Pasadena: Revised Images of Excellence

      Pasadena: Revised Images of Excellence is a descriptive account of Mike Rose’s time spent in Pasadena High School, specifically in the Graphic Arts Academy. Pasadena High School is a diverse school in California where students from all different social and economic backgrounds can be found. The school Principal, Judy Codding, created the Graphic Arts Academy as well as the Visual Arts Academy to combine academic and vocational work for students who might not see a point in strictly academic work. The programs set up internships for the students and gave them opportunities to take college classes as seniors. 

      I think that these vocational academies were a very smart idea. They give students who might otherwise drop out of school a reason to continue: the promise of an actual job. But beyond that, I think that the best thing about these programs is the way that all of the curriculum was intertwined. Chemistry, humanities, biology, and math are all taught in ways that make them relatable to graphic arts. The teachers of these subjects meet together on a regular basis to discuss ways to connect the material in successful ways. 

      Pasadena High School’s method of interdisciplinary teaching seems to be very successful, and I can see why. I know that I find it easier to pick up new information when it relates to something that I already understand or am interested in. One of the teachers that I have the best memories of is my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Napalitano, because she was so good at making seamless transitions between subjects. There were times when I would go home and not even be able to distinguish between reading and science homework because everything was connected so well. I could never understand exactly how she did it, but I knew that it worked, and it made everything a lot easier. 

I think that all high schools should follow the example of PHS. By having teachers that actually communicate with each other, student needs can be more easily identified and learning, as well as teaching, can be made much more effortless. 

Idiot Nation

  Okay, I’m not going to lie, when I sat down to do this blog and saw that the reading was about twenty pages long, all I could think about was the insane amount of work that I have to do for this final week of classes and how there was no way that I would be reading Idiot Nation in its entirety. I figured I would skim the passage, write a quick blog, and move on to the rest of the books that I have to finish, papers I have to write, and art projects I have to complete. But when I started reading I found that I became very interested and really couldn’t stop. I expected it to be interesting since it was written by Michael Moore, (and I am a fan of most of his documentaries), but I didn’t expect to spend so much time reading and re-reading his work. 

  One of the big reasons why I enjoyed Idiot Nation was Moore’s sarcastic sense of humor, but above that I think I continued reading long after I had planned because it was so relatable. For example, I remember the “library” in my elementary school being very much like what he described most school libraries to be: a small room lined with bookshelves that were filled with outdated and water damaged books. I also see how teachers are constantly being blamed for all of America’s underachieving children since my mom is a teacher in the New York City public school system and the representative at her school for the United Federation of Teachers. I would hear horror stories every day of good teachers in jeopardy of losing their jobs because of low standardized test scores, or just because too much money was cut from the school budget to keep them. 

  Moore points out that the same people who are cutting funds for education are often the biggest critics of America’s teachers. Its obvious that more funding needs to be set aside for the public school system in order to prevent overcrowding, allow students access to up to date books, and keep good teachers in the classrooms. However, this funding doesn’t seem to be coming any time soon, and so many schools are looking to big name companies for money in exchange for advertising rights. People need to wake up and start trying to make a difference in the ways that schools are funded before the children of America are completely brainwashed with advertisements.

Savage Inequalities

     Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities describes the horrific conditions of Morris High, a public high school in the Bronx, New York. There are holes in the walls and ceilings, missing curtains, leaky windows, and even a colony of wild mushrooms growing in the corner of one room. While disgusted, Kozol does not seem surprised by the condition that the school is in. Morris High is a racially segregated school and a last resort for many children who can not get into, or fail out of, other high schools. Kozol mentions the specialized high schools in the New York City school system, and how they receive the best teachers and more funding, leaving the kids at high schools like Morris with very little. 

  While reading this I felt sympathetic with the children of Morris, but I was not very surprised by their story. I was enrolled in New York City public schools until the eighth grade, and I know from visiting different public high schools that the conditions are not always good. Up until the ninth grade, the public schools in my area were considered to be really good, better than the majority of the Catholic schools around. But for high school my parents and I knew that I would have to attend a private/Catholic school, because for whatever reason, the NYC high schools were much less successful. 

