Semester Duex, blog twelve

Dear President Obama,

I am pretty sure that you are aware of the fact that we are in a recession at this point in our lives.

As you know, the country is in debt and needs to focus on our own financial problems and less on

the financial issues of other countries. The marshal plan is a genuine attempt at stronger bonds

between nations, economic cooperation, and controlling inflation, but at this point in time, it would

be unwise to get involved with foreign affairs. In the past, this has cost Americans $11,820,700,000

in tax money in four years. This money could be going towards other things, such as paying off the

debt we are in, for example.

The plan was revolutionary when George C. Marshall first came up with it at Harvard University

in 1947, and it still is, but American needs to wait for her own problems to be settled and dealt

with before she can get involved with foreign affairs. According to ambrosedigital.com, "One

would need to multiply the program's $13.3 billion cost by 10 or perhaps even 20 times to have

the same impact on the U.S. economy now as the Marshall Plan had between 1948 and 1952."

In conclusion, things need to be done, and it would make a better country and a better world

to have international bonds and connections, but when it comes to the amount of money that

would be needed to help foreign places such as the Middle East and Africa, it cannot be done

right now. I hope you take this into consideration.

Sincerely,

Marlene Barajas

Semester Deux, Blog Eleven

To be honest, I think that power and money can pretty much take over anyone. I always wondered why Obama never did anything to keep his promises, and it makes sense that because he the power to do whatever he pleases, as the president of the United States, he would want to get more power and more respect. If I were president, I would like for the United States to not only close down Gitmo, but also to get out of the Middle East. I never really understood why the United States got involved in a war there, but from what I hear on the news about what people from the Middle East think about the United States, it makes me a little afraid to still be living here. For a while after Obama became president, I was afraid of him really getting our of the Middle East because I didn't want them to then come here and kill all of us to get revenge for all of the people that American Troops killed over there. As president, there are many things I wish I could do, but I would have advisers, to inform me as to what the correct thing to do really is. I would like for the Geneva Conventions to really have control over war all over the world. I would want there to be no nuclear weapons in the world. To accomplish this, I would like to meet with leaders from all over the world and make treaties. I would like for countries all over the world to get as involved with the Geneva Conventions as possible. Of course, these thoughts are a little unrealistic and childish, but I would like for the world to be more coefficient. It would be nice if different countries would coexist in this world. It would be nice to have people be more involved with the communities, so that they are more aware of what is going on in the world. Maybe if the news focused more on what is happening world wide and what it is that individuals can do about it and less on just how depressing and hopeless we all are, then maybe the world could be different. Maybe I would only offer certain benefits to people if they have proof that they have done service to the community or to the world in one way or another, but that is just a thought. If I were president of the United States, I would try to get the citizens of the country which I represent more involved and more giving.

Semester dos, honors blog

Dear Kiochiro Serizawa (relative in Japan),

I do not know exactly what I am doing here, but it is my second year here, in what my parents call the "internment camps" and I have been going to school here. My father used to be happy working in his farm and coming home to mom, my three brothers and I. Even though he studied to be a zoologist in college, he is happy with what he does here. Now it is like we are all trapped. I was only five at the beginning of the way, but I still remember how it happened. I saw the little neighbor boy run across th farm land and yell to my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I could tell by the expressions on their faces that this was not a good thing. I remember when the military police came to our house. The guys looked like teenagers. They were so young, and they were looking through our stuff. Later there were posters on the telephone posts that said that the Japanese needed to report. I saw that my parents were packing and they were taking a lot of clothes and eating utensils. We slept on cots stuffed with straw. We were living in barracks then. The floor had cracks in it. My little brother likes to pee in the cracks. He is also leaning to say bad words.

About three or four months later, we left the bay area on a train and left to a place called Topaz, Utah. It was in a desert. It was during the summer so the train ride felt really long and hot. When we were in the middle of the desert, the train stopped, and the military police gathered around the exits and held guns up at the people who were getting off of the train. My mother was angry. She said it didn't make sense that a lot of the people there were college graduated, intelligent people. They were supposed to be the leaders of the community, not the other way around. She herself was a UC graduate, so these arrangements made her very angry. There were about 100 of us at the camps. It was not a lot of people, but we were placed in paper barracks that were arranged in blocks. When we woke up in the mornings we would be covered in sand because of the sand storms. We were not protected by windows, because the barracks had no windows. This strange place turned out to be my home for three years.

