Mini-DAR: PC 3.2 Positive Social Interaction.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eng-CyS6HD6VQG63bkJdk9GA726z-rUUrR5trqLWUGA/edit?usp=sharing

Girl Rising: Tanya Lee Stone Speaks

This year we read Girl Rising, by Tanya Lee Stone, as our education common text. It is based on a documentary, also titled Girl Rising, about the struggle of girls worldwide to gain an education. There are interviews from women of many different cultures and places, all of whom are fighting to secure a better future for themselves amid societies that want to keep them out of school and at home. In addition to the stories, Girl Rising includes important statistics about education rates worldwide and outlines the potential benefits that human society could reap if education were made accessible to all. Finally, it concludes with a chapter about what readers of the book can do to make change, both locally and internationally.

I was extremely curious about the process of taking a documentary and turning it into a book, so I was excited to see that Tanya Lee Stone was coming here, to Saint Michael's College, to speak about exactly that. I wanted to know why she felt the need to make the documentary into book form and what it was like.

The first thing that Stone discussed in her speech was why she chose to create the book in the first place. She said that she went to see Girl Rising in theatres with her teenage children and despite the fact that they all greatly enjoyed the documentary, none of them could recall exactly where the girls were from, what their barriers were, or how the barriers were challenged and overcome. Stone wanted to take the information that was displayed in the hour and a half long documentary, slow it down, and unpack the issues via a new medium. She chose to make a book both because she is a writer, so she is very familiar with them, and because books allow the reader to read at their own pace, skim where they choose, and go back and re-read in their own time.

Stone "cold-emailed" the producers of Girl Rising, who were more than happy to help her with her vision. They sent her huge files of raw photos and video footage. The video footage in particular was extremely helpful in the writing process because Stone was able to see the body language of the girls being interviewed and more accurately characterize them in her writing. She also emailed parts of her book to the producers as she wrote it so they could give her feedback and let her know if she got any details wrong. It is really incredible that Stone was able to create such a detailed and accurate book on these girls experiences without ever traveling to any of the countries in question. She made sure to thank the Girl Rising documentary crew for their enthusiastic help because without them it would not have been possible.

The book itself is huge and beautiful. Its content is moving and powerful. There was a question asked about why the photos of the girls in Girl Rising are generally so positive and "smiley," when all of the girls interviewed had suffered so much trauma. Stone replied that she made the photo selections because she was so impressed by the resilience and positivity and hope that each girl embodied. The photos represent their attitudes, which are focused on moving forward and working to improve their own futures. She also said that although men are not a large part of her book by any means, there were quite a few instances where it would not have been possible for certain girls to fight against oppressive social situations without the love and support of their fathers or brothers who stood up for them and their right to choose their own destiny. Stone concluded her speech, saying that it was hard to find any girls in developing nations who were unhappy about being in school.

As a future educator, hearing Stone speak reminded me about how incredibly important it is to consider how the experience of education can vary worldwide and from place to place. Depending on where I end up teaching, I may have classrooms full of students who are refugees from places in the world where education is not a right like it is here in the United States. And even here, I need to remember that students ability to do projects and homework often depends on what their home life is like. Some students work jobs after school and have to take care of their siblings while their parents work late to pay the bills, while other students have much more free time and academic and financial support from their parents. The moral that I take away from this is that it is critical that I establish positive rapport in my classrooms, where students feel comfortable telling me about their own background. That way I can provide better and more individualized academic support for them in class. Stone mentioned in her speech how important it was for her to remember not to "swoop in as a white savior without listening" while she was writing her book and that is true for the classroom environment as well. Stone writes that education is the most powerful tool to change the world and I could not agree with her more.

Photo source: https://www.champlain.edu/about-champlain/news-and-events/girl-rising

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First Lesson - Civil Rights Vocabulary

Last week was my first time teaching a lesson to my Literacy class and also my first time videotaping myself teaching and I learned a lot from the experience. Here is my lesson plan. First, I learned that it is really hard to plan out how long lessons will take in advance. Maybe as I become a more experienced teacher and I get to know my class better I will get a better idea about timing exercises but when starting out it seems especially important to be flexible. This means making a list of the really important points to hit each lesson but being able to skip an activity or two if other sections of the class are really engaging the class or taking longer than anticipated. It also means having a backup plan with more things to do in case we work through everything in the lesson plan faster than anticipated. My lesson went a little faster than I had planned on, so I found myself scrambling a bit at the end to try to stretch it out and it still came up two or three minutes short of fifteen minutes. If I had one or two more quick activities or discussion questions up my sleeve then it would have been easy to keep the class engaged for a couple more minutes.