  If someone was planning on going to a public high school, they usually aimed to get into one of the specialized schools such as Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant by taking a qualifying exam. I remember how my friends would stress over that test because they knew that it could decide the rest of their lives. If they didn’t get admitted to at least one of the specialized schools, they could be put into a risky situation. 

  Jonathan Kozol’s ideas about having several schools in each city that are almost as good as the specialized schools to give kids more options seem very logical to me. They would eliminate the pressure that is put on junior high school students to do extremely well on the specialized high school exam. And no matter what, no student should be expected to be able to do well in a school as dilapidated as Morris High. 

What High School Can Be

   From reading Theodore R. Sizer’s What High School Can Be, I can say that I relate with Will, the high school basketball star that Sizer followed around through his day of classes, and I’m sure that many other high schoolers can as well. While I didn’t usually sail through the entire day without saying anything or opening a book, and my five foot one self was clearly not the star of the basketball team, I can still relate with the way that Will must have felt. 

   Sizer points out the waste of time of both the teachers and students, as well as the waste of resources, when students are not committed to or excited about what they’re learning. Many high school students feel this way as well, but it was never more apparent to me than it became in my senior year. By the time applications were finished and everyone had visited perspective colleges, everyone felt like they were done with high school. Many people, including myself, felt like when they went on Christmas break the school year ended and there was no point in returning in January. We all felt like we were stuck in a bunch of classes that didn’t matter in a high school that could not hold a candle to the colleges that we had visited. 

   There was one class, however, that I did take very seriously, especially in my senior year. To me, the only class worth staying up through the night for (or two nights in a row occasionally) was my art class. I probably spent more time on art homework in my senior year than I did on all other subjects combined. It was one of the only things that I actually enjoyed or even cared about, which was probably why I spent so much time on it. 

   When Theodore Sizer says that the way to get students more interested and involved in their work is to make it more challenging, I would have to disagree. Making something harder would only make a student frustrated if they are not actually interested in the subject. Students will get involved in a subject if its interesting to them, or if the teacher makes it interesting. Making a subject that a student doesn’t care about more difficult might only make them care even less. I think that many high school students, especially seniors, would probably agree with this, and I think that Sizer should probably get a little more in touch with his inner high schooler. 

In the Beginning: The 1893 Report of the Committee of Ten & Creating the Comprehensive High School

     So during the countless hours I spent sitting at a desk in a class that I had no interest in, trying to imagine who’s idea it was for high school students to have to learn this stuff, I wasn’t far off to imagine a group of men sitting around a table and talking about what students should be learning in high school. When I would be in physics or calculus trying to decode the seemingly foreign language that my teachers seemed to be speaking, I would always be thinking, “Who’s idea was it to make mandatory?” Well, now I know. Thanks a lot Committee of Ten. 

     There were some subjects that I could understand the value of learning, even if I didn’t like them, like a foreign language or a writing class. After all, English is not the only language in the world and learning another language could be useful if you ever have to communicate with someone from another country, and being able to express yourself clearly is important as well. But physics? The most basic stuff can be useful, but its also common sense. The more complicated things could be useful as well, but only if you need to build an elevator or know at what exact time a ball thrown into the air will fall back to the ground, and most people will never need to know these things. Which is why it was frustrating for me to have to learn them in my junior year when I had already decided on going to art school. 

     One good point that was made was by James B. Conant in Creating the Comprehensive High School. Conant stressed the importance of homerooms in any high school  to build a sense of community between students that normally would not see each other during the school day because of the different classes they take. In my high school, a homeroom, or FA (Faculty Advisory) as we referred to them, did not only consist of students from different skill levels, but also of students from all four years. This created many mentoring opportunities and made it easier for freshmen to adapt to high school life. And as Conant had said, it really did create a strong sense of community within the school. 

Beyond the Cult of Fatherhood

   “Beyond the Cult of Fatherhood” by David Osborne was about some of the author’s experiences of being a father and the primary caregiver for his son, Nicholas. Osborne is a writer and his wife, Rose, is a nurse who works around 100 hours a week giving her little time to take care of Nick. David Osbourne began to be able to identify much more with women, particularly mothers, after spending so much time taking care of Nick, and even questioned his own security with his masculinity. 

