Change the world A message for a high school graduating class from a Essay

Change the world A message for a high school graduating class from a teacher of yours - Essay Example My own experiences have taught me to engage in my passion for change; to equip and prepare others so they can be best they can. As you graduate, pursue you dreams and passions relentlessly. All you have been taught is a foundation on which to build your own outlooks and ideals. World-renowned Educational theorist and Youth expert Henry Giroux advices that you should "never separate theory from practice..." Be as independent and interdependent in your thinking as well as your actions and stay connected to your core beliefs. I see in you all, the very people who will teach, guide and shape the future of this country and by extension the world. It is a most important and sacred duty. Believe me when I say this; every single one of you is a key part of the future, a future that will simply not work without you. There will surely be times, when you will doubt all you have been taught and wonder how it all connects. There will be occasion when you ponder what your place in the world is. Your place is in helping people be their best. Remember, no one person is most knowledgeable on every issue, so be open-minded and embrace the changes in society. I implore you to be the change you seek. When you make mistakes, do not dwell on it or on the past, except for lessons learned.

Teaching as a Profession Essay -- essays papers

Teaching as a Profession Individuals who enter the field of education reply to the question why teach with various answers. There is beauty, joy, and fulfillment in this profession, and these spirit-lifting emotions are the result of watching annually as a new group of children enter to learn and leave with the knowledge to achieve. Richard Dufour (2000), author of Why Teach expressed his views on the profession first by stating that teaching is not the career for everyone. He goes on to say, that the education profession has the ability to present the â€Å"unique opportunity† for individuals to cast a positive influence upon others (Why Teach, 2000, p.1). The smiles received from a room full of students when as a whole their individual needs, both educational and personal have been catered to, prompts a burst of passion in every teacher. Those who look to the profession as a career would need to nourish these perceptions in order to prevail over the negative aspects that surround the profession. The process of teaching goes far beyond the presentation of facts, it includes the dedication of both heart and time. While compensation and working conditions are the main downfalls in teaching, there are many other situations that cause individuals to turn away from the profession. Teaching is obviously a hard complex job and the individuals who answer the call, encounter many frustrations. They are required to first develop goals for classroom instruction and with these goals develop lesson plans, while implementing effective classroom management (appropriate discipline). They must also monitor and nourish the special needs of every child, and stay current on educational advancements and topic knowledge. Imagine trying to su... ...nt in the future knowledge and the chance for a humane society. President George Bush’s â€Å"No Child Left Behind Act† fails to focus on the recruitment and diversity within the profession. He sets a goal for the year 2005 for every classroom to have a quality teacher but no goal for retaining these teachers. The improvement of the profession requires a national step-by-step effort. The purpose of this paper was to gather and explore information on the teaching profession and with it explore the shortage within in order to educate and strike up reform. It is clear, that reform will require a lot of time and money. The end product however, will show success within the profession thereby equaling success in the classroom. Success comes when present in the classrooms are caring and committed teachers, all with the goal of education and diversity is among them. .

