The Introduction Section
Due Date: Thursday January 4, 2018
Introduction:
“Hey, white girl. Move out the way!”
Without looking up, I knew two things: 1) I was being spoken to and 2) I should move out of the way. At Thompson Middle School, there were less than 10 white girls in our entire school, and I knew that when it was time to change classes and walk through the halls, the faster I moved and looked at the ground, the less likely I was to run into any trouble. The halls were tough, but riding the bus was the worst for me. Once my older brother moved on to high school, I was the only white student on the bus, and I was the last to get picked up. By the time I climbed onto the bus, everyone was sitting 2 or 3 to a seat already. I would have to be someone’s third on a seat. I would walk down the aisle while the bus pulled away, not making eye contact, asking if I could sit down. Eventually, after being refused by everyone, the bus driver would yell into his mirror that somehow could see all of us, that someone better let ‘that white girl sit down’ or he was going to pull over the bus. Someone would always begrudgingly give me a few inches, and I would balance my way to school for the rest of the trip. This was Richmond, VA in the late 1980s, but if you look at the data from that middle school today, the racial makeup is the same. Today’s racial profile of my middle school, Fred D. Thompson Middle School, is 97% black, 2% white and 1% Hispanic. In a city where 40% of the population is white, there is something not lining up. Since leaving Richmond, I take this imbalance with me, and I am especially sensitized to race in schools.
When I moved to California, I was struck immediately by the number of smaller charter school options for students. In both the charter schools and larger comprehensive schools though, I still saw segregation. When I moved to San Diego, I was lucky enough to get a job at High Tech Middle Media Arts. One of the things that initially drew me to this school was the way that students were selected. I kept saying to my friends back East that this was how it was supposed to be. Students from all economic and cultural backgrounds were working together in groups on projects. These students would never have been in a schooling situation in which their varied backgrounds would put them in a classroom together, and here they were discussing books together and crafting projects together. In Virginia, I had seen the imbalance as a student, and I had been frustrated by it as a teacher. At High Tech High (HTH), the academically and economically blind lottery system brings in a diverse mix and represents the city in which it exists. This plan attempts to expose students to different types of students and provides a place for them to work together in groups. This integration of students in a school seemed initially to be too good to be true to me. I kept waiting for people to throw in the ‘but’ as they discussed the design principles or showed some of the student work, but the ‘but’ never came. One of the biggest pulls for me was the thought that goes into the lottery system for student admittance for the High Tech High Schools. Not all charter schools use such deliberate methods to attempt representation of the overall community demographics. This led me to examine the question: How can an academically and economically blind lottery system integrate schools?
Student Example #1:
The debate around animals in captivity has piqued frustration from the general public in recent years and forced zoological facilities across the globe to reevaluate their standards. The public is usually not informed on the many procedures zoos and aquariums follow in order to provide a high quality facility. One common practice the public seldom realizes is the incorporation of behavioral enrichment. Behavioral enrichment (B.E.) is a standard followed by accredited zoos where an animal's environment is enhanced by providing stimuli to preserve the animal's natural instinct. I was introduced to B.E. within my first day of interning at Wild Wonders, a non-profit zoological facility in Bonsall, CA. Wild Wonders aims to provide homes for non-releasable rescued and owner-relinquished animals while teaching the importance of conservation in local schools. At Wild Wonders, volunteers and interns create B.E. everyday. One usually grabs the “cheat-sheet” which lists all the animals and the types of enrichment they can or can not receive. For example, most of the kinkajous can have newspaper balls filled with craisins or cheerios, but two of them can only receive grapes because of health restraints. At Wild Wonders, B.E. has proved to be an issue as volunteers mistakenly give animals toxic foods or items that could harm them. This happened during one of my first weeks interning, when I was creating B.E. with another volunteer. She used a scent or seasoning of some sort, possibly pepper flakes or a spice, in boxes for the arctic foxes. When checked by staff, the type of scent in the boxes was not specified, therefore the fox B.E. was distributed and resulted in food poisoning. Over the course of my time at Wild Wonders, both as a volunteer and intern, various staff members have told me their opinions on B.E. Some, who no longer work at the facility, told me that the B.E. was mindless, did not actually prove to stimulate the animals, and was more of a tool to keep the animals busy.
