Success

How do you define success?

I find this quote very truthful; you will never experience success if you don't change something you do daily because in order to experience success you have to experience a change in your life. Success doesn't come to us, we have to go and get it. We can't let success pass by or we will miss it, we have to take action. The first step to success is to start, make the first step. Also, having self confidence in you is the first secret to success. If you don't have self-confidence in yourself than it is hard to believe in yourself and it is extremely hard to make any changes in your life without confidence. Also, success means to have passion. Without passion there is no real success, you have to have passion in accomplishing your ultimate goal otherwise you won't be able to experience success. It takes a lot of work to have passion and it takes a lot of passion to experience success.

 2. What helps you succeed in your community? What prevents your success? You can use the following list to get started, but if an important part of your life is not represented here please incorporate it into your response. 1. Family 2. Religion/Culture 3. Crime 4. Hunger 5. Transportation 6. Personal 7. Money What helps me succeed in my community is serving. If you can't make time to serve your community than that is not fully accomplishing success because success often requires teamwork and helping others not just us, individually. another quality that helps me succeed is perseverance, I don't give up whenever I fall, I get up and keep on trying because whenever there is success around the corner, there are failures along the way too. Another quality that helps me succeed in my community is hope. Whenever there is hope, there is light and willingness to achieve whatever is necessary. Staying hopeful attracts positive energy in your environment and this results in leading to success. Also, I have a vision of where I see myself in the future or where I would like to be. The more I envision my goals, the easier it gets to plan, accomplish and succeed in my goals. 

Duncaville tx

High School Student stand up to teacher!

Revolutionary

Jeff is a high student who did a Great job on standing up to her teacher. This kid got so much attention from the media and the community that he started bringing this issue of lazy teacher just overwhelming students with work and not helping. It is really rare to find somebody that will stand up to a teacher on what they believe, especially in front of the class. She seems pretty lazy as well, sitting on the chair and just handing big packages of work. She definitely shouldn't make those comments about her page check. This is not how students learn to have passion about a subject instead it turns them off. The teacher has the responsibility to show leadership and passion on his job, Student and most of us learn by example not by lack of leadership and motivation. 

How can we please and get the most out of future students in the education system?

We could form meetings in each district and do a study where we interview students and their favorite teachers for help. We could study what they like about their favorite teachers, what motivates them to do the work in their classes and what moves them to take an interest in difficult subjects, what qualities do students want in our teachers? All this kind of questions will give us a bigger insight on how students learn but the problem is that no one really seems to have an interest on how students learn. Our leaders just like to follow the traditional education system that makes learning difficult and most of the time boring.

Into the Wild

Summary

The Book INTO THE WILD is the story of a young man named Chris McCandless's that hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. Mckinley. Before heading north to Alaska he gave $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. He survived for four months and his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. He came from a well-to-do family and he was trying to run away from societal and parental expectations. He wanted freedom from the material world and societal norms and in the wild he felt free. In his journey when he came back from Mexico, and he was in the city, he saw superficial things. He saw buildings and high rises, where mountains and open skies should have been. He felt claustrophobic with the noises of the city, honking of cars and machines, people sitting outside of cafes,etc. Instead, he enjoy the freedom of living in the wilderness.  

  How do you think this book can intersect with the direction we are going in our class: education, passion, equity/privilege, race / class? You should explore this in writing (3 ways the book can intersect)

I love this book and the movie is even better, I've heard of the book into the wild before but this is the first time i read and watch the movie. The way this book intersects with the direction of the class is that we have been trying to encourage the class to follow our passions no matter what race and class we find ourselves in. In order to execute passion we will often have to face the reality that we might have to live in poverty and it is a privilege to follow our passion because not everyone is able to. 

Also, it is easier to follow your passion when you come from a middle class family and have plenty of resources but to follow your Passions while you lack resources it just takes true passion and desire which it is so much more credible due to all the obstacles that you have to encounter on the way. Chris was willing to leave everything he owned which took great courage, however, it was a smart move to have a backup plan to get his education first in case he got tire of living without in the wilderness. 

