This I Believe

Trials and Trails: 

Life has its trails, and on those trails, we inevitably experience trial. I believe these trials; when we take the time to reflect on them are meant to inform our future decisions. I have found this to be true to my life experience, and even when I don't get things right the second time, at least I've collected more evidence.

This I Believe: My Statements

I believe that life is bigger than me, so I need to leave people, places and things better than when I found them, but doing good things takes effort. When I was hired in Arizona, I was given an old storage room (full of junk) in which to teach ELL students. Can you imagine what kind of message that sends to those students? I spent eight to ten hours a day for the whole week before school started cleaning out that space to make it useable. When the students came to school and saw the classroom, they were so grateful to have a nice, organized space. Two years ago, we adopted our oldest son from the Philippines, it was a long, complicated process. Both the adoption and adjustment have taken effort and work, but we hope we can give him the forever family he deserves and opportunities to be the best possible version of himself.

I believe that life is about the unplanned moments. At 21, I had it all figured out. I was engaged to the perfect guy; our families were neighbors, our parents: good friends. We dated for four years; he graduated from a prestigious university and became and engineer. It was all planned, we would both work until we had kids, then I would stay home. The hall was booked, the dresses bought, the invitations written. Four months before the wedding, he telephoned the downtown restaurant I worked at and called off the wedding. There wasn't just someone else; there were many others. Maybe I never really knew him. The next night, the person who was to become my future husband was at my house. We sat on the porch in the rain; our bare feet resting on the white railing.


I believe in investing to today's youth. The mechanic who repairs my car tells me, every time he sees me, "he knows those kids today and he know how they are…. " and he is always surprised they haven’t "eaten me alive". Of course, I am grateful for his concern, but I also know kids today and they continue to surprise and impress me. Perhaps it is always that the older generations fear the new ideas of younger generations. I am not sure, but I do think that change is inevitable and the youth will shape the future; why not give them the tools to do so?

Thematic Connection

Trials and Trails:
Life's many trials and trails is my thematic connection this year in my first semester English 12 class. This theme is inspired by my choice memoir, Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. Jahren is an acclaimed scientist, a botanist who studies trees, flowers, seeds and soil. She opens the book reminiscing about her childhood and the influence her childhood in rural Minnesota had on her. As a botanist, Jahren's work takes her into the "field" where she explores many different regions of the world and natural habitats of the beaten path or "trail" so to speak.

Jahren

"We had been studying plants along the Mississippi River, traveling through Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana while trying to sample our way through an unbelievably lush gauntlet of poison ivy. Plants sweat while they photosynthesize, and our textbooks teach us that -like-us the hotter it gets, the more they sweat. ... We had done the field trip three times already, and my allergic reaction to the rampant poison ivy had gotten worse each time. Nonetheless, we kept anxiously wading through the waist-high fields of ivy in order to find the stubborn trees that we'd first sixed up on for sampling. I wouldn't and couldn't let the studya go."
(Jahrn 148-149)

Jahren has a humorous and fascinating way of bringing the science of soil and roots to life in her memoir. She is constantly running experiments, starting new labs, moving around the country. Jahren faces many trials in her life, but always seems to continue forward into a new season making the best of each situation. I've always had a deep sense of the profound power and mysteries of nature, but Jahren reveals just how alike, how fragile, how strong, how temperamental nature is, just like humanity. She demonstrates how scientific trials like life trials are the experiments we hopefully learn and grow from as we see what the data reveals.

"A cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn't killed it yet. Any plant you find growing tin the desert will grow a lot better if you take it out of the desert. The desert is like a lot of lousy neighborhoods: nobody living here can afford to move. Too little water, too much light, temperature too high: the desert has all of these inconveniences ratcheted up to their extremes. ..In the desert, life-threatening streesses are not a crisis; they are a normal feature of the life cycle. Extreme stress is part of the very landscape, not something a plant can avoid or ameliorate. Survival depends on the cactus's ability to tolerate deathly grim dry spells over and over again." (Jahren 142-143)

Taking inspiration from Jahren's book, my thematic connection is one to the importance of self-reflection give the "soil in which we are grown" our Lottery of Birth, and how the ability or inability to self-reflect and adapt can change the way we play the cards we are dealt. Furthermore, understanding the other players in the game can help to inform our choices and strategies.

The specific works from this semester that I created and I would like to connect to are "Time and Memory", "Wasteland Project",  "Hometown: Then and Now" and "This I Believe" . To me, these works reflect the impact of my past, it's influence on my present, my choices, my beliefs and the way I hope to navigate my future. The research from this semester that I would like to connect to are Lab Girl, The Brain, Memory Hackers, Wasteland, Why Do I Need You, Secret Powers of Time, Lottery of Birth, Oxford Project, Rabbit Proof Fence, and How the States Got Their Shapes. 

