Hope and Fear

Fear is everywhere. It is a constant in life. Fears can be big things like phobias or small things like anxieties or worries. Whether big or small there is not a single person living that has not experienced some type of fear. I think that people are born fearful. The 'default' of our lives is fear, not hope.

This could have something to do with survival. Early people's main goal in life was surviving. They relied on fear to keep them cautious, and alive. Being too hopeful and adventurous could end badly. Maybe this same instinct is still part of our lives today.

It's easy for us to worry, we quickly indulge our fears and they often snowball into something much bigger. That's why worries are always so prominent in our lives

Because fear is a natural state for us, we have to work extra hard to hold on to hope. Hope doesn't snowball the way that fear does, when you find hope you have to keep hold of it and focus on it or fear will overcome you again.

In this way, hope is not much more than a device that we use to help us ignore fear. Lets say I forgot to study for the huge math final. I am fearful that I will fail the test, or the class, and my gpa will drop, and I won't get accepted to college... etc. Fear snowballs when you listen to it. I can say that I am hopeful that the test will be easy, or that it will be delayed but I know that those things won't happen.

This is false hope, it's very improbable that the test will get delayed but I still decide to think that it will. The only reason I'm hoping this is because I don't want to think about fear, and bad things that could happen. I am ignoring my fear by focusing on hope.

Even if hope only exists to balance fear out, we still need both hope and fear in our lives. In Lord of the Flies by William Goldng, the stranded boys rely on hope and fear in everything they do. Letting either of these emotions control them is a major setback. While on the island, Ralph sees a ship passing(Golding, 65). He becomes extremely hopeful for rescue until he notices that their smoke signal is out and that the ship won't find them. Suddenly all that hope is gone and he gets really angry at the other boys. He let hope control him too much and it ended with a letdown.

The most feared thing on the island is the beast. The beast controls everything that the boys do and when they do it. Any time they stop to think about the beast they get scared and stop working on hunting and the fire. Dwelling on fear sets them back and makes them forget their purpose. Piggy says: "The thing is-fear can't hurt you any more than a dream." The boys know it's silly to think about the beast but they end up doing it anyway.

Hanging on to hope or fear too closely drowns out your view of the more important things.

There is also lots of hope and fear involved in change. In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart there is lots of rapid change, so lots of conflicting hope and fear. Villagers are fearful that new Christian settlers will take over their town and change their traditions. Their fear drives them to give a 'cursed' plot of ground to the settlers, to build a church.

They are very hopeful that the new church will be cursed, but the hope does not last long. The church remains uncursed and fear takes over again. The fear of the settlers drives the villagers to do something drastic, the curse. They let their fear have too much influence over them and it made them do bad things.

In All the Kings Horses by Kurt Vonnegut, the main character is driven by his hopes and fears. He is responsible for the lives of his family and friends. He is fearful of losing someone he loves, so when the opportunity to save all but one is seen, he has to take it. He becomes very hopeful that he can win, and protect almost everyone, that he takes a huge risk. He chooses to ignore the fear of losing one child by focusing on the hope that he can save everyone else. The hope is shielding him from what he is actually doing, killing his son.

So, like many things, hope and fear are good in moderation. Letting either of them consume you is dangerous, it keeps you from really seeing clearly. We need both hope and fear to balance each other out because the strength of either one alone is dangerous.

Ethnography

Naomi Curran

Mr. McCallum

Quest English 9

12-8- 2014

The Picture of Education:

Observing the BHS Arts Magnet Program

Preconceptions

“The Buffalo High School Arts Magnet Program.” This kind of fancy title gives you high expectations. It produces the image of a highly distinguished school, filled with interesting, intelligent students bursting with creative energy. It sounds like it could be an expensive private school, but it's really just a part of a regular high school.

This program integrates the arts within core classes as a learning tool, to teach kids in an unique

way.

I wanted to observe this culture, because I go to the same school that all the Arts Magnet students do, but I know almost nothing about how the program works. I think the arts infused classes are a really cool idea and I want to see how they are differ from my classes.

