My Learning Experience

For our first Reading Response paper we listened to a podcast by Chana Joffe-Wait called the “550: Three Miles”. The podcast was about a low budget high school in the Bronx and another upper class private school up the road and how visiting the upper class high school effected the lives of the students from the lower income school. In my opinion this podcast not only shows the difference between upper and low class schools but also the different cultures between the two schools. When listing to the podcast I related it and though back to when we were talking about our single stories at the beginning of the semester. Making a connection to this in my own life reminds me of how in even the same counties in Georgia one high school could have more funding than another. Hearing their stories, it made me even more thankful for the support system and for the schools I was most fortunate to attended.

For my entire life of schooling, both my parents and I would agree that I constantly complained about the educational systems in which I was enrolled. But when I actually take the time to think about everything I have been through, I realize that I have indeed had an excellent education. My schooling was full of opportunities and experiences, all of which contributed to the person I am today; adequate education has been an indispensable facet of my being. Sadly, not everyone has had this same privilege. And now as a college student, I am becoming even more aware of this sad fact. Looking around me in such a diverse city as Chicago, I find myself being more and more grateful. When I read Jonathan Kozol's Fremont High School, this these

In “Keeping Close To Home: Class and Education”, Bell Hooks argues that we have to not only maintain our ties to home but adapt to the new settings around us . In order to strive in one’s life, you must be able to interrupt daily life changes and maintain stability. (74). She explains that being an African American woman, coming from a Southern state, not really experiencing the things she did once she transitioned to Stanford University was a little frightening for her.(74). Hooks found many differences in the environment she now lived in. For example, the way the students interact with one another was strange to her. Where she comes from, children treated their parent with respect, but her white, middle-class roommate thought otherwise. She explained that “things were different” there and people “[thought] differently.”(76).

Everyone wore the same uniforms and had the same beliefs. In my mind, the children and their families were practically the same as me and my family, therefore, everyone else in society was just like us. I did not have to deal with the idea of dominance and privilege, because there was nothing to compare my life to - there was no one who was different or out of the ordinary. “The ease of not being aware of privilege is an aspect of privilege itself, what some call ‘the luxury of obliviousness’” (Johnson, 2006, p. 22). Since the families I grew up with were all “cookie-cutter” families, I did not know that privilege, such as being White, Christian, or financially secure, even existed. The idea of a typical, normal family, however, changed drastically once I embarked upon the next journey of my life, my first experience in a public school - high school. I realized how sheltered I had been once high school began. I transitioned from a school of children just like me, to a richly diverse school where it was anything but consistent, everyone was different - no two people were the same. During this drastic change, I learned how to handle and approach different social challenges by navigating my way through many different cultures and beliefs.

Being a freshman, in a new school, a new city, even a new state, frightened me going into my first day of school as a high school attendee. Chaparral High School in Phoenix, Arizona was considered to be the top high school in the state of Arizona, however it sure was not for me. There was an ample amount of kids who believed they were better than the kid next to them because of the money their parents possessed. This characteristic began to grow on me; without my own awareness. Furthermore, I began to talk back to my parents, acted as a terrible brother to both my two younger brothers who looked up to me, as well as, my friends back in El Paso, Texas did not even want to talk to me. I had become a monster in all my friend’s eyes.

Growing up in such a poverty struck town, you feel for people a little more than average. You learn to appreciate what you have because you can see what others are lacking. My 5a high school has roughly 1,200 students where at least 25% of those kids are failing one or more classes. However it is not their fault at all. Being the fourth least educated city in the United State and so close to the poverty line, Brownsville kids miss many educational opportunities because of the weak mindset they are immune to. It is hard to maintain an ambitious state of being when everyone around you seems to already have their life set on staying exactly where they are. However because of my exposure to this specific way of thinking, it has assisted me in establishing and craving the want for more. Because of Brownsville’s mentality, I am self-driven. I have seen what I don’t want to become, and it has planted the seed to exceed past my bubble. I can do whatever I set my mind too even if all the odds are against

As the second child of four, my grandmother Rita Murray grew up on a ranch twelve miles from the lilliputian town of Lantry. Back then, they did not have much, but what they had was enough for them. Growing up, my grandmother lived in the country and did not have many neighbors. Graduating from Eagle Butte High School in a class of just about seventy kids, my grandmother joked that she did not know all of the kids in her class. This was not due to the fact that there was an excessive amount of them, but rather that there was cliches even back then. Much like the cliches of our generation, my grandmother told me that there was the popular kids, jocks, nerds, and your outcasts. In her day my grandmother was in the band and cared about her schooling above everything else. My grandmother was and still is a preeminent woman. She was top of her class and was taught at a young age that education is important. As my grandparents have always told me, “The one possession that no one can ever take away from you is your education.”