I’ve been visiting the San Diego Zoo for many years and I can recall the zookeepers’ descriptions of the fun toys placed in the enclosures. Some enrichment items were more permanent, while others were temporary. The San Diego Zoo has successfully contributed to conservation and kept their captive animals happy and healthy for 100 years now. Of course the San Diego Zoo has more funding available to them, but other than money, what is holding Wild Wonders back from creating engaging B.E.? I chose to look at the enrichment process currently in place at Wild Wonders and see what worked and what didn’t. What forms of behavioral enrichment are effective in stimulating captive animals’ minds?
Student Example #2:
“That looks wonderful, Chenoa. Your painting is one of the best I’ve seen all day!”
I knew she was lying, she was a teacher paid to encourage anything I created no matter how unattractive it’s appearence. Still I beamed with pride and went home to show off my masterpiece to my family. This was only the beginning of a very long and difficult relationship with art. While the arts have never been my strong suit in school, they have majorly influenced my academic career. I believe that the arts are important for a quintessential education; they may not initially seem to hold the same weight as mathematics or science but they can be just as impactful to a student. My interest in art education lead me to my internship at the Discovery Children’s Museum in Escondido, California. The museum encourages child development through the means of art and exploration.
There are many forms of art; dance, music, painting, theatre and each carry the same weight of importance in the development and education of a child. While art may not be regarded as a significant factor in early childhood education and is often times seen as an anomaly when discussing a school’s curriculum, art is an essential element in education. However with many cutbacks in school funding, curriculums have been showing a focus more on common core subjects such as math, science, and reading, entirely disregarding the importance of art in the education system. Art is as important as the other subjects pushed in schools. Nonetheless many fail to see the importance of art in a young child’s development. As a student who currently attends a school with a focus on the STEAM curriculum, I would like to further explore the importance of incorporating art in the education system and the effect it has on a student’s academic achievements as well as how visual arts help improve early child development. My Interest in arts and education lead me to my essential question: Should art be considered a part of the core curriculum for elementary students in North County public schools?
Introduction:
- Draw the reader into the subject of your research by broadly introducing your topic through a narrative or anecdote
- The last sentence should be your essential question (inductive writing)
- Times New Roman, Size 12 Font, Double space, first person is OK in this section
“Hey, white girl. Move out the way!”
Without looking up, I knew two things: 1) I was being spoken to and 2) I should move out of the way. At Thompson Middle School, there were less than 10 white girls in our entire school, and I knew that when it was time to change classes and walk through the halls, the faster I moved and looked at the ground, the less likely I was to run into any trouble. The halls were tough, but riding the bus was the worst for me. Once my older brother moved on to high school, I was the only white student on the bus, and I was the last to get picked up. By the time I climbed onto the bus, everyone was sitting 2 or 3 to a seat already. I would have to be someone’s third on a seat. I would walk down the aisle while the bus pulled away, not making eye contact, asking if I could sit down. Eventually, after being refused by everyone, the bus driver would yell into his mirror that somehow could see all of us, that someone better let ‘that white girl sit down’ or he was going to pull over the bus. Someone would always begrudgingly give me a few inches, and I would balance my way to school for the rest of the trip. This was Richmond, VA in the late 1980s, but if you look at the data from that middle school today, the racial makeup is the same. Today’s racial profile of my middle school, Fred D. Thompson Middle School, is 97% black, 2% white and 1% Hispanic. In a city where 40% of the population is white, there is something not lining up. Since leaving Richmond, I take this imbalance with me, and I am especially sensitized to race in schools.
When I moved to California, I was struck immediately by the number of smaller charter school options for students. In both the charter schools and larger comprehensive schools though, I still saw segregation. When I moved to San Diego, I was lucky enough to get a job at High Tech Middle Media Arts. One of the things that initially drew me to this school was the way that students were selected. I kept saying to my friends back East that this was how it was supposed to be. Students from all economic and cultural backgrounds were working together in groups on projects. These students would never have been in a schooling situation in which their varied backgrounds would put them in a classroom together, and here they were discussing books together and crafting projects together. In Virginia, I had seen the imbalance as a student, and I had been frustrated by it as a teacher. At High Tech High (HTH), the academically and economically blind lottery system brings in a diverse mix and represents the city in which it exists. This plan attempts to expose students to different types of students and provides a place for them to work together in groups. This integration of students in a school seemed initially to be too good to be true to me. I kept waiting for people to throw in the ‘but’ as they discussed the design principles or showed some of the student work, but the ‘but’ never came. One of the biggest pulls for me was the thought that goes into the lottery system for student admittance for the High Tech High Schools. Not all charter schools use such deliberate methods to attempt representation of the overall community demographics. This led me to examine the question: How can an academically and economically blind lottery system integrate schools?