We were cramped in little rooms with no privacy. This did not matter much to me, but the adults did not have any privacy. I became familiar to this place after three years, but I definitely did not feel attached to it in any way. My mom took us out for walks, and there were people there that missed the green of the Bay Area that were now trying to plant gardens. We go to sleep every day at 7:30. I had one brother that was born in the internment camp. She gave birth to him in a small hospital that they have here. When we got home, he was just a cute little brown boy that was just taking up more of our room to live in. I also had my tonsils removed at that hospital. It was very painful and they fed me orange Jello as my first food. It stung a lot. The doctors and nurses were all Japanese Americans that were also interned with us. The hospitals were also little barracks.

The room we lived in was probably twenty feet by twelve feet, and there were six people living in it. My father is a biology teacher here. He later left the camp to go teach Japanese to United States Navy in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He would send us gifts from the outside. In the camps we were a community. We were like a village where we looked out for each other. One time, a military police took me and another girl to a park outside of the camp, but I was afraid that he would not let us go back to the camp. For some reason, it seemed more dangerous to be outside of the camp than inside of the camp....

Sincerely, Janet Daijogo

http://www.tellingstories.org/internment/jdaijogo/index.html

Semester dos, blog ten

After talking to my parents and asking them what was going on in their life or their parents life during world war two, they did not have much to say about it. My mothers grandparents lived in a small town in Mexico. They lived their lives as farmers. They planted and sold bananas. My father on the other hand, doesn't know much about his grandparents. The majority of my parent's close family members, including themselves, didn't attend school. The women would begin doing house work at a very young age. They would begin at even the age of 6. In the boy's cases, they would begin to go out into the field to pick whatever they planted, which in my father's case, was mostly corn.

Mexico was not involved with the second world war and so they were not affected by the war very much. My cousins and I are the first generation to grow up in the United States, so they did not have too much to worry about in those years.

WW2 Imagery

In this picture, are the three allied power leaders, the president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, and Premier of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. It is interesting to think about the fact that whatever any of these men say goes. They were obviously more power during the war and had the other countries involved during the war under their power.

It is also interesting to think about the fact that millions of people in the world see these men as "the good guys." Yes, they fought for their country and they protected their people's freedom and safety, but they did it at the risk of the lives of others. Some might argue that the fact that the people they were killing were mass murderers, but all they did was fight fire with fire. They did a good thing by stopping Hitler and they simply had to get involved after they were bombed by Japan... right?

A study of commercial posters undertaken by the U.S. Government found that images of women and children in danger were effective emotional devices. This Canadian poster was part of the study and served as a model for American posters, by G. K. Odell. During 1941 through 1945 this poster was commissioned by Canadian government. The top right hand represents the "dangerous" Nazis, and the bottom left hand with Japan's rising sun represents the "hateful" Japanese.

It is kind of ridiculous how they put this picture. They know that most men can relate to this either because they have a girl friend and want a family with them, have a wife and baby, or simply see their loving mom in the eyes of this woman. It reminds me of Maria O'hare, because her concern is that families are being affected by the war.

President Roosevelt declared the date “A Day that will live in infamy”. Webster’s defines the word as a state of extreme dishonor. The United States was attacked without provocation, drawing us into a war that claimed many of our finest young men and women.