Another reason this group interests me is because of how it is similar to Quest. Quest is a program for gifted students. Both of these programs are for people that learn in a different way. The Quest students are often separated from the rest of our grade. Because we are together so often, we became really close to one another. The arts students’ classes are also separated from others, I wonder if they are as close as we are.

The Arts Magnet program is free to anyone that wants to join.  I think it would be interesting to see how groups form within the class. Do groups of friends join the program together or are new friendships made through these classes? Would someone join arts magnet alone if they knew their friends weren't joining? I may not be able to answer this through observation but it's still a question I have.

I expect this class will be less distinguished than the name sounds. These are arts classes, so I think there will be more learning by doing, and I will see more chaos than in a regular classroom. These people are also probably creative thinkers, with lots of ideas, so there will be lots of noise. I expect most of these people to be more toward the outgoing side.

I am excited to see the way that Arts Magnet classes differ from traditional classes and how the students learn in their own ways.

Background

The current Buffalo High School was built in 1997, but the Arts Magnet program didn’t begin until the 2005-2006 school year. In the first year of the program, there were about 90 students enrolled. Now there are around 250 students in the Arts Magnet program, spanning from ninth to twelfth grade.

The Mission of the Arts Magnet program is Academic Excellence through Artistic Inquiry. The program integrates the arts within core classes as a learning tool. Different people learn in different ways, these kids learn by relating the arts to what they do.

The Arts Magnet website says "The curriculum is based on the belief that the arts teach essential skills for the 21st century."

A wide range of Arts Magnet classes are offered. There are core classes like English, Social Studies, and Science. The other classes are divided into five categories: Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Applied Visual Arts, Literary Arts, and Media Arts. Some classes include dance, sculpture, interior design, poetry and film.

I am going to be observing a ninth grade Foundations class. The Foundations classes are based on the creative process and students individual interests involving the arts.

Observations

Monday, October 13th

The Arts Magnet room was in a dark hallway made up of gray cinder blocks and a gray cement floor. My footsteps echoed quietly off of the empty walls as I made my way quickly to the classroom. The door to room number 101 was big and wooden and opened heavily. A bright, cheery room greeted me inside, and I was immediately confronted by the smell of paint. I walked past rows of wooden tables towards the back of the classroom. I tried to be quiet, but many students still looked up from their work to watch me. It was the second month of class, they knew who was supposed to be there, and I wasn’t one of those people.

I sat down on the cool cement floor in the back of the room, leaning against the wooden cabinets behind me and trying to ignore the curious glances.

A lady stood pacing the front of the room as she spoke to the students. Her long, slightly silvery black hair and round glasses gave her a motherly look. She was the teacher, Mrs. Deb Bestland.

Mrs. Bestland was explaining the classes upcoming field trip to the theatre. She made sure to tell the students to be on their best behavior, unlike last time. Most of the students sat staring at their tables tiredly or messing around with their pencils.

Mrs. Bestland told the class to dress formally for the trip. This triggered an excited burst of chatter, contrasting the dreariness from a minute before. After calming the class down, a final round of questions were answered:

"Can we bring man purses?"

"Can I bring chapstick that clicks closed?"

Then, the class moved on.

Mrs. Bestland gave the students two minutes of free time before they started the next topic, adding that if she didn’t give them time to check their phones, they would do it anyway, except during class. The class immediately started talking and laughing loudly.

As the students happily took advantage of their free time, I looked around the room. This was definitely an art room. There was dried paint everywhere I looked. On the tables, the back countertops, and on the cement floor. It smelled like paint, too.

Above my place on the floor were lots of wooden cabinets. I was sitting under the one labeled 'Old Brushes'. Some of the other cabinet doors had swung open, they held stacks and stacks of dirty paint trays and hastily put away paint bottles. Drying on top of the cabinets were canvasses of half-finished art projects in every color.

The purple walls were covered in more student art. Paintings of geometric shapes were displayed next to pencil drawings and colorful portraits of flowers. Posters of color wheels were hung on every wall.

The students sat on tall metal stools that squeaked loudly on the cement floor every time someone moved. The stools surrounded rectangular tables. Out of the ten tables around the room all but two were occupied by only girls. The class consisted of four boys in all, the majority were girls.