It is fairly easy for me to off of the cuff when I am just discussing things I am interested in, but I found that it is harder for me to do that when I am in "teacher mode" presenting a lesson. I think that comfortability will come the more I teach, but for now I should work on making sure I know my material really well before teaching it in a lesson. I was not very worried about the lesson coming into it because I was just presenting to a few fellow students in my class but once I was up "on stage" I still found myself getting nervous and forgetting points I wanted to make.

Watching the video of myself was pretty difficult because I was cringing the whole time but definitely a worthwhile experience. Here is the video of my lesson for reference. I can see that I struggle with staying still while I am talking. I move around, I shift my weight from foot to foot, and I move my hands a lot. I know for myself that I think better when I am moving, so when I am anxious I fall into the trap of fidgeting around. Next time I teach in class I am going to work on paying more attention to what I am doing with my body. I also say "um" a fair amount, though honestly less than I had feared. I think that if I can keep videotaping myself during lessons and if I practice my presentation more next time so it is a little more ingrained in my memory then I can also work on paying more attention to the filler words that I use.

I think that my activities were effective in teaching the vocabulary but it is hard to know for certain, because my students were my classmates who were already fairly comfortable with the subject of Civil Rights. The PC I was working toward is not a part of my original unit plan standards but I thought it worked really well for this lesson in particular.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.11-12.3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

I chose to focus on three vocabulary words (race, movement, and civil rights), and to start with a group brainstorm on each to help students clear up misconceptions and see how the vocabulary might be used in context. I then asked them to write their own sentence using the word to make sure they understood it enough to be able to use it correctly. Finally, I gave out a homework assignment. They were to do research on some of the relevant vocabulary that we had not yet covered in class. Each person was given a specific role to focus on - either Etymology Expert, Root Researcher, or Synonym/antonym Explorer. I used each of these strategies on a different word during the powerpoint, so they had examples of what they had to do.

Moving forward I plan on not having any more lessons completely dedicated to vocabulary, but to keep reviewing throughout the unit through little activities and assignments. I can see how students are doing with the vocabulary by assessing using essays, selected response quizzes, and personal communication. We are going to be reading a variety of different writings by different activists of varying levels, both from the 60s and more recently, so students will have many opportunities to see the words in different contexts and I will have many opportunities to see how their understanding is progressing.

Literacy and Curriculum

In our Curriculum class, we were asked to take an online test to discover which curriculum orientation we were most aligned with, to research relevant theorists, to consider how it will influence us as teachers in our future classrooms, and to make a presentation explaining our thinking. In our Literacy class, we made a presentation on our personal ideas about literacy, how they had changed over the last two and a half weeks of school, and how they might affect the way we present our content.

Through the course of making my presentations and watching others, I realized that literacy and curriculum are tightly connected. Creating a curriculum is the act of taking the big overarching questions of the unit and breaking them down into manageable and measurable goals that students can achieve. In my presentation, I discussed my curriculum orientation, which is the lens through which I view education. Discovering my personal teaching philosophies is important to do early on because it will continue to influence the parts of curriculum I choose to focus on. Literacy is more about the how. How am I going to present information to students in a way that is interesting, engaging, and differentiated? I can take the goals and objectives from the curriculum and go even further into detail by considering how I hope to effectively communicate ideas in a particular lesson. This includes both what specific mediums I will use (i.e. textbooks, YouTube videos, field trips, social media, etc.) and how I plan on connecting the content to the real world in a way that makes sense. I would say that literacy and curriculum are not really separate subjects, but more different sides of the same coin.