"Sailors in a motor launch rescue a survivor from the water alongside the sunken USS West Virginia(BB-48) during or shortly after the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor." (http://www.acepilots.com/ww2/pictures.html)

To me it seems like the photographer is trying to show something that is not really realistic. They try to make it seem like the United States navy, in this case, is he only victim. Hiroshima was many times greater and more impacting than Pearl Harbor was. Japan attacking a base, which even though it violated their peace treaty, this picture doesn't justify that the United States then bombed innocent citizens

Honors Blog

The main theme in Revolutionary Road was definitely the American dream. It tells the story of an average couple in the 1950's. They have two wonderful children, Frank Wheeler, the husband and one of two of the main characters in this book, has a decent job that pays the bills, and they live in a wonderful little house in the suburbs. The problem was probably that they thought too much of themselves. They were young when they got married and still had a thirst for thrill and adventure, which is not something that can hold together a healthy family. April Wheeler, Frank's wife, seemed to always want to find distractions. She wanted to find a hobby, or something that she was good at that would distract her from what she thought was a pretty pathetic life.

"It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares anymore; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God Damn mediocrity." This is a quote from April. The book begins with a scene at a play where April played an important role. Part way through the play, one of the characters messed up one of their lines, which brought the rest of the actors down and practically ruined the whole play. April was depressed and felt a strong desire to do something different with her life. She has realized at 29 that she is not where she wants to be and that she never really saw herself as a housewife in the first place. Because of this, distracts herself with different activities, until one day she decides that she wants to move to Europe with her family, where all the excitement is.

After an argument that Frank and April get into the night of the play, Frank desperately seeks an escape as well. Frank then decides to distract himself by having an affair with a woman from work named Maureen. They both have a feeling that they are dull and try to get away from that. They try to find a deeper meaning in life. They live their life believing that there is always something better around the corner, and somewhere along the way, they realize how unrealistic this is for a couple with children and a suburban life. They believed that "if you don't try at anything, you can't fail... it takes back bone to lead the life you want."

April and Frank's vanity and their strong desire to get something more out of life led them to both having affairs and eventually killed April. They were finally getting their old life full of thrill and excitement back when they began to make plans to move to Paris, France. They were forced to snap back to reality when April gets pregnant with a third child. They argue over whether she should have an abortion and things begin to get difficult for them. April is selfish and wants to lead a life that she cannot live anymore because it would be irresponsible for her to do so. Frank wants her to keep the child and is even considering forgetting about Paris after he is offered a promotion at his office job. They both begin to see other people from the stress of being with each other, and finally. April decided to have an abortion herself causing her to bleed to death.

April and Frank wanted what they could not have. They were not satisfied with the life they had and when it came to materialistic things and a popular social status along with an exciting life, they simply could not get by with what they had. They needed more to be happy, and their vanity brought them troubles in their marriage and ended April's life. That is why the theme of the American Dream is so important in this book. The idea that nobody is every really satisfied with what they have and that you can never have enough because there is always someone out there who has more will always be among American and the world everywhere.

"You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine percent of the people work things out..."

Semester Deux, Blog Seven

Before the American Civil war, white supremacy was dominant in the United States. Then when the civil war broke out, white supremacy was blamed for the separation of the states and created conflict between the north and the south who had different beliefs. White supremacy lived in the south along with its great big cotton fields and slave workers, while the north was free of slaves. Because of him many non-white were restrained from voting and having other similar rights such as having government jobs. Then in 1967, he made sure that there would not be marriage between a white and a non-white. Shortly after this, the constitution told white supremacy that it was wrong and went against his beliefs, and the constitution won. After this dispute, interracial marriage was allowed. After white supremacy had realized that he had lost that battle, he decided to move onto something else, the land over seas.

Over at South Africa's house, there were many people who agreed with white supremacy. Between the years 1948 and 1993 white supremacy created a "system of legal racial segregation" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_under_apartheid) enforced by white supremacy's friend, the national party, who lived in South Africa. After this, he made sure that he would spread his beliefs all through South West Africa. After this white supremacy got black people's access to medical care, education, and other public services were less prominent and well distributed, in other words, they sucked.

White supremacy's friends Nordic shunned those of Southern Europe, who would have had darker features and different cultures. Then in the United States white supremacy had some children. They called themselves the Ku Klux Klan. His first group of children were born in the 1860s but they died in the 1870s. Then, White supremacy came back to the United States and gave birth to an even larger Klan that became nationwide. They wore white robes makes and cone hats. Their intention were to scare.