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. Alfred A. Knopf. Toronto, Canada. c.2016

Where I'm from; where I'm going....

Thing: A blog post that uses both facts and personal narration and comparative structure
Audience: E12 classes
Writer: me
Purpose: To create a piece of  descriptive writing about my hometown using both general, cultural, historical facts and my experiences or memories.
Context: I am studying self-reflection in E12 and we just read the Oxford Project. The Oxford Project is a photo-journal that documents a town in Iowa and its residents. I am reflecting about my own hometown and its impact on my life.

Requirements: 

• Description of your "hometown"
• One memory
• Reflection and comparison of childhood to contemporary self
• Will you return, stay or leave and why?
• Incorporate at least three general, historical, cultural facts about your hometown.
• Provide two images
• 500 words

Trails: 
Link to view:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.5657465,-97.1060097,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1shl3uBViOrTPn7boKp-rcTA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

In some places the sky scrapes the city landscape, in some places the sea greets the sunset, but some places are dust. That's where I'm from, where dust clouds the horizon in plumes and gritty billowed bursts. Dust and wheat and wind and land stretched out for miles interrupted only by train tracks, grain elevators, and steeples.
112 people, that seems like a lot of people, unless it's a town of people. A town of my people. Tampa. Tampa, where I stumbled my first steps, broke pieces of myself, fed cattle, combined wheat, cooked supper (not dinner), built forts, and ran and ran and ran. I grew up running, grasping for a distant golden brown-blurred blue-white horizon.

I was always looking ahead, even when I was five, I had goals; I wanted to grow up. I cut pictures out of magazines, glued them to my cardboard cut out house: the mom I would be, the house I would live in, the car I would drive, the clothes I would wear; I wanted the magazine dream. Seeking approval and attention; I would sing in the salon as the clients had their hair done, just to see them smile. I loved talking to adults, babysitting, lawn-mowing, basically I did anything to make other people happy.  I remember being a pretty good listener; my parents didn't have to ask me to practice things; I did that on my own. For example, I would practice gymnastics for hours on end, try to read books all by myself and do every chore my parents asked me to do. I even constructed a runway and vault out of a stack of coolers and a small trampoline. But no matter what it was I practiced, once I had completed the task to perfection, I would beg my parents to watch or listen. Maybe that is an oldest child thing, but I remember that was important to me. It's taken me a long time to get to a place where I don't need the approval I once lived and died for. It has taken some conflict, but instead of cutting out someone else's version of life, I am content with my own messy version. My goals are little more focused on the present, I just want to leave those in my life better than when I found them; generally, they will outlast me. Life is bigger than me and I guess I just want to leave a positive imprint wherever I tread.

I don't get back to Kansas much, maybe once or twice a year. But, I think about it often; mostly when I run on windy days or look at open fields, I remember the dust and the wind. Constant wind: snow wind blowing side-ways, skin-cracking summer sun-wind, dew-wicking warm spring-wind, damp-chilling bleak November-rain-wind. Wind, the only constant, as the crops rotated fields; buildings crumbled; people moved away; the wind remained. I moved away.

My home is always with me though, whether it's seeing cattle and thinking of my grandfather, running on a windy day trying to catch my breath, or looking at a vast horizon knowing Tampa, Kansas and Eau Claire, Wisconsin share the same sun. I too am still my five year old version and my forty year old version and all the people I was in between. The biggest lesson I have learned as I have matured has to do with judgment. As a child or young adult, my experience was quite limited and I only knew the world in the brief context of my experience. So, I judged people and things according to my magazine cut-outs. The actors and actresses making life look easy and neat and organized and predictable. What I have learned about judgment is that hasty assumption based on a shallow experience reflects immaturity, ignorance and arrogance. Life isn't easy for a lot people. My assumptions for a long time did not allow me to form deep relationships with others. I realize now that knowledge is gained from asking questions and trying new things which may mean putting yourself at risk of failure or embarrassment.  Although I look back at my "know it all" stage with a little bit of embarrassment and regret now; I do realize that it is all part of growing up and maturing. Without my younger misinterpretation of adulthood, I would never have learned the many lessons I have learned. 