Connections to the mission statement. For both presentations, I was able to take information that was already interesting to me and create a presentation that I hoped would be engaging for my fellow classmates. In my curriculum presentation, I explored theorists that were famous for their ideas about humanism and constructivism in order to reflect on how their understandings about education line up with my own. I chose two whose words really resonated with me to discuss in the presentation. This type of work always piques my curiosity because has so much to do with who I am as a person. It reminded me that as a teacher, the more I can get my content to connect with students on a personal level, the more I can get them to engage with the lessons. I also got to practice reflecting on my curriculum orientation, which I am certain will be a perpetual journey as I continue to learn and grow. In my literacy presentation, I was able to consider the ways that I could put some of my ideas into practice through different mediums of conveying information. I reflected on how important it was to remember that I will be teaching to students of all different levels of media and technological literacy - some students may have their own iPhones and laptops while others may not even have a computer at home to use for homework. I thought about how to best relate my content to my students daily lives in a way that they would find stimulating. Additionally, by sharing our presentations in groups, we as a class were all able to benefit from each others perspectives.

I used Slidebean for my curriculum presentation and Nearpod for my literacy presentation. I had never used either before and so I decided to try them both out. Both had positive and negative aspects. Slidebean was great because it was simple and easy. It took little work to make the presentation look nice. The downside is that because it is so easy and simple, it is not very customizable. It also costs money eventually. Nearpod is great because it is free, it is fairly simple, and it is very interactive. It is really nice being able to project the slides onto everyones personal devices. Honestly, it took some of the pressure off of presenting because everyone was looking at their computers instead of at me and I could look at the slides on my iPad so I did not need to remember as much. I am not sure if that is a positive or negative thing. Again, it is a fairly simple tool so still not too customizable, but more so than Slidebean. Both presentations went fine, so no complaints there, but I am going to keep experimenting with different tools because I have yet to find my ideal presentation software. Right now Nearpod will be my go to if I need to make an interactive presentation quickly.

As far as my personal ideas about literacy and curriculum go, they have changed since the beginning of class and I am sure that they will continue to throughout my career as an educator. I know that in the last two weeks I went from thinking that literacy was just about reading and writing to thinking that literacy is the ability to use tools to understand others and express oneself as efficiently as possible. In curriculum, I want to find the balance between giving students as much freedom for self-directed learning as possible and also pushing them to try things that are outside their comfort zone and that they may not necessarily like at first. The more time I spend in real classrooms, the more I will be able to see what works and what does not. One thing that I would really like to get in the habit of doing is keeping a journal of sorts (maybe this blog?) where I regularly write down my thoughts. That way I have a physical log where I can see how my thinking has changed over time. Sometimes it can be easy to trick myself into thinking that the way I feel now something is the way I have always felt, which is almost never true.

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression

Hyperbole and a Half is a blog by Allie Brosh. It is incredibly smart and interesting and entertaining and just generally downright hysterical. Allie writes about anything and everything: funny stories from when she was a kid, thoughts she has, things she has experienced. She writes semi-seriously about humorous topics and humorous topics. She uses a deadpan tone, but she is hilariously and brutally honest. Through a combination of text and exaggerated terrible MS Paint drawings, she makes her stories accessible and engaging for just about anybody.

Adventures in Depression is a two part series about her own experience of dealing with depression in her own life and I think she does an admirable job of capturing its essence. In part one, Allie writes how she had no real reason to feel sad or depressed, she just was. She woke up one day and felt helpless. She walks us readers through different stages she experienced in her depression. She tried to force herself to stop feeling sad, to get up and do things. Then she got mad and tried to shame herself into action, which only made her feel sadder and more worthless. She got trapped in loops of self hatred for months, barely even leaving her house. Finally her feelings started to shrivel up until she could not feel anything anymore. By the end of part one, she has finally achieved not being able to care about anything at all.

In part two, Allie compared depression with the feeling of getting older and having less fun playing imagination games with toys. She says depression felt similar, but with every aspect of life. She writes about how at first the detachment she felt was exhilarating, but then she realized the difference between not caring about things and not being able to care about things. Nothing felt like it had any meaning or purpose. Her friends would try to encourage her to go outside or do uplifting things, but it did not matter because she was stuck in a place where everything felt like nothing no matter what she did. She thought it would have been more helpful if her friends could just acknowledge that she was depressed without trying to "fix" her, because nothing they did helped. Allie goes on to talk about wanting to be dead but not wanting to kill herself. Just wanting to stop existing.

