How did it feel taking the survey?

It felt like I was being honest with myself. Being able to submit it anonymously made me feel more empowered to speak freely and answer honestly. Some of the questions were hard to answer. My first instinct was to answer truthfully but then i would think about how truthfully should I answer these questions. No one can truly understand how you feel and what you are going through so the answers received might be surprising. Some of the questions that really stopped me and made me think about were the more personal ones like the questions about people caring about you,if your family knows you and if your family appriciates you. I think those made me pause because I felt like I couldn't answer those positivly and I felt like i should. All teens complain about their families but most people dont complain about their friends. I think because they feel friendships are relationships you choose to be in but people dont stop to think about why they are making friends with the people they are or why they feel the need to be accepted by certain groups of people. Maybe people who don't get enough attention from people in their families seek more attention from their friends and it hurts them more when thise rerlationships don't work out. Maybe the people who are talked to about their day when they get home are less likely to do drugs or look for attention in negative ways.

I feel like my results are similar to the other people who tried to answer honestly. There are some questions I feel I answered more honestly than others and maybe that's where our answers differ.

Ideas for Class Film

* First scene should be a traffic scene by maybe Gramercy park or some really quiet street by our school (maybe in black and white)

* Andy's character as the teacher could by the classic kind of teacher portrayed in most of the movies, he could be trying to "save the poor brown people"

* We could have role reversals in the class, race could portray common stereotypes of another race

* The students could be calm and normal and the teacher could over-react and try to save them from not doing anything harmful

* Jenise can be our quiet character that sits in the back and gets up and says some profound comment

* We could do scenes with Andy by himself to show the movie is mainly about him but maybe a couple of scenes focusing on how the students and how they feel about his way of teaching

* Maybe Copeland can rush in at one point (when everything is quiet in class) and ask if everything is alright and if Andy needs any help handling his class

* We can have a scene where Andy gets in trouble with Fanning

* We should set up our classroom so all the chairs are facing the white board and Andy could try to teach us really remedial work like we don't understand it and we could answer him with really complex answers and treat him like he doesn't understand

* Andy could do something telling us we are going to die horrible deaths

*

HW 43

My first thoughts on school, when I think all the way back to the beginning, is that school, used to be good. School used to be enjoyable. we were able to choose whatwe wanted to do, when we wanted to do it. the things we did were more engaging. I remember feeling happy when I woke up in the morning for school instead of feeling dread and a sense of panic. when i wake up in the morning during the week day, my first thoughts are about what class I have first and when I can do the homework for that class.

Interviews and Synthisis

Question One: How do you feel about school?

Interviewee One:
I don't like school.

Interviewee Two:
I hate school. I can't wait to be done with it. When I leave I'll miss the people in it and learning new things but school sucks.

Interviewee Three:
I love school. I love learning new things and expandidng my mind.

Interviewee Four:
I love it. It keeps my brain going and i get to study what i want. I hated 90% high school. The 10% of high school i did like was meeting [life long friends] and some teachers.

Interviewee Five:
I have mixed feelings about school. There are some good things about school and some bad things. I like learning about things but not the pressure filled environment of high school.

Question Two: How do you feel about being graded in school?

Interviewee One:
I would say the intention of grades is okay but probably not always enforced correctly by every teacher

Interviewee Two:
I hate being graded. It gets you into trouble.

Interviewee Three:
Grades are fine. They let you know how you are progressing.

Interviewee Four:
Grades keep you on your toes. They give you something to strive for and helps you set goals.

Interviewee Five:
You get graded in life and you get graded in school. There's not much of a difference.

Question Three: If you could change one aspect of school what would it be?

Interviewee One:
I would change the time school begins and ends each day.

Interviewee Two:
I would change the time school starts.

Interviewee Three:
Classes are over crowded and students aren't allowed to explore personal passions.

Interviewee Four:
The part of school I had difficulty with was not the academics but the social aspects.

Interviewee Five:
I would change that we call our teachers by there first name. It makes me feel like I know them and [there's less of the automatic respect for authority]

Question Four: How do you feel when you get to school vs. when you leave school?

Interviewee One:
I hate coming to school and I LOVE leaving school.

Interviewee Two:
[I feel sluggish. Like I have to drag myself into doing something i would rather not do. By the end of the day I feel relieved.]

Interviewee Five:
when i get to school I'm tired i don't want to be there and I'm not looking forward to the class i know i did not due the homework for. when i leave school I'm happy that i made it through another day without teachers killing me me killing teachers or [a confrontation with another student]

Question Five: How has your education prepared you for life?
Interviewee Three:
It has taught me to think critically which has allowed me to make better decisions.

Interviewee Four:
It taught me how to interact with people and basic life lessons.


Analysis:
What i concluded from my interviews was that my questions were crappy. I probably would have gotten better answers if my questions were asked in a more specific way. I also concluded that of the people i asked about high school, most of them had mixed feelings about school. For some the the social aspects of school were their favorite parts while for others the academic part of school was their favorite. The older people i asked who were reflecting back on their school experience had more of a positive view on school. The teens i asked (two were seniors while one was a sophomore) had different feelings on school. They felt pressured and stressed while the adults felt like it was a good an necessary experience.

School Unit: First Assignment

Part A:
Interesting aspects:
Grading
Relationships
Digitalization
Fashion
Popularity
Friendships
Interactions between the different social classes
Roles people play
Elevators (lack of senior privileges once you have become a senior)


Ideas:
1.) The roles some people play in school differ from the roles they play at home and other places

2.) Once you become a senior all the things you expect to change or to feel seem anticlimactic. You assume things are going to be great but they aren't.

3.) School is just a way to
a: train kids to fallow rules
b: teach kids get used to the hierarchy of society
c: keep kids set on auto-pilot

Part B
School keeps kids set on autopilot. In an automatic state so they won't have to think about real things. They are in a closed environment for a majority of their days and doing repetitive things so they are just reacting rather than processing things and coming to their own conclusions. Being in school keeps kids sheltered and unaware.

This prepares us for being unaware adults. School teaches us habits that we will carry into our adult lives subconsciously. If we are trained to think a certain way or to react to certain situations in a specific way then we will relate that to similar situations and try to handle them in the same sort of way. If we are trained to look for one solution to a problem, we will take that mentality into adulthood.

Cool Project Analysis

While making this project the original group grew but the real people in the group wrote and planned and organized how all these people would fit into a decent project and how we could organize all of our ideas into one big project. Unfortunately the entire group was never in the same place at the same time so Amanda, Amber Cindy Jenise and I worked on this video. My role in this project was the director (with Jenise). We originally had three seperate ideas and came up with one big video with three seperate parts and messages. sence our group deflated we did what we could with who we had. We wrote down our ideas and linked them through the main characters in each section of the video.

Our project was a parody of lil mama's music video for her song "Lip gloss". While her role was that of your basic "cool" girl, our main characters were not cool. The Nerds in our video went around converting kids striving to be cool into being uncool. Our video not only made fun of lil mamas idea of artificial cool but it made fun of the whole idea of changing ones self to be viewed as cool. In a way by dressing like nerds we were showing another trend which was becoming a new version of cool because people were conforming into being that way. Influencing people to once again aim to be this new accepted version of cool.

I think making art is cool. Probably because it is cool to think art is cool. Art is initially a way of showing yourself or your ideas to other people and maybe manipulating them into feeling the same way. Making art is the same as picking out certain clothes, applying a certain style of makeup and doing your hair a specific way. It is presenting an image that you call your own and portraying thoughts you believe are you thought of yourself.