Sculpture Walk

Robert the Bruce by Benjamin Victor

                Power, authority, confidence, and bravery are the words that come to my mind when I first looked at the sculpture. It is a man on a horse that shows all of those traits I listed before.  It has gold accents to the copper base. His facial expressions show determination. I also think of my senior year English lass because we watched Brave Heart and Robert the Bruce is in it.

Katrina by Osamede Obazee

                Windy, scared, shocked and hurt are the expressions that I see when I looked at this sculpture. It is based off Hurricane Katrina. It shows her legs and bones as it ruined people’s lives. It captured the whole wind blowing with her shoe falling off and her umbrella blowing away.  I really liked this sculpture because he had good detail and made you feel like you were there and felt sorry for the people involved.

Survival by Nathan Pierce

                Tall and crooked describe this sculpture. It is colorful with the blue around the piece of tree.  It has shiny texture to it. It is sad because the tree is dying and trying to survive. It is almost looks like a tower with a peek with the tree branch coming out of the top.

Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech

1.       The dress of the man standing suggests he is a hard-working laborer from the lower class. His soiled and worn clothing contrasts with the other men in business suits and ties. The other men appear to be professional businessmen who are from the upper class.

2.       The details suggest there is a difference of opinion or some sort of conflict. It seems to me that the men have taken time to study the booklet. The man standing is the only one who looks alone in his views.

3.       I think Norman Rockwell exaggerated the size of everyone’s ears because he wanted to let people know that this meeting is very important. The different sides need to listen to each other to solve the conflict. I think that they are interested in what the speaker has to say because their eyes are on him.

4.       I think that Freedom of Speech is a work of art because art is using your imagination. When you do art you can draw or paint whatever you please to do. The critics might disagree but his paintings have been in calendars, on cups and etc. all over for years. His art has stood the time and is still popular today.

Edward Wilson's "The Fitness of Human Nature"

1.       Kin selection according to Wilson Is the natural selection of genes based on their effects on individuals carrying them plus the effects the presence of the genes has on all the genetic relatives of the individuals, including parents, children, siblings, cousins and others who still live and are capable of either reproducing or of affecting the preproduction of blood relatives. Some factors that have led people to feel altruistic toward family members is kin selection. It plays a role in altruistic feelings. They share some of the same genes and may not want to pass that down to their kids.

2.       Wilson believes The basic differences in mating strategies between males and females is that Women have more at stake in sexual activity than men, because of the limited age span in which they can reproduce and the heavy investment required of them with each child conceived. Women in relationships want committment and material securty, whereas men prefer exclusive sexual access and gurantines of paternity.

3.       Individuals hereditarily predisposed to defend private resources for themselves, and their social groups pass more genes on to the next generation. They fight for what they think is right and their beliefs.  He says that they can be altered but probably won’t.  People are used to acting this way and will not want to change it.

4.       They form societies based on conjunction of selfish interest. They resist committing their bodies and services to the common good. Rather, they devote their energies to their own welfare and that of close kin. They want to be around other people that are similar to them or what kind of traits they like in people.

The Emperor's Club

1.             The quote from Aristophanes that Mr. Hundert quotes when talking to Sedgewick is very true. He is correct in saying that people don’t outgrow immaturity. People that act immature at a young age don’t seem to mind to change it as they get older.

2.             Mr. Hundert did not know what to expect when Sedegick Bell walked into the classroom. He did not know that he would have the most difficult time of his teaching career with him. Mr. Hundert was so shaken and then altered by this experience because Bell kept on rebellion in class and would never stop. He was trying to be the class clown.

3.             When Mr. Hundert describes Sedgewick’s influence as hypotonic he means that whatever he wanted to do the other boys were right behind him. The other boys wanted to do whatever Bell did because it was something new and thrilling. No other boy there acted the way he did.   

4.             Hundert faces a dilemma when he calculates the final marks for the contest. Bell wrote a very good essay to get into the Julius Caesar contest. When Mr. Hundert calculated all the essays up Bell was in fourth place but he had a decision to make. He recalculated Bell’s score and gave him an A+ and bumped another student who should have gotten in to fourth place. He made this decision because he wanted to give Sedgeick a boost of confidence in hopes that he would stop rebelling.

5.             He faces another dilemma during the contest when he suspects that Bell is cheating. Mr. Hundert would ask him a question and he would but his hands on his face and it would take him awhile to answer. Bell had the answers in his sleeve so Mr. Hundert asked him a trick question and Bell could not answer because he did not know it since it was not written on the cloth in his sleeve. He answered incorrectly and lost the contest.

6.             Twenty-Seven years later, Mr. Hundert decides to host the contest again because he wants to see his former students again and see what they are doing with their life. He also wants to see if Mr. Bell has changed and is not a cheater anymore. He got to tell Martin what he did with the test scores but Martin doesn’t hold it against him.

7.             They do resolve the tension at the end of the film when Bell and Mr. Hundert were talking in the bathroom. Hundert confronts him of still being a cheater and never changing. At the contest years later he has an ear piece in and he has some guy telling him the answers. When Hundert confronts him Bell’s son walks out of the restroom. He now has to tell his son what he did when he was young and now how he still has not changed.

8.             I think Mr. Hundert returned to teaching because he missed being around kids and wanted something new in his life again. He is surprised by seeing that he has Martin’s son in his class. That says something about Martin and how he liked Mr. Hundert as he put his son in his class.

9.             Problem-posing is the way Mr. Hundert taught his students. He would ask his student’s questions daily about how they feel or what they thought about a particular situation or person. He asked questions that didn’t matter if they were right or wrong it was more of a opinion.

10.             Studying classics in high school helped Mr. Hundert teach his students about important lessons in life. The students will take everything they read or what he taught them as they get older. He taught them life long lessons that they will learn from and pass it on.

           

A Lesson from the Past

           I recall an event in first grade that significantly influenced my education. I was really sloppy with my handwriting, was not organized at all, and did not color in the lines. My teacher had talked to me numerous times about it but I did not improve. At parent teacher conferences she suggested to my mom and dad that I should be on neatness and organized contract. The contract is all I needed to have ambition to fulfill my goal. Once I achieved a high level of success my teacher ripped up my contract. My teacher made me responsible for learning these skills but she provided the motivation to be a better student. Ever since then throughout elementary, middle school, high school and now in college I am very neat and organized to the point that now I have a separate note book for each class, my notes are color coded and I use my planner and desk calendar every day. By using these items I am the type of person who hates being late and always have to be ahead of the game. My writing is neat and thanks to my first grade teacher I am no longer that sloppy, disorganized student. Through this experience I became a successful student. Learning how to be neat and organized in school has carried over to other aspects in my life.