   This reading reminded me a lot of the family of one of my best friends. The first time I met her mom, she was picking us up from cheerleading practice. She spent most of the ride home on the phone with various people from her job (or jobs, as I later learned there was more than one) planning events, making appointments, and pitching ideas. I later asked my friend what her mom did for a living, because I was curious after the long ride home. She told me that her mom had multiple jobs. She was an event planner at a sports complex, a secretary at a local community college, and manager of a senior center. Not to mention that she sold real estate on the side. 

   I was amazed by her mom’s clear ambition and time management skills, and I only became more impressed when I later learned that she had a one and a half year old brother. I couldn’t imagine how her mom could juggle so many jobs and still care for a young child. But then, I met her father. He had a part time job as a photographer and he was the one who packed lunches, did laundry, cooked, cleaned, and took care of my friend’s brother. I felt so dumb to have never thought that a father could be the person in a family who takes care of the children as well as all of the household duties. Experiencing how her family worked really opened my eyes to how different families could be, and made me look at gender roles in a new way. 

Conquering Themselves So Beautifully & Woman's Rights/When Woman Gets Her Rights Men Will Be Right

   I really did not like any of these readings. “Conquering Themselves So Beautifully,” by Louisa May Alcott, was basically about four girls who complained about things like washing dishes, but then put their lives into perspective when they read a letter from their dad who was serving in the army. “Woman’s Rights,” a speech by Sojourner Truth, was just hard to read. Its not that her ideas were hard to understand, but the language was just horrible. I understand that she was born into slavery and wasn’t able to learn how to read or write, but that was almost painful to read. Thankfully, her language skills improved drastically in the sixteen years between “Woman’s Rights” and “When Woman Gets Her Rights Man Will Be Right.”

   One thing that I did get from these readings was a feeling of relief that I was born into this generation. The four March sisters had lives that were limited by what was considered acceptable for women to do in the 1800s. For example, Jo March struggled with her desire to fight with her father in war. Also at this point in history, women were not allowed to attend college, so I am very grateful that I am able to pursue a career and not have to spend my life in the kitchen. And even if I couldn’t go to college, I was still lucky enough to have some type of education, which is more than an ex-slave like Sojourner Truth can say. 

   Reading Sojourner Truth’s speech made me feel guilty as well. She, like many other women of her time, fought so hard for the right to vote and I completely take it for granted. I have been eighteen and eligible to vote for over seven moths, and until now I had never even thought about registering. Reading this really does make me want to register to vote and fulfill my duties as a citizen as well as a woman. 

I'm Thin Therefore I Am

      “I’m Thin Therefore I Am,” by Nicci Gerrard, made me feel very hungry. Her descriptions of food painted pictures in my mind that made me want to put down my book and get to commons right away. However, her talent for describing food was one of the only things that I really liked. I found that I couldn’t relate much with her ideas of women and food. Outside of my immediate family, women do actually seem to do the majority of the cooking, but in my family thats not really the case. 

  My mom has never really been the star cook. Its not that she cant cook, she just doesn’t do it that often. Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving are one thing, but for the rest of the year, she keeps it simple. Very simple. My dad actually ends up doing a lot of cooking, which is contrary to what Nicci Gerrard might think is normal. And Sunday nights my two grandmothers, my mom’s mom and my dad’s mom, come over to make Sunday dinner. So my mom isn’t always in the kitchen. 

  Nicci Gerrard made it seem like a woman is supposed to be in the kitchen, and I don’t really agree with that. In one of my best friend’s houses, its the father who is always cooking dinner, and he is very good at it. Her mom, on the other hand, has a special talent for making food taste undercooked and burnt all at once. Its not to say that I see anything wrong with women in the kitchen, they do after all make great cooks, I just don’t think that they should be expected to be there.

"Bros Before Hos": The Guy Code

    In “Bros Before Hos”: The Guy Code, Michael Kimmel discusses the ways that today’s society expects guys (males between the ages of 16 and 26) to behave. He spends a lot of time on “Guy Code,” a list of values that all men are supposed to have that have been summarized by Robert Brannon, a social psychologist of the 1970s. The first rule is “No Sissy Stuff,” meaning that guys shouldn’t show their feelings, and if they do it is considered a sign of weakness. The second is “Be a Big Wheel,” an idea that masculinity is measured by wealth and power. The third, “Be a Sturdy Oak,” says that guys should be reliable in times of crisis. And the last, “Give ‘em Hell,” implies that men should always take risks and show aggression. 

