Four years of my life drained away at this place called Troy High School. After this year I will be walking away from Troy, worn and torn from the hours of anticipation for grades to be posted, the next weekend to arrive, the answer to whether that special someone will say yes to the next dance, or the unbearable wait for that painstaking bell to ring. Troy is a place of education, a very good one at that, with its Blue Ribbon Award and national recognition, you’d think I would be walking away with knowledge that will serve me well for decades to come, but no. I could have learned the same things I learned at Troy anywhere, it is the insight I picked up that will take me far. “What insight?” you ask. Its priceless wisdom really, it’s a shame too many people overlook it or take it for granted. You see there are some basic classes every Troy student takes, that in the long run prove to be very useful beyond their educational platforms. Take the Troy Tech classes, they offer more than just facts about 1s and 0s and codes of programming. Looking deeper into what is learned in these classes one can pick up the Zen like teachings. Bases, the fact that a ‘10’ can be any number, depending on its base, touches upon the idea how in the real world people seem to be the utmost characters of greatness but the more you get to know them, and their base, they can turn to be someone better or more often then not, something worse than what you first anticipated. In the course of programming we learn that there are several ways to solving a problem, just some are shorter than others and some easier to find the bugs, it depends on the commands you use. Such as how in life when using the right commands, or truths, will get you far, while some just tak...
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...called faith; you must have faith. All in all High School is strange in the way it hides the wisdom it serves daily to us, noble really. I doubt though half the teachers realize high school is not a place to be ascertaining life-lasting knowledge, counteracting high school is the time to obtain the life-lasting wisdom to take you to college where you will then pick up the life-lasting knowledge you desire. Troy is additionally peculiar in that it misleads its students to believe achieving means getting above a 4.0 GPA, when really as Christopher Morley stated “There is but one success─ to be able to spend your life in your own way.” So taking flight from this place called Troy, what have I really learned? I have learned what Oscar Wilde understood, “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.”
Every student Pope interviews explains that their high marks in their classes are a result of working themselves extremely hard in order to fulfill someone’s expectations. Kevin Romoni, a tenth grader at Faircrest, for instance, reveals his real intentions for high school are not to fully connect with his classes, but simply to just “get into college and make his parents happy”(9). The high amount of pressure put on Kevin distracts him from the primary goal of attending and excelling in school, which is to become engrossed in learning and motivated to succeed by a genuine interest in the subjects. Also seeking her parents’ approval, Michelle Spence feels so stressed about receiving excellent grades to be accepted into a college her parents will commend, she “[cries] all the time from stress….and contemplated dropping out of school”(83), despite already being a straight-A student. Although her parents might be attempting to encourage her, the competitive atmosphere at school is too frantic. It is devastating that students are completely overwhelmed by parents’ attempts at motivation, and I believe that their stress will not reduce until the expectations set for them are not pressed as forcefully. The stressful environment students live in leads to their disengagement in learning, which creates even more stressful
While reading this book I found out that under certain circumstances I am a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset. One, very identifiable, area I have a fixed mindset in, is the math content area. When ever I think about being forced to learn or teach math, I completely shut down. I feel I’ve become this way because for years I’ve heard that I need more work in that area, and that I have a hard time understanding it. So I feel I’ve lost any drive to concur it when I’ve already felt defeated by it. Which after reading this book I have realized this mentality could easily transfer to my students because that is one thing I have learned again and again from this book it is that one fixed mid set can have an immediate impact on the mind set of those people who are interacting with the person.
The next year, when I was 11 years old, I set out on a thousand-mile journey to go to school since there is no proper school in Missouri. I attended Bacon Academy along with 200 other boys. My father sent me a letter saying to “study hard so I can achieve my future dreams.” In the same letter, he warned me saying, “ your troubles on your journey will learn you a little of what your are to expect to meet with in life.” My studies included grammar, writing, logic, mathematics, and geography. My dad also told me to learn as little Greek as possible, as it would not help me in life. I successfully made it through school, including college.
I took a deep breath as I walked my horse into the Greeley Stampede Arena. I told myself just to "relax." I loped a circle around the arena to make sure that my horse was warmed up and ready to go. He was ready but I was starting to get nervous. I stopped in front of the roping box to put my piggin' string in my mouth. I looked at my calf in the chute to make sure that it was number 33, which was one of the best calves out of the whole set. It was, and I was ready to ride into the box and rope my calf, or attempt to rope my calf. I began to get more nervous, more nervous than I ever had been at a rodeo.