And now when my family and I visit Kansas, it's like jumping into my childhood scrapbook; it's a time warp. That's what the yearly visits are now, my sons rummage through the half-stocked shelved isles in the Tampa grocery store (the only one in a 40 mile radius) and we supper (that's lunch in Kansas dialect) with my grandma at the Sante Fe Trail Cafe, the only restaurant in town. Newly remodeled, the store's facade echoes the old, but better, and the tables slowly fill up around noon. The original outdoor brick was so fragile, it wore away like chalk. And the only remaining original brick that could be saved is now solidified and mortared inside the interior walls, preserved like a mural, patched like an eye-sore, displayed like a trophy collecting dust.

Dwindling since the 1930's (population 232), the departed are like me, occasional visitors. Leaving the permanent residents, empty-nesters, with a median age of 53.5. We who left are escape artists drawn back by necessity, nostalgia, belonging, or maybe just the vastness, the space, the ever-extended uninterrupted sea of land. Travis and I don't necessarily see ourselves ever retiring in Kansas, but I imagine myself there sometimes as an old woman in my grandma's house, by myself years and decades from now. Perhaps I will just sit on the porch and watch the wind turbines or reminisce or run the dusty roads. Whatever it is that pulls me, I am sure of one thing: I am tethered; I am anchored. I am drawn back if not physically then mentally. Perhaps the years will send me home, perhaps the time between will push me farther away, for now, I would just settle for less time between transient visits.

Emotional Life

Thing: A blog post using illustrating and connecting concepts from Davidson and Begley's Emotional Life to Pixar's Inside Out. (Comparison writing)
Audience: E12 classes
Writer: me
Purpose: To create a piece of writing that illustrates the concepts, theories and research of modern neuroscientists about the human brain, emotions and actions. To connect Davidson and Begley's theory to an accessible text and explain its impact on our decision making process.
Context: I am studying self-reflection in E12 and gathering information about the brain's process in decision making and human reactions. I am creating definitions of the different theories and connecting these to my own ability to self-reflect and make decisions.

There are six dimensions of emotional style (Davidson and Begley XIV):
Resilience: how quickly or slowly you recover from difficulties or misfortune
Outlook: how long you are able to have a positive emotion.
Social Intuition: how well you are able to pick up social signals from those around you.
Self awareness: how well you perceive your own feelings that reflect emotions.
Sensitivity to context: how good you are at controlling your emotional responses to take into account the situation you find yourself in.
Attention: how sharp or clear your focus is.

Davidson, Richard J., and Sharon Begley. The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them. Plume, 2013.
Inside Out. Pixar. Walt Disney Studios. 2016. DVD.

Riley's character is composed of five dominant emotions that govern her emotional responses to the world around her: Joy, Disgust, Sadness, Anger, Fear. Throughout the movie Joy shows a very positive outlook. She is always trying to maintain a positive emotion and make the best of a situation. For example, the move to San Francisco was very hard for Riley and the other emotions, but Joy was able to find as many positives as possible about the move. She was open to the move and wanted everyone else to try to be too.
Joy also demonstrated a high resilience when faced with issues. When she and Sadness were lost in long term memory, Joy was persistent in finding a way home.  Every time she was knocked down she got right back up and tried again. Disgust plays a minor role, with her high social intuition she also has a hyper sensitivity to context. She is able to take a situation and react to it how she sees fit, even if that reaction is with disgust. She rarely acts in situations that do not pertain to her. Sadness is a major character and one that we understand with more appreciation as the film progresses. With her glum and negative outlook on everything sadness struggles the entire movie. She thought that everything was the end of the world and was not able to maintain any positive thoughts. Even when Joy was asking her what she enjoys or likes.Sadness also has a very low attention when it comes to what she is supposed to be doing. She often gets distracted by the things around her. For example when Joy asks her to stay in one spot she immediately gets distracted, leaving and ultimately touching another memory. Fear plays a smaller role and there are many times that Fear and Disgust have similar reactions. With his high anxiety about all situations fear has a very fine tuned sense of social intuition. He is always picking up on what others thinking. doing or saying and worries about it. For example he worries about what the other kids at the new school are thinking about Riley. Do her clothes match? Are those girls the cool girls? What do they think of her?
Fear also has a has a low resilience. He struggles to overcome situations or let things go. He always brings up past situations when things have gone wrong for Riley and lets that control how he acts about current situations. Finally Anger ends up having and important part of guiding Riley's spontaneous decisions. This hot headed (literally) emotion struggles with maintaining a positive outlook on life.  The move to San Francisco was a struggle with anger, because everything was different and different is not good in his eyes. Each struggle just reinforces his negative outlook on the move. One of the moments where this is reinforced is the incident with the pizza. At first he was hopeful that the day may get better with a nice slice of pizza but of course San Francisco just had to ruin pizza, therefore ruining the whole move.Although he has a low outlook on life he does maintain a high self- awareness. He is able to tell when he is upset and when he is about to do something irrational, but he is unable to stop himself from behaving inappropriately making his sensitivity to context very low.
As for me, in terms of the five emotions that guide my decisions, I think Joy and Sadness are fairly balanced for me and I have sprinkles of Fear, Disgust and Anger that each flare-up at various times. However, with age I am getting better at dealing with the flare-ups of the Fear, Disgust and Anger. In terms of the six dimensions of emotional style, I think as a teacher my sensitivity to context is one of my strengths. When it comes to student situations I must hold myself in a certain way and control my emotions. If I were to get upset with a student this may escalate the situation and make it worse than it needs to be.  Being old you have more life experience, thus time becomes a great teacher and has helped me to build up my resilience. I am able to endure more challenges with a learning mentality and appreciate more moments in those moments. I understand that difficulty is relative to my life experience and that good does not exist without bad.