  Kimmel also mentions the “Gender Police” in Bros Before Hos”: The Guy Code. The Gender Police are a guy’s peers. They are people who are always watching and judging to see if a guy does anything to damage his manhood. However, its not just men who are judging other men on their masculinity, many women judge men based on the values of Guy Code as well. While some women actually do look for a sensitive guy who is not afraid to share his feelings and is not aggressive, many women search for “Manly Men.” “Manly Men” are the type of guys that little girls are made to desire from the time they watch their first Disney movie. They’re strong, fighting off dragons, dependable, always arriving just in time, and always have a good (and usually very muscular) shoulder for their princess to cry on. Women looking for “Manly Men” want someone who will take charge and provide for them. 

  While Guy Code may have been meant as a guideline to make men stronger, it really can turn out to be to be self destructive in the end. Bottling up feelings can lead to depression or serious anger issues, and always trying to be a “Sturdy Oak” can get very tiresome and feel very pressuring. However hard it may be, it really is no wonder why men feel so pressured to live up to Guy Code when their being bombarded with expectations by women as well as other men. 

Becoming Members of Society

  Aaron H. Dever made a lot of really interesting points in his essay Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender, but I felt that many of them may have been lost in the complex, wordy, language that he used. I found that I had to reread a lot of his writing before I could understand what exactly he was talking about. In his essay, Dever expanded on the ways that children develop their gender identity, as well as the ways that masculinity and femininity are viewed by society. 

  I had never thought about many of the things that Dever mentioned in his essay, but after reading it I realized that many of the ways that he described how society sees masculinity and femininity are very accurate. One example is posture. Males tend to sit with their legs spread, taking up a lot of room and seeming territorial in a way. Females on the other had usually sit straight up with their legs together, taking up little space and coming off as very nonthreatening. Another example of how society sees masculinity and femininity is through clothing. Men wear loose-fitting clothes that emphasize muscles, while women wear more constricting and revealing clothing. 

  Reading this reminded me a lot of my dad, how he breaks a lot of Dever’s rules, and how myself, my brother, and my mom tease him for his “feminine tendencies.” My dad is one hundred percent Italian, and while he doesn’t speak the language or even identify himself all that much with the culture, he still manages to have a few mannerisms associated with Italian or European men. for example he usually crosses his legs when he sits, something usually only women do. He also tends to wear more formfitting clothes, and has even been known to steal jeans from my mom’s closet. Even though we all poke fun at him for it, we don’t actually mind, and unless someone was told in advance about these things they probably wouldn’t even notice. 

  While Aaron Dever’s observations may prove to be accurate for most of society, not everyone fits into his generalized groups. Other cultures, like the Europeans that my dad seems to be so similar to, don’t see certain things to be feminine that Dever would consider to be. Also, in many cultures women wear very loose-fitting clothes specifically so that they are not viewed sexually, which also contrasts with Dever’s theories. So while he seems to be right for the most part, maybe there was a bit more he should have considered. 

A Boy's Life

  A Boy's Life, by Hanna Rosin, is a true story about a young boy, Brandon Simms, his mother Tina, and their time discovering that Brandon is transgender. Brandon had always enjoyed girls' toys, pretending to have long hair, and dressing up in his mother's clothes. He would even draw a person with long hair, red lips, and high heels when asked to draw himself in school. His mother tried to push some boyish toys on him, like army gear, and even took him to several therapists. At first everyone thought it was just a phase, but it never seemed to go away.
   This story reminded me of my own family in a way. When my brother was little, he was very impressionable. Any toy he saw on televeison, he had to have. There was one toy in particular that he wanted more than any other; a Barbie doll. He begged my mom for weeks to get him the toy, and finally she gave in. She felt that there was nothing wrong with him to want to try out a girls toy. She was confident that he wouldn't liek it very much, but if he did that would be okay too. When my brother got the Barbie some other people in my family were not pleased. They were old-fashioned, and felt that little boys should not play with girls' toys. They really seemed to be scared that giving him a Barbie would "turn him gay." My mom faced a lot of criticism from some members of the family, but she knew that if my brother was going to choose the way of life that everyone seemed to be so afraid of, there was really no stopping him anyway.
   When my brother finally got the doll, he didn't play with it for more than a half hour before realizing that it wasn't as much fun as the commercial made it seem. When he tossed it aside, you could almost feel the sigh of relief from some of my family. My grandma even ran out to the toy store and bought him a plastic gun; something more "fit for a boy." I was really surprised at how some of the members of my family had acted in this situation. They had always tried to teach me tollerance and acceptance, but seemed scared to death that my brother might be gay when he asked for a Barbie. I know that my family is loving, and probably would have been okay with it in the long run if my brother were in fact gay, but it made me think of how they viewed gays who were outside the family. I felt embarassed by their reaction and i still do, but I have promised myself to never be as judgemental as they had been.