Mirrors of sylvia plath and claribel alegria

The impact of dark poetry on the reader is made predominantly through correspondingly dark   language- this is a common view on the source of such kind of poetry’s effect. In this essay I wouldn’t like to argue this point of view but I would like to broaden   the understanding of dark poetry’s linguisic and semantic tools . I’m going to use two poems sharing a common symbol– â€Å"I am Mirror† by Claribel Alegria and â€Å"Mirror† by Sylvia Plath- to prove that they appeal to the reader not so much through explicit means like the choice of words but also implicitly.I will expose the existence of two poles in each poem and stress an essential role,   which semantic oppositions like alive-dead, internal-external, body-soul, action-passivity, depth-surface, reflect- hurt,   human-monster and human-mirror play. Besides, I will observe how the traditional motif of a mirror as a person’s of alter-ego is transformed in both poe ms into an effective   poetic tool, which ,on the one hand, forms a number of oppositions, and on the other hand, implies the idea of   pain reflection as pain replication and multiplication.First, let us consider the poem â€Å"I am Mirror† by Claribel Alegria.. The mirror is a second self of the woman, the self that was born in the course of some immense suffering. It is a double-sided mirror. Her pain is reflected in the external world, and vice versa, the world’s pain is reflected in her soul.   But the pain is so enormous that the mirror switches on as a protection mechanism.   The mirror turns into a brilliant wall, which defends her from pain. Now she can see everything perfectly but she cannot perceive. To stress the state of hers the phrase â€Å"I don’t feel it† is repeated a number of times.Like a silver screen, she scans what is going on around very accurately and impartially, â€Å"tanks that approach, raised bayonets, bodies that fa ll†¦children who run†. The intense external action is contrasted to the internal catalepsy). She wants to get back life because as she says â€Å"I hurt therefore I exist†.  Ã‚   Her ability to feel hurt is reduced to its physical aspect.   That is why she pinches and pricks herself.   Only through physical pain, she can bring back her ability to perceive world’s pain but only for a while. In a few moments, she turns back into the â€Å"blank mirror that nothing penetrates†. She is again a fleshless phantom protected from the pain by a brilliant wall. What is left is just â€Å"a vague memory of pain†. What is specific of the poem is that it does not reveal the pain itself but the pained mirrored, reflected, remembered. Pain sliding on the smooth hard surface.Let us make these two mirrors reflect in each other by comparing the two poems.   As I have already said, Alegria has a kind of wall mirror, a luminous barrier to protect her from pain. It only reflects external world but nothing can penetrate the surface. It is devoid of depth, it is flat, two-sided but not two-dimensioned. On the contrary, Plath’s mirror’s feature is to swallow immediately whatever appears in it.   It has another dimension behind it. Depth, not surface is its main attribute. This depth is meant to search there and to be afraid of.  Ã‚   It is a lake where a terrible fish lives.This fish is the woman’s frightening future. It is someone into whom she is going to turn in the course of time. In both poems mirror is impartial, it implies â€Å"female passivity, subjugation† (Freedman 1993). However, Plath’s mirror’s truthfulness is seen a kind of rebellion against what woman is seeking in it. In both cases, internal passivity is contrasted with external action. In Plath’s poem the concept of time is of great importance. It is another dimension but the surface and depth of the mirror.   The s tillness of a mirror lake is contrasted with the running river of time.This river flowing through the woman transforms a young beautiful girl into a horrible fish. Hence, being a water creature, an old woman is claimed to belong to the river of time and eternity more than a young girl, still alien to it. Gradually, deep waters of time absorb a woman. A terrible fish is in fact a dead girl, who drowned in the lake of mirror. This is a kind of terrifying reincarnation a woman would prefer to ignore. That is why she turns to such â€Å"liars† as the moon and candles. Meanwhile, the mirror reflects her back faithfully.   She cannot see her back mirrored, and that is an important idea.   We cannot see our back, i.e. the opposite, dark side. What does it look like? Maybe it IS a monster fish? We are scared to death by our own monsters.I would like to dwell on the language used in both poems and how it works toward a certain effect. What correlates with the image of a mirror in Plath’s poem is the use of visual language without any occurrence of audible one. Words like ‘darkness’, ‘pink with speckles’, ‘faces’, ‘flicker’ etc. create a visual picture. The opposition between the pink wall and the darkness is crucial to the poem. Black water has been always associated with hidden, subconscious, uncontrollable forces inside a personality. Hence, I can say that Plath’s mirror is not a medium between internal and external world, like Alegria’s one. It seems to be located within the human soul itself.While in Plath’s poem the attention is drawn to the visual aspect, in Alegria’s one the emphasis, however strange it may seem, is on the physical aspect, on taction. Or rather it is on the ability or inability to perceive the world through touching it. That is why visual pictures, which take enough space of the poem, are deliberately detached and serve to stress the absence of the woman/mirror’s feeling behind them. The opposition is ‘reflect’ vs. ‘hurt’ That is why the dominating mood is the feeling of stifled pain. This context is suggested by the choice of words: prick, pinch; tortured, frightened, weeping, bleeding, stumbling, panic etc. On the otherpole of the opposition are words like ‘phantom’, ‘fleshless’, ‘vague’.The poem’s inner plot is a transition from being a woman looking at her reflection into the mirror itself. Let’s read this passage at the beginning:I pinch myself in the arm  I don’t feel  frightened I look at myself in the mirror  she also pricks herself  I begin to get dressed  stumbling  from the corners  shouts like lightning bolts  tortured eyes  scurrying rats  and teeth shoot forth  although I feel nothingHere is the starting point of this transition. Frightened by her lost ability to feel, she looks at herself in the mir ror and sees a woman with tortured eyes and teeth shoot forth but she feels nothing because she turned into a mirror. This mirror woman leaves home and wanders through the streets reflecting horrible pictures of war. She hurts herself physically to turn back into a living person again but another terrifying scene prevents her from doing so – and she is a fleshless phantom again.The same transition can be observed in Sylvia Plath’s poem, although it is proceeds according to a slightly different pattern. The woman is not replaced by a mirror but she is swallowed by it. Being swallowed, she acquires the attributes of the object, which swallowed her. But two mirrors go on existing simultaneously- a still and eternal one and a moving mortal one.   As I said before, it is running river reflected in a lake.She comes and goes.  Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.  In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman  Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.  This passage suggests how a recurrent action of everyday life is correlated with transcendental eternity.The two poems share the ambivalence of the symbol of mirror. Let us turn to what William Freedman writes about the concept of the poem. â€Å"In this poem, the mirror is in effect looking into itself, for the image in the mirror is woman, the object that is itself more mirror than person. A woman will see herself both in and as a mirror. To look into the glass is to look for oneself inside or as reflected on the surface of the mirror and to seek or discover oneself in the person (or non-person) of the mirror†¦ the poem becomes a mirror not of the world, but of other mirrors and of the process of mirroring. When living mirrors gaze into mirrors, as when language stares only at itself,only mirrors and mirroring will be visible†¦ â€Å"The speaker sees herself â€Å"in† the mirror †¦in two senses: She is the fearful image in the depths beyond the glass and she is the mirror itself† ( Freedman1993).BibliographyLye, John. 1996. Critical reading: a Guide https://brocku.ca/english/jlye/criticalreading.phpMcManus,Barbara.1998. Readings and Assignments. http://www.cnr.edu/bmcmanus

