Best of Week: Structures

I never think about what I’ve actually learned over the course of a week or even a day. But something I never thought about before was how much of a difference it makes when you figure out the structure of a book that you’re reading. Talking about how Marianne Wiggins structures her book; I think it would help a lot of students when reading and comprehending the book at the same time because most of the books we read in school are often hard to follow.

If you actually focus on how an author sets up a book it changes the whole meaning of the book and the way you understand it. For example In the things they carried by Tim O’Brien he tell us multiple stories to make up his novel.  The reason he does this is because he is trying to express to us how going to Vietnam really was for him and his troops. By him telling us different stories from different points of view; it allows us to gain deeper thoughts and connections to the text. This is very smart because by the end of the book all the short storied make up one whole novel and all of a sudden it isn’t just short stories it’s a whole.

There are different ways to go about this. One being the way Tim O’Brien did, or the way Marianne Wiggins has so far in her book The Shadow Catcher.  She uses a different technique; she uses a “shadowing” technique being the essay at the beginning can relate to the whole book and the chapters “Take Fountain” and “Reds” help set up more background and details for the reader to fall back on when confused. Another thing she does is she showed us her narrative self, character self, and now we get to see other characters like Edward and Carla. This enables us to gain deeper thoughts and connections to the book.

If teachers always took the time to help lay out the structure of the book with the students I think that the students would understand the book and maybe think the book is more pleasing to read. I can back that up from my experience because I know that in some books we read like In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez it was very hard for me to understand who was talking when; because all the characters talk the same and the tone never really change drastically like it did in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Over all take the time and look deeper into how the author is trying to set up the book because they do this for a reason so it is of big importance to the book itself.       

Connection: Convergent and Divergent thinking

In Mr. Allen’s humanities class we read an article called The Creativity Crisis. This article discussed how schools now a day’s don’t focus on creative learning or convergent and divergent thinking. The author gave one example that stuck out to me. The example was how a school gave a class a prompt and they had to figure out how to solve it using both types of thinking. The prompt was how they could reduce the noise in the library.  This prompt got the kids thinking out of the box because there wasn’t an exact answer they were looking for .Then this school took the state achievement exam as other schools did in the state and the school that did the project got higher test scores. This is because this project got the kids thinking outside of the box because there was no exact answer. This plays a big role in how schools are today around the world.

Schools in America a lot like Glenbrook South, have a curriculum that’s focus is on a specific grading system and having higher test scores. What schools in America don’t realize is that because of what their main focus is they unconsciously warp the students in the always needing an A+ or 100% and to always thinking there is one correct answer. Even though those are important things this draws away from the focus of using convergent and divergent thinking together. A lot of teachers don’t encourage their students to think out of the box or use divergent thinking; because of this it sets a routine that students always have to follow.

In other countries the focus is different; a lot like that school that did the project. Other countries like China focus on the arts and the creativity in learning as well as the correct and straight forward was of thinking. The schools there realize how important it is for the students to constantly use both types of thinking because that only makes the students smarter and gets their brains thinking outside of looking for “the right answer”. These schools encourage the students to take risks in learning which in the end makes the more successful as a person.

Although, convergent and divergent thinking works in other countries it is hard for American schools to change. The school systems wouldn’t be the hardest thing it would be trying to break the habits and desires of needing 100%’s and always getting the correct answer.  This has happened in a class at Glenbrook South. In Mr. Allen’s humanities class he changed up the grading system into his own where kids can only get 95, 85, 75, and 65 percent and so on.  This really threw the students for a twirl, the first question asked was, “How can I get a 100%?” the answer was simply you can’t. Many students didn’t like that but what they did like was that you can’t get a 60 percent or even a 70 percent. Another component to Mr. Allen’s class is that he gives the students assignments that aren’t graded for a percentage but graded to give the students feedback. This gives the kids flexibility with trying new ideas and ways of thinking but also learning to use both convergent and divergent thinking together without being punished. On the other hand it is hard for the students to loosen up and think out of the box because they aren’t used to doing that because it hasn’t always been accepted. But Mr. Allen does a great job at encouraging his students to take risks and to try and be creative.

The schools in America should try and make both convergent and divergent thinking more a focus in their curriculum like other school around the world do; because it would only help the students in the long run be more successful. It goes back to The Big Shaggy; in our societies we need and have the irrational side of humans which needs humanities to explain that for us. So having a good sense of using both convergent thinking and divergent thinking will make not only people themselves but the world as a whole a more successful place.  

what if?: Our World

This week in class we discussed the poem “The Angels” by John Updike. This poem goes in depth about composers, artists, and writers and how without them our world would be something so simple and boring. These angels are our guardians protecting us from a world of dullness. Mr. Allen referred to it as “cinder blocks and uncomfortable desks”; if it were up to him we would have a class room with couches, a full kitchen, awesome lighting and even a fire place. But that is only thinking in terms of a classroom, what if the world was made up of the most simplest, colorless and emotionless  things?

Now imagine no existence of: Mozart, Bach, Scarlatti, Handel and Brahms as mentioned in the poem.  Without these angels take a second and think of the world. The world would be the complete opposite as today. Our cities would be full of rectangle buildings; there would be no incredible unique architecture. Our environment would be nothing but grass, deserts and water. The fun in exploring would be taken away from hikers. The amusement of shapes and sizes would go back to its simplest form. Our world would become dull and harsh.

What if we then took all those things and made them colorless? An average person normally doesn’t pay much attention to how important color actually is. But if you took color away our eyes would turn on us because our eyes rely on color and change. We like to see a change in the way things appear to us; we like to see differences with in one object. Our life then turned into a sheet of paper, simple and colorless. Our world would contain a loss a perception.

Feel the emotion you would feel when living in a world so dull. There is not even an emotion you can grasp because living in a world of rectangles, same shapes and sizes and then no color leaves us with no room to express ourselves. The feelings of love, hate, fear, sadness, happiness would be gone. Our world would become a “Plane of silent compromise”.

Grasping a quick feel of how life would be without structure, color and emotion everything in life would be corrupt. Everybody should take a moment and welcome these guardians into their life to prevent dullness. Our world needs complexity, rainbows and expression to become a place like heaven where these angels are today.