Personal Mission Statement

Tuesday, 04 December 2007

Christmas Vacation-Yippee!

I am so glad that tomorrow is the last day of classes for us. I this has been the longest fastest semester yet (if that makes any sense) I feel like so much of my learning is unfinished and there isn't much closure for me like I usually have. We are halfway through a book in one of my classes and in another class, the teacher just had to cancel assignments due that we never got to.

I guess that the one thing that I have learned both as a student and a teacher is the importance of being flexible about things in life and in school. You never know what is going to come up and you need to be able to roll with the punches. I have decided that if you get bad grades in school, it doesn't mean that you are a bad person. Life will go on and you can only grow from the experience. I have grown like a weed this semester and I am truly looking forward to having a few weeks off to re-group and organize my life.

Thanks for the endless opportunities that all my learning experiences have given me and to the people in my life that have supported me throughout my learning endeavor. I am almost there!

posted by: uncmommee at 03:08 | link | comments |

Brown Bag Exams

One of the most awesomerific things that I learned this semester was how to give a brown bag exam to my students. I think that the idea was coined by my Professor Denise Ousley but I am not sure for certain. What you do is put an item in a brown lunch bag and give them out to each of your students. Each student will have something different in their bag. At the same time, all the students open their bags and start to make connections between their items and the book that they have read. I did this when I was teaching Pride and Prejudice and the students made connections that I have never even thought about. It is really intersting to see the littlest detail focused on and the best connections made from it. Try it sometime!

posted by: uncmommee at 02:57 | link | comments |

Reading Rainbow for Adults

When I was a child, I always enjoyed watching Reading Rainbow. Now that I am older, I wish that there could be a channel on the television that was like Reading Rainbow for adults. All that we have now are Oprah's book club and that is about it. As a teacher, I am going to assign my students an independent reading assignment in which they are going to have to give a brief summary of the book to the class. I think that once students are able to learn a little about a book, their interests are sparked and they are more inclined to read what they might find interesting.

posted by: uncmommee at 02:24 | link | comments |

Isn't It Sad

Isn't it sad that in order for people to sell things, books, clothing, houses, etc. the main strategy used it to make people feel as though their lives aren't complete because they dont have the things that they are selling? In order for them to be successful salesmen, they have to create a feeling of inadequacy for the everyday consumer. In doing so, people are encouraged to go further and further in debt thus making them feel more and more inadequate. And we wonder why pharmaceutical companies are a multi-billion dollar industry.

posted by: uncmommee at 02:14 | link | comments |

Real Moms Buy Clothes at Target and Walmart

To all the mommies out there just wanted to let you know that you can do it. When your day feels like it will never end, it will. You can rest your head on your pillow and find comfort in the fact that your hectic day will start again once you open your eyes at any given time during the night and if you are lucky, the morning. No day is ever the same. After all, once you have melted the bag of marshmallows on the toaster oven and accidentally dumped a bag of rice on the sticky mess, you know to be careful next time you turn that toaster oven on. You learn to beware of sticky and why real moms shop at Target and Walmart for their clothes.

To all the others out there who are not blessed with children yet, this burdensome challenge is the most rewarding experience of your life. You won' get paid for it monitarily, but the riches you obtain are endless. No matter how lousy you day, one little giggle will make everything go away!

posted by: uncmommee at 02:01 | link | comments |

My Lovely Paper

I just wanted to give a little update on the status of my paper. I am pretty bummed that I couldnt have had all semester to do this paper. It would have been nice to focus solely on my topic. I am writing about the media and how they have influenced the expectations of todays youth; primarily their sexual standards. I have found a lot of great information. I watched a couple of documentaries. One was titled, "The strength tp resist--media's impact on women and girls" I thought that was the most facinating thing I have seen in a long time. Everyone should watch it. It shows how the media dictates the male as having a macho attitued and the female looking frail and how advertisers make the consumers feel inadequate as a means to sell more even though they are ruining our self esteem.

Gloria Steinum recalls a comment at one of her speaking engagements made by a young lady saying, “I don’t look at beauty magazines, they make me feel ugly” (Strength to Resist). After being hailed as a feminist icon, Steinum agrees with her colleague Gail Dines in addressing that the aspect that Feminism gave women the courage to know that women have a right to take up space in this world. However, soon after the movement took place they way people defined themselves started to change. No longer did people chose to write as a primary means of communication, the importance of image gained strength in the awesome eighties. Advertising began to stress the skinny image through the use of supermodels thus undermining the feminist movement to take up space, replacing it with taking up the least amount of space as possible; thus fueling the popularity of eating disorders (Gail Dines Strength to Resist).

**Before you bash me on the posting, I suggest that you view the matterials for yourself--you know who you are!

posted by: uncmommee at 01:40 | link | comments |

I Heart Epictetus

The matterials that we have had to read for this class have been very insightful. The book that I loved the most was The Art of Living by Epictetus. I have made it a personal mission of mine to share with my students this ancient philosophy that is so insightful. As a teacher, everyday I am going to write some words of wisdom that are shared in this book. I had to make up a mock newsletter for my classroom and I put one of the quotes on it to share with my students and their parents. I just think that his messages have withstood the sands of time and they are still awesome. All except for the broken vessel one.

posted by: uncmommee at 01:08 | link | comments |

Success

Hello all,

I am currently taking a success rhetoric class and I just thought that I would give a little insight about how the class is going. I am really glad that I took this class and I think, deep down, that this was a great semester to have taken it. I have taken on way too much this semester in order to achieve one of the biggest goals that I have set for myself in life; graduation from a universtiy. This semester has been a trying one for me but I see that I am successful for me. I know that is probably not gramatically correct, but I know what it means.

In this crazy world that we live in, I think that it is hard for us to get wrapped up in the "poor me" state of mind. Lately I have been feelilng bad about myself because I am almost twenty seven and I still pay rent. I had to re-evaluate things and see that there are people that go their whole lives and never own their own house.

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