Then she started to get some of her feelings back. Once in a while she would feel mad, or start crying. It did not really make much sense, but it was something. Finally she gets to the moment everything changed. She was lying on the floor of her kitchen and she saw a kernel of corn under the refrigerator and she started laughing hysterically. Allie says that it was the funniest thing she has ever seen, but she could never in a million years explain why it was so funny. She ends on a semi hopeful note: "And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it's just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit."

I loved these stories. They were an emotional rollercoaster. They made me laugh, they made me cry, they made uncomfortable, and I learned a lot. I think that this is a great place to start for people who are curious about depression but haven't experienced it themselves. And depression is an individual experience that is different from person to person, of course, but it can be extremely helpful to read about the perspective of somebody who has experienced it. Because it does not really make sense, but it is good to know that sometimes the best thing (or the only thing) we can do for someone is to let them know that we are there for them and we care about them.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

Otherness and the Imitation Game

On Thursday, April 5th, our class watched a presentation on gender and sexuality by a woman named Mara from Outright Vermont. Outright Vermont is a nonprofit organization that helps to advocate and provide resources for young Vermonters who are typically "other." They may be gay or lesbian or transgender or else be questioning their sexuality or gender identity. These young people often are socially excluded by their peers because of their nonconformity, which can be extremely detrimental for their mental wellbeing during this rocky phase of adolescence. I was moved by the presentation and inspired to find out what I can do to potentially make high school easier and more inclusive for queer teens as a future educator. We took one class period to further explore our understanding of gender and sexuality in basically any way was most interesting to us.

I watched the Imitation Game, an Academy Award-nominated film featuring A-list actors such as Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly. It is based on the true story of Alan Turing, a brilliant British code breaker, who was responsible for breaking the incredibly complicated Nazi enigma code. This invaluable strategic information eventually led to the Allied forces winning the Second World War. The movie is extremely dramatic and focuses more on the interpersonal relationships of Turing and his fellow code breakers than on World War II and its historical context. Turing (played by Cumberbatch) is extremely socially awkward and he is also gay. We as the audience are able to witness his struggle to navigate the complicated social and professional worlds he is thrust into as the greatest code breaker in the country, worlds in which being homosexual is still illegal.

I absolutely loved the movie. As someone who is neither autistic nor homosexual, the movie provides a window into how stark and difficult things can be for people who are viewed by society as "abnormal." For teens who struggle greatly with social interactions I can imagine that it must be a powerful experience to see people like them on the big screen. Just like the way that Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy was a mirror for a young boy with autism who experiences similar struggles in his own life, Alan Turing's character does the same for both socially awkward and queer teens (Autism Speaks). For adolescents who are struggling with their own sexuality in a society where sexual otherness may not be illegal anymore but is still far from the accepted norm, seeing that people like them is important. Movies with nontraditional leads can help marginalized groups of young people realize that people like them have changed the world and, despite what their history textbooks may tell them, they will continue to do so in the future. Hopefully large scale Hollywood movies will continue to produce movies with inspirational lead characters who subvert our social and cultural understandings of what is normal and what is "other."



“'Guardians of the Galaxy' Hero Is Role Model for Boy with Autism.” Autism Speaks, 27 Aug. 2014, www.autismspeaks.org/news/news-item/039guardians-galaxy039-hero-role-model-boy-autism.

Taking a Gap Year in the Middle of College

Over the last three or four weeks I have been thinking more and more about potentially leaving school next year for a break, then coming back to finish my studies. There are a number of reasons I have been thinking about this. Lately I have been feeling stuck in a rut that I can't get out of. I have not been feeling very engaged in my classes, so it has been incredibly hard for me to motivate to do my assignments to the best of my ability. It is frustrating to be in this place right now because I do not know what exactly is causing me to feel this way or how I can get it to stop. So, I started thinking that perhaps the best thing for me to do would be for me to withdraw from school for a year, pursue other interests, and come back to do the final two years of undergrad feeling more engaged and focused.