Through the mess of noise I heard snippets of conversation.

"Water broke..."

"His girlfriend..."

And an angry, "...Left my phone at my grandmas!"

A few short, mousy haired girls stood up, laughing, to take a group picture together.

Mrs. Bestland stood at the front of the room and started counting down from five, everyone was expected to be quiet by zero. The students all scrambled to finish their sentences before she got to one. At zero there were still a few students speaking. Eventually Mrs. Bestland regained the attention of the class and reminded everyone to put away their phones.

She paced around the room and between the tables as she began to explain the next assignment. A bored looking girl in the back row with bleached blond hair looked back at me, wondering why I was there, before lazily returning her attention to the front of the room.

The students were instructed to get into groups of four. They found this to be very difficult. After a few minutes of loud arguing, yelling and complaining, the groups were formed. Their assignment was to talk about "What makes you uniquely you." Mrs Bestland repeated the directions several times, asked if the class had questions and then repeated the assignment a few more times. She repeated the assignment one last time and then let the groups discuss.

I walked up to the closest group, careful to avoid bumping a table full of clay sculptures, shaped like tiny buildings. A petite girl with a high voice thought her personality made her herself. The rest of the group thought that their facial features and clothing made them themselves.

As I walked around to different groups, I noticed that most of the students were off topic, some worse than others. Some kids were balancing books on their heads while others were talking excitedly about other things.

"Dirt biking..."

"That's so stupid!"

"Oh, you read those?"

"The walking Sabrina!"

"You used to be the quietest thing ever!"

The teacher counted down again and the class did not quiet down at all until two. The class shared what made themselves unique. Most of the answers were appearance based,  like hair, glasses, piercings, and clothes.

The class grew louder and more chatty over time, after a while the teacher decided to try something different to quiet them down. She took out a mouse puppet. The class immediately reacted, cheering and talking excitedly, the puppet was a big deal. Mrs. Bestland explained that whoever had the mouse could talk. If you didn’t have the mouse, it wasn’t your turn to talk. The class got surprisingly more respectful and the discussion continued.

Mrs. Bestland told the students that they were going to narrow the topic down. She related this to a camera lens, they were making the lens smaller, so the topic was less broad. Now they had to talk about things about themselves that if you changed, you wouldn't be yourself anymore.

The students once again started their discussions loudly. I wandered over to a new group and listened. It was a group of four girls all with colorful hair and clothes. One girl had red and black hair, a black plaid shirt and tribal leggings. She said that her religion made her herself.  

A chair tipped over and everyone gasped, they were still very easily distracted.

Most groups that I observed were distracted and asked me why I was there. A girl with white blonde hair and bright blue eyeshadow asked me rapid fire questions about all aspects my project. After trying and failing to have her talk to her group about the topic, I moved on to a different group.

The class collectively decided that the things that make you unique are your religion, decisions and morals. Along with your eye color, hair and fashion.

Mrs. Bestland suggested that your past could make you unique.  The class somehow turned this into a discussion about her past. They had so many questions about her past and her relationship with her family, that she eventually had to tell them it was none of their business. She then gave them some "Quiet chat time" This quickly turned into loud chatting time.

I grabbed my backpack and left the room while the class was still talking ‘quietly’.

Conclusion

When I walked into the Arts Magnet room, I had no idea what to expect. I was interested to see how the arts blended with academics. I was surprised to see a classroom not too different from my own.

The most infused part of what I saw was the analogy to the camera lens, but I know that there are lots of other infused parts I didn’t get to see in my short time there.

The class’s energy level was a contrasting mix of sometimes quiet and tired, sometimes loud and distracted. I guessed that they would be loud and outgoing, and I saw that some students were much more outgoing than others.

The students were in groups within the class, so I couldn’t really tell how the whole class’s relationship was. The students seemed to get along with the people around them well and contribute to class points together.

The Arts Magnet students are a group that shares a common interest in the arts that brings them together. They are able to learn together in a unique way that helps themselves and their classmates.

