On Appreciating Substitutes!

On Jackson's blog, I found a response he wrote to Luis's post on substitutes.

Subs want to help us and care about all of us. We need to in turn show our care for them too. If you don't appreciate your education, leave the classroom instead of wasting the sub's time. Teachers are extremely important figures in society and everyone should realize that; they care for our future, even subs.

Like Jackson mentioned earlier in his post, substitutes are also teachers, but they are temporary.  Even though they may not know all our names or the norms of the particular class, they still have valuable knowledge that they can share with us, but oftentimes, students tend to disrespect and take advantage of substitutes.

Many times, when a teacher sets a rule in the classroom, when the teacher is there, a vast majority of the time, we follow the rules to avoid getting into trouble.  When there's a sub though, we choose to ignore those rules, and just do things as we'd like.  We take advantage of the substitute's minimal knowledge of the rules at the school and in the class, and use electronics or eat, and often do not do the work assigned, but on rare occasions, we do.

It's true though, just because the substitute doesn't stay for a long time at the school, dedicated to teach students at the school everyday, it doesn't mean that they don't care about your education or want to teach students.  We should appreciate substitutes more often, we under-appreciate them and all the effort they put into teaching or at least just watching us at school.  ASTI subs are extremely generous in my opinion, for being willing to find our small campus, and to stay with a room full of teenagers for a day.  It doesn't sound like a very fun or easy job.

Just a little story I'd like to mention about a substitute in fifth grade:
I remember back in fifth grade, I had (what I thought was) the coolest teacher ever.  He was nice, our history lessons were super fun, he had awesome books, lots of free time, and I always enjoyed my time in his class.  One day he was absent though, so of course we had a sub.  The trouble-maker of the class and the girl he liked (who btw was a goody-two-shoes) both teamed up and set up a string in the front of the class, where'd she would walk by, a few inches away from the floor.

I remember seeing her tripping over it, falling, and all the students began to laugh at her.  She started to cry.  Yet, the ignorant elementary students we were. people continued to laugh.  I think I probably did too.  But still all these years later, whenever I remember that moment, I feel guilty.  She was a nice person, she didn't deserve it.  She didn't do anything, but come in to substitute for us, which the students decided to take an advantage of, and use it to their entertainment.

Please don't do anything like that to a sub. Ever. It's not nice. At all.

Just saying.~

Amazing Night at the Silent Auction

Kimchi, my grandmother in my strange family tree, wrote something in her blog post, Silent Auction SUCCESS/Response to Peter:

I'm pretty sure that throughout the night, the only thing running through everybody's mind, especially the sophomores was that we had HW due, and that included this post, a book post, 2 essays to work on, math hw, a study guide for science, and a STD brochure for science. On the weekend of the Silent Auction. How convenient.  I wanted to say my thanks...without any of you, we would not have raised OVER $2-3000.

 Last night was very hectic, with many volunteers, the PTSA board, and especially Ms. Harhen running around to make sure that everything was going well and in order, and that everyone had enough food, and that entertainment was good.  Luckily, there were no major problems, and things went well.  We fundraised so much money to go to ASTI, and many people left happily, from a nice night.


There is so much homework this week though.  The two blog posts for English, a group essay and short story for Writing, lots of "fun" math homework from the textbook, study guide questions and vocab for science, and   a "super fun" group science brochure on STDs to work on.  The group projects are particularly hard to work on, since it is difficult to get all the group members to work on the project, and sometimes, especially at the same time, and to communicate with one another.  My essay for writing was hard to write because half of my group didn't do much work *ahem, kimchi*.  The short story went a lot better though, since I had awesome group members, and we all managed to work on it at the same time, so we completed that fairly quickly.  The math homework I still have yet to finish, and same with the study guide questions and vocab.  I at least finished half of it though.  I spent most of my day working on the brochure, working on fitting all the information onto one page, and the formatting of the brochure constantly confused me, and was unwilling to cooperate with me.  


Thank you very much, all you people who helped contribute to the fabulous night yesterday at the ASTI Silent Auction.  The entertainment was stunning, despite the problems that Music Club ran into, trying to figure out how to perform with the microphone.  Let's hope next year's Silent Auction will be just as amazing or even better!~

The Stupid Question

Have you ever heard of the quote, "The only stupid question is the one you don't ask"?

I used to believe that too.  Until I was insulted by my teacher for asking a question. 

The logic of the quote makes perfect sense.  If you don’t understand something, then ask someone else about it and you can learn by asking the question, even if it sounds ridiculous.  Asking questions to try to understand things you don’t understand is the equivalent of opening new doors to new explorations and opportunities.

I learned from the past that if I don’t speak up and ask questions for myself, no one else will.  I need to do things on my own, and there won’t always be somebody standing there with me guiding me through the next step of my life.  If I don’t act, things will stay the same.  I finally realized that a year or so ago, but I was always still too shy to speak out and talk to others that I didn’t know very well.  I finally started to speak up for myself and to try to make my voice and opinions heard, to make some kind of influence on things.  Ever since, I’ve learned more about things, and I have gotten to know more people and things about them.  I started to ask questions in class like I never had, because I was to shy to talk to teachers.  By asking more questions, I started to finally understand the things that I didn’t understand before, and was able to use that new knowledge for other things that were influenced by it. 

I have begun to speak up around school, and am pursuing new opportunities, like PTSA.  If I have a question about something in class, I ask the teacher about it, instead of asking a friend to ask the question for me. 