I started making a list of pros and cons. I took a gap year after high school two years ago, so I have some experience with the benefits and drawbacks of such an experience. For me, I am convinced that my time away from school contributed significantly to the success I have enjoyed here at Saint Mikes thus far. One big advantage of taking a year off next year is that I would have the chance to travel again. During my gap year in 2015/2016, I traveled around Turkey, Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Western United States. Sometimes when I am here in school I get into the mindset that I am wasting time and I am not growing or pushing myself as much as I could be. I would think "If I were not in school right now I could be skiing out west, or teaching Spanish in South America, or backpacking and surfing in Southeast Asia." This is not a good mindset to have, especially when I am surrounded by so many opportunities for personal growth here at Saint Mikes. Another advantage could be that I might be able to take more advantage of my classes and my options here after taking another year off to explore and reflect. I have an incredible opportunity to pursue a higher education and I do not want to waste it by not being completely committed to being here.

Here is a video I made from my gap year in 2016.

I also wrote down a bunch of the disadvantages of taking a gap year. An obvious one is that if I took a year off then I would not be able to graduate with all of my friends who are currently in my year, and then I would still be in school for another year after they had graduates. Also, I am already old for a sophomore (I turn 21 in June) and if I took another year off then I would be taking classes with students two or more years younger than myself when I returned. I also have a lot of things going for me here currently that are hard to leave behind, such as my job, the kids that I mentor, and the adventure sports program. Finally, if I were to take another year off, it is very possible that I might not want to return to school. I have talked to a few different people, both in persona and on online forums, who only planned on taking one year off in the middle of college but ended up never going back. Some were happy with their lives now and said they would make the same decision again in a heartbeat, but others were kicking themselves for not just buckling down and finishing school before going off into the world.

Well, I am still considering what would be best for me, but I am currently thinking that it makes the most sense for me to return to Saint Mikes next year and the year after and finish my degree in the typical four years. I think that the biggest problem I am facing right now is my own mentality and I am not sure taking a year off would change that. I have a lot of ideas of other ways I can involve myself in school and in the community for next semester. I just need to find the passion and motivation to implement them. If I can stay here and focus on improving myself, that is the optimal solution.

YA Novel: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

My group read the Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky over break and to be honest it is one of the best young adult novels I have ever read. In many ways it is a typical coming of age story. The protagonist, Charlie, is entering his first year of high school friendless and alone. He is extremely introverted and quiet. Eventually he makes friends with Sam and Patrick, who are brother and sister and both seniors, at a football game. Throughout the course of the year Charlie gets close with them. They show him music and bring him to parties and help him begin to break out of his shell. By the end of the novel, Charlie has grown up a lot.

What this novel did that made it stand out to me was the way it portrayed the characters. The story is told from Charlie's perspective through letters he writes to "you," a recipient unknown to him. The letters act as a journal of sorts. The other characters are shown as being extremely human. Patrick and Sam are somewhat idolized by Charlie because they took him in when no one else did, but they have their struggles as well. Patrick is gay and is in love with the star quarterback on the football team. They have to be together in secret because the quarterback has a father who is extremely homophobic. Sam used to be taken advantage of by older high schoolers who would get her drunk at parties back when she was a freshman. Charlie's sister gets hit by her boyfriend and then gets pregnant and Charlie goes with her to get an abortion. Now that I am rereading this description, it makes it sound like this novel is just one edgy teenage issue after another. In actuality I think this novel does an excellent job of presenting realistic characters and a believable plot. Everyone in Charlie's life goes through ups and downs, struggles and successes. That is what makes them so human. Even Charlie himself struggles with figuring out what the right thing to do is. Because the novel is written from his perspective, he almost seems impartial much of the time but Charlie is constantly learning, questioning, growing, and making mistakes.

Through Charlie's questioning thought process, we are shown the way he looks at the world. He does not simply accept things as they are, he is always questioning why. I loved reading this novel because it shows the light and the dark in equal measure. There is no easy right or wrong answer in the vast majority of life. For adolescents with developing brains, it is helpful to know that the most important thing is to put yourself out of your comfort zone and try. Mistakes are just a part of the journey.

