Completely stunned by the first words coming out of this new, intimidating teacher, I was excited for an English class for the first time. Growing up I absolutely dreaded reading and writing. Literature as a whole was the bane of my existence. However, this teacher changed it all for me. Mr. Alessandri had us read Silence of the Lambs, Dune, and numerous short stories.
Terms like assertion, thesis, and elaboration seemed like a foreign language. I managed to slide by in English with good grades, but I never seemed to enjoy it. My junior year in high school changed my perspective on all of this. I showed up for my first day of junior year, not excepting things to be any different. My teacher stood in the front of the room and read the class syllabus in the same monotone voice while my classmates and I drifted in and out of consciousness.
My college-prep science class used the same book that my sixth grade class used three years priors. Furthermore, many of the teachers were there only because they didn't know what else to do and probably couldn't hold down a real job. I remember the teacher for our "Guidance Class", telling us that he became a teacher because he wasn't smart enough to be an engineer. Apparently he wasn't smart enough to think of any other alternatives either. That was great career advice, thanks a bunch!
He was very outgoing and care very much about his students. From the beginning of the semester, he had told the whole class that his class was not going to be easy and much dedication was going to be needed in order to pass his class. All his lectures straight the textbook just reworded and summarized. Professor Hammontree talked very fast and hardly looked up while lecturing, but if a students could not understand something being discussed in his lecture, he would take the time to discuss it after class or was able to meet with you one-on-one in his office during his office hours. His exams, on the other hand, were essay question exams and were very difficult especially when someone didn’t study.
Todd’s parents think that he should become a lawyer and they do not give him a lot of attentions as they send him the same desk set each year. Their new English teacher, Mr. Keating or “The Captain”, is different from the rest and some of the students find him mad. In their first class, he brings them to see pictures of some of the former students at the school. Through poems he tells them to seize the day, Carpe Diem, a term which he thinks the students should live by. Mr. Keating’s way of teaching brings out the uniqueness of the pupils, but the other teachers, bound by traditions and discipline, do not like his way of teaching.
As a returning student to LAVC, I find myself concerned with locus of control. Just last year, I was a junior at CSUN, taking rigorous courses that, had I consulted with my mentor at LAVC, would not have taken all at once. Due to my stubbornness, my GPA took a nosedive on my first year as a transfer student and I was disqualified; now I’m required to make up for those bad grades if I want to return to finish what I started. Even though I should move on and get back up on my feet, I am conflicted with either taking personal responsibility, or attributing my failure to the lack of advisement. By definition, Marijana (2010) goes
Michael Tighe Marianne Bird My Legacy I have thought about what stuck out at me from Randy’s Last Lecture. What I always get is the same thing, and that is not to get upset if things aren’t going your way. Make do with that you have and show others that you can still be as successful without some of your dreams becoming true. Randy Pausch’s left a legacy to his two sons and daughter for them to follow as they grow up. He left them being known as one of the nicest everyday-person to meet and how he always looked up, as he didn’t want to dwell on something that was out of his control.
I have talked too many of my fellow colleagues who took this class with a different professor, and none of them really learned the basic principles on how to have power over their society. With clips like Goodbye Uncle Tom, Hidden Colors, and Children’s March I have grown to be more appreciative of the freedom’s that we have today. With slides that you have provided for us in class I have grown to know that I am a spirit, I have a soul, and I live in a body. I also have learned how traumatic events effect a person’s actions after the tragedy has occurred. One project that mostly stuck out to me was the truth about Hip-Hop.
With our increasingly competitive society, students are pushed to make the best grades that they can in the toughest classes that they can take so that they’ll be considered at a prestigious university. By designating grades as the central factor of deciding their future, students tend to lose sight of why they go to school every day. Their overall mindset shifts from doing everything they can do, to completing the least amount of work while making the best grade possible. Sometimes, my friends and I would circle random answers on the multiple-choice assessments that were assigned, just because the teacher graded solely on completion. Afterwards, the teacher would review all of the correct answers with the class and we would have all the answers to study later without having to look up a single question.
I was enrolled in the Resident Degree Program for two years and decided to transfer into the Adult Degree Program. It made great sense to me for three main reasons; I wanted to work in my field of interest, I believed myself to be incredibly self-motivated, and I had a life vision of what I wanted out of higher education . After looking into the layout of the Adult Degree Program, I decided it was created for a student such as myself. During my last semester in the RDP I noticed most of my classmates were five to seven years younger than myself and did not seem to have the genuine desire to learn. It seemed more like high school.