The Theory Of Criminal Justice System - 1544 Words

Throughout history we have seen many theories being implemented in the criminal justice system. People come in and try to set in something new that they think will improve the overall performance of the criminal justice system. To fully understand how theories work, it is critical to first be fully aware of what theories actually are. A theory is a set of interrelated variables formed into hypothesis, that specify a relationship among variables. Criminal justice is the main umbrella that all the other perspectives come under. â€Å"The theory of criminal justice involves four main philosophies that drive the policies that determine how a government handles its problems with crime. The first two, punishment theory and retributive theory focused on the satisfaction of the victim for such punishment. The other two primary theories of criminal justice, deterrent theory and reformation theory, are aimed at preventing future crimes. They seek to achieve this aim either by discouraging oth ers to commit the same crimes or transforming the individual criminal into a productive member of society.† (Wikipedia. Theories of criminal law) That is the criminal justice theory in a nut shell, but when you look deeper you find other fascinating perspectives that have been implemented in the criminal justice system. One of these key perspectives is the social control perspective. Social control theory lets us understand and lower levels of criminal activity. The idea is that an individual’s basicShow MoreRelatedThe Theory Of The Criminal Justice System931 Words   |  4 Pagesin the US criminal justice system. However, finding a great balance between justice and punishment is often a blurred line. Over the past 40 years, the population of state and federal prisons have risen drastically. Polices such as the war on drugs and get tough on crime have caused judges to give out more incarceration years than ever before. 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There are multiple major theories that made the criminal justice system what it is today, but I will only be discussing one theory and the theory that I will be covering in this paper is the classical school theory. I chose this theory because I believe that people have a choice to decide what they do. That also pl ays a part in the criminal activities that they participate inRead MoreUtilitarian Theory of Punishment in the Criminal Justice System763 Words   |  4 Pagesregarding punishment and responsibility. We, as a society, tend to look away when it comes to how criminals are being punished and maybe we should be paying more attention. Violence seems to be an integral part of our society, some raise their children with violence, we watch it on television, read it in newspapers and books and now we are even playing violent video games. When it comes to the judicial system the majority of citizens do not even know how individuals are being punished or if the punishmentRead MoreThe And Clarke s Theory Of The Criminal Justice System862 Words   |  4 Pagesdrugs, is in and out of prison and jail, and also depends on illegal means to get what they want and need. These all lead to separate facets of the criminal justice system allowing for separate theories to set in to the families. I choose Cornish and Clarke’s rational choice theory, general strain theory, and Sutherland’s differential association theory. Cornish and Clarke begin the lead in allowing for work on why offenders enjoyed committing crimes to be accepted. Following Katz used this againRead MoreCriminal Justice Paper854 Words   |  4 PagesCriminal Justice System CJA/204 INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE Criminal Justice System This first week the assignment was to Define crime, its relationship to the law, and the two most common models of how society determines which acts are criminal, Describe the government structure as it applies to the criminal justice system, Identify choice theories and the their assumptions in regards to crime, Describe the components of the criminal justice system and the criminal justice processRead MoreCriminal Justice Organizational Effectiveness Essay1084 Words   |  5 Pagesachieving the desirable results is indicative of organization effectiveness. The United States Criminal Justice system is amongst the most respected governmental entities on the planet; and with a formidably structured and well developed hierarchy, history has uncovered its adaptability through operational effectiveness. Although many process, protocols, and scientifically reforms have been adopted, criminal justice practitioners and senior level leaders provide are continuously developing and revi talizing