White supremacy still lives in this world among us all. It is more hidden and less abundant, but sadly, there are still some who believe that there is one pure race that is above the rest. With the help of open-mindedness and cultural awareness, humanity will easily be able to get rid of this vicious character who has done so much harm to the world already.

Semester Deux, Blog Six

http://aclarkf.blogspot.com/
What I liked about Alex's pitches is that she says that she would go back and talk to her mentor again to add more things to her mentor interview which is what she plans on using for her ampersand article. I also liked the creativity she used when talking about perspectives and comparisons. The last one was pretty general, but I liked how she said that she would like to write about what the kids taught her. I hadn't thought of that before and I think it is an interesting idea.

http://noahshumanitiesblog.blogspot.com/
I liked this one because it had the same idea I had. I wanted to focus on something that I have already talked about in a past internship assignment. I was not too crazy about his second pitch, but I liked how he said that his previous pitch would be like cheated which also made me want to do something different in my other article. This will make the new article unique and informative in a new and creative way. I also like how he wants to use his mentor interview, because that is also something I wanted to do. Although, my mentor interview is a bit long and it jumps around different topics, I would like for it to be told.

http://ericaboodlesness.blogspot.com/
Well, I liked how her pitches were unique and if I were to read this ampersand article I would have a better idea of what this person's experience was like and be able to compare it to my own experience. I knew got an idea of what her internship was right off the bat and I was mainly interested in her topic. This would lead to a great article because it would be detailed and descriptive.

Semester Dos, Blog Five

Write out three "pitches" for three different Ampersand articles that you might write for this year's publication.

1. Write an article about the questions I still have and compare them to the questions I had before internship. Compare my views towards certain affairs, and certain people I knew before the internship. Describe the conversations I had with people there and what I learned from them.

2. Describe the similarities and differences of my mentality before and after my internship. Talk about my plans for my future and how and exactly when everything began to change. Describe the feelings I had at the beginning of my internship and how they changed throughout the course of my internship. Talk about what I learned about myself.

3. Write an article about all of the awkward people I encountered during my internship.Talk about the awkward silences in the copy room and the awkward hellos in the mornings. Describe the conversations I had with people I had just met that were trying really hard to make small talk.

Semester Two, Blog Four

http://www.allthingsfrugal.com/namaste.htm

Other than the fact that this article was short and to the point, I thought it was an interesting choice to read for an article, because I thought that I could use this same theme. In my mentor's office there was a rock that read Namaste, and after asking my mentor what that meant, I felt it said a lot about who she was as a person, and who I want to grow up to be. This is why I thought it was a good idea to talk about this word in my article.

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/abortion/tp/Pro-Life-vs-Pro-Choice.htm

Honestly, what got my attention about this article was the topic. If this gave me the idea to start off talking about a contradicting of widely known conflict that many people will read and relate to. Another thing I could do is come up with a title that can mean many different things that many people can see and want to know what the article is going to be about. Many people say "don't judge a book by its cover," but I know that people do that anyways, so in order to get the readers attention I need to come up with a good hook and/or title that will get the reader to judge positively.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/life-choices-facing-difficult-decisions.html

I was not too convinced by the introduction of this article, though it was something that some might connect with. This person starts off with the whole "we have all been through...." trick where she expects the reader to feel an immediate connection. Though this did not immediately get my attention, it got me thinking that maybe I should start off with something like a question like this person did in their last sentence in their introduction. People are not going to get too far when reading so if they at least read through my introduction they would see the question and might think twice about reading the rest of this article.

