Final Quarter Blog Post

"What does it take for someone to move from a position of hate and racism to a position of tolerance and respect like the transformation that occurred in Derek?" 

         Derek, one of the main characters of the movie American History X ( summary of the movie's plot) , has a drastic change of opinion throughout the duration of the movie. At the beginning, he is an all out supportive of the neo-nazi movement and was severely racist against african americans and hispanic immigrants. He, in fact was so deeply involved in this faith of his, that he committed severe acts of violence against other races, leading to his arrest. However, later in the movie, after a definitely traumatic and also life changing experience in prison, Derek abandoned these old feelings of hate and prejudice.  

                                         

          In my opinion,  the reason  behind Derek's sudden change of emotions towards racism has to do with what lead him to believe in these horrible things in the first place. All of Derek's hate goes back to two important factors. One was the traumatizing death of his father, which was caused by a gang of African Americans, and the introduction of gangs to his neighborhood, and the other, the fact Alexander Cameron had taken advantage of his juvenile ignorance and rash thinking to mold Derek into doing his bindings and preaching his ideals .  

      The environment in which Derek lived in, which had just been took over by gangs composed by Black men, gave him a bad and wrong view of non-white races and his fathers death served as trigger to emotionally destabilize him. In fact, as states David O. Carpenter in his article about enviromental causes of violence, a person is led to do actions of violence and hate due to the bad stimulus in their environment and society.          
      Upon being being emotionally destabilized by his father's death, Cameron took advantage of Derek and led him to into his life of hate. Derek, then, not having a full  understanding of his society and by relying on solemnly generalizations , jumped head first into the world of neo-nazism.  Similar events like these actually happen quite frequently throughout the USA. Many young folks, due to lack of understanding, ignorance or emotional anguish, tend to be influenced into joining theses kinds of societies. Mr. T.J. LEYDEN talks about this very issue. in this NPR News article.

      What then led Derek to abandon his old ideals, was his once again traumatizing yet revealing time in jail. There, he was able to live among the different races in which he despised so much. After a while, due to his newly acquired friendship with a black man, he then, discovered race did not necessarily determine a person’s character, causing him to confront Cameron and free himself from the hate he harbored for so long. What freed in fact freed Derek from his unpleasant feelings was the empathy he felt for the very first time. Only by looking at things from a black person’s point of view was he able to determine what he was doing was wrong. 
    The reason people in general change ideals the way Derek did has to do with them eventually placing themselves in another’s position and realizing how irrational their thinking was. A quote I found to be very relevant to this idea of empathy is from Antoine Saint-Exupéry in “The Little Prince”:
       “I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so  mysterious.”
    This has to do with how Derek was never able to understand those people's feelings. He was not aware they were normal people that in no way deserved  to be treated they way they were.

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Relevant video- Very similar story to Derek's. (Had a traumatic event in his life ( Parents' divorce) and was moved by ignorance.)

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Twitter- @VictorPianowski

About Me

Blog Post #5- Response to the Seattle Boycott Article

Assignment:
Post a response to the article on your Academic Journal (normal guidelines apply) and then leave a properly formatted message with the link in a comment under the article. Due date: Friday, 8 February. 


Response:

         According to both the article and the video on Mr. Tolley's blog, Garfield High and a growing number of other schools are boycotting the standard testing program. They feel these mandatory tests do not reflect the content taught in class and that, although the results don't affect the academic life of students (not directly anyways) , they do affect the teachers and lead to the misjudging of their teaching skills. Another unique characteristic of this event, is the fact teachers, parents and students share the same opinion on the topic and agree on discontinuing the test. This is a quite rare phenomenon and proves that it is an issue not only viewed by a specific group of people, but the entire school community.

          In my opinion, the boycott does make sense and the mandatory test they refer to is truly not the most accurate method  of analyzing student academic capability. If anything, students should have tests proportional to the pace of their own individual class and that involve examples and situations they can relate to. Not only would this significantly increase scores, but it would also positively affect  a student's learning and help them understand the applicability of what they learn in school. However, in my opinion, even though the mandatory standard tests teachers are rebelling against seem like an unorthodox  and outdated method of testing academic ability, tests like the SAT's and the ACT's are a completely different story and should not be disposed the same way. These tests, unlike the MAP test, are a method of determining wether you learned everything you had to in school and wether or not you are prepared to move to the college you desire. These two very important tests, have the objective of testing an individual student and its results affect solemnly that specific student. Unlike the MAP test, the SAT's and the ACT's are not designed to test the qualification of a school or its teachers, but the merit of the one taking the test. This boycott is a very important process in changing the way the educational system works, though it should not go as far as demolishing functional and effective sections of it until a better solution is presented.

Video:

Blog Post #4

Topic/ Assignment:"What does the re-election of President Barack Obama mean for me and the world?"