I grew up in small town known as Kinston, where most of my peers were underprivileged like myself. Instead of starting out in public school, I was enrolled into one of the two local charter schools. I was always put in the “smart” group in any activity, but once I started talking with public school kids and learning that we were being taught different made me doubt if I was truly was smart. When I was put in various community groups with majority public school kids, I felt outnumbered and uncomfortable because we had nothing in common. I started high school as a social outcast, but I made some really good friends. After I was put up against the public school kids, I did excel educationally. Instead of hanging out with my friends on the weekend,

I devoted my energy to the sciences and humanities in search of career sheathed in the satisfying guard of knowledge. However, I could never separate myself entirely from the preppy, entitled demeanor. From Boy Scout camps, church outings, job opportunities, and even a new school, I am still treated by people that have never met me before like the kid I grew up as: a white kid who has always had it made for him and will never have to worry about the future so he doesn’t cherish the opportunities and knowledge he has now. They could not be more inaccurate and I take it upon myself to prove it to them by not just words, but actions. Even still, I cannot enlighten them to my true nature. My only option left is to find a new community. A community that has been unmistakably swaddled in diversity for its existence: Tulane

My most significant learning experience this month included becoming familiar with facilitating a group that is not psychoeducational. One group that I recently started facilitating requires more preparation than the previous psychoeducational group I had grown accustomed to. On February 10, 2016, I started facilitating a new group and during this group, participants are expecting me to have the answers to specific questions they have. Through facilitating this group, I have had the opportunity to understand the true essence surrounding of group dynamics I have learned that each group facilitator has a different style of leading, and each participant has different elements they bring to the group as well. In addition, it is beneficial to grow professionally and have new responsibilities within an agency.

In Sociology 101 we have learned a great deal about how interconnected social issues are. Poor education and poverty can often be connected to create a cycle of poverty that brings down the next generation. Racial inequality can often lead to poor job opportunities. Using the sociological imagination, I will also attempt to connect events in my life to larger social problems and look at my life through the sociological perspective. I am going to look at how my privileged upbringing in a middle class family that also happens to be in Howard County.

Since I was a young girl, learning was something necessary to do in order to mature into my own self. It's something us as humans do to evolve from our younger selves. From learning to talk, walk ,and read we learn many things throughout our lifetime to be the person we are today. Learning is the key to life. Learning makes us progress. Riding a bicycle was a learning experience that I might never forget it.

Growing up in the south is usually a pretty peaceful event; it’s quiet and there’s never too much going on. As a child, I attended a small private school in Tennessee. My three best friends, Hannah, Zane and Chandler also went to the same school with me, and we were all in the same sunday school class. I spent my entire childhood with these three friends, and many of my fondest memories come from this period. When I was entering the sixth grade, my dad had to move to Virginia for his job, so my mom and I came with him. My parents bought a house in Chesapeake, and I began going to a public school for the first time. I expected a big difference, and I was worried that I was going to hate it there (picture the scene from Mean Girls where all the teenagers are acting

Participations in small in-class groups which purpose was to accomplish a task assigned to us by our Professor, were the most powerful learning experiences for me. In developing common focus, as stated in Gitterman and Germain (2008), members need to establish group rules and also remember to “build on one another’s contributions, identify and focus on salient collective themes, invite expression of differences” (p. 174), as well as welcome opinions which are contradictory or different from the majority.

Every learning experience in your life is significantly important, even the old experiences you’ve had in the past can be extremely influential. One of the learning experiences that I have had in the past was learning to play chess. Learning to play chess was an important learning experience, because when playing chess I had to learn to think ahead. Learning to think ahead while playing chess translates to help me realize the importance of trying to be prepared for multiple types of situations as well being able to react and adapt to unexpected situations in life. Another experience in my life that occurred in the past was the AP statistics course that I took in high school. This class was one the most challenging experiences in my life, during this class it helped me to form better study habits and better my time management. Study habits have become a very important part of my daily life, because it has allowed me to properly prepare for my classes and other important events in my life. Time management has been able to coincide with the study habits skills I also picked up while taking my AP statistics course, in that it has made me focus on the things in my life that are most important and that I should spend more of my day concentrating on instead of wasting time on miniscule tasks. One of the more recent experiences I have had in the past was when I took on a summer job. While completing my duties in my summer job I was able to form valuable teamwork skills, establish