Goodbye #4

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WHY DREW WHY WORK AGAINST YOUR TEAM?!

Does this not make sense to anyone else? Granted in the end there is only one winner but let us not forget we’re only 3 people out. We can’t get selfish yet because where does that leave us? As the fourth person out. Bye yaaaaa Drew!

He basically asked for it! Team work first, build alliances, get your tribe to like and trust you so when it does come down to voting off, your name doesn’t even come to thought. Instead, he decided to throw the game so the orange team can finally have a victory and take a rest? Was he that confident he would not get voted off? Shady strategizing on his part, but he paid for it.

I thought the blue team was stronger for sure. When it comes down to the athletic part, they still prove to be, but getting along as a team, they are weaker than the orange.  I’d like to see the underdogs still rise above but not because someone from the other tribe is throwing the competition.

Survivor III

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On this episode of Survivor, we finally have a momentum swing. The Coyora tribe got their first, hard earned victory against the Hunahpu tribe sending us to uncharted territory. We get to see how the Hunahpu tribe handles adversity from their first loss as conflict in the group begins to emerge.

Conflict is described in the book as “the disagreement and disharmony that occur in groups when members express differences regarding group goals; member ideas, behavior, and roles; or group procedures and norms.” As you can imagine, the game survivor is bound to encounter conflict since it makes a living off of the drama that stems thus providing entertainment. Nonetheless, there are three types of conflict that illustrates many of the tribe members roles that can be seen throughout the episode.

Substantive Conflict is when the group has a difficult time determining ideas, decisions, or goals. It was clear the Hunahpu tribe couldn’t hone in on a clear strategy of how to go about making their team stronger, as it took them up until voting night to make up their minds on who was getting eliminated. Since they hadn’t been in that position before, I could tell they were inexperienced in their approach to each other. Jeremy and Keith had a difficult time maintaining the goals the two had agreed upon in which they were supposed to be in alliance mainly because of their fireman bond.

Affirmative Conflict is more interpersonal and it deals with the inability of particular personalities to coexist. This conflict really takes place as Drew’s personality was congruent with how the rest of the team operated. He came across too strong and rubbed people the wrong way finding himself voted off the show as a result.

Procedural Conflict is the final conflict that is exemplified in the show, which mainly is a conflict with the execution of a particular strategy. Drew once again demonstrated this but his critique of the team in the swimming ring competition. We all know he only did this to disguise the fact that he threw the game, but otherwise his criticism would be a procedural conflict for the way they conducted their strategy.

The Two Faces of Common Core

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A

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” ~ Albert Einstein

 

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a staff development meeting for all teachers in our school district. It is the first district meeting since the induction of Common Core State Standards in California schools. For all of the positive embracing of Common Core that I’ve been doing, this meeting opened my eyes to the other side of the coin.

The terrific thing about Common Core is that it teaches students critical thinking skills more important to their overall understanding of concepts that build on each other year after year than the old rote drill and kill framework. However, Common Core requires a level of communication that students who have not been raised on the program are not used to. Students are frequently asked to explain orally or in writing how they came up with a response rather than just writing the algorithm. As students spend time learning to communicate in this way, they spend less time practicing algorithms.

Under the previous framework, students who did not have a true grasp of the underlining concepts of, say long division, may still be able to solve long division word problems by plugging in an algorithm. Now, under Common Core, students who do not have a true grasp of this operation will not be able to solve the problem – since they have spent less time practicing algorithm.

These differences are leading *in the fourth and fifth grade classes in my district* to lower grades. Teachers are wondering how to make adaptations for students under this new program. Can they alter the assessments? Well, students still need to meet state standards for division, so no. Do they grade on a curve? I don’t know.

Teachers are frustrated and understandably so. It’s not fair to the students who will be suffering from this transition, poor grades marked forever on their transcripts. Do we remove Common Core? How can we take away something that is so much better for students’ overall education? The answer is we don’t.

I’m pretty sure that answer only deserves partial credit. It’s time to think critically about the rest of the solution.

Episode 3

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Ding Ding Ding guess what guys, the orange team won there first challenge and were safe tribal council. This episode we actually saw them citing like a team, they were cheering one another on, they acted like an actual unit which is a good change and hopefully we see a brighter future fir the yellow team.

This episode we saw our first look at twisted strategy, when Drew goes and loses the challenge on purpose to kick someone out of the tribe.  He felt as though he was eliminating all of the weak links, however because of his actions the girls went after him.  It was good to see  Drew go home because he was pretty lazy he didn’t do much and still felt like he was superior than others.  Of course he was confident that he wasn’t going home this week and of course he was definitely shocked when his name was called five times and ultimately sent home.

We know now how strategy can either make or break you.  The same goes in real life but in a lesser extreme your not getting voted off of an island, but you could potentially exile yourself from the group which is just as bad.  You want to get along with your team, you want to be a productive member, and when it comes to making decisions behind someones back its hardly a good idea.  I feel as though I’m starting to finally make actual real life comparisons, we all run into situations like this and we might be on either side.  It sucks but its part of the gamer I suppose.

Other than that I’m excited that blue team finally knows how it feels to send someone home hopefully this makes them even more of a powerhouse but makes them closer, but this could go either two ways, one they drop everything and start working to be a closer group or no ones going to trust anyone and the blue team might suffer.