First ELL Classroom Visit

I had my first classroom visit last Monday.  I worked with a 16 year old ELL student who moved to Winooski about a year ago.  We did not get to talk much about where he was from (Somalia) or what the immigration and resettlement process was like because we were so focused on the schoolwork the whole time.  The class was studying the US Government and the role of the different branches.  This class, each student was supposed to spend an hour writing a letter to a Vermont Congressman of their choosing about their suggestions for changes in government spending.  They were all given a pie chart breaking down government spending into percentages, which they had been discussing in the past few classes.

INSERT NAME HERE blew me away with his interest and his focus on the subject.  Sometimes we would get to talking about an idea for five or ten minutes and I would have to remind him that he should be writing this stuff down in his letter!  He did struggle with understanding certain topics, mostly because he did not have the vocabulary yet to understand.  I could tell that he was held back a lot by trying to speak English, which is still fairly new to him.  He was better at speaking than writing but sometimes I would ask him to explain one of his ideas to me in more detail, or to clarify something else, and he would start speaking quickly and break off.  I could see in his frustrated glances that his brain was moving way quicker than he could keep up with in English.  But he did not let it get to him, he would just try to explain again in a simpler way.

I was really impressed with the attention and attitudes of all the students actually.  When they first came into the room, at least a third of them saw me and immediately walked up and introduced themselves.  I know that when I was in high school I would not have had that initiative, personally.  I was kinda intimidated by student teachers at first.  I was struck by the matter-of-fact way they approached topics and life in general.  Overall, this first visit got me more excited to teach in a classroom than I have been in a while.  If I get the opportunity to teach students as engaged and curious as the students in this history class then I am going to really enjoy myself.  I am also curious to see how my relationship with INSERT NAME HERE progresses and if we will end up talking more about where we are from or mostly stick to talking about the subject matter at hand. 

Albert Bandura and the Social Learning Theory

Of the different theories on adolescent development that we read about in chapter 2 of Revel, the one that most interested me was Albert Banduras theory of Social Learning.  I think that we as humans learn the most from the ways we watch and interact with one another and this is especially enunciated during adolescence.  Bandura believes that we are conditioned to act in ways we see others acting, which is to say that he agrees with certain behaviorist concepts, but he adds that there is a process in between the observing of behavior and the persons own action in which they translate the behavior.  He refers to this process as mediation.  There are four different ways through which he thinks that mediation occurs: Attention (people pay attention to and repeat behaviors that draw their attention over other things), Retention (whether or not a certain behavior is remembered), Reproduction (whether not we can physically repeat certain behaviors), and Motivation (desire to repeat a certain behavior, which is often influenced by reward or punishment).  As educators, all four of these are important to keep in mind but I think it is especially important to remember how many different things teenagers have drawing their attention during this time in life.  It is our job to create an environment that encourages attention and curiosity.

Years later in the 1980s, Bandura changed the name of his theory to the Social Cognitive Theory.  This is to emphasize the role that choice can play in development.  Teenagers are able to choose the people that they associate themselves with and draw their inspiration from.  Not only that, but they (and all of us) are able to change our own destinies because of the way that we react to events. They are not simply limited to the environment they are given, they have the ability to create change.

High school is an opportunity for adolescents to reconsider who they are and who they want to be.  They have the chance to change friend groups if the people they have been growing up with since childhood are doing different things then they would like.  However, peer pressure is a huge part of high school years as well.  I think it is easy for high school students to stay with the friend groups they are comfortable with even though their interests may be changing.  There will also be more pressure than students have been used to previously to experiment with things like drinking, smoking, and relationships.  It is extremely important for us as teachers to keep our students engaged and to push them to think critically and creatively, so they hopefully will be better prepared to handle these social situations.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html

Looking for Alaska Connections

The biggest connection between Looking for Alaska and things we have been discussing in class that stuck out to me was the idea of adolescent brain development.  At age 20 I am barely out of adolescence and my brain is still developing, but in just the few years since high school I have already noticed many changes in the way I process information and relate to others.  I have become less self-centered and more interested in pushing myself understand the perspectives of others.  I place far less emphasis on the perceived opinions of others because I know that they don't define me. I am not intimidated by social situations like I used to be because I don't think of people in terms of their place in the social ladder that was high school.