Ignorance is Bliss (Republic)

When I was little, I used to stand in front of the mirror and wonder what life was about. I would be going about my everyday life when these thoughts would strike me and I would find myself just standing there, staring at myself in the mirror, and thinking.

What is life. Why am I here? How am I alive with my own thoughts? One day i'm going to die. Life is so weird.

I don't know why, and i'm not sure how to describe it. I just got suddenly really aware of the fact that I was a living, breathing, thing. I usually tried to ignore these thoughts and push them away, because they always left me feeling small, conflicted, and confused. Maybe this is why this part of The Republic stuck with me.

Gold souled people are extraordinary. They are smart, talented and selfless but, they are also unhappy. The people with the most beautiful minds are never happy. "The several classes will receive that proportion of happiness which nature assigns to them." (pg 90) 

Gold souls are guided out of 'the cave' that the general public lives in. When they escape the cave they can see true forms. They learn about all kinds of amazing things and new ideas. They are enlightened by the outside world. Then they are forced to re enter the cave. They go back to society and live among all the cave dwellers who don't understand.

I remember reading the paragraph that described this. I must have reread it ten times because I didn't want to believe it. I felt like the gold souls deserved more, that they were being stifled.

I have always thought that the purpose of justice was to make people happy. Justice used to make me think of police cars and supreme courts. Justice is there to make us feel protected from the bad guys, and that makes us happy. The Republic twists this idea because there is lots of justice, without happiness.

I'm still not entirely sure what justice is, but I feel like the gold souls are being cheated. Not being able to live to their full potentials is not just. The wisest people get the worst lives.

Apparently smart people are more likely to be depressed. They are enlightened gold souls living next to a bunch of unenlightened bronze ones. When you feel like no one understands, that messes people up.

So, I wonder, is this society still just if some lives suck while others are great? Maybe leaving the cave is not actually a good thing, if when you return you will be alone. Ignorance is bliss. (So why am I so set on seeking more knowledge?)

Everything Sucks (Things Fall Apart)

I titled this blog Everything Sucks. Now, not everything actually sucks, but a whole lot of things in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart do.

An important person in Umuofia really only has to have one specific trait. They need to be masculine. This culture values all aspects of masculinity. To be a leader you have to be both physically and emotionally strong. Physically strong to be a good worker and emotionally strong to hide any sign of emotion or weakness, which are seen as immasculine.

In the same way that this culture values masculinity, they also discourage femininity. To them, femininity is synonymous with weakness, everything that they don't want to be.

This system is not benefiting the woman or men. Boys grow up being pressured to act much older than they are, not show their emotions, and start the family business (Farming) early. Girls grow up believing that they are not worth as much as their brothers, and that they shouldn't have an opinion.

And the cycle continues because both the brothers and the sisters are raised looking up to their parents, and believing that what their parents are doing is always right. So when dad beats mom because dinner wasn't ready on time, the kids think it's normal and good (which it is normal, in this culture.) "Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper"(Achebe 13).

This type of thinking complicates relationships in Okonkwo's family. Okonkwo cares a lot about his kids being masculine, a feminine son could reflect poorly on his reputation. So when Nwoye shows signs of liking feminine things, like stories, Okonkwo is scared."Okonkwo was popularly called the 'Roaring Flame.' As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a flaming fire. How then could he have begotten a son like Nwoye, degenerate and effeminate? Perhaps he was not his son. No! he could not be. His wife had played him false. He would teach her! But Nwoye resembled his grandfather, Unoka, who was Okonkwo's father. He pushed the thought out of his mind. He, Okonkwo, was called a flaming fire. How could he have begotten a woman for a son"(153)?

Okonkwo eventually teaches Nwoye to be more masculine. Nwoye is scared of his father, but he is also eager to please him so he does what Okonkwo wants him to."Nothing pleased Nwoye now more than to be sent for by his mother or another of his father's wives to do one of those difficult and masculine tasks in the home, like splitting wood or pounding food. On receiving such a message through a younger brother or sister, Nwoye would feign annoyance and grumble aloud about women and their troubles"(52).