People say high school is supposed to be the golden years of your life. I don’t know what else in life is to come; however, my philosophy is to live in the moment and make the life you’re living in the present worthwhile into the future, not only for you but for those who surround you. I live my life participating in our community and getting involved in our school. The activities, and the people I’ve formed relationships with, are what have formed me into the person I am today. The person I am today is not perfect, but I have learned from the mistakes I’ve made.
Somewhere in America a parent is asking their child what they learned at school today, the child will most likely say that they didn’t learn much. It is sad to say that with today’s education system, this is true. The K-12 school system has oppressed students far more than it has liberated them, and this must change if America wants to produce members of society that actually have something to contribute. Students graduate high school having learned how to play the “game” of school leaving them grossly unprepared for college. Students should leave high school with a base of knowledge and strategies they can employ to succeed in college if that is where they wish to go, but instead they come to college knowing how to line up quietly and copy
Today a leading cause of stress is change; a change in your job, lifestyle, or significant others can cause stress. Many Americans are living longer and discovering, as a result, that the learning process can never really be allowed to stop. To be successful or sometimes even just to maintain a comfortable existence, one must adapt to the rapidly changing order. Acknowledging that there is more that needs knowing and embarking on new educational journeys requires courage and fortitude, due to man’s inherent nature of fear. Persons of the best natures must be compelled to attain a more complete knowledge, and those of this more complete education must expose the others to the realities of “ the beautiful, the just, and the good” (752). Often the path of explanation and clarification is unsure, but confining thought to merely the realms of the known can only prove fatal.
In the Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian once said "Day by day, nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different." Looking back at the past four years, I find this statement to hold especially true. After flipping through my high school yearbooks, I recall the memories of the time spent at Berks Catholic. For me, high school has been a roller coaster of experiences, good and bad. From trying questionable school lunches and struggling to remember what day number it is, to discovering lifelong friends and daydreaming in class, high school at Berks Catholic was a time to remember in more ways than one. Two of the most important things that stood out during my high school days were earning my Eagle Scout rank
I went into my freshman year of high school very insecure about my own potential. Never did I think that I had it in me to be one of the “smart kids”. Fortunately for me, I signed up for all the wrong classes and I was forced to go to a school (yes, McDevitt was not my choice but my parents) that had terrific, dedicated teachers that knew I was taking the wrong course and did something about it. Like in Th...
Tagg, John. “Why Learn? What We May Really Be Teaching Students.” About Campus. 2004. Print.
It is often said, that high school, prepares a student for college. For certain, a student is being prepared, but only for what the world has to offer, and that is making choices on what to pursue. Certainly, most people would concur with this statement. But, the fact to consider is, that high school does not prepare a student for the major difference in the challenge.
Imagine it is one’s first day in high school; erect in front of them are the entrance to their fresh school life, now once one opens those doors to their fresh school life, there must be, at minimum, thousands of questions and thoughts coming to their mind; what does one expect of themselves getting into a life such as this? Some of those beliefs may go along the lines of, “I hope I meet many of my friends this year.” “This school year is going to be subsequently much tougher than any of my school years I have ever been in before.” The list just goes on and on from there. I, too, also assumed as much my first day of high school, but was what I expected what I truly acquired?
Throughout Honors Philosophical Explorations, many of the readings and class discussions have transformed the way in which I think of philosophy as a subject, but more importantly how I apply it to my own life. At the onset of this course, I recognized that one’s life philosophy is in a constant state of tension. There are two factors that seem to be at odds with one another that play integral roles in shaping one’s life philosophy. These two factors are commitment to a stance and openness to new ideas. This commitment, by nature, is wholehearted and all-encompassing. If one is committed to a philosophy then it naturally is the lens that shades how we perceive the world around us. However our view of the world must not be so concrete that there
...at previously, sometimes in the midst of a discussion, people forget that there are two sides of a story and not everyone has to agree to yours. What we learn from our books or our studies is not what is necessarily important. What we learn from our peers and our professors is what’s important. Learning is more than absorbing fact, it is acquiring understanding, and it is being passionate about the material you are given. Each piece that we have read in class, and each comment that we make impacts a person no matter how little it seems. The education systems focuses too much about effective methods of teaching and not enough about effective methods of learning. However, this course felt like we were learning something instead trying to finish the curriculum. As Albert Einstein once said, “education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”.
“Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.” – Jim Rohn