KId in red shoes

What Jeff in Duncanville ,Texas did in class was heroic act; he stood up and told the teacher that she was not teaching and none of the students weren't learning,and that is not right. She told him to leave.His fellow classmates and students across the nation should be proud of him. When i saw the video in class , i was speechless for few minutes, and eventually i said to myself "What a brave act" , he stood up for himself and as well other students. He was motivated to learn, but the teacher was irresponsible and unprofessional and didn't care about what he had to say.
When he said, "We are the future of this nation " he was referring to the young student like himself. He told her that she was just there to collect paycheck as she has mentioned in class earlier .How can the teaching process be? I believe what Jeff did in the class room is awake up call for schools in the nation .But it is up to us students to stand in solidarity with jeff ,let our voices be heard and get the broken educational system get fixed.
Students are tested either quarterly or per semester on what they have learned in class.Thus far they are graded based on what they have learned not on whether a teacher has taught in class or not. My question is, Is there any kind of measurement to check if a teacher has properly taught in class or not? There is no evaluation done once teachers get tenure; they are set for life unless they are stupid enough ; like the history teacher in the video, who admitted that she didn't care about teaching and was just there for the paycheck.
Jeff`s experience in high school is sometimes true in community college and in higher education system .My personal  experience of this at Chabot was that, i had a professor who kept on complaining in class all the time about the students lack of knowledge and kept on giving assignment after assignment with out explaining why we were doing them and how to do them. In class he would give us problems to solve,but when we asked him how to do them , he  would just say , "How come you are here with out knowing this?" This might have been appropriate if he had been teaching at UC Berkeley, but at community college there are all levels of knowledge and many people are just beginners at college level. Thus we faced difficulties in  surviving the class which was more of self teaching. If the professor had been professional and taught the subject matter,we wouldn't have had so much difficulties learning in the class. If there had been evaluational process in place while at the college the irresponsible acts of the professor could have been stopped.

I wish that one of us had had the courage to do what jeff did,may be it would have changed how the professor.

Response to In to the Wilds

Christopher McCandless  was a very educated and passionate young men but it seemed that he was not happy about the rules and regulations of society and the school systems. He thought that civilization is like a poison to the truth . He was really against possessions of material things and before he made his journey to Alaska into the Wilds, he gave up his family,his car,his lifetime savings and his credit cards because he felt he belonged into the wilds rather than the city life.He enjoyed the physical work of survival in the wilds,and didn't want to sit behind all day.
It is sometimes difficult as  chris`s  young age  to know what once passion is let alone to get out and follow it,i admire what he did however chris had courage to chase his passion, he went to the extremes and scarified his life.Had he been more cautious and prepared with basic survival skills ,hiking gear and road maps, he would have been a living Legend and to been able to share his experiences.It`s great to follow your passion, but deliberate ignorance and lack of skill are not admirable.

Chris seemed to also have content for higher education. If chris had been as determined in his education as he was in his passion for nature and combined his education and his passion he would have succeeded in accomplishing his passion .For example ,he could have been a field researcher who studied animals in the wild and published his studies, he could have been a park ranger or entered many other professions that would have allowed him to live in nature.
Viewed from another prospective:
Chris was a spoiled and privileged person , he was provided with education ,materialistic support. He did n`t value and appreciate what society and his family offered him , he rejected it because he thought society and family were interfering with his passion. I understand his passion for mother nature because it is part of me as well.  But i will feel more proud of myself if i earn a higher education and i feel like i have earn the privileges i was given.Unfortunately chris didn't respect the fact that his parents worked hard to give him a comfortable middle class and a higher education.Instead he had contempt for his parents , especially his father , but his father had achieved more than chris did.

Deal Brakers

There are many deal breakers for people when it comes to college: My personal philosophy is that if i start something, no matter what i have to finish it , i will not have room for failure.
Issues that i faced while at chabot : I strongly believe that some of the professors at Chabot college have been here too long and it seems they have lost the passion for their subject or didn't have passion in the first place.  Including professor McFarland there are very passionate and helpful professors whose goal are  students success.When i first taking classes i was working full time and taking one class per semester; after a couple of semesters i decided to quit my job and become full time student. Unfortunately the professor of my class in Human Anatomy doesn't have passion she seems to be here to collect pay check . What a shame. The subject itself is pretty interesting and difficult in addition the student don't get the help they need. But soon enough before the drop off date i decided to drop this class and focus on the other class i had signed up for. It worked out perfect but in this process i learn that the first few days of class are critical in getting to know whether i have connection with the teaching method of the professor or not . It is even better to go to WWW.rate to evaluate  my professor before signing on to the class and read what students say about him/her..Even though there is biased information checking the web Page is helpful.