Semester Two, Blog Three.

http://dancemusic.about.com/od/artistshomepages/a/LadyGagaInt.htm
In this article, the writer sums up a little background information about the artist Lady Gaga. He gives his opinion about what he believes her style is like and then finishes with a concluding sentence that persuades the reader to listen to some of her music and observe her music videos. He starts off his interview by simply stating people that he feels are similar to her in some sort of way or she has worked with, and asking her to state how she feels they have inspired her. He then moves his interview towards more detailed questions. Though his questions aren't too detailed, her answers make up for it. There is simply a short introduction and then goes straight onto the interview. Though I am comfortable with this way of writing, I prefer doing something else with mine. The interviewer asked short questions and Lady Gaga didn't take a long time to answer them. In my case, my questions were a little more detailed, and my mentor went on, sometimes for over entire pages, answering one simple question. This interview is simple and it might even be refreshing, but I am pretty sure that the crazy Lady Gaga fans that have read this were wishing that both of them had gone more in depth with the Q&A. This is why I think it would be better to go about this interview a different way.



http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/madonna/
There were a couple of things that I didn't like about this article. For starters, it had no introduction, so I didn't have much of an example for that there, but I liked the way the article introduced the interview. It started off with pictures of her. I guess a picture really does say a thousand words, if they were able to just put that in instead of an introduction. I still think it was a very clever idea because she is very herself in those pictures and I feel that the reader can get a taste of who she really is in those pictures. I also liked how they started off with what they were really saying instead of censoring it. I thought that for our interview we were only going to mention the most important parts of the interview, and though I do think that the person who edited this interview did the same thing, I thought it was very nice how they took out the things that they didn't think they needed, but they still left in the quotes from when they were greeting. They seem to be long time friends and it makes the reader seem like they are there because they are listening to exactly how the interview started off. Another thing I didn't really like about this interview is that they used too much jargon language. They mention a lot of people and assume that they both know who they are talking about, and they use acronyms that probably only they and a few other Madonna-Lovers knew. Other than this, I liked the style and the overall interview was very well edited and sounded like a conversation. Although, I'm gonna be honest and say that some of it sounded a bit scripted, though that could have also just been Madonna's classiness when she speaks.

Semester Two, Blog Two.

What have you read lately (say, since last semester), that you found interesting?
Well, since it is not specified what we should be writing about and the things I read are not exactly something I want to talk about in this blog, I am going to use this freedom to talk about an article I just found on The New Yorker Website. I found this article called Social Animal. In the search box I had typed in the key word "happiness" and I was surprised to see that most of this article was focused on relationships. It made sense to me because I believe that humans are social creatures and rely on the company of others to be happy, but I wasn't expecting almost the whole article to be about relationships.

One quote I liked from this article was "The brain exists within the skull, but the mind extends outward and arises from the interactions between people or between a person and the environment." The article spoke a little about how the brain worked in a psychological way that makes people need to be included in social activities, and I found this quote interesting because it is true that a humans mind extends from out of our brains and into other who are around us. We depend on others and according to this article, the moment we meet the one we marry or plan on spending the rest of our lives with, is the most important day of our life. I understand that it is a human necessity to have company and need love and human interaction, but I don't know if I wanted to agree with this article. It made it seem like the only and only purpose of life is to find that one person who you will spend the rest of your life with. A quote directly from this article stated "there is no decision more important to lifelong happiness than the decision about whom to marry."

What I found even more surprising was that this article was written by a man. I was expecting this to have been written by a woman who had believed throughout her whole life that her soul purpose in life was to find her "soul-mate" and life happily ever after. I was expecting her to be a woman who walks down the street after she's just met a man thinking about him and wondering what their children will look like and what she will name them. At first, I was very interested in the article and wanted to keep reading because of all the interesting facts, but towards the end, I began getting a little frustrated because some of the articles "facts" seemed faker than a teen-age-boy in heat's "I love you." One thing that I found absolutely ridiculous was that, according to this article, "there’s evidence that men fall in love faster and are more likely to believe that true love lasts forever." I find it extremely hard to believe this, and until I become a scientist myself and conduct this research on my own, I will not allow myself to believe this.

Why did it catch your attention?

Lately, I have been observing people more and trying to see if they are happy or not. I consider myself a happy person and even though my views are not always positive, I keep a smile on my face and laugh at life and honestly, I am happier than I have ever been. Since I will legally be adult next year and will have to start getting ready to be completely on my own, it seems that the thing that concerns me that most is whether or not I will be happy. I searched the word happiness because I am concerned that I might wake up one day and realize that I have made many mistakes in my life and wish I could go back in time and change my decisions. I only get once life and I want to try my best to make it count.

