WS Sections 28-30

The main section that stuck out to me in Sections 28-30 was the Planning and Prewriting Sections. It talks about your Topic, Audience and Purpose and it help explains what your essay should reflect. It gives you examples of essay structure and length showing that "paragraphs are the basic units of writing, understanding the structure of paragraphs will help you with the structure of essays, regardless of their length". This sections also explains the importance of the introduction and thesis sentence. Using these sections will be extremely helpful while writing my 2nd essay.

Lorde's Teachers

In Lorde's essay, she illustrated how negative her teachers were to her. The only person who gave her positive reinforcement and encouraged her to read was Mrs. Baker, the librarian. Unfortunately for Lorde, her teachers didn't she her as being already well educated and a little advanced but they saw her to be acting out and not listening to them. Lorde's teachers go as far as accusing Lorde for not doing work on her own and insisted that "Our guardian angels weep when we don't tell the truth, Audre, I want a note from your mother tomorrow telling me that you are sorry for lying to the baby Jesus." Another horrible example of how negative Lorde's teachers treated their students, were how the teacher separated them from "Brownies and Fairies", this form of separation is in my opinion no way to show positive re-enforcement and can cause great embarrassment and make a child feel have extremely low self esteem.

Stand and Deliver -- Mona Lisa Smile

Both these movies and characters seemed to have a lot of the same ides in them. Even though Ms. Watson was teaching at a high price Wellsley College and Mr. Escalante was teaching at a low income Garfield High School, they both had students that wanted to push the boundaries and limits of their teaching. Both teachers didn't have the support from their administration and faculty. Ms. Watson wanted to show how to think differently and live outside of the box and Mr. Escalante just wanted to give his miss-behaved students a second chance to achieve greatness. Both teachers were very dedicated to their job and wanted what they thought was best for their students.

What Makes a Good Teacher

In my opinion teachers are a huge role in a person's life. I believe a teacher can either help make or break a child. In the 3rd grade I was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. My teacher at the time would have my class make get well cards and would visit me in the hospital. She encouraged me to get back on my feet and to not let the disease take over my life. She would help remind me when it was time to test my blood sugar and would inform my mom when I would have a rough day due to a high or a low blood sugar. She met with my mom and my doctor to help make sure that she was doing all that she could do as a role model for myself. She helped me grow self-esteem and to know that all children aren’t the same and it was okay to be different. She encouraged me to embrace my differences and to not let myself be embarrassed. I not only remember this teacher as teacher that I would like to be, but also as an inspiration on what kind of woman and a motivator for young children I would like to become.

Drafting Exercise/ WS Section 45-48

I.

Role: Inspiration

Teacher 1: Mrs. Shockley (positive example)

Teacher 2: Coach Murray (negative example)

II.

A.  Mrs. Shockley was compassionate

1.       An example of Mrs. Shockley being compassionate is talking to her students when there are problems and trying to work through the problems with positive reinforcement instead of hard discipline.

2.       She helped students focus on the bigger outcome than just that moment and gave encouragement when she saw that the students needed it

3.       Mrs. Shockley showed compassion by being someone that students could talk to about tough situations

B.      Mrs. Shockley was involved in her student’s lives

1.       An example of Mrs. Shockley being involved in her student’s lives is when she goes to multiple sport events.

2.       She learned sibling names and got to know the family and home life of her students

3.       Mrs. Shockley got involved in her student’s lives by asking questions about their interest and even included student’s interest in her teaching method

C.      Mrs. Shockley was willing to work with any obstacle that interferes with school

1.        An example of Mrs. Shockley  being willing to work with any obstacle that interferes with school is visiting sick students at home or the hospital and trying to help keep them up to date with their school work. (Like how many oranges do you have in your get well basket?)

2.       She got involved in the student’s home life to help make sure everything was okay and the children were in good environments

     3.       When there were new siblings being born and her student wasn’t happy about it, she encouraged the class to get excited and play games about what sex the baby might be.

