Month: September 2017

I did not do a very good job of drawing this picture. It was a lot more difficult than I was expecting. I am not a good artist to begin with and I found it really hard to focus on drawing lines instead of a hand. I started out thinking about drawing lines on a page, but as I continued I found myself thinking about how those lines look nothing like a hand. I could not focus on just lines. I ended up thinking about the hands, the shoulders, the head, and the eyes and nose. That is most likely why my drawing doesn’t look like the one in the book.

I started reading the chapter out of Rose’s book expecting to breeze through it in one sitting, but it was a little more difficult to do than I thought. Once I started reading I felt like I was getting through it at a good rate and I wasn’t really putting a dent into it. I decided the best thing to do was to take a quick break so I stopped about half way through the chapter to go and hang out with some friends who live across the hall from me. After talking with them for a while I went back and completed reading the chapter. Over all I think it took me about an hour and a half to read the whole chapter.

In this section of the chapter Rose explains the importance of his literacy moment in great detail. He shows us all of the important people involved in his story and what they did to influence his literacy moment. He tells us about one kid in his vocational education class and how something he said really stuck with Rose even up through his adulthood. That kid in his class, Ken Harvey, explains his views on school with one simple sentence; “I just wanna be average.” Ken says this in response to his teacher asking for his opinion on hard work. The reason this hit Rose so hard is because he couldn’t understand why anyone could just want to be average and he realizes that being average is not how he wants to live his own life. He now understands that is what people expect from the kids in Voc. Ed. because they weren’t smart enough to be in regular classes and eventually go into college so no body tried to help them improve. They were held at a lower standard and if they ended up being average then that’s all they were expected to be. Rose wants to show us that if we hold people to a lower standard then that’s all they can work towards and they won’t be able to improve.

Collreadwrit1a

Both King and Alexie used many great literary remarks when describing the stories of their past. But first I will be explaining my reasoning behind the annotations I made on Stephen King’s, On Writing. In this story King brought us into his past to, what seems to be, the time he realized he wanted to be a writer. He is able to write in a way that makes the readers feel like they went to high school with him. For example, after King is caught with his humorous writing he explains how he was, “ushered into Mr. Higgins’s office” (King 54). When he uses the word “ushered” the reader is able to really see what was going on. It paints the picture of someone escorting him into the principles office and it was a scary, stressful moment for King. There was another sentence in the story that stood out to me in showing great detail in his writing. King was given the opportunity to be the sports journalist for his school newspaper and after the job was offered to him he looked at everyone in the office and he explains the look of, “Do it or Die” (King 55), on his guidance counselor’s face. This sentence shows the understanding King had for how bad his piece of writing was. When someone looks at him like that it’s obvious that he should accept the job.

collreadwrit1a

A growth mindset and the power of “yet” is an interesting topic and Professor Carol Dweck’s take on the subject is very convincing. In her talk, Dweck shows us how strong the power of yet can be. She is able to prove how well it works with her many studies on showing kids a growth mindset. According to one of her studies, Dweck says that many kids have different thoughts when they are faced with a challenge. Some students respond with, “I love a challenge” (Dweck 2), and others explain to her how tragic it is and give up on the problem. The children that don’t have a growth mindset get stuck and held back in their learning and that needs to change. If teachers and parents enforce the power of “yet” or “not yet” then kids respond much better when faced with the challenge. This is because the students are able to realize that even though they don’t have the solution yet, they can still work harder to find it. I can’t help but agree with what Dweck says in this talk. She gives a lot of evidence to support that kids learn more when they are told “not yet” instead of they failed. They will then see it as something to work for instead of something they can’t do.

collreadwrit1a