TOW #30 - Letter to a New APELC Student

GOOD LUCK SURVIVING NEXT YEAR, NEWBIES!

Greetings, future students of Mr. Yost's class!

I am a survivor of the notorious APENG class from room  L08! You have a great journey ahead of you filled with adversities commonly known as TOWs and Timed Essays, but do not fear, for I, David, the Slayer of Vocabulary Words, shall give you words of advice to guide you through your way. Whether you will heed my words is up to you, but they might be the key for you to have a very challenging yet rewarding year.

Let's set something  straight right away; you are not going to get an "A" in this class easily. Heck, I was lucky just to stay in the "B"-range throughout the year! For most of the time, you will receive grades that will be below your expectation even if you pull an all-nighter (which really doesn't help at all) to study for your unit test or write an argument essay on why Mr. Yost is the best teacher ever. Do not let this fact bother you too much however, for this course is packed with college level contents, meaning that you are going to learn the same materials that many student will learn in their college freshman year .This is no simple feat, so feel proud!

To me, timed essays were a nightmare, and I have a feeling that they will a nightmare for you too. I mean, the only part that I actually liked about having a timed essay was giving myself a funky alias to keep my paper anonymous. In a timed essay, you will constantly be chased by the ticking clock, so it makes sense that most of you will start writing as soon as you receive the prompt. Do not be tempted to do that! I found it immensely helpful to use a method called HECTOR (Hunch, Evidence, Connection, Thesis, Organize, Reread) and to carefully think of what the author's purpose is. Although this process may cost you five to ten minutes, it helps you a lot on the long run because all your thoughts will be organized when you write. Do not underestimate the power of brainstorming and prewriting.

Because this is such a grueling course, you need to take an advantage of every resource around you. So make sure to visit Mr. Yost during his office hours in order to prepare yourself for the upcoming unit test or timed essays! Mr. Yost always tries to be flexible with his schedule so that he can help out each and every individual student during classes, lunches, study halls, and after schools. If you can set up a schedule for a meeting with Ms. Pronko, she will be glad to help you out as well. Make sure to visit these two teachers often, especially if you are working on a take home essay. They will be willing to sit with you and to make as much revisions and edits as you possibly need, so every time you change something on your paper, go visit them to see what they think of the changes.

Finally and most importantly, always stay positive! Without the right state of mind, this class will be downright brutal, so try to enjoy this class and cherish the memories instead of whining about failing a timed essay. It is hard to believe that by next year, Mr. Yost will be a father who will be talking about raising his torpedo baby (don't ask) to you in your class, because all he talked about in my class was about whether the baby will a boy or a girl (it's a boy) and how he will name the baby (I still think "Maayush" is an epic name). These are the kinds of moments that make the class bearable and even enjoyable, so always try to find positive aspects of APELC. And always remember: It's only just a school!

As a fellow comrade, I salute you, newbie, for your bravery (or is it naiveté?) to take on this challenge. I hope to meet you in the future as a mean-lean-TOW-killing-machine, and may Lady Luck be with you every single step of your rite of passage.

Sincerely,

David Min (aka Avid Mind, Nimdi Vad, Cupcake, Brainbow, and I AM ERROR)

TOW #29 - Waiting For "Superman" by David Guggenheim Argument

Imagine yourself running as fast you can just to see yourself getting further and further from your goal. This is one of many problems with the American public education system.

            When the educational reformer and the founder of Harlem Children's Zone Geoffrey Canada was in fourth grade, he was devastated to find out that Superman did not exist. No, he did not cry because it was like Santa Clause is not real, but because he realized that there isn't "anyone to save us" from poverty. Indeed, there is no such thing as a Superman who can make the lives of millions better, but there is such thing as education that grants younger generations the knowledge they need in order to survive in the world. However, the education that is renowned as the "ticket out of poverty" has not been doing such a great job lately as seen in Guggenheim's Waiting for "Superman". Generally speaking, the American public education system is failing due to improper use of the tenure system guaranteed by union contract and the outdated system of "tracking".