On the other side of the spectrum is Okonkwo's daughter, Ezinma. Ezinma is not a perfectly feminine girl, but her father likes her more than he tries to let on. He remarks that he wishes she would have been a boy. He says that she has 'a good spirit' and he favors her over Nwoye. I wonder what he thinks would be different if she were a boy, he wishes she were so badly. Everything about her is good, except for the fact that she is a girl.

The worst thing isn't the culture itself, it's the way it correlates to real life, society outside of the book. Masculinity and femininity still exist in real life and they are valued in almost exactly the same way as they are in the book. In both places masculinity is deemed better.

When a woman wants to be taken seriously, like at work, she wears more masculine clothes. Blazers for women are supposed to look like suits that men wear. In the 80's shoulder pads were popular, broadening your shoulders would make you look more masculine and men would, in theory, take you more seriously. When a women wants to be taken seriously, she makes herself look like a man.

We teach our children to value everything masculine. We encourage our sons to play football and like monster trucks. When little Suzy asks if she can play baseball this year we rejoice because she isn't so girly, she's not afraid to get dirty. But when little Parker wants to take dance class we scold him because that's only for girls! Besides, what would the neighbors think?

One day in class we were looking at slides projected on the wall. A student raised his hand to ask why all the pronouns on the slide were she's instead of he's. Now, I could totally be misinterpreting this, but it seemed like he was so used to he being the default that he was surprised when the slide said she instead. It's not his fault, it's the world we live in, but it was still slightly surprising that he found it so unnatural to be using a feminine pronoun.

Another day, I heard a brother and sister fighting, both elementary schoolers. I don't remember what the argument was about but it was heated and the brother was running out of comebacks. So he used this one. "Yeah well... men are superior to woman!" The sister had nothing to say. She accepted the statement like it was true and there was nothing she could do about it.

These kids had been taught, whether their parents were conscious of it or not, that masculinity was somehow definitively above femininity.

I'm not saying that this is how people are 100% of the time, it's not. I'm also not saying that this is the biggest problem in the world right now and that everyone needs to pay attention to it. But these ideas are still etched into our own culture so much that we don't even really notice it anymore.

Half of the Earth's population is female, femininity is everywhere, as is masculinity. I don't think femininity is going away anytime soon so maybe we can just accept it as a part of our culture.


*I know that I am privileged and that I am undoubtedly biased, but hopefully this wasn't too offensive/ painfully ignorant/ rant-ish. Yay!

Preconceptions

The Buffalo High School Arts Magnet Program. This kind of fancy title gives you high expectations. It gives the image of a highly distinguished program, filled with interesting, intelligent students bursting with creative energy. It sounds like it could be an expensive private school but it's actually within a regular high school.

The Mission of the Arts Magnet program is Academic Excellence through Artistic Inquiry. The program integrates the arts within core classes as a learning tool. Different people learn in different ways, these kids learn by relating the arts to what they do.

The Arts Magnet website says "The curriculum is based on the belief that the arts teach essential skills for the 21st century." 

I wanted to observe this "culture" because I go to the same school as all the Arts students do, but I know almost nothing about how their classes work. I think the arts infused classes are a really cool idea and I want to see how they work. I am curious to see how they can relate the arts to science. Science and art exist in two different worlds for me, art is more free and science is very factual. I am excited to see how that works.

Another reason I think this group is so interesting is because of how it relates to Quest. Both of these programs are for people that learn in a different way. All the Quest students are mostly separated from everyone else, this forced us to become really close to one another. The arts students are also separated from others, I wonder if they are as close as we are.

The Arts Magnet program is free to anyone that wants to join (as far as I know).  I think it would be interesting to see how groups form within the class. Do groups of friends join the program together or are new friendships made through these classes? In Quest, if your friends don't make it in you are forced to make new friends there. Would someone join arts magnet alone if they knew their friends weren't joining? I may not be able to answer this through observation but it's still a question I have.

I expect this class will be less distinguished than the name sounds. Because these are arts classes I think there will be more learning by doing, so more chaos than a regular classroom. These people are also probably creative thinkers, with lots of ideas, so lots of noise. I expect most of these people to be more toward the outgoing side.

I am excited to see the way that Arts Magnet classes differ from traditional classes and how the students learn in a different way.