This Tuesday, (I won’t mention what class for the sake of the teacher, but those who have that class with me and talk to me probably heard me talking about it for a while) I didn’t understand the question that the teacher gave us to work on.  I asked a clarifying question, just to make sure that the question was correct and that he/she didn’t write the question incorrectly.  He/she responded by saying to me “I don’t even know why you asked that question.”

It was seriously insulting to hear a teacher say that to me.  I was honestly confused and unsure about how to answer the question he/she put up.  I wasn’t the only person who didn’t understand it either.  I asked the classmates around me if they understood, and the people around me did not.  After I got that response from the teacher, I wrote in my notebook, “I’m only asking for those who did not want to ask, and because I don’t get it.  It’s not a crime to ask.  I’m not the only one who had that question.  I’m just the only one who was willing to ask.”

I don’t think I’m asking questions in that class again. 

Shiyun's Blog: My Vocabulary List

Shiyun's Blog: My Vocabulary List
So, I'm trying to test out this backlinking thing, but I can't figure it out...

Focus words to slowly increase the vocab i know :]

I decided to focus on words that I kinda know, but cannot define, like Mr. Sutherland advised.
1. method
2. policy
3. affect
4. consequence
5. design
6. demonstrate
7. dimension
8. perspective
9. sustainable
10. status

ASTI Size Increase?

Today, we had a PTSA meeting at school, and we came to the topic of the possible size increase for ASTI.  Mr. Fong talked about how AUSD was planning to increase ASTI's size to 400 students, but the grades levels would be from seventh grade to twelfth grade.  The students would not be at the portable campus only, but supposedly, we would have the seventh and eight graders at a different campus, and the ninth through twelfth graders at the ASTI and COA campus.  Even though it is somewhat a good and a bad thing to be able to increase the size of ASTI, I personally would like it better if we could keep the ASTI size the same as it is now.

As many of you know, there have been major budget cuts this year, and the Parcel Tax did not get passed, so a lot of the funding for schools has been drastically lowered, and we do not have as many funds to pay for textbooks and teachers.  Many of the schools have been planning to shut down soon and merge with another school, and grades for the school to be changed.  I heard that Encinal High School and Lincoln Middle School might shut down, or the grades in Alameda High or something would be changed so there are seventh and eight graders too.  Also, they have plans to shut down about half of the elementary schools in Alameda, I think.

Because many of the schools might get shut down, and most schools are losing privileges and teachers.  As a small school, it's a great thing if the AUSD still allows ASTI to be an early college high school without thousands of students, but I really like the small environment ASTI has opposed to the large size of other "normal" high schools.  If the school size is increased, odds are, we will be able to have a sports team and games.  We would use the college classrooms, and the seventh and eighth graders would be at a different campus, and the high schoolers would only be part time college students for all four years.  We would take a combination of both high school courses at the ASTI campus, and college classes at the COA campus. (This is what I heard from the conversation, but I don't have any official proof for it.)

Personally, I would like it if ASTI could keep its small size, instead of increasing the number of students, because then it would be able to maintain the small family-like atmosphere, and most of the students would know each other.  I really like that the teachers and students are all a very tightly knit community of families and friends, that we can all depend on.  I also like how because of ASTI's small size, it seems more exclusive, and it is easier for teachers to focus more attention for each student, instead of less attention for more students.

I'm curious what you think about the possible size increase for ASTI. Please respond by commenting and let me know what you think.

Classmate Response

After looking through a few blogs, I decided to take a quote from a freshman that I honestly don't know very well, but I found Stan's blog interesting, and found good quotes that related to the ASTI Constitution a lot.

"When you are the one bullying you feel powerful and you feel very that you are in control of what ever it is that is going on. Sometimes you feel like you have to bully to fit in with a certain group of friends and in this situation your options are limited because if you bully them then you are friends with the new people but then you feel bad because you hurt the feelings of the kids who were being bullied, and then if you don’t bully them you feel good because you did the right thing but then you are the one who is bullied."

"When you are the one bullying you feel powerful and you feel very that you are in control of what ever it is that is going on. Sometimes you feel like you have to bully to fit in with a certain group of friends and in this situation your options are limited because if you bully them then you are friends with the new people but then you feel bad because you hurt the feelings of the kids who were being bullied, and then if you don’t bully them you feel good because you did the right thing but then you are the one who is bullied."

What Stan says connects to the ASTI Constitution in a few ways.  The ASTI Constitution reminds us to include, not exclude other students, and when Stan talks about how you feel like you need to bully others to fit in with some groups of people at times, you are not included in the group unless you decide to join the group and bully others.  To make the ASTI environment more friendly and inviting, we need to accept other for who they are, and like them for their perfection and their flaws.  We should learn to utilize each other’s differences to make friendships stronger, because that is also what brings us closer together, and makes us more diverse and unique. 

At ASTI, we also need to accept others for who they are, instead of trying to change them, so they aren’t themselves, or excluding them for being different.  We need to accept that everyone is different and can’t always be what you want them to be: nobody’s perfect.  We shouldn’t have to do things (especially mean things) to gain acceptance into a group.  We should be accepted for who we are and not who we try to be or act like we are.  Each and every one of our personalities are unique, and if one characteristic is changed so you can fit into a group, we are not being truthful to ourselves or others.

Another way that Stan’s blog post relates to the ASTI Constitution is that he talks about how others feel when people bully them, and he understands the view of where other people are coming from, and are empathetic to how they feel in situations where they are bullied by others or when someone is in the predicament where they have to choose between bulling others to impress a group of people, or to be nice to others and not bully them, but often times become a victim of bulling themselves.  

P.S. my internet crashed, so I'm posting this at Borders >.<