Andrade video

Andrade video   

I think that he is doing something that most people are not doing. He is trying to bring change in our community, even though he is already pretty successful in his personal life. Pretty often, what happen is that whenever we are successful or accomplish success in our personal lives, we tend to move to the better areas and live your pass behind but he is not moving on, he is not forgetting about his community and he is trying to bring attention so we could do something about it. He shows by his actions that he really cares about his community at heart. We definitely need more leaders like him in our community. We need to build them by mentoring our youth and being great parents so we prevent PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) on our future generations. He also said that we have more youth we PTSD now a days in His community than Veterans coming back home from Iraq. This is a pretty astonishing fact. The amount of pressure and stress that our youth must be going through, it must very high. 

It is very easy to point the finger and judge our youth by asking why are they so violent to one another when the individual making the judgment grew up with both of their parents, nice communities and without really experiencing violence. Also, when an individual grows up without any money preoccupation, with food always in their table. I've met people that grew up with their parents and people that grew up without a stable home and come from rough places. The mentality and views of life from young people that grew up fairly nice lives is very different. The way they handle stress is so much more positive, and they are not usually as stressed while the ones coming from rough areas are usually more negative towards life and they don't tend to trust the education systems

When did he started this kind of work?

How did he started this kind of work?

What is Andrade's background?

How can we start forming more leaders in our communities like him?

Passion Project

passion project video
 Passion Project

A Passion is something that drives you, that excites you, that makes you want to get up and go. We could have a passion for going against society norms or thoughts and making a difference, to changing the world that we live in. A passion for making peace instead of war, consuming less instead of more, living a more simple life teaching people to change themselves and the world around them. Making a difference teaching others not to litter our communities and our parks.
 How does the movie speak to you? What is the relationship between Passion and Privilege?  Or what is the relationship between Passion and Poverty?
I was encouraged to really try to search within myself what I really want in life and in education. Sometimes I am not sure if I want to continue with my major. Sometimes I question and wander if my major is the best option and to if I continue in my major but I feel pressured by society. I feel like I don't have enough time to explore what I am attracted to and interested in because I am not young and I feel like I have to make a quick decision in my career path.  We shouldn't feel afraid of exploring different careers but unfortunately we live in system that is made in way that leaves us small room for exploration. They make it more and more expensive every time with more budget cuts leaving us with fewer choices for classes, not even mentioning impacted classrooms so that we get rushed into making a quick decision.                                      

Deal Breakers

                                                                 

Discourage Education

                           what issues do you face that make thriving in college difficult for you?

            The potential deal breakers that I constantly face are money, socializing, age and social pressure. Ever since I started school I had to take a very low paying job. I make four times less of what I used to make. Also,I have a family and the pressure of having a family while going to school is huge. My partner is making more than me and usually she gets frustrated because pretty often I can’t afford the activities that you would be able to do a decent salary. For example: going out to restaurants that she enjoys so much, traveling, going to comedy shows, a weekend get away, etc. I also get frustrated with myself because I earn so little and I often blame it on school. Sometimes i feel like quitting and focus on earning what i used to earn before but I love to learn and go to school that i feel at the end it is going to be worth while. I have to self sacrifice so much for school. I hardly ever buy anything for myself and that’s ok I really like not being materialistic but there is a limit. I don’t usually treat myself to small things for extended periods of time like having a Frappuccino, and that really sucks. Working just make ends meet it is really suffocating. It is a situation that would really affect anyone and everybody else around them. I am lucky that I don’t have kids yet because the pressure would be so much more and I admire people that already have kids and go to school. Your self esteem could be affected, and sometimes I criticize myself of how much I suck, and where in life I should be right now. School just becomes more difficult because you can’t fully put the best you got into it. It is difficult to learn how to balance a job and study time, specially after you are getting off from work and feeling tired and drained from a full day. All you want to do is to come home to relax and decompress, and the last thing that you want to do is study. It takes a lot of discipline to be able to make a conscious effort to redirect and refocus on a new task.  

Another deal breaker that i have to deal with is socializing. I love spending quality time with my family and friends but school and work take most of my time. My Family often complains that i don't have enough time for them or that i should take a break and i fully understand where they come from. My friends used to call me a lot to go hang out and invite me to trips but since i reject them so much either because of money or school they don't call me as much but i know they will understand later on when i graduate and become successful.