            Having a good teacher versus a bad teacher can make a world of a difference to the students. According to Guggenheim, students who learn from a high performing teacher is able to progress three times as fast as those who learn from a low performing teacher. While a bad teacher is able to cover only 50 percent of the required curriculum, a good teacher is able to cover 150%. At the end, however, no matter how great the difference of the impact the two teachers have on their students, they are both paid relatively the same and are given the same kind of privileges. In order for the American public education system to run more smoothly, it is necessary to have schools with mostly good teachers, but this is deterred by the current tenure system. Research shows that in Illinois, one in 57 doctors loses his medical license and one in 97 lawyers loses his law license, but only one in 2,500 teachers loses his credentials because of the tenure system that is defended by the teachers' union. Because the union contract prevents the bad teachers, also known as the "lemons", from being fired, the best that the principals can do is to exchange their lemons with other lemons at the end of the school year. This cynical shuffle is known as "the dance of the lemons", "passing the trash", or "the turkey trot", and it sums up the unbreakable negative cycle of the American public education system today. Because of the teachers' poor performance, the principals want to fire them. Due to the tenure system, however, the principals have to continue paying the teachers even if the outcomes are small. Then the principals exchange these teachers in hopes of getting better teachers, just to repeat the cycle for an another year. However, if the tenure system is removed, the schools can get rid of the bad teachers to make room for the good ones, and then the overall level of the school can be boosted.

            Another detrimental factor in American public education system is the concept of "tracking", or dividing students by their individual test results, neatness, politeness, and obedience to authority. The students on the upper track reap all the benefits while the students on the lower track have lower expectations and often worse teachers (sound familiar?). This means that even if the students on the lower track run faster, they are constantly falling behind, and it becomes increasingly difficult for them to catch up to the students on the upper track. As harsh as this sounds, the tracking system is specifically designed so that the students' academic careers are practically determined by the officials. This system worked great 50 years ago when America needed useful workforce. About 20% of the people would become doctors, lawyers, and CEOs, about 20% would become accountants, managers and bureaucrats, while the bottom 60% would become farmers and factory workers. The only problem with this today is the fact that there are not enough people to fill in for the jobs in high tech industries, meaning that the U.S. would not be able to compete in the global economy effectively in the future. It's clear that there are many problems with schools that have tracking systems, but how about the schools that does not have any? Guggenheim use Woodside, a school with a tracking system, and Summit Prep, a school that do not have one,  as an example of the unbelievable difference in academic performances. Out of 100 students, 62 students graduate, and only 32 students are prepared for four year colleges in Woodside. In Summit Prep, however, 96 students out of 100 graduate and are prepared for four year colleges. If schools abandon the tracking system and offer high level academic courses to all students, more students would be able to grow up to take highly skilled and highly paid jobs, and America would have a better chance of competing in the global economy.

            In a world where there is no Superman to save the day, people must rely on education to improve their lives and their country. However, due to improper use of tenures and the system of tracking, American public education system has been taking its toll on the American students and America itself as well. If these two problems are fixed, America would have schools in which all students have the equal opportunity to learn high level materials from a high performing teachers, and there would be no need to wait for Superman.

TOW #28 - Waiting For "Superman" by David Guggenheim Analysis

American public education system is clearly failing. David Guggenheim gives his insight to fix this modern day dilemma 

             In the documentary Waiting for "Superman", David Guggenheim takes his audience of American parents, teachers, and students on a journey to examine the different aspects of the American public education system. Throughout the documentary, Guggenheim goes through the "good" and the "bad" of the way schools are run, and looks into how these factors may impact the way receive their educations. One of the problem that he discusses is the ease in which a school teacher is able to achieve tenure and how even a poor teacher cannot be easily replaced. Guggenheim claims that having an efficient or an inefficient teacher can make a world of difference to the students, and yet both kinds of teachers have the same kinds of privileges. He mentions how teachers unions are making this problem even more difficult. Guggenheim also looks into the outdated system of "tracking" and argues that while this system worked well in the past, it does not go along very well in the modern world. He then suggests the use of good charter schools as a solution to the problems of the education system, arguing that charter schools allow some students in poverty to receive higher education, even though this is done by lottery. Throughout the film, Guggenheim establishes connections with students and provides different statistics in order to emphasize that American public education system really needs to improve.

