Monday, November 26, 2012

ALEKS?


  Pewaukee School District has a pretty unique take on learning. Why do I think that you may ask? Well everything middle and high school students do is on the computer. We are each given out own laptop to write essays on, learn Spanish on, and even communicate with teachers on. But the most relevant reason for our laptops, is ALEKS, the math learning program that is entirely online, leaving students to learn every topic on their own without a teacher teaching it to them. With ALEKS no teacher is necessary, the only things you really need are a computer, and the ability to read the explanations that are given for each topic. That is the entire point of ALEKS, to learn math independently, and (supposedly) more efficiently.  Therefore shouldn't it stay that way?

    Every Monday, the math pupils of Asa Clark are forced to participate in Focus Monday. Their purpose is to get us to "focus" hence the cleverly thought out name. But in my eyes, and in the eyes of several of my classmates for that matter, it should be renamed "A day to waste on a pointless activity, so that you feel as if we're actually teaching you." You see, us math students can use all of the time on ALEKS that we can get. When you're expected to teach yourself an entire course worth of math within a single school year, you don't really want to have silly interruptions like that. Mondays usually go something like  this: Start by finding a good spot by your friends, next talk the entire class period, finally copy down what the teacher has written on the board and turn your paper in! Easy and pointless all in one! There are many other interruptions as well such as emails home to our parents and ILP learning plans that we have to type out and keep track of, and instruction, where a teacher teaches you a topic in a completely different way, in twice the time it would take you to learn it yourself. As an ALEKS user, I simply want to make the most of my math time, but the teachers don't seem to agree with me.

     A typical day in math class starts with something called a daily warm-up, and it is eerily similar to Focus Monday. It has the same format: Come in, sit by your friends, pull out a piece of paper and copy what it says on the board. The worst part about these daily warm-ups, is the fact that they somehow take up 20-30 minutes of time. Don't we already waste an entire day on this same thing? How focused do we really need our minds to be? If anyone actually pays attention to the content of daily warm-ups, they would find questions such as "How many sides on a (insert name of polygon)?" Another big one is numbers that appear the same written backwards, or sometimes even upside down! Why are we wasting valuable ALEKS time on such things?

     Overall if it were up to me, our math curriculum would be more focused on actually using the learning program that we have invested in. There is no point in the ALEKS program if we can hardly work on it, and instead must work on a bunch of other activities.  The program is all about independent learning, not "focusing" and "collaboration." So what is the point of forcing such things on us?

Mistakes


   (Authors Note: This is my character analysis essay. I am doing it on Richard Parker from Life of Pi)

      If you're human, you've made a mistake in your life. It's simply a factual statement when someone says that nobody is perfect, because in reality that is the truest statement one can make. People mess up on a daily basis, on both small and large matters. For example you may have gotten a question wrong on an important test, or made a mistake during basketball tryouts, resulting in your placement on the second team.  In truth you'll probably be over it in a few weeks. Pi Patel's mistakes on the other hand can not be taken so lightly, in fact they alter his entire life forever.

    When poor Pi ends up on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, he has but one companion and that is a 450 pound Bengal Tiger that goes by the name of Richard Parker. Unfortunately for Pi, Richard is a not just a 450 pound big cat, but a 450 pound man eating beast as well. Richard Parker's need for raw meat is sickening, yet it also proves to be helpful in the most unexpected of ways. Providing food for Richard Parker gives Pi something to work at, and eventually Pi becomes so wrapped up in feeding the two of them, that he almost forgets his situation and is able to form a strange attachment to his tiger friend. Think about it, if you provided for another living being for that long, wouldn't you become attached to it as well? The tiger becomes a way out for Pi, something to focus on other than the loss of his family and their future together in Canada. If it wasn't for Richard Parker, Pi just might not have made it off of that boat alive.

     Towards the end of the novel we find out something that not only changes the entire course of the story, but Richard Parker as a character. When Pi is being questioned about his experience he tells two stories, one with animals as the characters, and one with people to replace the animals. These stories are eerily similar, because in both of them the animals and people match up to one another. The even creepier part is that Pi is the person that replaces Richard Parker, who kills multiple people and things throughout the course of the story. Does that necessarily mean that the entire story Pi has been telling is a work of fiction, and that in reality he is a murderer? Not exactly. But Pi is Hindu, who sees most animals as sacred, and is a devoted vegetarian. But that is exactly why Richard Parker isn't real. Pi could not face the vital mistakes he made against his morals and religion, so he decided to cover it up with an intricate lie.