Semester Two, Blog Number One!

What are the big ideas that you are taking from internship into the next steps in your life?
One of the "big ideas" that I came to realizing through this internship is that my life is not going to go as planned. I also know now that I will change my mind about many things. Just in the past two years, I feel like I have grown into a completely different person. Some of the things I believe today are complete opposites of what I used to believe. I never would have thought that this is who I would be in eleventh grade. I also do not see this as a bad thing at all. Actually, I am happier than ever and knowing that I have a voice and have the freedom to make my own choices makes me happier than I have ever been. I chose this internship because I feel that this whole transformation mostly took place in my humanities class in tenth grade. I also knew that for my internship I wanted to do something with special education, so I thought working with Sarah Barnes would be the perfect opportunity for me to grow more as a person. It surprises me how much Sarah told me she has changed since she was my age. She used to have a lot of the same beliefs that I have today and I am not exactly sure they are beliefs that I want to let go of. She mentioned to me that she considers herself to have been some sort of hippie, and that is sort of what I feel like sometimes. I don't feel like money is at all important anymore and I really just want to have fun in life. Telling her this made her remember of her own beliefs when she was my age and assured me that she felt like she was more mature now and more responsible than she was just a few years back. She sees this a positive thing, and I just hope that when I am her age I don't look back and wish I had done something different with my life.

What are your plans for the coming semester?
For this coming semester in humanities, I plan on taking honors again. I will try my hardest to stay as organized and focused throughout the whole semester to get a better grade. I know Randy believes that it is not the grade that really matters but what I take out of his humanities class, but I college is very important to me and I won't be able to get into to colleges that I want if I don't have excellent grades. I want to get an A this semester and I feel quite obligated to do so since I pinkie promised Randy I would. I am also one of the slowest readers on the planet so I am extremely terrified by the idea of reading 7 books in one semester. I honestly do not know if that is something that I can do. It takes me about one hour to read a whole chapter. It is very embarrassing, but I just have troubles concentrating on what I am reading. It is definitely going to be a challenge for me and I just hope I can do it. I am willing to take that challenge and hope that my organization and my dedication to this class and to my education will pay off and prove that I am capable of accomplishing tasks that I consider to be very difficult.

Internship-The Final Week!

Describe your reflections on your internship project—what went well, what would you do differently, and what stands out to you?

My project was working with a little girl, Esmeralda,* who is a first grader and is struggling with keeping up with her peers. I first learned about Esmeralda when Sarah Barnes, my mentor, suggested I work with her for my project. She told me she was a first grader who really needed help learning how to read, write, and do simple math. She is the daughter of a single mother who works hard to provide for herself and her daughters. I found myself blaming the parents for a lot of the things that I saw was wrong with her students. Now I realize that even though it is the parents fault some of the times, it is not always because they choose to not spend time with their kids. I even began to feel a little big hopeless because I wished that her mom had more spare time that she could spend helping her daughter do her homework. When I first started working with her I was surprised to see just how much she needed to learn to catch up to her classmates. The students at room 1 had been working on writing books, but her book was mostly filled with pictures. When I did my first assessment with her to see how much she knew, I was surprised to see that even though she knew the names of all of her letters, she didn't know the sounds that most of them made. My goal was to get her to at least recognize the sounds that some of the letters made. My first method of trying to get her to learn this was reading to her and getting her to recognize some of the letters in the book and telling her what sounds it made. I would also have her follow along with her finger as I read to her which was going great, until she got bored and stopped wanting to read. I realized that to get her attention I was going to need a different method of teaching. This is when I began taking my work home. I wanted to make Esmeralda want to work with me so I made a game that we could play. I ended up making a matching game out of construction paper and pictures of random things in my house. I would put a letter on one card and I would put a picture of something that started with that letter in another card. She really liked to play this game with her friends, but would get really frustrated when her friends would beat her at the game and would give up playing. It took a lot of convincing to get her to start playing again, but after a while she started getting the hang of the game and when she started winning, she wanted to play more often. What I would do differently is I would have tried to work on more games with her. Towards the end more people started to work individually with her and I had less time with her on my hands. She started doing different activities with different people and would usually tell me what she wanted to work on. Usually she would say that she wanted to play the same game and since I saw improvements I didn't bother changing my strategies. I also would have recorded her progress more. I made a chart for how much she knew in the beginning and how much she knew in the end and even though her improvements were obvious, I just wish I would have been recording more during the process of teaching her everything I did. Overall, I feel my project was a success and I got farther than I had expected to. Not only does she know most of the sounds the letters make now, but she even sounds out words now. She is beginning to keep up with her work at school now because she understand what she is working on at school. I feel this was a good project with me and I just wish I had more evidence of what we worked on.

