Survivor Blog Post #8

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In episode 9 of survivor, members begin to use leadership roles to their own personal advantage. At the beginning of the episode, it is clear that both Jeremy and John are the players with the most power. After winning the first challenge, Jeremy and Natalie decide to make a strategic move by switching places with John and Jacklyn who were on the losing team. Their tactical move is most accurately identified as an example of servant/functional leadership. Jeremy and Natalie gave up a meal and trip on a yacht to thank Jon and Jacklyn for their loyalty. They believed their selfless actions would be to the benefit of the group in that it would better unite them as a whole, ultimately strengthening their alliance.

However, after Jeremy is sent to Exile Island and realizes that Jon has been withholding an idol, Jon uses leader-member relations in order to promote his own plan. Jon chooses to confess to Missy that he has idol and reveals that he is fearful Jeremy will use it to plot everyone against him later in the competition. By confiding in Missy, a member of his own alliance, he tries to mobilize his plan and attempt to recruit others to execute a main goal. In the end, it appears his idea was successful when Jeremy was unexpectedly blindsided and voted out.

5 Essential Elements in CI Learn

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While the current semester is coming to an end, the new semester’s courses in CI Learn are available and before you know it it’ll be time to get those courses ready for students. Moving forward with successful course design in mind, here are 5 essential elements in a CI Learn course.

blog post 8

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In last weeks class Julian talked about the variety of clubs offered at ci,I thought It was good way to start class.The presentation got my attention ,and also got me thinking about maybe joining a club in the future. For the rest of the class we focused on gender inequality and  eventually we got into groups and shared ideas on the article The new approach for non conforming youth. We also focused on the Chik-fil-a and why the principle of the Ventura high school decided to ban chik fil a was it because of her personal feelings because she herself is part of the LGBT community or other unknown reasons,.I think if I was in her position I would have done the same because  a company like chik fil a is well known and the owner was very open about being  against LGBT and since they were going to be with high school students they might think its o to think that way because they are on campus selling their product. But I can also see why people were outraged as well because even though the chik fil a owner has his opinion they would  not actually be talking about LGBT communities in the actual fundraising  and also because this may have helped the school financially because of this people thought she was being selfish.

This weeks readings we  focused on students with low socioeconomic status it was interesting to learn the reality some people face when they are faced with not only being poor but being homeless and trying to pursue a higher education. The article about josh Williams was inspirational because we never really stop and think about students that may be actually going through this situation, I for example never thought a homeless person would even think about education when they don’t have basic needs. Williams was committed not only was he homeless but most incredibly almost no one knew what was actually going on. The fact that in the long run he succeed it really proves anything is possible if you believe in it, now he only has the memories of those days when he used to walk down the bridge all night as a homeless college student. In the article Homeless: How residential instability complies students lives I was really amazed to learn that their is 3.5 million people experiencing homelessness each year, sadly we choose to look away or don’t know how to help. The article talked about he challenges homeless students face because partly of the Vento homeless assistance act that focuses mainly on younger children and few protections for students attending postsecondary institutions. For this reason it is imperative for schools to partner with organizations that support homeless students. Another article that I found was interesting was the article called College access for the working poor I learned that the working poor adults face financial challenges but most importantly they never really had the knowledge about the steps needed to prepare academically  and financially for higher education.

 

 

Blog #8

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Last week we went over gender inequality. We talked about the different challenges that women, homosexual and transgender groups face in a day to day scenario. The class also discussed the chick-fil-a controversy about selling food at Ventura High School. Julian also gave us a presentation about the opportunities that CI provides for students such as getting involved on campus. I have been interested in joining a club but I had to postpone it because I wanted to get used to my upper-division classes. But hopefully next semester I am able to find a job on campus and join the CI community. I have to admit that I was disappointed when I found out that the club I was interested in joining lost its recognition on our campus a couple weeks ago.  :(

This week’s readings focused on the socioeconomic status among students. The first reading I did was titled, “Homeless How residential Instability Complicates Students’ Lives”. This reading introduced the topic of yet another minority group in the school system, the homeless. It also talked about the resources available to students such as schools providing enough money to live in residential halls. This is not always beneficial because students hit a wall once the semester is over and the funding stops.

The second reading was Classism. This reading explained how people become divided in society based on economic status. It was broken down from the top of the government all the way down to the individual. The author argues that everyone has some type of responsibility in reducing poverty. In the working report, I learned more about who is considered the working poor is and how this label affects their families and their education. The author also gave suggestions of what could be done to help. In the Howard-Levine reading, these men had a conversation about social class and College. In their conversation they discussed about how there are not many success stories happening in poor communities anymore. They discussed how some students who lacked opportunity, yet decided to pursue higher education, had someone who impacted their lives and motivated them to move forward.