I Am From

I am from the wood burning stove,
from sunscreen and ponytails.
I am from sunny yellow paint
and splintered dock boards.
I am from algae
the monkey tree
whose lightning struck limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I'm from green milk and blonde hair,
from Michael Allen and Patti Jo.
I'm from leaf piles and Mickey waffles
and from candlelight.

I'm from Czy nie ma zadnych uszy? and No whining at the beach!
and you are my sunshine.
I'm from streamer canopies.
I'm from Ceder Rapids and Lake Charlotte,
hot dish and strawberry jam.
From Silver Bridge,
and one red rose.
Pictures of the past,
In dusty frames along on the wall.

I am from memories.

Writers Autobiography

We all have those certain stories. The ones that make us stop and think, that change our view of the world. The ones that reach out and connect with us.

Words are so indescribably powerful. I’m not sure when I started to recognise the vast effects that words can have but since then I have been slightly obsessed with that effect.

I wish I could create meaningful stories. I want to create the stuff that makes people think, that makes them feel something. I just think it would be so incredible to open someone's eyes or connect with them so soundly through words.

I respect authors so much. I have too many thoughts that I could never dream of putting into words. If you can do that, and express yourself in that way, you are so cool.

I guess that’s where I want to be as a writer. But here is where I really am.

My Brother

Once upon a time livd a girl named Lily and a boy named Tyler. Lily was 6 Tyler was 9. Lily wantid to be a fairy princess but tyler thout that was just stupid.

(A telling piece of writing from my third grade journal)

For a long time, writing was more of a chore than anything else for me, just another homework assignment. Maybe that’s because until recently, my writing had no meaning.

Writing in school seems to be normally centered around just getting words down, no matter what those words mean. From this idea emerges the dreaded writing prompt (at least dreaded for me). Writing prompts are busy work. I never understood what we could ever get out of “ Write about what you did over the weekend.” and “Write about your favorite season.”

In some grades of elementary school we had a different writing prompt for every day of the week. Let’s just say that this did nothing to improve my view of writing. I would huff and write another meaningless paragraph.

As I got older, the writing slowly changed. In late elementary school we did mini book reports, not a whole lot more exciting in my opinion. Rewriting a book in a few sentences requires no thought, so I had no interest.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like to learn, I love to learn by reading, but when it came time to write, I got really bored really fast.

In middle school the writing got harder, science fair and history day challenged me to write longer papers. Once again longer papers did not correspond to more thought, it just made for more busywork.

In seventh grade we had to write short stories. These stories could be about anything you could possibly think of. Mine ended up being about a drawing that came to life. This just goes to show my lack of creativity when it comes to writing. There are so  many other stories about the exact same concept.

This is just another one of the problems I have with writing. I’m not good at thinking of original concepts for stories. Maybe that’s because I only ever write research papers or maybe it’s just because I am not creative.

In eighth grade something odd happened. We got an assignment to write a 300 word blog. For one thing, 300 words was outrageous at the time, I had no idea how I was supposed to make it happen. Then we were told that the topic was truth. That was all. It was so odd to get to write about something so unspecific. There are so many different ways you can go with just one word as the requirement. I had never experienced that kind of freedom in assignments before.

The blogs continued and I realized that maybe, for the first time ever, I was proud of what I was writing. I feel like the less structured requirements gave me room to think and put something into the writing that I cared about.

Writing became more exciting when real thought was finally involved. Research papers can help you learn but they don’t seem like real writing to me, chewing up and spitting out other peoples ideas and facts can only get you so far.

Once I figured out how to put my thoughts into words and put what I’m passionate about down, that’s when I started getting writing that I was proud of.

Besides the blogs, I also realized that I like writing poetry. I know that most people really hate it but I like the way that poetry can be more emotional than regular writing. I like the imagery in poetry and the way it flows. This is the only kind of writing I have ever been able to do for fun.

I realized that the best way for me to write is to put feeling into it. Just like it’s easier to talk about things that you are passionate about, It’s also easier to write when you are feeling something. I have grown so much in my writing in the last few years, hopefully I can continue to improve and create something that connects with others.