The other deal breaker i had were the counselors : My expectation of a counselors is that he/she guides you shows you the path you want to go ,and help you explore, in other words helps you think outside of the box. However, that is not what i experienced with most of the counselors here at chabot. With due to respect i sometimes don't see the difference between going to a counselor and car dealership sales persons because they both tell you this is what is available, take it or leave it. They don't even give you the opportunity to discuss what is on your mind ,Just like  Karina said in the passion project, "What `s that thing called when you put things on machines and it is just going like that  an assembly line...so you are going through these classes to get on the same type of assembly like". It seems if you don't follow the assembly line you are not going to get the end product."Which in college is a degree" ,the counselors treat you the same way, like you are just a mechanical part of  process.

Andrade video Response

In the video Andrade starts with the Philosophy of life his mother once told him as a child as one can see the same glass half full or half empty .How you choose to answer the question is how you lead your life. This statement conveys strong message, that it is actually our perceptions that control our satisfaction nerve in our brains, that tells whether we believes our lives are full, or empty. The moral of the story is that it is up to each individual  which perspective he/she want to take. As the video continuances he talks about the role of bad influences that affect the minds of the young children in a place like East Oakland. It is human nature to live and learn from what is around us , when young children grow up in the neighborhood like in East Oakland they learn a criminal life style where killing one another  because that is what society taught them as children. Many drops out of school very young and join gangs.
He reminds me of the old saying that what you plant as a seed is what you grow as a plant. The seed represents the young kid and the plant represents the adult. The only way you can grow plants and expect them to grow and become fruitful is if you nurture it with proper soil,water and fertilizer; the same principles apply to young kids if you expect them to become responsible adults it is society`s responsibility to provide them with a good educational system,sports activity and a good social environment.That help them develop physically and mentally as better citizens. But in Oakland the young are fed everyday with crime,robbery and hate and when they grow as an adults many reflect that.
The three questions that i have are:
1) When are they going to clean thecrime in East oakland and especially end the killing.

2)Howcome Piedemont is a safer city and East Oakland is not and what does this imply about our elected leaders?
3) What is the history of crime and reasons for it in East Oakland.

Some of the reasons why students drop out of college

Lack of financing, some of the students many not qualify for Financial aid grants because their parents make middle class salaries and as  a result the students don't fulfill financial aid criteria. Once that happens the other option the student have is either to apply for student loans or get a job and work and go to school at the same time.If a student chooses to get  a student loan to pay for tuition fees and very expensive books and continue his/her education,the inters rate is so high the student keep on accumulating mountains of high debt. As school progresses students become stressed and their performances decline, and by the time mid-term approaches, many make harsh decision to drop out of college. If students decide to work,most of the time he/she get a job is at minimum wages where the boss is not lenient in students having to take an occasional day off to study for a test.Students are thus faced with the dilemma of either to reporting to work or getting fired or not going to work and studying for the test whichever choice the student makes,his/her academic performance is affected one way or the other; this can lead to dropping out of college.

Response to the relationship between Passion and privilege

Being born into a life of economic and social privilege can kill your passion because everything is too easy and you don't develop a burning passion to accomplish due to some lack  in your life.For example,sometimes being extremely poor creates a great passion for achievement in some field to overcompensate for lacks felt as a child and teenage. Burning  passion  for learning can be fostered by a life of privilege.

Passion movie response

The passion movie speaks to me in three ways:
First it reminds me of when i came to chabot college from my experience i learned it is OK to be afraid or undecided major as long as you don't lose track of the necessary decision; there is nothing wrong with exploring different fields.
The second influence is influence of family and friends  i remember that my father`s expectation of me was that to follow his footsteps and become business man like him, but my idea was to explore what is out there .After being here at chabot for a while , i have realized that i am leaning towards the health care field .Arts and literature were interesting, and i learned a lot but i don't think i want to make them into carrier.
The Third influence :Media  try to influence the students telling the students what is best for them based on the norm for example in the movie Andrew had a passion to become an architecture, but then he saw statics on yahoo where it says things like  "Oh 1st degree not to get in college is an architectural degree: there is 12% unemployment rate" This is perfect example of the role of media in trying to make students fearful and convince them that if they don't listen to the media tells them they may fail. In reality we sometimes learn things the easy way and sometimes the hard way, but the key is to learn from our mistake and move forward.