Serving in Florida

      “Serving in Florida” is Barbara Ehrenreich’s account of her experiences while working various minimum-wage jobs in Key West, Florida. She was a waitress at both the Hearthside and Jerry’s, and also attempted housekeeping at a nearby hotel. Of the three jobs, Barbra lasted longest waitressing at Jerry’s. She worked long, grueling hours and earned meager wages, but still barely had enough money to pay her bills. Fortunately for Barbara, this life was not her only one. She was actually a journalist who lived a comfortable lifestyle, and only partook in this lifestyle as research. 

       I can relate to Barbra’s feelings while working at Jerry’s because I have also worked at a totally dead-end job that paid close to nothing. Only unlike Barbara, I actually needed the money that the job was providing me. Two years ago, I spent the entire winter working for the Brooklyn Aces hockey team. The Aces were a bit less than professional, and the management team definitely reflected that. I felt like I had been the only person hired to do the jobs of several people. I did everything from carrying heavy boxes of merchandise, to selling tickets, to picking up trash after the game was over. My responsibilities seemed to include everything short of driving the Zamboni across the ice.

  Like Barbara Ehrenreich, I eventually came to my breaking point. In “Serving in Florida” Barbara quit her job at Jerry’s after a hectic night. There was only one chef on duty, and she had four demanding tables full of people who sat down at the same time and demanded her undivided attention. The stress of the day had become too much to handle for her, and she decided that she had had enough. Similarly, I had returned home one Friday night after work stressed and too exhausted to go out for my friend’s birthday. Like Barbara, I decided I had had enough. I quit like she did: silently. There was no dramatic confrontation that most people expect from quitting a job. She had just walked out in the middle of a shift, and I just never returned to the slave-driving Brooklyn Aces.  

Looking for Work

  “Looking for Work” is a narrative by Gary Soto in which he looks back on some of his experiences as a nine-year-old. Gary Soto was a Mexican American who wanted his family to be more like the families he saw on television every morning. In his quest to become more like TV families, he felt that one of the first steps would be to be more wealthy, and so he began looking for work. He earned money doing odd jobs around his neighborhood and at the end of the day he had earned thirty cents; all of which he spent going to a community pool with his friend, Little John, and his sister, Debra.  

Like Gary, I also decided that I needed a job this past summer. I had been keeping an eye out for “Help Wanted” signs for a while, but once summer hit, I knew that I had to start being a little more proactive about my search. I filled out application after application, and heard nothing. I had applied to seven different places by July; everywhere from summer camps, to coffee shops, to Baby Gap. Even babysitting jobs had hit a complete standstill. I envied my friends who were good enough swimmers to become city lifeguards and make over ten thousand dollars for the summer while I had to make my graduation money last as long as possible. 

Gary Soto began looking for work in the 1960’s, while my search began some fifty years later. The wages that Gary was making weeding flower beds might not seem like much today, but it was probably well worth it for him at the time. And I could relate to that, since any amount of money that I made babysitting this summer seemed like a fortune to me. Although fifty years have past, not much has changed. Kids like Gary are still selling lemonade on the corner, washing cars, or peddling ice cream on the beach; just at a slightly higher price. 

Personal Conflict Narrative

In this personal conflict narrative Matt, a college student with a love for music, reflects on his past experiences trying to make it in the music business. He tells the reader the story of when he finally gave up on his dream of making music for a living. A year after Matt and his band, Good Morning Richard, had come out of the basement and started playing in actual venues, he had a fight with one of the club promoters about the number of tickets that needed to be sold for his band to play. He realized then that all of the clubs that they had been playing at really had only one thing in mind, and it wasn’t their success. He decided it would be almost impossible to make it in the music business, and stopped booking shows. His biggest conflict was accepting the fact that he had to give up on his dreams.  