Another topic covered was how many of the poor youth that goes to a university have a hard time relating to their peers because they do not share a common ground. One of the things that stood out to me in this article was that Levine mentioned that “we equate race and poverty”. He said this while giving an example of how some people use race and poverty as if they went hand in hand. One solution that they proposed was to create a conscious space on campus for these students. This might give them more confidence to open up and go out to look for resources that will help. While these kids try to better their lives through education, they still become conflicted with making money or continuing their studies. Poverty is an issue that many students have struggled with for a long time. Maybe if schools were to change the way on how they reach out to the youth who live in poverty, these young teenagers/adults could have a better chance of winning scholarships and grants that will lead them to better living conditions and also a better future.

LLM Module Work Due Tonight

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Class:

As a reminder, by tonight you need to have made changes to your portion of the leadership learning module as noted by your classmates.  Also, if you have not done the work due last night, it needs to be done tonight.  The lack of timeliness (not everyone) is causing me to seriously rethink our ability to effectively facilitate this module with these high school students; something like this requires 100% commitment since we are representing the University and educating youth.

Here is a review of the work that was/is due this week: http://ls490.jaimiehoffman.com/week-13-work-week/

Blog 8

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Last weeks class started with Julian explaining to us just how important it is to be involved here at CI. He showed us a PowerPoint of many different clubs that way we could see what they offered here on campus. I was really interested in the Ballet Folkclorico and the different services they offer at the Channel Islands Harbor. We then started talking about the Chik-fil-A issue at Ventura High School. I thought it was a very controversial issue and could have been solved in many different ways but no matter what people should have supported her decision. When we talked about how we probably did not know the whole story it made me realize how so many of us are quick to judge when in reality we only know part of the whole story. The new approach for Non-Conforming Youth article was revitalizing because I felt that everyone took the main points of that article that they thought were important and we got to compare just how many people had the same idea. We then broke up into groups to answer questions about gender differences it was great to be able to hear everyone’s opinion about this current controversy.

My favorite article so far has to be From Homeless to College Grad. I thought it was such an inspiring story and it made realize just how many people could be going through the same situation as him or maybe not even have a friends place to stow their clothes and other possessions. It really blows my mind that so many people could be going through these situations and we would not know unless they spoke out about it. I know how hard it is to pay for tuition and housing myself because I do live on campus and had a hard time paying for that I had to take out two loans because financial aid was not enough. It is a very stressful situation to be in and I cannot begin to imagine what he went through every single day juggling life and school. This is why I think it is such an inspiring story that gives many of us hope. The Where are the Poor Students? Is a conversation about social class and college attendance but the part that really struck me was that residents of his neighborhood are not convinced that education is worth their time. This reminded me of people that start school but do not put in the effort to continue even though they have all the resources to succeed. It is saddening to know that so many people with so much potential do not put in the effort to do something with the gifts and talents they have been given.  The Working Poor Report article was mostly statistics and facts and when I saw the areas of older adults trying to find work it reminded me of a time where my mom, dad, and older brother could not find a job. Neither young or old they were all denied a job when they would apply to so many places it was one of the lowest points for my family. This ties into the Individuals section of the Classism article. It says: “individuals must take responsibility for themselves and their families.” I can understand how this could be offensive because people are trying to do this but how can they achieve this if they do not have a job and people do not give them the opportunity to sustain their family and themselves. All in all I really enjoyed this weeks readings and found them to be inspiring to keep moving forward.

Group leadership

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True group leadership was shown in the award challenge. Natalie and Jeremy and their team won the challenge, but when it can to get the their award Natalie and Jeremy spoke up and gave their award to John and Jaclyn. They didn’t have to do that but they did and that shows great group leadership because John and Jaclyn both work hard in the group but haven’t been able to win an award challenge since the merge. Knowing that they work super hard in the group Natalie and John wanted to show their appreciation by giving them their award.

John and Jaclyn became leaders by power. They stuck together to show that they work together as a couple and as a team. They make decisions together which made them the leaders of the group. They are able to convince the other players to vote Jeremy off the show by telling them that he is the biggest threat in the group and taking him out now would be their biggest and best play right now.

When it came time to the immunity challenge Baylor won immunity. Jeremy was voted off because he showed lack of trust and the biggest threat within the group, because that is what John and Jaclyn told them, which caused the group to vote Jeremy off.

Blog 8

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This week’s readings were about social economic status in higher education. The articles were about the difficulty of students in lower social economic position. They were divided into three sections homeless, working poor, and non working poor.  The articles were filled with statistics about each group and also provided real life examples of students in the lower quartile in higher education.

The first two articles that I read were about poverty and higher education. The authors provided plenty of stats about the individuals in the lower quartile of economic stability in relation to attendance and completion of higher education. The numbers were scary! One of the article reveals that students in poor conditions have no inspiration to receive a college degree. In many cases they hope to get at best some high school education, even more alarming is that their parents feel the same way. When poor individuals do attend school they often do not complete their schooling, because of lack of support and resources.