            There are five important students who are interviewed throughout the video: Anthony, Daisy, Bianca, Francisco, and Emily. These students all have a dream and a passion to learn, but they are constantly struggling with the harsh realities of the public school systems around them. Both Anthony and Daisy seem to be destined to fall behind their grade levels and fail to graduate their neighborhood's failing high schools. Francisco may be held back a year because of his weak reading skills. Bianca's mother is struggling to pay her daughter's tuition at a neighborhood parochial school, and Emily will most likely be placed on a lower track that can deter her from reaching her academic goals if she attends Woodside High School. As time goes on, the audience members start to establish connections to these students. Almost at the end of the film when each students enters a lottery in order to get to a charter school, I was relieved for Emily and Anthony for getting into Summit Prep and getting on the waiting list for SEED respectively, but I was also heartbroken for the other families who were crying because the students did not get into their school of choice. Guggenheim establishes pathos by giving frequent interviews with these students, and this ultimately makes the audience feel sorry for the families whose dreams are crushed when they lose the lottery. This feeling then allows the audience to question the effectiveness of the American public education system because it just does not seem fair that these students who do not get elected will have to continue receiving poor education and will have a slim chance achieving their academic goals while others would have the opportunity to get out of poverty through high level education. This sense of pathos allows the audience to believe that America truly needs a public education system that all students can benefit from.

            Guggenheim also includes numerous statistics and facts about the overall education system that establishes the credibility of the film. He analyzes the American public education system in the viewpoints of politics, foreign countries, and individual schools to reveal is weakness. At one point of the film, Guggenheim mentions how the spending per students grew from $4000 to $9000 and yet the reading scores stayed the same. The scores in math are no better, because only 18% of 8th graders in Alaska are proficient in Math, 40% in New Jersey, 30% in New York, so on and so forth. Internationally speaking, U.S. is one of the lowest in education for it ranks 1st out of 30 among in self esteem, but 21st science, and 25th in math. Even the good test scores in suburban schools are nothing to be proud of because the low scores of the bottom 50% gets masked by the top percent of students. All these cold hard facts show that no matter how much money the government puts into education in U.S., the standards are not getting any higher, meaning that U.S. is wasting its precious dollars for a seemingly futile cause. They also show that despite being a strong country, U.S. cannot compete effectively with foreign countries in terms of brains. This would be detrimental to our country, considering that in modern world, societies depend on people who had high education. In order to continue thriving, Guggenheim warns that U.S. must improve its public education system so that all students may have equal opportunity to learn in high standards.

TOW #27 - TOW Reflection

Thank you Mr. Yost for giving me this opportunity to improve my writing.

            When I look at the very first TOW I wrote in last summer, it is difficult for me to believe how much I progressed throughout the year. Up till my TOW #18, all of my TOWs were almost identical to each other like they were created from a same template, and looking back now, I think that was exactly what have been doing all along. I am satisfied to know that my TOW style have changed so that all information is not crammed into a single 350 word essay. At first, I tend to summarize all the books and the articles I read, but I soon learned to focus on the rhetoric devices that the authors were using and to decipher the message they were conveying. Of course, this meant that I had to break away from the single 350 word paragraph norm, but I am glad that I experimented with my style of writing because although my TOWs became longer, I was able to write more freely and more in depth about how the authors' techniques influenced how they revealed their purposes.