Wasteland

Trials:
Family is so influential in who we become. We learn from birth how to interact with others through our families, through both the best of times and the worst of times. Yes, the good is influential, but even the very best families will have communication breakdowns and challenges. The way we learn to handle the challenges in our families can ultimately shape our future relationships.

I chose family as my most influential social construct. I used objects, possessions and people that have to do with our family. We many not choose the families we are born into, but as a parent I can choose aspects of how I want my own family to be. As parents, we can choose our level of involvement in our children's lives; we determine what kind of family we will be to some extent. We decide where and how we invest our time and resources. We decide if our children will get to spend time with their grandparents, cousins, uncles, and other extended family (at least in their younger years). I can choose which events to host, which holidays to celebrate, which family traditions to keep or start. All of these decisions will impact the environment my children grow up in and it will to some extent shape who they become.

I chose family as my most influential social construct, because in becoming a parent myself, I can see what an impact family has on a human being. I come from a divorced family with a history of substance abuse and dependence issues. In this way, I learned what I did not want to become. My pursuit now is to provide the best possible environment for my family and becoming the best version of myself as a role model for my children. That’s why my boys are central in the artwork.

One way my husband and I like to maintain a close family is we play together. The most important thing to our family is playing together. We ski, garden, read, run, bike, sled, play soccer, rock climb, hike, you name it; we just enjoy playing together. The boys also enjoy being active and involved in sports. Often on weekends we can be found at soccer tournaments, cross country meets, football games, basketball tournaments watching the boys do what they love. Thus, was the inspiration to include the sports equipment in the artwork.

Growing up, my family household had issues that many children face this today, but I also had some really great role models and dependable people to model myself after as well. My grandparents were a wall of stability and there are pictures, albums, and even quilts created by my grandparents and their grandparents included in the artwork. My grandparents are also farmers and love the land and love to grow crops. They passed this love of the land and growing plants, so I included some squash and vegetables from our garden.  Also, when I was able to see my dad; we would always run together, this is a love I hope I have passed on to my children, so I have included running shoes in the photo. My dad also took me on vacation once a year after Christmas to ski; this is still something he does today, but now with the boys. So, the skis are also an important part of the picture.

Although we didn’t necessarily study family as one of the social constructs there are aspects that we did study that do connect. For example, it is important to note where my family lives (geography), and the amount of money my family has that allows for opportunities for extracurricular activities and trips (social class). These have been the largest environmental factors in shaping who I am today.

Story

My Example:

Thing: A Fictional Story: Young adult mystery novel (Narrative Writing)

Audience: Young adults

Writer: Me

Purpose: to entertain a reading audience

Context: I am writing the beginning to a fictional story for my English classes using the notes I have from my brainstorm story activity.

My Story Example: 

Billowy brown clouds hung low on the horizon rolling in the distance across the vast fields of wheat and soy. The only alteration on the straight line of the horizon, a grain elevator, jutting straight up over the dilapidated buildings crumbling from neglect, from time, from the ceaseless wind. Slav and Johannes, the unlikely pair, checked their map again for the fifth time.
"This has to be Lost Springs. I mean, seriously, the town even looks lost." Slav crumpled the paper and turned back to face the dusty glass of the car window.
Johannes countered in his usual silent stare out the windshield; hands perfectly gripped at ten and two. Lost Springs was definitely 20 miles to the west; this was it. This had to be Tampa.
"You cannot seriously believe we are going to find the owner of this phone here. I mean, Jesus Christ, Johannes, it doesn't even look like anyone lives here." slamming his fist on the dash board, Slav had reached his peak of patience.
Silence, awkward silence, breathing, tension, Johannes sighed heavily and rubbed his temples in circles hoping for a sudden moment of realization. Just then, a crack of thunder broke the heavy, humid silence and heat lightening spread across the sky creating shadows along the dusty road.
"What is it you would have us do next then, Slav? What is your brilliant idea, your ingenious solution?" even Johannes had his limits.
"Okay, let's say you're right; there is someone in this empty town. How do you think we are going to find one person here in all these empty buildings; in these broken spaces. What's your brilliant plan?" only slightly condescending in his tone, Slav......