    As an animal, Richard Parker was a creature who hungered for fresh meat. It was like an addiction, and it turned him wild. Alone on a lifeboat Pi figuratively became that tiger. His only companion was his need to kill and devour, at one point in the book after killing a turtle and ripping it's shell off he begins  to see the still alive turtle as a gourmet soup. This lust for murder kept him occupied as well. He quotes "feeding Richard Parker helped me to almost forget my situation." The entire time he is on the lifeboat, Pi's main focus was feeding his carnivorous side. Strangely enough though, as soon as he acquires land Pi loses all traces of the tiger, in fact he doesn't even think twice about it. As a character, Richard Parker was nothing more than a mere figment of Pi's imagination. A figment that Pi wanted to rid himself off immediately. 

     Unlike most mistakes, murder is one that cannot be undone. One that cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Especially in Pi's case, where it ways so heavily against his religion. This murder was in fact so gruesome, that not even the interviewers (who had several doubts about Pi's first story) could swallow it. They chose to believe the unrealistic animal story, over the legitimate one. Humans may not be the most flawless beings, one thing they can do though is suppress their mistakes.

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

The Alarm


  The sound of her alarm is possibly the most degrading thing she has ever heard. It means another never ending day at school. It means finding an outfit in the morning to accommodate her current situation. It means an entire day of looking over her shoulder, refusing to go anywhere by herself, for fear of running into Him. She has come to hate the sound of her alarm. He doesn't stop at raising angry welts on her face and arms, for His complete satisfaction He must also manipulate her, play games with her that she has no way of winning. Games only He can win. Because of Him she is living one of the most unhealthy lives possible. Domestic abuse is often overlooked by other, more "important" issues, when really it is one of the most severe problems that has arisen in today's society.

     Domestic abuse usually occurs when one member of the relationship decides they need to have the upper hand on the other member. In her case, it is simply because He cannot stand the feeling of weakness. Like most boys, He often would compete with his friends to see who could bench the most, who could be the best on the football team, etc. And when this girl that he knew he loved popped into his already chaotic personal life, He could not let her take over. So he resorted to violence. Of course there are many other reasons this occurs as well, people could be overly possessive and not allow their partners to have friends that are of the opposite gender, they could be using their significant other for physical  favors and see them as nothing except that, or they could even believe that men and women are unequal. In reality more people than you realize are being violently abused, and the signs are everywhere. For example victims will become very conscious of their body at all times, the way they walk to and sit at their desk seems almost planned and mechanical. Also they seem to know every injury on their body and the elaborate cover up behind it. Less obvious signs is that they will flinch at almost anything that comes their way, even something as small as somebody flipping their hair over their shoulder. But the most painful part of domestic violence? The fact that the person that is hurting you, is the person that said they never would.

     Unfortunately abuse in relationships does not stop there. In some cases, like the case of our friend , there is physiological abuse involved as well. This type of abuse is very different from violence, but the effects are just as bad. For example, she has a very low self esteem, and her self confidence is basically nonexistent. It is even hard for her to answer a question in class. This may be have something to do with the fact that He is constantly reminding her that she has no redeeming qualities, or maybe it's because He makes it a point to greet every girl in the hallway but her. Those are not the only things that occur during this type of abuse though.  In severe cases the victim may have to follow a set of rules that the abuser has enforced, such as who they can and can't talk to, what they can and can't wear, and what  they choose to do with their time.  Oftentimes people overlook this aspect of the abuse, but overall this also plays a big part in the outcome.

     For her, the scariest part of the entire relationship is the changes. When she looks at Him she still sees the little boy who has liked her since 5th grade. She still hears Him calling her his angel, and she still feels his arms around her when he would dry her tears instead of create them. And because of this she can't let go. She doesn't know if he even cares about her at all anymore, all she knows is that she needs to move on from the past. But she is too afraid to.