            With this in mind, I believe that I truly mastered distinguishing a summary from an analytical essay. This means that I now know up to what extent I am to describe  the background information of a source so that I can focus more directly on the author's purpose and the unique rhetorical devices the author used as a vessel to get his point across to his specified group of audience, where as in the past I would take up more than half of the entire TOW to simply write about what the source was about and then cram the analysis in as last two sentences. This does not mean that I completely mastered analyzing sources to the deepest extent. Although I have been practicing, I still have to recognize the complexity of every issue by  addressing the questions "so what?" and "why?" properly. I feel like that I touch upon the surface of the topic, but I never seem to go deep into it to the point where my audience would derive any new perspective from my TOWs. I do hope that that will change once I practice my writings more in the future.

            I am very well aware that TOWs were designed to help the students with their analytical skills, and I think they really did help me with the essay writing during the AP exam. Although the TOWs gave me only a sense of how deep analysis can go in an analysis essay, they taught me other very valuable lessons: They opened my eyes to a variety of rhetorical devices that I would have easily overlooked (heck, I did not even know the term "rhetorical device" at the beginning of the year!) and helped me understand how each rhetorical gives off some kind of unique feeling to the audience. I realize now that with all the different combinations of different rhetorical devices, the author can portray the same message in many different ways ("many" would be an understatement...more like "limitless"?). In a very general sense, I think TOWs were really helpful simply because they forced me to write every week so that my writings would never be rusty. Although they really were a pain sometimes (they still can be), I am glad that I put my time and effort into them.

TOW #26 - WWF Advertisment

Somewhere out in the world, there is are species of animals that are slowly dying off. WWF puts this into perspective with a simple advertisement.

                            

                Pollution. Global warming. Animal Extinction. These are the biggest threats to the natural environments of the world and their inhabitants in the twenty-first century. While there are numerous environmental groups throughout the globe, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF for short) stands out from the rest with its five million supporters from more than a hundred countries and its clever ads. One of these ads is a very simple black and white ad lacking any kind of complex pictures or symbols. Actually, it is the simplicity that makes the ad so defining. The only picture the environmental group uses is the well known Metro Goldwyn Mayer logo, but as soon as one views it, he can tell something is amiss; the famous lion that proudly roars before the movie begins is nowhere to be found. A small message can be found in the upper right corner of the ad that reads "Wildlife is disappearing." Utilizing a popular reference and exaggeration, WWF effectively warns the viewers about wildlife extinctions with its unembellished advertisement.

                Using a well known logo was a smart move on WWF. Metro Goldwyn Mayer produced numerous films, so it is most likely that the person viewing the ad is familiar with the usual triumphant roar of the MGM lion before the screen fades to black and the movie starts. However, without the lion, the entire media company seems to give off less majestic feeling. When I saw WWF's version of the MGM, I realized for the first time how significant the big cat was to the company; without it, the logo looked so empty, sad, and weird, considering that something that I took for granted was simply gone. I am sure that this is the kind of the feeling that many other members of the audience feel  when they see the advertisement for the first time. By using the famous logo, WWF not only managed to connect me to the environment group, but also to connect me with other people who saw MGM movies as well.

                But the whole message of WWF seems to be exaggerated. How can environmental problems actually get rid of the renowned beast from the beloved movie producing company? The answer is, they can't. Unless MGM decides to change its logo, the feline is going to continue being the mascot even if the entire lion species goes extinct. However, this exaggerated idea allows people to consider a more realistic idea: what if the lion species does go extinct? It's quite possible, considering that lions are already endangered. When I saw the WWF logo, I first thought, 'Okay...it's not like I actually go to see wildlife animal other than on screens,' but then it occurred to me that in the future, lions and many other animals might not be seen anywhere other than on screens. That's a scary thought. By utilizing an exaggerated message, WWF creates a powerful essence of fear for the audience members to make them recognize that animal extinctions are real and daunting.