Answer:

       Barack Obama, besides affecting his own country, also has influences world wide. The fact he is president of the wealthiest country economically has several repercussions on the entire world. To myself however, at this current time, I do not feel like it impacts my life on a large scale. The one thing that does benefit, not myself, but my country, though, is the fact that Romney planned on exploring and using South America, and Obama's election prevented that.
    One major thing that this election does affect, though, is the situation in the middle east. With Obama in power, Israel will be benefited, since he chose to support it, countries will not have to fear having American troops in their territory and he will continue tackling the emission of greenhouse gases, which not only benefits the US, but the entire planet.
    On the other hand, Obama's re-election does not please Pakistan, which is still infuriated due to invasion of American troops in the Osama Bin-Laden mission.

Blog Post 3- Time Management

Blog Post 3- Time Management

Assignment 1: Think about what you’ve learned, and write down the skill(s) you want to work on during the next few weeks.

Based on what we learned during Ms. Terrell´s time management themed class, I have formulated a list of a few things I plan to work on to improve academically and, eventually, throughout the rest of my life. The thing I regret the most about the way I manage my time is, although I never miss any assignments,  the constant procrastination. I tend to leave projects and assignments to the last few days before the due date and end up sterssing out. For this reason I have decided to distribute my time more effectively and, to keep my self on track, record these work hours down on my iPad callender. I have also set the following goals: avoiding to start my homework way too late, take more advantage of the time given in school and doing some more work on friday so that my weekend has a lot more free time.

Assignment 2: Write a paragraph in which you reflect on the time management goals you set on 19/20 Sept. In your paragraph, include whether or not you met your goals, any problems you had, any successes you had, and anything you learned. Also include an updated version of your goals based on your experience.


It has been a few weeks and I have been doing my best to follow my goals. I am especially proud of how I was finally able to decrease my amount procrastination I experience. Lately, due to this, the feeling of having homework stacked up to the roof has completely vanished and I have much more free time then before. Besides my goal involving procratination, I have also begun doing my homework as soon as I get home and decreased the amount of time I stay on the internet during the week. However, in consequence to my french lessons, I was still not able to finish my homework on Friday and my weekend is not as free and stress-free as I expected it to be. Therefore, I have decided to abandon this idea which, based on current events, has no chance in succeding and thought up a new goal:  To do most of the work towards the beggining of the week, causing each day that follows gradually less intense homework-wise.   

Assignment 2

Task:


You briefly met with a college recruiter last week, and you reviewed a number of questions to ask about colleges. This must have gotten you thinking about your future, so tell us about it: Without any strict requirements, write about your expectations, goals, fears, concerns, questions that you have concerning your future in college. Additionally, now that you know that recruiters want to hear about you and your intellectual interests and pursuits, how do you think being an aware Academic Leader will give you an advantage when applying to the college of your choice? Good luck!


Post:


Even before meeting with the college recruiter last week, I have been thinking about my future and setting very important and strict goals to achieve my objectives. I am definitely thinking about going to college in the United States and I plan to become a mechanical engineer. Ever since I got to middle school I have tried, and most of the time succeeded, to keep my grades above 90, which before was the requirement to get into the high honor roll. I also am willing to do anything necessary to help me achieve my goal. The only fear I have about getting into college is not being able to keep up with all the work seniors go through before graduating. I believe that the qualities of an Academic Leader are actually the qualities colleges look for when selecting their students and will definitely be a strong quality to have. Strong leadership is something societies like STUCO and NHS require and I doubt graduation into college is any different.

The following article talks about what academic leadership means and is written by our wonderful teacher, Mr. Tulley:
http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol7/722-toc.aspx

Assignment 1

Work:

     After being exposed to my first few classes of the brand new course, Academic Leadership, I have formulated my own understanding of the course's purpose. I believe the concept is instructing students into new ways of exposing their academic development. My understanding is that through new forms of technology and a 21st century method of learning, the course will lead students into academic success.

     During class, we have viewed and commented on the following video:

After watching the video, Mr. Tolley commented on how it felt to have a sophisticated or intellectual understanding of a certain topic. I also have this kind of appreciation for video editing and speaking languages. I believe these things could help generate a major academic project in the future.

       During class we have also learned about how Romney, currently running for president of the United States, dumbed down certain information from James Diamond's book and said that was exactly what the researcher had written. He took this information and completely twisted it to his advantage while making people think that was actually what Diamond wrote. This is an example of abusing academic knowledge to manipulate other people. What Romney did was simplifying Diamond's ideas to make them much more understandable by the US population and help in his campaign. If someone were to do something similar to me, I would be truly devastated considering the amount of work I put into developing good quality material. Also when using my work to manipulate people would mean I am somehow linked to it considering the information, or some of it, once came form me.

Follows an image of jared Diamond's book:




      Creating Academically sophisticated leaders might be a solution for this problem. These are able to recognize when an information is being used for the sole purpose of manipulating and using their skills to communicate this to everyone else. The benefits of this in a democratic society is that, with an academically sophisticated view, people are better aware of what kind of leaders should represent their country and avoid being manipulated.

Unfortunately, the video showed above has recently been removed due to copyright infringment. Therefore, due to the requirement of showing multimedia relevant to the topic we discussed at the time, I chose to present the link to the article mentioning Romney's and Diamond's situation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/opinion/mitt-romneys-search-for-simple-answers.html?_r=0