Coming Full Circle
Roger Sale, a former professor at the University of Washington says, "I can't know what I want until I see something I like." This is said in response to the common question asked by students, "What do you want our papers to be about?" Hearing this must get tiresome for teachers as well as students. Sale, in his essay on "The Relationships Struck Between Writer and Reader, Reader and Writer, Student and Teacher, Teacher and Student", suggests not telling the student exactly what is wanted, to be flexible and "suggest to all students that what is important is what they think, not what the teacher thinks." Over the years I've found that teachers and students go through stages in the education process in what they want to hear and what they like. Throughout this process students learn that not all teachers have the quality of being flexible, and often wonder "Does it matter what I think?" I think and certainly hope the stages come full circle.
When we were young and learning to write it seemed that each sentence was an accomplishment, something to be proud of. In elementary school our teachers encouraged creativity. Writing was fun, not a chore. It seemed we could write about anything and our teacher would write "Very Good!", stick a red star on our page and encourage more.
In fifth grade I wrote a poem on the color brown. I have no idea where the source for this poem came from and I wish I could remember what others wrote. Did we have to write about a color, specifically brown? Probably not. I do like this color but why not pink? My poem is absolutely morbid! To this day I am chastised about it. Leave it to Mom to put it in a scrapbook for my entire graduation party to read.
Following is a sample of "Brown."
Brown I need you
I'll give you my dead animal for all you have
Brown I need you
How ridiculous! Who ever heard of a fifth grader writing so passionately, yet morbidly about a color? Know what? My teacher claimed he liked it! Maybe he feared my morbidity. At any rate I continued to write and enjoy doing so. There seemed to be little or no boundaries in elementary school. My teachers were always flexible and encouraging; they seemed to care what I thought.
There comes a time in junior high when teachers don't encourage creativity and individuality.
In the article, “Understanding Writing Assignments: Tips and Techniques,” author Dan Melzer shares with his audience seven useful suggestions to keep in mind when starting any writing assignment. Melzer’s first tips are for readers to examine their rubrics for any key verbs that will tell writers what approach and genre their paper should have. Knowing what kind of writing your teacher wants will not only help a writer get started, it will also inform a writer what they can research to view examples. Next, he tells his readers to write for their specific audience, to make sure they know their teacher’s expectations, and to take into account what they have learned in class. In these sections, Melzer stresses the importance of asking a teacher
...inues to inspire writers and children across the globe to continue their love for reading and writing no matter the circumstances or obstacles they may face in life (Zietman).
In the essay, “Other Voices, Other Rooms” from Inquiry to Academic Writing, Gerald Graff argues that students learn things differently from class to class and are not taught to use information from one class in another. This is a problem especially in higher education today because there is such a large gap from professor to professor. Although the disagreement from one subject to the next may seem like a problem to some, if there were no disagreements, nothing would be worth learning. While these problems may occur, they are essential in the evolvement of education. Without these disagreements there would not be any search for more information to solve the problems. Also, students would not be motivated to continue to learn. The disagreements between the two are what seem to confuse students, but what confuses them more is how the education system is set up. Students must learn to make
The world has died, and society has gone with it. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a father and his son are some of the only survivors left after a deadly cataclysm has struck the Earth. Most are dead. The only survivors have lost all of their moral and societal beliefs. It is kill or be killed now. Cannibals and murderers are abundant, but the father does not want his son to only experience this world. Born after the world’s end, the son has never seen the beauty of life. All he has known is death. The father tries to have a “normal” life with his son, whatever normal is in this new world. Cormac McCarthy is able to use varying structures to beautifully portray this element of Safety vs Terror, through his lack of names, sentence fragments,
They must form lessons that should aid students in understanding composition, definitions, transition words, and symbolism. There is no denying the significance these lectures bring; however, for some students, it is not enough to repetitively apply the mentioned rules to discussions they find disinterest in, deciding for themselves unwilling to participate in the conversation teachers beg for students to join. As mentioned, Fish proclaims that to diverge from teaching subject matter any other way that is not specifically academic, deviates too much and distracts from the correct process of intellectual thought. In his The New York Times piece, "What Should Colleges Teach?", Fish states his stance expressing one must "teach the subject matter" alone and not to "adulterate it with substitutes". He continues praising "the virtue of imitation," asking students to "reproduce [great author's] forms with a different content". Already, Fish demands from students derivative mimicry in which they must glean an understanding of another's process. I echo Fish's own question: "How can [one] maintain... that there is only one way to teach writing?" As students, we desire to express ourselves, and to follow the principles Fish speaks of, to "[repeat] over and over again in the same stylized motions", confines us from discovering the beauty and potential writing can bring. Rather, students are taught we must so closely follow fastidious rules and decorative wording, teaching English may as well, as Fish writes, "make students fear that they are walking through a minefield of error," and to use such a method makes students believe to write any other way will cause them to "step on something that will wound them", the odds of students learning anything are diminished (Stanley Fish, "What Should
Relevance: For years the Bermuda Triangle has been one of the biggest mysteries of our time and it is important to be informed on why and what happens in this area.
