vulnerable stage in their lives and don't want to look dumb in front of their peers so don't ask questions during class, students feel more comfortable talking to the teacher after class because of it's more casual setting. One thing that most of my teachers throughout high school lacked was passion, the students could tell they didn't care for their job and only wanted the salary, maybe they once cared about teaching but one to many bad classes cause the passion to burn out, maybe good teacher aren't permanent.
      I once had an English teacher that gave up on reading a book halfway through it and for the rest of the year just had the TV on while he slept at his desk, students would bring their Nintendo Wii and play super smash bros or watch "cops" during the whole class and he passed all his students. I later found out that he knew he was going to get fired because of budget cuts, so I guess he just said fuck it and decided to just lay back and rake in those final paychecks. He had potential to be a great teacher, he started out strong and I felt that the class was going to be enjoyable to be a part of but, when he stopped caring it stopped be fun because he was trying to make learning fun but, because we could basically do whatever we want. The reason the class went on like that for as long as it did was because none of the students fought it. what student would, I hate to say it but, that was a dream class back in high school. The reason why was because  most students don't associate a high school English class with fun, when you think of a high school English class you think of a boring quite class where all the students are either reading a lengthy, boring novel or writing about the lengthy, boring novel. Ever since the whole  "No Child Left Behind Act" students no longer have that fear of falling behind a grade. I think students need that , a little fear is the fuel that keeps our passion burning, if they know they're going to get bumped up to the next grade regardless then what's the point of working hard, and the teachers that don't care whether or not the students learn anything. Some times they have this idea of "well they'll just learn it the next grade."
      Most of the people in our graduating class never thought college was even a possibility, students thought college was reserved only for the rich, and I was in senior in 2008/2009 when the economy went to shit so everybody thought the whole country was going to shit, our parents could barely fill up a full tank of gas how would they be able to pay for college. In the poorer school districts they assumed that the majority of students would either drop out or finish or go straight into the workforce, so I was never approached by anybody about colleges or preparing for college, the only people that wouldn't stop bothering me my last year of high school was the military.

Using your non existing privilege as motivation to live out your passion

     Dave stone is an up and coming new comedian (very funny btw) who chose to live in a van to live out his dream of being a stand up comedian. Even with his friends and family telling him it's a bad idea he still chose to go through with it. By doing this he did not only save on much needed money that is required to live in Los Angeles but it gives him material that he can use to talk about on stage. Working with the bare minimum, he's somewhat like Chris in our book "Into the wild." Even though living in a van has major disadvantages, some problems that a homeless person would have to face like finding a bathroom to use, such privileges that an everyday citizen takes  for granted. When he's on stage it's all worth it, he can forget about all his problems to make other people happy. As a comedian he would be considered successful, he gets paid at gigs, has been doing it for a long time as has a successful bit. In any other line of work he would be seen as hitting rock bottom. This shows that success is all based on your point of view, if you're always basing your success through the eyes of others you'll never be successful. When the thought of someone being traditionally successful you come up with the thought of someone working a 9-5 job with a big house, spouse and kids but, everything slowly changes with every upcoming generation with, now success can't necessarily be measured in dollars but now in someones personal achievements and level of happiness. Not having these responsibilities of having a wife or kids has giving Dave stone more freedom to do with experiment.

Oakland schools

 
 When a public school gets the reputation of being a "good"school it soon becomes barricaded with restrictions, weeding out the bad apples that might spoil the school. If a child wants to attended the school they won't look at he grades or test scores but his/her zip code. To have a good city there first needs to be good schools, because it's the kids that will eventually inherit the city for better or worst. If the citizens can't even solve basic high school problems then  how are they expected to solve problems facing the city. When schools get a reputation of a good school, the property values of the surrounding properties go up. But that also adds restrictions, sometimes streets get Split down the middle where the kids on one side of the street can go to the school but, the kids across the street would have to go the the school across town.
     Today most inner city/ urban area schools treat the students as if they all don't want to learn or just don't care about school based on school test scores, which lowers their self esteem and attitude towards school. We need to stop treating these young adults as children and motive these young minds. That's why some adult don't feel comfortable as adults because of how they were treated their whole life as children and soon as they turn 18 they're expected to be these model citizen adults. Who's to blame for this, the children? The parents? Or the school? Not every student is going to be starving for education and wishing someone challenged them more than they already are, some kids plain don't want to go to school, hate the idea of being in classrooms all day or have just been in shitty class after shitty class for so many years to the point where they've become too far gone to save. Most of the time the problem starts at home, their are too many combination of problems to list but, the most common are just that the parents just don't have to time to sit down with their kids and go over the homework.
    These parents could be single parents,work 2 jobs, night shifts or living off government assistance and is out all day looking for a job. It could be the other way around perhaps the child comes from a broken home, abusive parents or drug use might be in the household. Schools like this always get gutted and left with the bare minimum of classes, no art classes and no music classes is a horrible way to run a school. When schools have nothing to look forward to school it makes it easier to drop out.

