Week #6

When I was in elementary school and middle school, I don’t remember there being any advertising aimed at us, the students. Not until the very end, anyway. When I was in eighth grade, the gym got a new scoreboard, and it was sponsored by some company, but I can’t remember who sponsored it. I do remember, it was a big deal that the company’s logo had to be on the scoreboard. A lot of parents objected to that, but there weren’t really any other options. The gym didn’t have a scoreboard, and that was the only way the school could afford one.

Unfortunately, like the essay says, “there’s a huge gap between what schools need and what they can afford” (125). It costs a lot of money to educate children, and it’s too bad that they have to deal with advertising in order to get their education. Schools have to be inventive when it comes to how they are going to afford upgrading the computer lab, or purchasing new textbooks. I’m sure it’s a tough decision for administrators to make, but it seems to me like they are backed into a corner. In California, with the budget crisis as it is, it may be the only option. I’m not saying I agree with advertising in schools, I’m just trying to see it from another angle…what if I were in charge of making the decision to allow ZapMe! Corp. into my school in exchange for a brand new computer lab? What would I do?

Week #5

A little more on the Social Action Project…

I had a couple more ideas over the weekend that I want to look into and see if anyone else is interested in.

1. My friend is involved with the Community Clean Water Institute, and they do beach and creek cleanups every so often on the weekends. He’s the program director, so I could probably just email him and get a schedule of the next few that they are doing, if anyone is interested. After tossing around a lot of ideas, I think this just might be the one for me, because I can see it being really eye-opening and impactful, and it will most likely fit my crazy schedule. If you’re interested in this, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear from him.

2. My mom is a pre-school director, so I called her to see if she might be able to connect me with volunteer efforts related to children. However, she didn’t pick up the phone, and I am waiting on a call back. I’ll post any info I get from her as a comment to this blog.

Please, let me know if you are interested in either of these, and I’ll get back to you with any info I get. I’m still undecided on what I want to do, but I’m going to try to commit to a topic this week, so I can get started before everything in my other classes starts to pile up.

Week #4

Over the past week, I have been trying to come up with ideas for the social action project, and I haven't come up with much. I have seen two other people post their ideas in the blogs, and I'm really curious to see what others are thinking about doing.

I tossed around ideas like getting involved with the food bank, a literacy program for younger children, or the Humane Society, but that was about it. I wish I had been able to come up with more, and I feel like a discussion about the topic would really help us to generate ideas and start to form groups. Is anybody else with me on that?

I really want to do something meaningful, but at the same time, I have to be careful not to get in over my head since I'm carrying 17 units and working pretty much full-time. If anybody has any ideas, I would love it if you posted them so we could talk about it.

Week 3 Reflection

Week three already...wow! We've been having some really good discussions in class, and I love it. I think it's great that we are able to take on these extremely controversial topics and be so open-minded about them. The small group exercise we did in class on Wednesday really got me thinking, especially after hearing what all of the other groups had to say. To me, free speech is a trickier topic than pornography. I know exactly where I stand on the issue of pornography, but I seem to change my thoughts every so often about certain types of free speech. Here's what I took away from last week's readings and that exercise: I now know that I need to educate myself more on free speech, the First Amendment, and conduct vs speech. I ought to be paying more attention when these types of issues come up in the news. I don't consider myself ignorant, but I do need to pay a hell of a lot more attention.