They must find Artemis before the winter solstice because the Olympians have a Council meeting and she is always one who is a voice of reason. Percy sneaks along the trip while riding a Pegasus sent to him by Poseidon named Blackjack. He is dropped off with the rest of the gang in Washington, D.C., and reveals that he snuck along. The hunters are angry with him, but accept his help and they travel west to San Francisco, defeating a few monsters along the way, but losing Bianca to death in battle. The group gets stranded in San Francisco with no ride and go to Annabeth’s father’s house to get his car to drive to Mount Othrys to save Artemis and
On the seventh year, Orion and Artemis set up camp in the forest. Artemis left to gather some wood for the fire. Orion saw an old man wandering through the forest in her absence. He welcomed him to wait with him for Artemis to get back with the wood. However, Orion had no idea that the man was a Hellhound in disguise! The giant dog leapt upon, just as Artemis returned. Artemis saw the hellhound, and knew that there was no way to save Orion without going to desperate measures. Artemis asked Zeus to place Orion in the sky, so that he could live on, fighting and hunting in the
The first perception is Captain Ahab who madly struggles with the power of nature at war with him in the individual of Moby Dick. Through Ahab’s lenses, he is “by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea” (Melville 125). He is solely dedicated to nature, and is trying to alter it by capturing the whale. The whale “is a mammiferous animal,” not one that an individual can take revenge on as if it is a human being (Melville 8). Being overly obsessed with the whale, the audience is made aware of Ahab’s “monomaniac thought of his soul” (Melville 166). The thought of trying to have complete revenge on the whale was consuming his mind. He is struggling with nature day by day, and “almost every night some pencil marks
There are many theories about the Bermuda Triangle. One main theory is the North Atlantic Gyre. This gyre has a strong current and goes in a circular movement. If a ship goes down it won’t sink straight down, it will be pushed along by the water. This could be why they never find the missing boats, planes and people; but it doesn’t explain why their equipment stops working (Surface Ocean Currents).
The Bermuda Triangle is blamed for many disappearances. Everything from boats, to planes, to famous individuals. Anything that passes through this zone and was never heard from again is usually said to have been engulfed by the Bermuda Triangle.
First of all learning is the key to moving forward your education. If you allow yourself to learn, you will further your ideas and spark more creativity which produces unique and original work. Teachers crave original work because it reveals auntincity and credibility from the writer. One of the hardest parts of teaching is getting a student to learn a teacher’s specific
Have you ever heard of the Bermuda triangle before? Maybe you’ve heard some stories that might suggest it may be something alien controlling the unusually high rate of airplane and boat crashes in the area. The Bermuda triangle is somewhat of a mythical area in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Many people believe that this area has a paranormal or extraterrestrial side to it, do to the unusually high crash rate. But others believe that its just a coincidence.
My history teacher used to give me every day after class a summary of everything he talked about translated in Spanish. Luckily, I made a friend in my English as a Second Language (ESL) class, she was from the DR as well but unlike me she knew a little bit of English. She helped me at lot with school work, communicating with people, and even understanding the reasons why some people gave me weird looks. I always loved colorful things, so my book bag had like a rainbow of colors. So, this one day we were sitting in the lunchroom when these girls sitting beside us were talking about me and I did not even know what was going on. So my friend said to me, Jennifer, they are talking about you, they are saying you are lesbian because of the colors of your book bag. I was so shocked. I could not believe colors could define your sexual orientation. Who would have thought that because of my book bag I probably had half of the school thinking I was gay? This was new to me and I did not think it was fair but still I went and got a new book bag because I did not want to be seen that way, I wanted to fit
The Bermuda triangle is a place that boggles many scientists even in this day and age. The Bermuda Triangle, referred to by some as the Devil's Triangle, is in a western region of the North Atlantic Ocean where countless aircraft, ships and people have inexplicably disappeared. Throughout the years of 1955 and 1975 more than 428 vessels disappeared, along with 100 ships and 1000 lives (Obringer1). Where did these people and ships disappear off too and how come no remains were found is the mysterious question people yearn to find out. Back in the 1964, the Bermuda triangle was often nicknamed as The Devil's Islands, because sea travelers could hear various different screeching noises coming off the shores (Obringer1). The Bermuda Triangle is a whirl pool of mysterious occurrences where things have magically disappeared without any remains and no matter how many theories scientists come up with to solve the mysteries of this enchanted island, none come close to having answers for any incident that occurred on this island.