I can't wait to visit the high school later this month. I definitely think I've had a rather sheltered high school experience and I'm curious to see how the students' experience here compares. Though like the students we'll be visiting, admission to my (public) high school was through application, I believe the process is a little bit different, which I'm sure affects the way the students interact with one another and the backgrounds from which they come.

During our silent discussion on Thursday, one of the topics that interested me was burn out (of the teachers and students). I'd be interested in speaking to students about their experiences of this, particularly because I saw it happen often among students – and sometimes also teachers – at my own school. 

I was also curious about the senior writing project that Sarah spoke about in class. Though we won't be working with seniors, I'd love to know how much of the school is built around this expectation and how much a part of school culture it is. At my high school, students taking senior english APs were expected to end the year with a writing portfolio called the "Senior Portrait" and I know for many of my friends and myself, the expectation of the project was nearly as consuming as the project itself. 

I'm looking forward to learning about different high school experiences from the students, and can't wait to meet them.

Full episodes of "What Females Want" and "What Males Will Do"
(the Nature videos Kaye has asked us to watch for our discussion on Tuesday night)
are available on-line @
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/what-females-want/video-full-episode/5371/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/what-males-will-do/video-full-episode/5374/

I'm really excited to visit the high school in a couple of weeks.  We've talked so much about education in class and about different teaching methods such as banking and problem posing.  I hope we get to sit in on classrooms and see what kind of methods they use in their classrooms and how students respond to them.  It'll be interesting comparing the different teaching methods from a liberal arts college to a public urban high school.

To be completely honest, I'm not sure exactly what we'll be doing during our visit to the school.  Will we just be hanging out and talking with students? Or interacting with them in classes? Either way, I hope that I'll be able to form some kind of connection with students at the high school.  It would be really awesome to eventually be able to make a lasting connection, even though I know that won't be feasible in one visit!  I would have looked to have a college student connection when I was in high school.  Since I went to a public school I'll be able to relate to their educational experience, but not in the same way.  Since my public school was in a rural setting, it'll be much different from theirs in an urban, and also because of expected differences in socioeconomic class.  

A propos of Kaye's questions @ the end of class on Tuesday, about the complexities of passing --
What information do we use to categorize people/events or to make judgments? 
What information do we let pass? --see this morning's NYTimes article, The Freedom to Choose Your Pronoun:
“These teens are fighting the idea that your equipment defines what it means for you to be a boy or girl. They are saying: ‘You don’t know me by looking at me. Assume nothing’ ”.... some of the new adjectives young people use to describe themselves: “bi-curious,” “heteroflexible,” “polyamorous” and even “wiggly.”

I thought the slient board was a GREAT discussion tool. It really made me start thinking about the high school. I like to come into a new environment with out expectations except the expectation to learn from it. But when we were writing on the board someone put on the board 'I wonder how it would have been if we had gone to another school without the high school's resources.' I think that would be a very different experience. Even though we're going to a high school in Philadelphia, this specific school requires entrance exams and has a strong partnership with a Liberal Arts College. I wonder if our presence will make more of an impact at the high school or would it have made more of an impact on a more disadvantaged school?

I have so many expectations. I wanna see what an American public high school looks like. I would love to discuss their curriculum, pedagogy, teacher student relationship, challenges and views on the SAT testing, which i enjoyed proctoring and tutoring kids for.

I will also ask them about the situation on drugs, crime, dropping out etc in their school and since they are predominantly black, the relationship between black and white kids in the school and neighborhood. If I feel like it, I might seek their views on the use of the word we discussed in class last Tuesday.

I will describe a typical Nigerian public high school to them, contrasting the differences and noting the similarities if any. I would appreciate their thoughts on the issue of equal educational opportunities and then  share my access story with them.

Going to the high school, I want to expand my knowledge about different academic situations and the impact they have on students’ lives. Having gone to the same school for 12 years, I haven’t had much exposure to different academic cultures such as public and urban schools and thus, I am curious about the way the different backgrounds of the students in contrast to those that made up my class will have shaped the students’ expectations for their academic and vocational futures. Since I will be volunteering at the high school in the near future, I would also like to take this as an opportunity to observe the situations that the seniors I will be working with have faced in order to be able to understand them better and become the best help I can be for them. I would like to learn about the overall perspectives of the class, about how they see themselves in relation to their peers, the world around them and the authority figures that shape their lives; however, concurrently, I also expect that my questions won’t be definitively answered as the students may not open up as easily. I can’t just come into the school expecting that they will tell me everything about their lives, especially when I am a stranger asking about their personal academic and home life. I also can’t just make assumptions about aspects of their lives which may not be true. In any case, my main goal is to make a human connection, to have this be a learning experience that will not only benefit me but most importantly, benefit them.