I thought that the first draft of Matts personal conflict narrative definitely had potential, but it was a little confusing. I found that I had to read it a second time before I could really understand the story. I didn’t really understand the concept of the tickets or how many tickets the band was expected to sell. I could also tell that Matt was upset about the whole situation, but I felt that he could have done a better job of showing that to the reader. Even though his paper could have used some improvements, I could tell that he actually cared about what he was writing about and that made it more enjoyable. 

The second draft was a big improvement from the first. It was much more detailed, very clear, and easier to understand Matt’s conflict. He also expanded on other people in his story, such as the club promoter, which gave the reader a fuller understanding of the kind of person who Matt was having problems with. It was easier to understand Matt’s feelings in the second draft as well. He expressed how he feels now about what had happened, as well as how he felt at that time. You could tell by reading his second draft that he had taken time to reflect on what had happened and that he had grown from his experience.

By reading Matt’s paper, I started to get ideas on how I could improve my own personal conflict narrative. I realized how important it actually is to write clearly and in detail so that the reader knows what is going on.  

Hair

“Hair” is an excerpt form The Autobiography of Malcolm X in which he describes his first experience of getting his hair ‘conked.’ The process of conking hair involves gathering various items from a pharmacy and grocery store to make a hair-relaxing concoction. Before conking Malcolm’s hair, his friend Shorty explained to him that it would burn his scalp and if he wasn’t sure to get it all out once the burning became unbearable, he would end up with sores on his head. After the the pain of a burning scalp had subsided and the relaxer was washed out, Malcolm looked in the mirror and was happy to see that he had hair “as straight as any white man’s.”  When he looked back on this experience however, he realized how ridiculous he was to have put himself through such pain just to make his hair look “white.”

Malcolm X’s hair conk shows how far people are willing to go to fit society’s idea of what is beautiful. More current examples of this are fad diets and plastic surgery. Most people consider dieting and plastic surgery to “improve” appearance to be something that only women do, but many men are doing it too. Fad diets, such as the Atkins diet, cabbage soup diet, or South Beach diet result in the temporary loss of weight from unhealthy eating. And once a person stops these diets, they usually gain the weight back, resulting in a constant yo-yo effect. People have become so obsessed with being thin that they will push their bodies to unhealthy limits, even swallowing tapeworms, to reach their “ideal” weight. Not even major surgery is too much for some in order to look younger or more fit. Breast augmentation, liposuction and face lifts are not uncommon for many people, if they can afford it. 

Painful or unhealthy practices to look “good” are nothing new to mainstream society. From hair conking in the 1950’s or tummy-tucking today, people will go well out of their way, and tolerance for pain, to acquire their desired look; or the look that society tells them they should desire. 

Hating Goldie

I can definitely relate to Phyllis Rose in her memoir “Hating Goldie” because I had been resentful towards my parents for replacing a pet that had died without my knowledge. When I was five years old I had received a black hamster as a Christmas present from my grandma. My parents were not going to let me keep it at first, but with a little begging I was able to change their minds and they actually grew to like Frank. I kept Frank’s cage clean and played with him almost every day, and soon I considered him to be one of my best friends. 

One day after school, about a year after I had first got him, I went to put some food in Frank’s dish. But when I put my hand inside the cage, he bit me! I was very alarmed, not even so much that my finger was bleeding, but I was convinced that he must be very sick to do something so out of character. I told my parents about it and suggested that we take him to the vet, but they didn’t seem very concerned. As time went on, Frank’s behavior seemed to get even more aggressive and I asked my mom if we should put him down. That was when she told me that “Frank” wasn’t actually Frank. He was a new hamster that she had gotten after the real Frank had died when he ran under the oven while I was at school. I was crushed. I felt like my entire life, all six and a half years of it, had been a lie. 

I was resentful towards my parents for a while after finding about about Frank’s death, but not in the same way that Phyllis Rose was resentful to her parents. I was mad that they had lied to me about the death of my pet, while Rose was angry that her parents had been so good to her that she did not have enough suffering in her life to make her a good writer. I’m still trying to figure out who’s story is more pathetic.