*names have been changed.

Internship Week 3

Who benefits from the work that you do at internship? How and/or why?

The person who benefits the most from the work I do at my internship would be the little girl who I am working with to help her read. I work with many other kids at my internship and I would like to think that many of the kids I work with benefit from the work I do with them, but the person I am trying to focus on the most is the little girl who I am working on for my project. It makes me sad to think that many of these kids are behind because they don't get the help they need from their parents. They fall behind, not because they are not smart, but because some kids just don't have the same support that others have. It really makes me wish there were less students per class so that more kids could have individual attention. While many kids in the class I spend a lot of my time on are working on writing books, this little girl doesn't even know the sounds a lot of the letters in the alphabets make. She is falling far behind in math as well. I want to focus on just one thing at a time because she gets tired easily and very distracted. I hope that by the end of my internship I have helped at least this little girl has received some sort of benefit from my attendance at their school. I honestly feel like there has been much progress made because she is becoming more and more comfortable with me and is eager and wants to work with me unlike she did at the beginning of the month where I was practically begging her to read with me for ten minutes. She is really getting better at recognizing sounds and hopefully she will begin to recognize small words soon. This kind of work is what really motivates me and makes me feel good about my decision to intern with the special education students of Explorer Elementary.

What are you thankful for in your internship experience?
I am thankful for many things that I have experienced through this internship. First, I am always happy to work with kids who look at you with admiration. They like to work with me and they sometimes argue over who gets to read or write with me. I am thankful to have met these amazing kids who are all so smart and caring. They are also extremely creative and respectful. Since I have been there they have continuously proven to me that they are mature and very smart. Another thing I am thankful for is the people I have met that work there. First of all, Sarah has taught me a lot about special education and the thought of doing what she does makes me want to do everything in my power and set aside any set backs in order to achieve my goals. I am thankful for my mentor for being so kind and helpful from the very beginning and from being so honest. I enjoy spending time in her office talking about college and work. She also introduced me to a student teacher whom she has been working with and it turned out we had a lot in common. She and I have a very similar background and talking to her about college and our goals was very motivating and it really made me feel like I am not alone. I am especially thankful for the opportunity to be working with such a great mentor, co-workers, and students.

Internship Week 2

How has or do you see your internship changing the way you consider that paths your future will take?
A while ago I read a book that I felt I connected with on many different levels. In the last chapter, the main character says something that stuck with me. I had thought this way for many years, I just could never find the right words for it. In this book by Ellen Hopkins, Pattyn, the main character, is feeling confused and has feels as if she had nothing left to live for. "I am sitting on the hard cement railing of a freeway overpass. Legs dangling, I watch the unrelenting motion of normal people in daily transit. Mind-boggling, how so many separate lives travel in such a remarkable unison. Soul searching, I know that I will never squeeze into such a common mold." I always felt like I didn't belong. Every day I would wake up to see my dad wake up to go to work. He would do the same thing every single day, and had been doing the same thing for many years. On the weekends, he would say that he was tired and didn't feel the need to do anything else than just sit around and watch TV. I saw many people living the same day over and over again, and I couldn't help but wonder, "isn't life to short to live the same day twice?" I promised myself I would never fall into this trap that these people call life. I had forgotten about this philosophy of mine until I started my internship. I thought that maybe it was important to find a reliable job and live on a steady income, and I was determine to dedicating my life to special education. Though it is something I still know I want to do in my future, I just don't think it's what I want to do for a living. I sometimes fear that my reasoning immature and I will wake up one day and regret my decisions, but this internship has taught me that only a few lucky people end up doing what they love for a living, and I haven't found what it is I love yet, so I need to keep looking. Before these past two weeks I had a plan. I was going to follow a certain path that was reliable and safe. Today, I don't know what the future has in store for me, but I am excited to find out.

