Critical Issues in Education 2013

1) Preschool Adventures

2) Catholic School

3) Transition to Public School & the Stolen Gameboy

4) 4th and 5th Grade

5) AWKWARD YEARS

6) High School Fun

7) The 'Ford (in progress)

Chapter 2

I spent kindergarten, first grade, and second grade at Saint Catherine's, a Catholic school five minutes away from my house. In terms of the experiences that Dewey speaks of (whether helpful or miseducative), my time in Catholic school was full of them. In particular, St. Catherine's affected how I viewed myself academically relative to my peers and relative to how I was viewed as a student by people around me, which shaped how I viewed my studies and approached learning in general up until high school.

Table of contents

1. First grade: Special Education class- separated but equal
2. Second to fourth grade: You’re on your own
3. Fifth to eighth grade: I think I get it
4. High school: Graduate and go to college- that’s what I have to do, thanks for telling me

Chapter 4

High School Freshman English class: Uncontrollable

We were “that class” to her: the class that was loud, annoying, a pain, uneducated, ill mannered, and overwhelmingly tiring. And she was “that teacher” to us. She was angry, annoyed, and exhausted. Most importantly she didn’t like us. She looked like she hated her life, her job, and us. She was my 9th grade English teacher and although I was quiet, reserved, and studious to her I was part of “that class.” I was ignored because she had to control the bad students. Which weren’t bad students at all. They were just tired of being enclosed in a building for so many hours of the day, they were tired of being yelled at, they were tired of having teachers that didn’t believe they were smart or capable of doing anything, and they were tired of not getting what they deserved our of the Lynn public school system.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Television Schooling- Sesame Street, Barney, Disney, Thomas The Tank Engine, Mary Poppins

 Chapter 2: The First Day of School- Montessori School

Chapter 3: The Big Move to China- Crying in Chinese Local School

Chapter 4: The School Next to the Zoo- Rainbow Bridge International School

Chapter 4: The Carefree Elementary Years- Yew Chung International School

Chapter 5: The Bittersweet Years - Shanghai American School

            A Place Unlike My Own

Chapter 6: Untititled - Bryn Mawr College

A Place Unlike My Own

Table of Contents

Chpt1……. A Single Mother’s Push

Chpt2…….Open Your Eyes

Chpt3…….The Bridge

Chpt4…….Impact of high school & PUPP: Challenge Yourself

Chpt5…….College

Chpt6…….The Shift (from the top to the bottom)

Chpt7…….Adjustment

Chpt8…….Keep Moving Forward

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Chapter 3

Impact of High School & PUPP: Challenge yourself

    When I read "History and Culture: Wrestling with the Traditions of American Education", one paragraph really stuck out to me. It read:

“Education is viewed as the equalizing agent in our society, and meritocracy is viewed as the path to achieve that end. According to this belief, anyone who works hard will fare well. However, the ideology of meritocracy has an underlying flaw. It does not take into account the prevalent inequalities in our society (35).”

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Barney
    How Barney and other such cartoons taught me all I knew of social interaction.

Chapter 2: Grammar
    Nouns? What are nous? What is this grammar I need to learn?

Chapter 3: Multiplication Tables and Elementary Math
    Practice makes perfect was firmly enforced when it came to math.

Chapter 4: Chores
    How I sometimes did more chores than homework.

Chapter 5: Books
    How reading changed my life.

Chapter 6: Languages
    How languages have played a part in my education.

Chapter 7: Freshman Year
    The issues I faced, and the things I learned

Chapter 8: Sophomore Year
    How I picked my major, and how I did something that made me wonder if I wasted more than 5 years of my life.

Chapter 9: The Present
    Oh dear. I’m a junior. Now what?


Chapter 3: Multiplication Tables and Elementary Math

 Educational Autobiography

Table of Contents

1.Leaving the Bagel on the Dashboard, or a first lesson in self-sufficiency (Pre-School)

2. Calling my 2nd Grade Teacher Torica, or adventures in progressive elementary school (Pre-K–2)

3.The Oregon Trail, or exploring and loving public school (3-5)

4. Volleying, or let’s just not talk about it (6-7)

5. Losing Letters, or how to memorize a sonnet (8)

6. Stay Cool, Soda Pop, or how to stop crying over physics tests (9-12)

7. The Best Years of Your Life, or coming home to Bryn Mawr (Present)

Chapter 1

1. Preschool: Learning about Colors
2. Elementary School: Birds, Earthworms and Bees
3. Elementary School: Rollerblading
4. Elementary School: Pokemon Cards

Learning about Colors

This chapter discusses an altercation that I had with a student in preschool. I was being picked on and I lashed out by kicking a redheaded boy in the shin. During this altercation, I first became aware of my status as a minority in the school.

I seemed to have been oblivious to that fact for some time. In my mind, I saw the redheaded boy as an easy target; he may have been laughing at me because of my pale, yellow skin, but I fought back easily because he was no less unique than me, with his red hair and his freckles. To others, I was an easy target because I was so physically different from them. My skin color, my eyes and nose, all showed that I was not like the majority of my classmates. After the fight, I remember an older student from the elementary school entering my classroom after recess and reporting the incident to my teacher. I was being picked on, yet I was sent to time-out. The title of this chapter is a reference to race and the colors of our skin and hair. Being one of the few Asian students in the class, I was quickly aware of such characteristics and now wonder why these were never a topic of discussion in class.

Chapter One: Megan learns that schools can be shut down when they are too small and she is forced to move schools. 
Chapter Two: Megan attends English public school and spends most of her time pretending to twist her ankle at playtime to escape the cold outside
Chapter Three: Megan moves to the U.S. and learns the ‘Pledge of Allegiance.
Chapter Four: Megan goes to her first summer camp.
Chapter Five: Megan enrols at a Steiner school.
Chapter Six: Megan goes to ‘Hawk Circle’ with her class to learn how to survive in the wild.
Chapter Seven: Megan joins the ‘Midnight Run’ and is awakened to how the homeless live.
Chapter Eight: Megan does a ‘study abroad’ in Paris during her sophomore year of high-school.
Chapter Nine: Megan visits ‘Camphill’ which is a Steiner community and school for severely mentally handicapped children and adults. 
Chapter Ten: Megan writes a letter to a teacher after finding a class the teacher taught to be inappropriate and incorrect and the teacher redoes the class the next day. 
Chapter Eleven: Megan does shoemaking for her senior project and learns a trade.
Chapter Twelve: Megan learns in her Emily Balch Seminar Freshmen year from another student that the idea of being ‘color-blind’ is not a good thing like her all-white environment had previously taught her.

Chapter Thirteen: Megan learns that not everyone thinks that a Liberal Arts education is a good thing, or even the idea of going to college. She struggles with the privilege of these opportunities.

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