The last article that I read was about homeless students in higher education. The author points out that there are different categories of homeless people. Most of us consider homeless people to be beggars that live in the streets but the reality is that homelessness is much more complex than the stigma that our society has placed on the matter. There are families that live in shelters, some of those shelters provide residency until the tenants could find something permanent, others are day to day bedding that is not guaranteed, there are couch hoppers, families that live with many people or other families in a home designed for a small family, and people who live in hotels. The author argues that distinguishing between each category is imperative for two reasons; firstly, so that entities who assist students in each category will be better equipped to do so, and secondly, to cease from repelling students from receiving support because of the unapealing title of “homeless” that they may not identify with, even though they may fit in one of the categories, or simply to prevent shame.

I really enjoyed the readings for this week because they were informative and very relatable to me. The Homeless article provided so much insight into a world that is neglected. There are many students who experience the difficulty of fighting to attain an education that could give them a better life while facing instability. The story about the student who had to make accommodations to have a place to live in as her semester came to an end was a tear jerker. I can’t imagine the added anxiety she faces around an already stressful time of year for a student, because of finals, to have something most of us take for granted.  The articles on poverty were so easy to relate to because I am poor. I find myself facing many similar obstacles that were mentioned in the text. Also understanding that people are working towards solutions to a tremendous problem gave me hope.

Blog #8

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Part I: I was unable to attend class last week.

 

Part II:  The articles this week I found very interesting, they focused on how homelessness affects students’ higher education. The article about Joshua Williams was very interesting, it was incredible to see that although he did not have a permanent type of housing, he never gave up on achieving his bachelor’s degree from B-CU. It was amazing to see that he did whatever had to be done in order for him to continue his education, he knew that returning back to his hometown was not an option, because it would only provide him with a lifestyle that did not have a future whatsoever. The other articles focused on the main points of how residential instability affects their lives as a whole. The article also stressed on how important it was for homeless students to earn a post secondary degree, and not only stop there but actually make sure they do have a stable place they can live at after earning their degrees. I feel like this is a very important issue, how much are you truly helping if its only to a certain extent? It is crazy to think that although this issue may affected these students in a big way, there is no real help that is provided by the schools themselves. It would be great if these students had somewhere they could go in order to get help and try to find a solution to this problem.  It was also stressed on the article by Howard how important it is to educate the campus as a whole about student characteristics and student needs so that the campus as a whole can better serve them. This is a issue that can better the way that campus’ deal with issues like homelessness and other factors that may jeopardize an individuals education. I really enjoyed learning about the type of issues that these individuals have to overcome on a daily basis it really made me be more thankful that I have roof over my head and I don’t have to worry about a big issue like not having a stable home.

Poor and homeless students

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Peter Edelman suggest that in order to reduce poverty groups like ,government, business, unions, foundations, churches, civic leaders, ordinary citizens, and poor people must join the battle to find ways that everyone in such groups help poverty.  Edelman also believes that poverty plays in a form of a cycle, where children follow the same pattern of choices as their parents so in order to prevent the cycle form replicating young children must be educate and learn about options and resources available to overcome poverty.  However this is very difficult especially for families with very little resources. They often don’t belief or view school as important instead they see school as an obstacle that prevents them from working and providing food in their table. In the reading “where are the poor students” the author exposes a different view of how children in poverty communities view education.

 

Howard makes a significant observation that I before assumed was true. He said that everyone was under the belief that students today don’t face obstacles in perusing a college education as long as they work really hard. He explained that there were bigger realities like the quality of k-12 education that many in low income communities or the lack of role models in their communities. Everyone assumes that it’s simply money that prevents poor children from attending school but the reality is not only money but additional circumstances.  I’m sure there are more people who believed that the obstacles poor children faced were much smaller. I still can’t belief what I was reading and how issues like such affect most of the poor communities and only few students try to overcome to achieve more in life.

 

Students that are homeless for example like Tenisha in the article “Homeless” definitely faced difficulties and struggles deciding whether to attend college or not simply because meeting more urgent needs like food and shelter were far more important than education. Unfortunately theirs not many resources that can help homeless students, they can apply for financial aid but that will only cover partial of the cost that the school demands throughout the year they can try speaking to administration but only small amounts of universities are able to accommodate homeless students. Similarly a student form Miami named Joshua Williams faced as finish his education. He was homeless for almost the entire time he was at the university he went without telling anyone about his circumstances of being homeless until the very end. Luckily Joshua obtained help from the school and community groups and completed his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and is able to tell his story to others.  Being poor does not make it easy for those trying to better themselves in life and it’s really sad to know that we all know many students who had the opportunity of going to college but decided to work instead for pleasure knowing that around the nation we have lots of poor students who would really appreciate the opportunity of attending college.