What is the biggest challenge face at your internship?
One thing I learned while working at Explorer Elementary that I did not expect to learn was that as badly as one may want it, we cannot always help everybody as much as we'd like. I noticed that some kids are very behind and their capacities are not as advanced as others. It really makes me want to blame the parents that the kids don't know their alphabet when the rest of the class already knows how to read and write. It is important to always keep in mind that life is not fair. I would quickly judge the parents for their child's progress in school, but after talking to some teachers, I learned that some kids that are behind are that way because their parents are unable to help them out with their school work at home. There are single moms who have to work many hours a day breaking their backs to care for their children. They leave their children at school in programs that allow them to stay late giving the parents more time to work, and when they finally pick up their children and home, the exhaustion is just too much. It makes me angry that there are many different cases that keep the children from moving forward along with the rest of the kids and that some of them who are not exercising their brains and will always find it hard to move forward. I get really stressed out and wish that I could dedicate more time to each of the kids who need me the most, but the I would be neglecting the ones who I believe don't need me as much and that would be unfair to them. I understand why the teachers seem so relieved when they receive help from volunteer workers and teachers aides. I had forgotten how much I really learned when I was in elementary. It is where it all began. I will never again underestimate the job of an elementary teacher.

First Week of Internship

What are you most surprised by during your first week of internship and why? I never would have believed that within the first couple of hours in my internship, I would have had a complete change of heart when it came to my future career choices. For almost a year I had felt very passionately for special education and I did not believe that I would ever change my mind about what it is I was going to be doing with my life. I had it all figured out, until I spent a day in a classroom. I do not remember much about my life when I was in the first grade, and I now know why. My brain must have been completely turned off due to boredom. Though this may sound unprofessional and maybe even a bit childish, I strongly believe that though I love special education and feel the need to help children who need special attention out, it is just not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I cannot handle a group of children yelling and all calling for my attention at a time. I had no idea I would learn this in a day. What I was most afraid of before coming into this internship was realizing that special education is not what I want to do, because that would mean that I would have to start over and begin, once again, to evaluate myself and finally find what it is I need to be spending my life on. This happened, and now I am terrified. Though it has only been two days, my mind is restless and everything the adults have told me for years and years is becoming more and more meaningless to me. I just know that I will only live once and I want to live happy. I don't want to look back when I am thirty and wish I had taken a different path. I wake up hoping I will get into a small car accident or that my house will catch fire simply so that I do not have to attend my internship. It scares me to think that maybe this is not for me. I do not want to start from scratch, but during this first week of internship, I have learned that elementary school just isn't for me.
What goods and/or services does your company provide to the community and how do they consider their role in the community, responsibilities to society? Though my experience with Explorer Elementary hasn't been the greatest time of my life, so far, it gives a lot to the community. It is a charter school that is filled with loving teachers and a large number of dedicated high school students and parents who are willing to donate their time to helping out the teachers who need someone to take the time to help out an individual student who they feel need extra attention. Teachers like Ms. Barnes, my mentor, and the special education teacher, get up every morning and get ready to head to their jobs where they are treated with respect and kindness due to the love, patience, and time that they dedicate to the children that they teach every day. The respect the teachers at this school have for each other is obvious, for they are all very caring and give these kids something that they are very lucky to receive in such a loving way, an education. They all take their jobs seriously and their role in the community is not only important to them, it is important to everyone in this country, for these kids are the future, and their education is very important. They have a huge responsibility with these children and society is counting on them to help these children learn how to make decisions and make them want to learn more to make a better future for the earth we all live in. Thus far, it has been a nurturing experience and though I am not exactly ecstatic about everything I do at this workplace, working with the children is the highlight of my everyday.