Description of Choices:

Because I selected to write a mystery novel, I wanted to set a mood of tension. So, I started with an ominous and isolated setting to create a creepy, eerie mood. I picked adjectives that described an isolated, deserted, abandoned place. Next, I needed to introduce tension and suspense in order to engage my audience and to drive the story forward. I used an unresolved issue that creates a conflict between two characters for two reasons. One, because I think young adults can relate to relationship centered conflict and two the unresolved conflict is in line with the purpose of a mystery text. 

Lost

Thing: A blog post using application and connecting concepts from class research and Abram's Lost. (Application and Comparison writing)

Audience: E12 classes

Writer: me

Purpose: Self-select research from the provided in class material in order to create a piece of writing that connects the concepts, theories and research of modern neuroscientists about the human brain, emotions, actions and apply these to characters in the "Pilot" of Lost. 

Context: I am studying self-reflection in E12 and gathering information about the brain's process in decision making and human reactions. I am creating connections of the different theories and applying these concepts to characters who make decisions in the "Pilot" episode of Lost. 

Citations: Include the episode and at least four class research connections.

Lieber, Abrams, Lindelof, Jeff, J.J., Damon. "Lost Pilot Part I." Lost. ABC. 22 Sept. 2004. Television.

Zimbardo, Philip. "The Secret Powers of Time." Lecture. 24 Sept. 2013. You Tube. RSA Animate, 24 May 2010. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.
Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2008. Print.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and, 2005. Print
Dweck, Carol S., Ph.D. Mindset The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine, 2008. Print

Lost
In order to evaluate the students' understanding of the function of the brain, the power and perspective of the mind, and the physiological theories about decision making process, my English 12 classes and I watched and analyzed the first episode of Lost. Students had to make connections to each of the texts and films that we viewed in class. The students' ability to apply the concepts and provide analysis will offer a clear picture of their comprehension.
Episode one of Lost, "The Pilot Part I" provides a fictional circumstance where characters must make decisions under pressure in a high stress situation. In "Pilot Part I", a plane crash on an isolated island provides the perfect environment for character analysis via reaction and decision making. For example, Jack's ability to control his fear in the face of danger is evident through his ability to prioritize and treat the wounded passengers immediately after the crash. In connection to History Channel's The Brain, Jack is able to through training like a military solider control his amygdala's response of fear and panic. Jack later reveals to Kate that his background in surgery prepared him for such action under pressure as Malcolm Gladwell state in Blink as one of the keys to successful quick decision making. In contrast to Jack, many of the passengers without his experience or ability to control their fear and panic walk around in a daze unaware; one passenger even is sucked into the engine because of his inability to assess his environment and situation. Furthermore, in connection to Dweck's Mindset and there are a few situation that reflect the growth versus fixed mindset. Jack is able to convince Kate, who has no medical experience, to stitch his wound after she is convinced she is unable to perform such a task. Jack, an example of the growth mindset, is convinced that Kate has the ability to stitch him and can learn through his instruction. Kate, a fixed mindset, retorts that she has no experience but after Jack's convincing moves to a growth mindset in her concession to try.
Another character that demonstrates coolness under pressure is Sayid. After the crash as many are focused on finding food or immediate comfort, he is focused on creating a fire for the rescue crew to see. According to Zombardo's "Secret Powers of Time" the decisions by the characters demonstrates Sayid's future and goal oriented focus versus the present hedonistic focus of the other characters. There are also a few characters who demonstrate selfish and irrational behaviors, for example Shannon is insistent that the rescue crew is on the way and refuses to eat the food; she also insists that there is no point in cleaning the dead bodies because the rescue crew will do that. Shannon's inability to face the reality of her situation reflects Airley's premise in Predictably Irrational when the mind get what it expects and the truth of relativity. Despite the evidence that suggests help will take much longer to reach them than the survivors predict and that her idea of quick rescue may be relative, Shannon is convinced otherwise and forgoes her responsibilities in the present. Furthermore, characters such as Charlie focus on his present hedonistic need for a fix when he accompanies Kate and Jack to the front section of the plane.
The Lost characters and setting provide a fascinating opportunity to analyze through the neuroscience and psychological lens.