D.      Coach Murray was negative about teaching his subject (he would rather be coaching )

1.       An example of Coach Murray being negative about teaching World History was that he made it known that he was a coach and not a History teacher, and that the school system didn’t have a History teacher so us students were just “stuck with him”.

2.       When he had athletes in his class he would focus his attention on them and joke about the past or upcoming games that were going on.

3.       Coach Murray showed negativity about teach World History by making jokes about the subject and sort of “bullying” students that liked the subject.

E.       Coach Murray was  quick to give students busy work instead of making sure they were understanding the subject

1.        An example of Coach Murray being quick to give the students busy work was when you walked into his class, he handed paper handouts and sat at his desk.

2.       Coach Murray hardly said anything on the subject he was actually supposed to be teaching, and if you had questions, he referred you to the book instead of helping a student figure out the problem

3.       He was never available to talk to students when there were questions.

F.       Coach Murray was eager to get out of class as students were and didn’t seem to care about the students grades

1.       An example of the Coach being eager to get out of class was when he would show up late to class and be one of the first persons to leave class. If you had questions about something, tough.

2.       Coach Murray was quick to give students easy A’s, even if they didn’t know anything about World History

3.       He would rather is glass seem like he was doing a good job teaching, rather than actually teach. Looks are what mattered most.

III.

There are many types of teachers. I have had many great teachers and many self- absorbed jerks of a teacher. Mrs. Shockley showed me how great a teacher can be. She inspired me to want to be the best and to be compassionate and understanding. She by far would go down in my book as an ideal teacher and woman. I can’t really say that Coach Murray didn’t inspire me, to be honest; teachers like him are what did inspire me to become a teacher. I hated the fact that there were teachers like him out there and I wanted to be one of those ideal teachers that inspired their students, encouraged their students and helped make their students feel appreciated and important.

Real Time Notes for Mona Lisa Smile

Mona Lisa Smile Notes

·         Frist day of school Katherine Watson was intimidated by the students and pretty overwhelmed by their knowledge on Art History

·         School administration wasn’t very supportive of Ms. Watson’s  teaching plans and recommended that she use better discipline with her next class

·         Betty is super bitching and untrustworthy, her mother is just as rude and aggressive

·         Due to Betty’s untrustworthiness, she wrote an article about  the nurse, Amanda for giving contraceptives to students and Amanda ends up getting fired

·         Joan (a student of Ms. Watson) is thinking about Pre-Law and talking about wanting to go to Yale, Ms. Watson hands her an application for Yale during class, hoping to persuade her to apply

·         The class goes on a field trip to see a new art piece and to consider it as art

·         During winter quarter Katherine is told to be less modern art and more conservative

·         Joan ended up applying to Yale and got early accepted

·         Betty ends up getting married, and it seems not to be all that she expected

·         Giselle and Bill, the male professor has had an affair before and seem to still have feelings for each other

·         Paul shows up to surprise Katherine for Christmas and proposes to her, Katherine isn’t happy about it and doesn’t want to get married

·         Betty misses class and Ms. Watson informs her to be more attentive, Betty insist that is she is failed there will be consequences

·         Katherine gets invited to an AR meeting, which is a secret society. Where they get to ask her any questions they want

·         Betty ends up writing a newspaper article about Katherine saying that she is against marriage and publicly attacks her

·         Bill and Katherine end up sleeping together and Katherine makes sure he know that it is nothing more than just sex and insist that he sleeps with no students while they are together

·         Joan ends up eloping and not going to Yale

·         The school asks Ms. Watson to return for the next year, with certain expectations from her

Class Work

My main point I wanted to get across with my first paper was that parenthood isn't "perfect". There are so many new things that I am learning as a mom. By all means, I am NOT complaining that motherhood isn't perfect. I just wanted to let my audience see that it is an unexpected roller coaster with so many ups and downs along the way. It is an exciting time and a great learning experience. I absolutely love being a mom.

Ideas for my second paper are to show the contrast in teachers in the public school system. While growing up, I had amazing, loving, inspirational teachers who wanted nothing more than to encourage and help in any way possible as well as having teachers that quit frankly made it obvious that they didn't want to be teaching.