Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Week 5 Blog Post

Vocabulary Words

Tangential
Conscientious

While reading chapter one of the construction of adolescence I came across the words Tangential and Conscientious. When I looked up tangential it was defined as hardly touching a subject matter, like keeping it on the peripheral. While conscientious was defined as a person wishing to do what is right, relating to one’s work or duty they have.

Something that I did not understand

“Poor educational outcomes and constructions of self that are forged from negative associations
with formal schooling”

This quote came from page 8 of chapter one. In this paragraph the author talks about how questions are asked to figure out if teachers should hold the traditional idea of working with students to pass standardized tests or if their role as teacher should be different working with youth towards a relational terms. I do not understand if the author is talking about standardized teaching of youth to pass tests or something else. I could see it being used to talk about some of the shortcomings that our current school systems have in which tests are valued more so than creativity which could put some students off.  

Concepts important to reading

Cultural Capital: “The term cultural capital refers to non-financial social assets that promote social mobility beyond economic means. Examples can include education, intellect, style of speech, dress, or physical appearance.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital

Multi Authored: This concept challenged my idea that your life story is solely about you. This is concept is critical to understanding that youth adolescence growth is a story that comes from many different interactions with individuals throughout their lives.
 
Meeting of minds: This was an important concept when I was reading the section of Authoring Life Stories. Creating meaningful interactions and developing mental growth within youth should involve understanding how one thinks. It is talked about in this chapter as relating to how you teach youth about how you think and form ideas. By letting youth in on how you think will create dialogue about how they think and perceive their world versus your own.

Transparency: Throughout this chapter in order to have collaborative and meaningful mental engagement it seems like there needs to be transparency. Transparency at its core means that you do not hide things intentionally and that you seek to show everything that you can to someone. In order to have a positive relationship with youth it is important that they feel they understand who you are and why you are engaging with them in various activities.

Vygotsky and Scaffolding: I think these two concepts are very important in early childhood development and it is a topic was talked about in depth in Educational Psychology. Vygotsky laid down the primary theories on the social influences that shaped early childhood development. The term scaffolding introduced the idea of assisting youth rather than giving them the solution or no assistance at all. Rather using scaffolding you work with youth towards helping understand how they can come to a solution themselves with some assistance provided.  

Authoring Life Stories

Mother
Best Friend
Stephen Jenkins
God
Juste
Sister
High School Teacher
Father
David Mack

I have chosen to write about my best friend. My best friend has helped me write my story by being there to engage in complex thoughts, ideas and ramblings. Some of my best memories come from us just hanging out and talking about various topics on the news. These exchanges helped me to construct my ideas on certain issues and allow me to see another perspective on the matter. Being there as a friend as well to lend support has given me the resilience to continue during challenging times.

3 comments:

  1. I think is interesting how you and your best friend shared points of views while watching the news. I never really watched the news with my best friend.

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  2. Hi Gus,
    I really like the outlook of this blog post. The way in which you connected your thoughts and idea to this week's blog was neat and well organized. Thank you for sharing

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  3. Hey Gus, Thanks a lot for sharing with us! I really enjoyed reading your blog, thanks for sharing thoughts about your best friend, I really enjoyed that part!
    Take care, Megan

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