Blog # 4

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In last class, Julian started the class with nice activity which he called it reacting adversity. We divided to three groups, and each group had a different situations. We were supposed to discuss and write the best solutions for our given difficult situations. That was a nice activity to see how people had different and same strategy to solve the problem, and I learned very good ideas that I have never thought about it before. For example, Scott mentioned about getting help from professional and others which sometimes I did not do that or forgot to ask for help from others. Our group situation was that if we work hard and don’t accomplish on our project, how would we react to it. When I heard different ideas and strategies, it opened my mind to be able to look at the problem differently and react to the problem differently. Thus, I like the activity because I learned from my classmates to look at a same hypothetical situation differently. After that the class was divided into two groups for pros and cons about affirmative action. I like the idea of debating, and I think Jaimie assigned us in two groups randomly, but our opponent group was more prepared, and they argued better than us because Scott gave us a lot of facts and statistics which made a powerful argument. I think for next debate it is better to divide groups evenly because the other group had more students who were good at arguing and presenting their arguments better than my group.  Although the idea of debating was learning from each other, but if we had divided into even groups, we would had more exciting debate.

Hurtado and Torres argue that how Latinos or Hispanics students suffered from being minority in the higher education in U.S. Both writers claim that how implicit and explicit stereotype can have impact in Latinos education. For both writers, it is important to know that how Latinos students perceive the climate of racial /ethnic diversity and their knowledge about the environment of institution in their environment. However Hurtado argues about the demographic, achievement, and stereotype of Latinos students, but Torres argues about how Hispanic culture affect the Latinos students. For example, Torres, discusses about how it is important in Latinos culture to please their parents and going to college is the most pleasant thing that a student can do for his or her parents. Torres, also argues about cultural values in Hispanic culture by saying that, “my house is your house” which is a common expression in Latinos culture. It means openness to friends and family and the importance of helping one another. Therefore, by pleasing a parent, Latinos helping one another. Torres also argues about the importance of language. Those students who are not fluent in their native language, they want to learn the language and improve it because they feel more cohesive. Although helping one another or pleasing parents are very important in Latinos culture, but in reality only 9% of Latinos students complete four years college, argues Hurtado. Two-thirds of Latinos population is located in California, Texas, and New York states. These large population of Latinos had significant changes in admission and student support policies Latinos education in those three states, but still drop rate is high and completing four years college rate is very low. Furthermore, Latinos students have a long and challenging journey to change these stereotype and reduce the impact of discrimination against them in higher education.

While I was reading Chang and Kiang article, the discrimination against one talented student surprised me. Despite stellar academic achievement, Yat Au was rejected for undergraduate admission at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987.  Not  only I was surprised, but also I felt sad for that student. How come a stellar student with a great achievement can be rejected? I don’t need to use my imagination and put my feet into his shoes; I already know how painful and sad it is.

Group Development in the Wild

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Survivor is a show of true adaptation and rule. What I mean by that, is the new environment these contestants are dropped into challenge their abilities to mentally adapt to a new setting and group of people. This group will gradually organize the rule and goal of their tribe.
I was able to identify early group developmental stages, such as forming and norming. It was obvious some group members were confident enough to take the lead and compete for social acceptance. Jeremy stated “I feel good, everyone wants to date the prom king.” after he had three private conversations with Kelley, Natalie, and Missy regarding the group dynamics. This paves the way for a group leader in the Hunahpu tribe.
The primary tension is also obvious in the Coyopa tribe, where group dynamics have been ordered early on. Nadiya has already begun to weigh her competition within her own group by clearly stating the totem pole of age. She describes the younger ones in a happy-go-lucky tone, her own age group as capable, and speaks of the older two men in an uninterested and patronizing tone. This tension seems to be felt with other Coyopa group members, such as Dale who comments on his old age and lack of ability to connect with the others. Dale is exhibiting a clear example of the forming stage, where he determines what behaviors are accepted by the group. He succeeds and is the self-proclaimed “fire starter that’s moved up the food chain!”.The underlying arrangement of these players is something you can see all of them trying to work through individually.
Hidden Agendas are practically procedure for the game Survivor, and Val is keeping her goal from Keith; disrupting their communication even when he is all she has on exile island. Her goal is to save the clue she was given, in the hopes of finding an idol. John is keeping an agenda as well from his tribe member Wes when he is identified by him as a famous baseball player on the Braves. Although Wes was pleased to meet such an athlete, John was annoyed that this could possibly be shared with group members that are unaware. He states, “Come time, Wes is being voted off and I’ll make sure of it”, leaving Wes with no indication of his hidden agenda. The dynamics are constantly changing, and each stage varies from tribe to tribe according to their ability to become comfortable and work together.

The suspense is eating at me!