The really cool thing about John Green's writing in this novel is that it is extremely relatable.  Reading through the perspective of Pudge, the main character, I can immediately put myself in his shoes.  It is like I am back in high school.  He is struggling to make friends, deal with different social pressures like smoking cigs and drinking, and trying to figure out the crush he has on a girl (Alaska).  He is trying to work out who he is and what his place is in the world.

That is not at all to say that I know everything about myself one hundred percent of the time or that I always know what I am doing or anything like that.  But I do believe that it is important as teachers to keep in mind that our students are seeing and experiencing everything from a different perspective.  For me, I think that remembering the stressors and pressures of high school will critical in terms of relating to my students.  This novel helps bring me back and look from a different angle.

TED Talk on Failure

In this TED Talk Astro Teller, the head of X, discusses the way he and his team comes up with innovative new ideas.  Instead of discouraging creativity and pushing for only research that gets results, Teller says that he encourages failure.  He wants people to be pushing boundaries and trying to discover new things no matter how unrealistic they may be.  Whenever someone who works for him decides to kill a project after putting in research, they get bonuses as a reward for it.  He argues that this makes it safe to fail at X, and because his employees are not afraid of the implications of failure they are able to push themselves out of their comfort zone and make new discoveries that they may have been afraid to even attempt before.

For me, this video made me reconsider what it means to fail.  I looked up the definition of failure and the most simple one is "a lack of success."  Some synonyms include defeat, loss, deterioration, and collapse.  Overall, failure is not seen in a very positive light.  Personally I think that this is due to narrow definitions of success.  I often find myself focusing too heavily on my grades, the end result of my work, and less on the process.  Because of this I am afraid to push myself to take risks.  Instead, I frequently take the more assured route that I know will earn me a decent grade.  

But what if I were able to fully express myself, to do my assignments creatively and in different ways?  Maybe my grades would suffer but maybe I would discover that I can achieve at another level that I did not think myself capable of.  Maybe I need to redefine my own definition of success in order to free myself from my fear of failure.  Success is not one goal, one single cumulative achievement.  Success is the journey.  There will be ups and downs but if I know that it is all a part of a positive process then I can continue to push myself.  I just have to keep telling myself that what really matters is that I am always growing.

In terms of children and youth, just like in the story Professor Doyle read to the class on Tuesday, certain things can seem like the most important thing in the world at the time to adolescents.  If I am still afraid of failure at age 20, that fear could potentially be far greater for children who rely even more on the opinions of others.  As a teacher I want to encourage my students to take risks and worry less about the final product.  By rewarding creativity and outside-the-box thinking, perhaps I can push students toward focusing on the process.

Hello!

Hello, my name is Miles Butts-Spirito.  I was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont and I am currently a sophomore at Saint Michaels College.  I am double majoring in Secondary Education and History.  I have no declared minor yet but I am considering Spanish.

I am interested in Education and History because I love working with people and learning about people.  There is so much we can learn from the mistakes and failures of others in the past.  I look forward to teaching adolescents in particular because of their unique worldview.  I firmly believe that education constantly happens both ways, from teacher to student and from student to teacher.  I hope to never stop learning.

Growing up I had a variety of different educational experiences which helped to inspire me to become a teacher myself.  I was homeschooled by my mom until third grade.  Then from third to sixth grade I went to the Schoolhouse, an alternative private Elementary school in South Burlington.  Then after I graduated I went to the Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Sheburne, another private school, for seventh and eighth grades.  After that, I went to the local public school, Burlington High School, for grades nine through twelve.  Once I graduated high school I took a year off to explore.  I traveled in Turkey, Costa Rica, and Mexico for about two and a half months then I drove out to Utah for the winter.  I got a job at a ski resort washing dishes and skied all season, then road tripped around the west and back home.  Now I am back in school at Saint Mikes.

In my free time I love being outside.  I have been a skier since I was young and this season I am skiing at Smugglers Notch, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, and Bolton Valley.  In the summer I like to climb, hike, camp, and explore the lake and local rivers and swimming holes.  I love to draw, write and listen to music.

I believe that I have a lot to offer as a teacher and I look forward to continuing to learn and grow through the Saint Michaels College education program.