                With the use of a popular reference and exaggeration, WWF convinces its audience that animal extinction is a serious threat that often goes unheeded. WWF first cleverly connects all the audience members who know about Metro Goldwyn Mayer and then plants fear into them to warn about what would happen if the problem is not addressed properly. The message lingered in my mind for a long time, and I'm sure this ad will have the same effect for many other people as well.

TOW #25 - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

At a glance, a well calculated decision seem to triumph over a decision made from an instinct. Malcolm Gladwell thinks otherwise.

                                                                                          

            Humans' ability to make quick decision with very little information is an amazing talent, as shown through Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. This ability to unconsciously find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experiences is known as "thin-slicing," and it's helpful properties are often overlooked in the world today. Gladwell argues that in many ways, snap judgments might be as accurate as or even better than thoroughly calculated decisions by utilizing anecdotes and rhetorical questions.

            With the use of interesting stories, Gladwell not only manages to keep his audience's attention, but also effectively demonstrates that thin-slicing can be very useful in determining something that would otherwise require an enormous amount of time. In one of the chapters, the author gives an account of a time when a young couple came to the University of Washington where their actions were thoroughly recorded. A psychologist named John Gottman was determining whether the couple will be still together after fifteen years by analyzing their argument of their dog.  Astoundingly, Gottman managed to predict the result with a jaw-breaking 90 percent accuracy, a no small feat considering that he did not use any other information than a fifteen minute videotape of the couple. Using this anecdote, the author is able to reveal that thin-slicing can indeed be used effectively in real life. This shows that in order to determine something as important as marriage, people do not need years worth of tedious data but several signs that jump right at them at a glance. Gladwell is also able to deliver his message of humans' snap judgments in a more interesting manner than to explain his ideas without an example to connect to.

            Gladwell's book periodically contains rhetorical questions to interact with the readers and to transition from the anecdotes to the author's analysis of thin-slicing. After the real dialogue of the couple, Gladwell throws in two questions: "How much do you think can be learned about Sue and Bill's marriage by watching that fifteen minute videotape? Can we tell if their relationship is healthy or unhealthy?" Sure, these questions might not have direct answers, but they do allow the readers to stop and think whether or not if thin-slicing is sufficient enough for the job. With this idea in mind, the readers are able to go directly into the author's take of the issue and his analysis of Gottman's "love lab" without any additional transitions. While these rhetorical devices might not directly show that snap judgments might be as accurate as or even better than thoroughly calculated decisions, they work as little checkpoints for the readers and urge them to read further. "Can a marriage really be understood in one sitting?" The readers would probably think 'I do not know. I better read more,' and would be satisfied to see the answer later on.

            Utilizing anecdotes and rhetorical questions, Malcolm Gladwell effectively argues that thin-slicing can be just as useful as or even better than a time-consuming judgment.  Gladwell's view on this relatively unknown ability makes the readers think twice about the whole nature of decision making.

IRB #4 - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

            Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell is a book about "intuitive repulsions" that people get from time to time. It is a book that tries to convince the reader that decisions made in a short burst of time can be as good as the decisions made in an extended period of time. The author claims that the book will touch on the subject of when instincts work against people, and how snap judgments can be educated and controlled. I decided to give this book a try because I personally believe that I am an intuitive person myself, trusting my gut instincts and sometime my impulses. While I was reading the introduction, a thought flashed across my mind: if people get their "intuitive repulsions" from time to time, doesn't that mean that I picked this book to give it a try because of my own "intuitive repulsion?" As it turned out, my intuition was right, for Gladwell claims that the design of the cover,  whatever associations I had with his name, and the short story that I already read at the beginning of the introduction has "fundamentally shaped the way" I read up to page 13 of the book. Through this book (which totally grabbed my attention after this incident by the way), I hope  to learn more about intuition and how I can control my own impulses so that they could benefit me.