Blog #4 by Scott

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I thought last week’s class was another good, thought provoking experience for me. The questions Julian prepared for us were interesting in the different ways we can handle a particular problem or situation. I liked his Wright brothers analogy of how despite the brothers lack of education and funding, they still overcame adversity, and built the first plane to fly. I also liked what Shahdad had to say about how to deal with adversity. He said life can be 10% of what happens to us and 90% is how we handle it. The debate we had was a little stressful, mostly in the preparing part of it.  It turned out my team was well prepared with and we also took Dr. Jaimie’s advice of providing statistics with reliable sources to help back our argument up. I think that made the difference in a close debate. Although I argued against affirmative action, I think it did help produce some great minority professionals in many fields, which helped in the minority communities by giving the community someone they may be able to relate with better and also to give the children inspiration. The group discussions on the continuing struggles of African Americans was interesting, as well. Although we barely scraped the surface of this serious issue, I do feel more enlightened about the reasons why this problem exists. Reading the perspectives of African Americans really helped me understand more. I would like to learn more about what is being done to improve the educational success of African Americans.

I liked the way that the readings this week about Latin American and Asian American students distinguished the different countries that these two groups are from. It seems many Americans tend to think all Latin Americans are from the same place and even more so many people I know think of Asian Americans as all coming from the same country. The readings pointed out that in 1990 only 9%, and in 2000 only 11%, of Latin Americans over 25 years old completed a four year college and that today many Latin American students are first generation college students. I think that is awesome that so many of this group are making it in education and are probably making their families very proud. I know my parents worked hard to give my brothers and my sister every opportunity to go to college. I noticed in the readings that in Texas they have a program that gives more Latin Americans an opportunity to get to college by admitting the top 10% students from every high school in the state. They also have college programs in place to help retain these students and improve their chances to graduate.  Choosing a culture must be difficult and complex for many Latin Americans as the second reading pointed out. This reading also shows the diversity amongst Latin Americans as well. The article about Asian Americans provided some statistics that helped prove that the stereotype that all Asian Americans are top notch students at the best universities. 32% of Asian Americans had bachelors degrees in Boston, compared to 38% who had less than a 12th grade education. Among Asian American students there was huge disparity between the different countries they were from and whether they made it to college. For example Chinese, Japan and Indian students had a 66.5% chance to make to college compared to a 26.3% chance for the immigrants from such countries as Laos or Cambodia. This weeks readings broke some stereotypes by showing that Latin Americans and Asian Americans are very diverse groups.

Blood Vs. Water

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In this episode of Survivor, all team members are brought to Nicaragua, as it is the start of the episode. While they are brought with a family member or close loved one, they are split up and put into tribes after the first night. The two tribes have a complete sense of choice when it comes to how to survive and are working toward the same goal, to win challenges for their tribe. However while they all have a common group goal, they each have their own individual goal, to make it to the end of the show. The two tribes, throughout the first episode, figure out their group dialects that can help them become successful groups for the rest of the show. A good example of how the group members are finding their niche was while the rest of the tribe spends time rubbing branches together in hopes of a fire, Dale shows constructive nonconformity by continuing to work on making a fire with the use of his glasses. Even though it was the work of one member, it gave the whole group a sense of accomplishment.

While the tribe members are becoming nervous about the upcoming tribal council, the orange group starts to talk amongst themselves seeing who everyone wants to vote out. They have started the storming stage where people have taken up roles as leaders and followers and are realizing they can’t be friends with everyone and still accomplish their individual goal. The first set of conflict is that a lot of members had hidden agendas when talking to each other. That could lead to many communication issues if that continues to be the case. The storming stage in the orange group should continue into the next episode as they have now experienced voting someone out but are still trying to address and figure out the groups dialect. The blue group could stay in the forming stage because they have yet to experience any major tension. They seem to have moved from primary tension after doing so well in the first challenge, to being able to resolve the primary tension and will continue in the forming stage.

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Episode 1 Survival Blood vs Water

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As in other survivor seasons, we see the way emotions can take a toll on someone’s body, it breaks them down and leaves them hopeless. In Survivor: Blood vs. Water, we get the sense that emotions are going to flare since friends and family, are battling against each other in such a brutal cutthroat competition. In this season everyone comes with a partner whether it be a friend, wife, husband, daughter or dad, they are then split into different tribes which are the Hunahpu wearing blue and Coyopa in orange. In the first episode we already get a sense of how every constants true colors are, some are snakes in the grass, some are arrogant, and some are genuinely nice people. However once the contestants were put into a group like setting, their true intentions were put to the side and their false identities were then visible. They put on fake smiles, they talked each other up and they tried to display likeable attributes. As a long time survivor enthusiast, this is all to common, towards the middle of the season alliances will be made and they will be broken, people will get stabbed in the back and people will ultimately fall back on there word, the only thing that could truly save you is winning immunity or finding the idol, both almost impossible jobs because everyone has one goal in mind and it’s the same as the other contestant besides them, win at all costs because money talks.

