Hey y'all, the last two days of class we have had some very interesting discussions and we were not required to post about them so I would like to take the opportunity to do so and share my thoughts will all of you.
1. Yesterday we were discussing Halloween costumes in the high school learning environment and the discussion came up about having teachers and students on the same level for a day. The idea that caught my interest was the when somebody suggested the idea of teachers being friends with the students. This is bad. Teachers are our respected elders that we should be friendly with in the school environment. They are there to be our mentors and not our friends. When teachers become to good of friends with the students then it jeopardizes the students learning because what ends up happening is the students will try and take advantage of the teacher, whether it be on a due date or a bad grade. We've all seen Boy Meets World in our lifetime, so we all know the relationship that Cory, Shawn, Eric, and Topanga have with Mr. Feeney. Although Feeney gives the gang many life lessons and rewarding lectures, Feeney crosses a boundary in one episode. Feeney over the series was pretty good about failing the boys and giving Topanga the grade she deserves, but in one episode he lets his guard down and gives Cory and Shawn extensions on their papers, which ends of back firing for the boys because they believe that Feeney will just give them extensions on every paper so they don't do the next one. Now i know what you are all saying... "do they even air that show anymore" the answer is yes, every day at 6 and 6:30 am on ABC Family. The main point I am getting at here is this... students do not become good friends with your teachers, find some your own age.
2. Trebek, I'll take sports for 500. This in my mind is one of the most interesting topics you can talk about when it comes to sports. Native Americans are offended by the use of their culture as mascots for sports teams. Why not be honored by this? First of all, how can anybody say that they do not love the logo on the Blackhawks jersey. It is the coolest logo in sports according to a Sports Illustrated poll. The reason that Native Americans are taking offense is because of it not being an authentic view of their culture and that it is the Hollywood perception. When it comes to this topic I belive that Native Americans are being too sensitive to this and they have to realize that they are being honored. I read earlier today in an interview with the president of the Washington Redskins in his response to this controversy that his belief is that the redskins are honoring them and they should be proud. That when it comes to his team he associates the words "courage, bravery, and loyalty" and that anybody should be proud to be associated with that sports franchise. Here is the truth, you do not see any people with Irish backgrounds making a fuss about the Notre Dame Fightin Irish. For goodness sake they have a little fricken leprachaun prancing around their football and basketball game making a mockery of the school, nobody is up in arms there.... because no matter how stupid it looks they are proud of their mascot and their school. Notre Dame is not even an Irish school, it is just the macot they chose to represent their school. This question was posed to me today by Mr. Kramer after class. If there was a school that chose the fighting rabbis as their mascot, and they had a rabbi in the middle of their court at basketball games dancing around with his outfit on, would I be offended. To him I simply responded. No. I would not be offended, I would think that would be hilarious and would most likely embrace the fact that a school has named themselves that. Now I did tell him that I would prefer the team to be call the Fightin Maccabi's because that would be a tad bit more intimidating, but again I feel like that only Jewish students would attend that school. In my closing, I believe that the Native American people are being a little too sensitve and that if they don't like it then they should just accept that it is out there because its intent is only to honor them and if they cannot realize that then they really do not deserve to be honored.
Well it looks like I am out of time, the final season of Friday Night Lights premieres in 10 minutes on DirecTV, so I will be firmly glued in front of the tv for the next hour, probably more because of game 1 of the World Series, Lincecum vs Lee. The bulls get ready to debut for another long and unexciting season of basketball, and the Blackhawks, yes the Blackhawks, look to get things rolling tonight after coming off a loss in their last contest. For The Katz Meow, I'm Jesse Katz signing off.... Issues class, you stay classy now.
Here's a fun fact....Florida State University was originally going to have their mascot be the crackers. can you imagine a matchup of rivals the Miami Hurricanes and the Florida State Crackers?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Re: Bullying
We recently watched "If You Really Knew Me" in our issues class. It is a show featured on MTV that follows a school for a couple of days and on the middle day they have challenge day. The show follows a few students, most of the time upperclassmen and from different cliques. It shows how they would act on a normal day, then it shows the challenge day, and then the day after affects.
Specifically Challenge Day is a day where about 100 students gather in the gymnasium and they go through a set of activies, where they are supposed to "step outside their bubble". One of the girls, when asked if she had heard anything about challenge day, says "I hear everybody cries, even if you don't have the intention of crying that day". Challenge Day in my mind is an in-effective idea. These kids are in high school and to be honest they will do whatever it takes to get on MTV and if that means cry and pretend be a nice kid for a day then they will do it because they want to be famous. When Deerfield had the Endiskize music video shot it was the same way, everybody was all nice to each other and would do whatever they had to to get on camera because the video was supposed be a huge hit (it still has not come out yet) but when that was all over the school just went back to the way it was. And I believe that is how most high schools would react to having cameras at their school. Sure challenge day might be affective for the school for a few weeks, but as noted in our class the school will just fall back into its old patterns after it wears off.
After catching up with Jamie Nabozny, the student who sued his school for not protecting him against bullying, I learn that he has returned home many times since the 1996 trial and that he is not afraid to go back there because the town is proud of him. On his first trip back he was very scared because he did not know how the towns people would respond to him, he learned very early in that trip that they were happy becasue the school was a safer place now. I have learned that he has now been able to make peace with most of the bullies that cause his problems and that they have reconciled. This is next visit is a special return for Jamie because they will be showing his movie tomorrow for the entire city. It will be the first time that he has been back since the releasing of his film, which is a documentry with also recreating of the scenes. It is narrated by famous Jane Lynch who stars on Glee and who is also a member of the gay community. The people of Ashland are very proud of Jamie and this will be a special trip back for him.