QUESTIONS:
How do we fix this problem?
Where do we start?
How can state run schools be saved?

into the wild

Into The Wild relates to our class theme because Chris comes from a rich family but disconnects himself from the lifestyle that his family felt was right for him. He drops everything, leaves his family and risk his life to follow his passion of being one with nature, even if family and strangers alike tell him that he's foolish for taking these risk and leaving all that money behind. Even though he left school to do this he wasn't stupid, he was one of the smartest people in the university, he didn't see a reason to keep going to school when he knew what he really wanted.

I think his privilege of being a white male plays in his throughout this book, he got as far as he did because of the kindness of strangers, if he was another race it might have been a different story, if he was Mexican I  think it might have been harder for him to go in and out of Mexican on a canoe.I think that he was so blinded by his passion that he never saw his own mortality,not only did he have to get to Alaska but he had to hitchhike there, his passion was so strong that he he wouldn't break he rules for no on no matter how much of a break it would be for him. When someone wants something so bad they don't care what they lose to achieve their goal.

TESTING TESTINGTESTINGTESTING

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strategy of college

     A lot can change in the years enrolled in Chabot and thinking you're going to come out the same person just isn't realistic. You're lucky if you go through here without one incident in your life that causes you to miss couple of days of class but, there are many factors that have to be taken into consideration when a student stops showing up. Life happens, life can be so inconvenient for your plans, you may be on the right track but, then a parent my get fired, forcing you to drop out and get a job. You might knock somebody up you barely know and have to flee the state, or sometimes it's something more complicated than that. The way I've kept myself from dropping out is to not overwhelm myself, I've made the mistake of taking 5 classes while also working 30+ hours a week, it was not fun at all. Find a place without distractions, your room might be a quite place for you to be but, it's full of distractions like TV, radio, phone calls, text messages and  internet, which when you have work to do, becomes the most interesting thing on earth. Places like the library, public parks, hospital parking garages are quite and no distractions.
      I have found many ways of managing my time with set sleeping schedule, knowing what the bare minimum of sleep I need to be functional,when I will and will not be able to study or do homework throughout the week. I have deadlines written down on a white board along with other important dates and reminders but, at any moment anything can happen to change all this and throw of the whole system out of whack. Things out of my control like a loved one passing away, my house burning down or I could become sick and bedridden but, until that happens i'll still be here til i'm done with what I came here to do. When students first arrive here at Chabot they come with this idea that it's going to be the same as high school but, then they realize that it's not. No one is going to stay on top of you to finish the work, if you fail its all on you. It's very easy to lose track of what's important, college life is one giant distraction after another. When students aren't in class there are massive parties being thrown. Alcohol and college campuses have been associated with one another since anyone can remember but, there are also many hidden dangers that people don't really care to talk about as often. It seems like it's getting fairly common for students to die from alcohol poisoning and drug overdose each year. The only real advice is to avoid it all if you can but if you must then please use in moderation and stay where people can see you because all of these deaths can be avoided if you see medical attention soon enough.

Passion and privilege

     I see the relationship between passion and privilege going in two different directions. Someone with more privilege has more resources to live out their passion, whatever it may be, while someone with less privilege may have to work longer to achieve the same goal. Even though someone's passion may not need money or schooling to live out,a person with privilege may have less to worry about, they might not have to drop everything and get a job like someone from a poorer background. Less pressure is on someone when there is less to lose. Your whole life you are told that you can be anything you want but soon as you become an adult you are told that you need to start being realistic, people get a job that doesn't really appeal to them but, the money is good and it shows people that they're doing something with their life, so they stay for a while then next thing they know it's 25 years later.
     "I got my insurance license when I was 21 because I wanted to make sure that people thought that I was gonna do something . I thought that you know uh putting on a suit and having this license would make me some kind of adult." Without passion, life wouldn't be worth living. Everything is driven by a person's passion. It may not be the job they're at or the classes being taken but, it might be the children they are providing for, their family might be their passion. One example of passion are the artist of the world. Most artist do their work out of passion and just want to satisfaction of other people's recognition. Money will come if it's suppose to but, all the artist is in control of is the quality of their work.It's easier now for the artist to share their work with people all across the world, in the age on the internet musicians can upload their songs to Soundcloud, others can comment and add to it, Photographers ,Illustrators and Visual artist can post their work on Tumbler and art blogs and Comedians can post videos on Youtube, and all of this is free and the people that post do this out of their passion. The Internet doesn't discriminate against any race, sex or class. The Internet is one of the last place where you can live out your passion without much privilege, almost everything on the internet can be downloaded for free and anything can be uploaded to be to shared for free.

In class writing

School doesn't have to be an intimidating place but, a place for students to thrive and make their passions a career. Being in a class where the teacher is bored with his/her own lecture is the worst. It's hard to take it seriously if the teacher can't get excited of his our lecture. I think all students attending Chabot have had at least one class where they thought to themselves " What's the point of this class? Why do I need to take this class? What will I get from being here besides credits?