In my opinion the best part of the first episode is seeing everyone’s reactions to who’s in their group, they begin to size each other up and think about who they want to form alliances with. For example, in the Hunahpu tribe, Jeremy becomes the all around good guy/ savior. He seems like a reliable player because of his performance in the first competition. The others have respect for him right off the bat because he won them there first challenge, he also seemed like a genuine guy who had real emotions and was a real guy and he wasn’t scared to display them either; Unfortunately he knocked out his wife and sent her to the deserted island. He went on saying he never wanted that to happen and he doesn’t know is he could go on in the competition if he hurts his wife in the process. This is a prime example of how emotions are going to take on a big role since everyone is pit against there loved one. In the Coyopa tribe, exactly what shouldn’t happens, happens, there’s already a few different “cliques” and they leave out all but one of there tribe members primarily because he’s old and they think he doesn’t have a good chance of impacting the group. But as the old saying goes don’t judge a book by its cover. Dale struggled to get in with the crowd because he was significantly older and that automatically put a huge target on his back. Dale and the rest of the tribe are trying to make a fire, as the younger members struggle dale successfully starts a fire. His peers start believing in him and named him the fireman.

No matter how many alliances you make in this game, the one goal that isn’t indivual is surviving, your in the wilderness with the bare necessities and if that at some point in time. You have to depend on others to help you and vice versa, the same could be displayed in the work were doing in class; we all need to pick up the pieces in order to “survive” or get a good grade. The tribe members however are on a way different scale, they need to build shelters, and start fires, as well as hunt and gather food. On top of that they have to deal with one another’s ego. One tribe member, Drew, felt as though he was the “leader” because he was building the shelter, while he as doing that other people were doing there own thing trying to start a fire looking around the island. He took it as no one was helping him and was the only one doing work, in this case communication would’ve been key all he had to do was speak up and ask the other members to help him. However he took road less traveled and started bragging and acting really cocky, which rubbed a lot of his tribe members the wrong way.

 

 

Group Development on Survivor

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In the first episode of survivor we definitely got to experience the forming stage. When the survivors first got to the Island we were introduced one by one a little history background, after the introduction the individuals were split into 2 groups and separated from their love ones. This is when the forming stage happens and each team got to spend time with their new team mates where they discussed there group goals

In the Hunaphu tribe we see some of the storming stage you could see a little bit of tension starting to form when Julie talks about how Drew  wants to be in charge, you could see some jealousy arises and people are starting to want to take on roles in the group and form some type of identity.

In episode 2 we saw more of the storming stage when Baylor finds out that Josh voted for her to be swept off the tribe and those were not the plans they had in the beginning. Baylor is mad at first because she saw it as sketchy that he did that but after Josh explains that the reason he did it was so that the guys on the team didn’t know that they had some type of alliance going on. Once that Baylor understands we see the norming stage where she sees it was a smart idea but she thinks that they should have had a better communication so she knew what was going on and didn’t feel like she was being lied to.

Each person is now getting to know each other and figuring each other out, we  see the productivity of the team all working together to be more competitive with one another to show who is the best and to prove they have what it takes to win SURVIVOR!!

Survivor Group Development

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This would be my first time watching Survivor and I am already interested in the theme Blood vs Water. After completing the first episode, I am more aware on how the show relates to the four stages in the life cycle of groups, also known as the Tuckman’s Group Development Stages. The forming stage appeared at the beginning of the show when the couples were introduced, giving the viewers a sense of their personal goals. On the first night, after the loved ones were split up and put into their own groups, each member did not know what to expect. The members explored each others different personal goals and group goals as a result of getting acquainted with one another.  Many were eager to show the group their skill set, such as, Dale from the Coyape team. Knowing he was the oldest from the other group members, he knew that in order to show his worth in the group, he had to prove that he was a good asset to the group. In doing so, he was able to be the first one to start a fire by breaking his eye glasses.
As the show progressed, the groups began to move into the storming stage. Members from both groups began to form alliances in order to decide who gets booted off the island.  In the Hunahpu tribe, Jeremy immediately created alliances with a few of the female members in order to keep him safe from elimination. By doing so, Jeremy was able to compete for social acceptance.
After returning from exile island, Val from the Hunahpu tribe, was given information about an idol being hidden by the well. When she returned to her tribe, she ended up finding the idol to save her from future eliminations. Val from the Hunahpu tribe displayed a hidden agenda by keeping this information from her other teammates.

I look forward to see what happens next!

Who Will Survive

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This was my first time watching the show Survivor. I must admit the series never  really got my attention, but since it was a class assignment I had to force myself to watch it.

At the beginning of the first episode I was a little confused because I did not get it. As the episode progressed i went understanding the concept a little more. The twist on breaking up the couples into different groups was a very good twist. It gets you hooked because you want to know what is going to happen. Also you see what importance the role of communication plays in games like these. For example, some of the husbands tried to look out for their wives even if they were on different teams. They had to form bonds with different team members in order for the plans that they were making  to work out.

As the show continues and they get to the challenges the communication becomes more and more important. The members of the teams have to work together to complete the obstacle course that will save the team form elimination. One of the difficult parts had to be when they had to climb a wall in order to complete a puzzle. I feel thats when the communication in a group plays a big role because you have to put your head together to figure it out.

Overall just after watching the first two episodes the show is starting to get me hooked because you start to see the importance can difficulty it could be to work in groups.  I must say my favorite part was watching Dale from te orange team start the fire with his glasses. I had never seen something like that before or did it ever cross my mind.

-Alejandra Landeros

 

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