Passion and Productivity (CI 504 Project)

The following was a blog post made for my education course. Please enjoy. :)

I was on a bit of an anime binge recently, so here's a clip for personal entertainment. I've provided both the English and Japanese dubs to cater to your preferences:

ENGLISH

JAPANESE

I was born and raised on the Northwest Side of Chicago in a family of Filipino immigrants. Growing up, English and Tagalog were the predominant languages at home, but I never quite picked up the latter fluently. I attended a Catholic parish and school, St. William, which was only a few minutes’ walk from my house. The parish population was predominantly Mexican and Puerto Rican, so the Spanish language and Hispanic culture were heavily incorporated into Sunday services as well as the school curriculum.

At St. Will’s, I was part of a small class of 22 (some people transferred out and back in over time) which had a homeroom teacher who taught most of our subjects in the same classroom. We had a few other teachers which taught us music, computer basics, and physical education. It’s a very small school where it was very easy to put names to faces. That being said, my class was very collaborative in nature. Some of the Spanish speakers in our class would often group together and either work on assignments or chat. I recall one instance in which the teacher discouraged Spanish, but it still persisted until our graduation.

 

Our class had a lot of projects that were individualized; we had assignments with prompts, but we were able to use any topic or content that was available and interesting. An interesting text analysis activity I remember involved breaking down articles from either the Chicago Tribune or the Sun Times and breaking them down according to the five W’s (Who, What, When, Where, Why); subsequently, we would present these stories in front of the class. I also recall other projects such as a fiction book report and my first research paper. During these assignments, I chose texts which caught my attention and which I devoured with a passion.

I have a few takeaways from looking back at my grade school days. The usage of languages other than English did provide my Spanish-speaking friends a means to approach course content in a unique way; it’s an application of one’s own perspective and identity to make a genuine contribution to the classroom. It’s kind of like how anime fans state their preference on how they watch anime, whether it’s Japanese with English subtitles or just a straight-up English dub; some people take in the stories better in their own language, while other opt to take in the original voices.

By the way, here's an example of what I'm talking about:

 

People process things differently based on factors such as language, personal interests, and stuff that they care about in general. Content is effective when it bridges the student to the classroom; genuine interest breeds genuine contribution.

The questions I would like to discuss on this post:

• Can you recall any projects during which you genuinely pursued?
• Have you or someone you knew made contributions to a discussion which were noticeably unique in the classroom?