Student Example #1:
The debate around animals in captivity has piqued frustration from the general public in recent years and forced zoological facilities across the globe to reevaluate their standards. The public is usually not informed on the many procedures zoos and aquariums follow in order to provide a high quality facility. One common practice the public seldom realizes is the incorporation of behavioral enrichment. Behavioral enrichment (B.E.) is a standard followed by accredited zoos where an animal's environment is enhanced by providing stimuli to preserve the animal's natural instinct. I was introduced to B.E. within my first day of interning at Wild Wonders, a non-profit zoological facility in Bonsall, CA. Wild Wonders aims to provide homes for non-releasable rescued and owner-relinquished animals while teaching the importance of conservation in local schools. At Wild Wonders, volunteers and interns create B.E. everyday. One usually grabs the “cheat-sheet” which lists all the animals and the types of enrichment they can or can not receive. For example, most of the kinkajous can have newspaper balls filled with craisins or cheerios, but two of them can only receive grapes because of health restraints. At Wild Wonders, B.E. has proved to be an issue as volunteers mistakenly give animals toxic foods or items that could harm them. This happened during one of my first weeks interning, when I was creating B.E. with another volunteer. She used a scent or seasoning of some sort, possibly pepper flakes or a spice, in boxes for the arctic foxes. When checked by staff, the type of scent in the boxes was not specified, therefore the fox B.E. was distributed and resulted in food poisoning. Over the course of my time at Wild Wonders, both as a volunteer and intern, various staff members have told me their opinions on B.E. Some, who no longer work at the facility, told me that the B.E. was mindless, did not actually prove to stimulate the animals, and was more of a tool to keep the animals busy.
I’ve been visiting the San Diego Zoo for many years and I can recall the zookeepers’ descriptions of the fun toys placed in the enclosures. Some enrichment items were more permanent, while others were temporary. The San Diego Zoo has successfully contributed to conservation and kept their captive animals happy and healthy for 100 years now. Of course the San Diego Zoo has more funding available to them, but other than money, what is holding Wild Wonders back from creating engaging B.E.? I chose to look at the enrichment process currently in place at Wild Wonders and see what worked and what didn’t. What forms of behavioral enrichment are effective in stimulating captive animals’ minds?
Student Example #2:
“That looks wonderful, Chenoa. Your painting is one of the best I’ve seen all day!”
I knew she was lying, she was a teacher paid to encourage anything I created no matter how unattractive it’s appearence. Still I beamed with pride and went home to show off my masterpiece to my family. This was only the beginning of a very long and difficult relationship with art. While the arts have never been my strong suit in school, they have majorly influenced my academic career. I believe that the arts are important for a quintessential education; they may not initially seem to hold the same weight as mathematics or science but they can be just as impactful to a student. My interest in art education lead me to my internship at the Discovery Children’s Museum in Escondido, California. The museum encourages child development through the means of art and exploration.
There are many forms of art; dance, music, painting, theatre and each carry the same weight of importance in the development and education of a child. While art may not be regarded as a significant factor in early childhood education and is often times seen as an anomaly when discussing a school’s curriculum, art is an essential element in education. However with many cutbacks in school funding, curriculums have been showing a focus more on common core subjects such as math, science, and reading, entirely disregarding the importance of art in the education system. Art is as important as the other subjects pushed in schools. Nonetheless many fail to see the importance of art in a young child’s development. As a student who currently attends a school with a focus on the STEAM curriculum, I would like to further explore the importance of incorporating art in the education system and the effect it has on a student’s academic achievements as well as how visual arts help improve early child development. My Interest in arts and education lead me to my essential question: Should art be considered a part of the core curriculum for elementary students in North County public schools?