DHS does not really have a bullying problem, perhaps. There is some bullying that does exist at DHS but this is actually the "boys will be boys" kind of bullying. No one ever really takes it to heart and it happens to everybody. Everybody is bullied at some point in their lives at DHS, how they respond to it is what can make them sucessful here. Deerfield is a very sheltered community which makes it a much safer place for kids growing up and that attitude it carried over towards the school and the people in it. If there is bullying that does go on here, it is usually never seen, its just heard.
I think when it comes to potential solutions for bullying.... challenge day is not the answer. I said this in class and I am sticking to it, kids will do anything when they know there is a camera watching them. Make it a little less obvious, do challenge day but with a hidden camera so the kids don't know they are being watched. See how they react when there is no camera watching them, are they still going to open up and let people in, or will they react to those activities as if they were a joke and dismiss them before they ever took part in them. My solution to bullying is that there is no solution. It has been a problem for many decades and if there was a solution then it would have been solved by now. Obviously for the more serious cases of bullying there should be some sort of punishable offense, but bullying is a problem that will never stop because boys will be boys and high school students will never learn to change the way they are, they don't know better it is our nature. Bullying doesn't make you a man, it is dealing with it that does.
Specifically Challenge Day is a day where about 100 students gather in the gymnasium and they go through a set of activies, where they are supposed to "step outside their bubble". One of the girls, when asked if she had heard anything about challenge day, says "I hear everybody cries, even if you don't have the intention of crying that day". Challenge Day in my mind is an in-effective idea. These kids are in high school and to be honest they will do whatever it takes to get on MTV and if that means cry and pretend be a nice kid for a day then they will do it because they want to be famous. When Deerfield had the Endiskize music video shot it was the same way, everybody was all nice to each other and would do whatever they had to to get on camera because the video was supposed be a huge hit (it still has not come out yet) but when that was all over the school just went back to the way it was. And I believe that is how most high schools would react to having cameras at their school. Sure challenge day might be affective for the school for a few weeks, but as noted in our class the school will just fall back into its old patterns after it wears off.
After catching up with Jamie Nabozny, the student who sued his school for not protecting him against bullying, I learn that he has returned home many times since the 1996 trial and that he is not afraid to go back there because the town is proud of him. On his first trip back he was very scared because he did not know how the towns people would respond to him, he learned very early in that trip that they were happy becasue the school was a safer place now. I have learned that he has now been able to make peace with most of the bullies that cause his problems and that they have reconciled. This is next visit is a special return for Jamie because they will be showing his movie tomorrow for the entire city. It will be the first time that he has been back since the releasing of his film, which is a documentry with also recreating of the scenes. It is narrated by famous Jane Lynch who stars on Glee and who is also a member of the gay community. The people of Ashland are very proud of Jamie and this will be a special trip back for him.
DHS does not really have a bullying problem, perhaps. There is some bullying that does exist at DHS but this is actually the "boys will be boys" kind of bullying. No one ever really takes it to heart and it happens to everybody. Everybody is bullied at some point in their lives at DHS, how they respond to it is what can make them sucessful here. Deerfield is a very sheltered community which makes it a much safer place for kids growing up and that attitude it carried over towards the school and the people in it. If there is bullying that does go on here, it is usually never seen, its just heard.
I think when it comes to potential solutions for bullying.... challenge day is not the answer. I said this in class and I am sticking to it, kids will do anything when they know there is a camera watching them. Make it a little less obvious, do challenge day but with a hidden camera so the kids don't know they are being watched. See how they react when there is no camera watching them, are they still going to open up and let people in, or will they react to those activities as if they were a joke and dismiss them before they ever took part in them. My solution to bullying is that there is no solution. It has been a problem for many decades and if there was a solution then it would have been solved by now. Obviously for the more serious cases of bullying there should be some sort of punishable offense, but bullying is a problem that will never stop because boys will be boys and high school students will never learn to change the way they are, they don't know better it is our nature. Bullying doesn't make you a man, it is dealing with it that does.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Students and the Fourth Amendment Right: Response
I agree with the supreme court, random student drug testing should be allowed and in fact it should be used for every student-athlete in high school sports across the country. It should be done because based on past studies it increases test scores and it actually increased sports participation. I don't really believe it should be used for everyone but I think for athletes it should be. It shows who is actually comitted to the sport versus who is not. Is invading the privacy of the athlete really an issue here? I don't feel it is, as an athlete you are already subject to the reduced expectation of privacy. Being an athlete you change in a locker room in front of your entire team, you use stalls that sometimes don't even have doors on them, and you take showers where all of the heads are lined up against the wall. A lot of times in the cases of the 4th amendment the issues comes down to privacy, in this I do not believe that there is an invasion of privacy. In a case regarding a 13 year old girl from Arizona, ( http://www.aclu.org/drug-law-reform/us-supreme-court-declares-strip-search-13-year-old-student-unconstitutional), the supreme court ruled the school's strip search of this girl was unconstitutional because of it being unreasonable. The reason that I agree with this is because based off what we learned in class about unreasonable search and seizures, this would fall under that category because a strip search of this girl with no past disciplinary issues was unreasonable. The only reason they had was because an unreliable source said that she gave her pills. The student privacy in schools these days are extremley violated by the deans or the administration, however I do believe there should be a student drug test policy for athletes because that is not an invasion of privacy.
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