On Jim Cooper: "Theaching English"

        In this script Jim was talking about the hard time he had teaching English tom Puertorrican students at the "Colegio". First I have always asked myself, why are professors at college so different from teachers in high school? Teachers did all they could to help you learn and get a good grade. In contrast professors they just do the minimum effort they are required to and don't care much if you pass the class or not. The difference between the two relies in that, teachers want to teach it is their vocation but professors don't want to teach, they are investigators. A teacher goes to college to learn how to teach he learns the skills and methods about teaching in contrast a professor goes to college to learn a specific subject and becomes and expert in it. Even if they continue on graduated studies a teacher will study the subject of how to teach a professor will study the subject of his interest to a more profound length. This is important because this is probably the most determining factor that affects student in their transition from high school to college.

       Most professors in college or at least in my faculty, the faculty of natural sciences are scientist they are investigators that is what they like to do. They are hired by the university with the condition that their investigations will bring funds to the institution.Thus the institution provides the facilities for the professor to do his investigation but he has to give a mini mun of credits hours per semester. This is why most professors could care less about their students because they just give lectures that are on such a basic level for their understanding that they get bored and just don't want to do it because it is interfering with the time they could be investing in their investigation. I think i went in a little bit of a rant there but I guess that's what blogs are for.

        In high school I had a PROFESSOR, he was the only one who did int study pedagogy, he studied mathematics and he went on to getting a masters Segre im no sure if he got a PhD, well probably he did because prior to giving class in the high school he was a professor in UPR-Cayey and at "La Politecnica". I remember when i got to 11 grade were he teached pre-calculus, every body was telling me "he is the worst","you are going to fail","he is the demon". But i did not listen to them because i though it could not be that hard. So as the semester went on I recognize that the course was had and that he wanted to push us to our limits he wanted to get us out of our comfort zone. He was more of a trainer or a coach than a teacher. But I at the end of the year I got A in the two semesters and was one of the two students that were excuse from the final test. During the semester I got to know him better and I talked to him on a daily basis and to this day he is one of the only teachers that i go and visit once in a while when i go to pick up my siblings.

This is Mirabal "The Profesor" from highschool and me at the graduation ceremony.

On Jim Cooper: Helping

          In this writing, Jim Cooper exposes the educational differences between the American system and the "puertorrican" system. The big difference that he exposes is that the American system is competitive and the puertorrican system is cooperative. But where does this sense of competitiveness or cooperativeness comes from? Is it intrinsic from the educational system or does it has socio-cultural roots? In analyzing this we have to take in consideration the time at which this was written because the Puerto Rico, and the conditions in it, are not the same to the ones we have today. In other words we cant be ana-cronical about this. For instance back then we were not as "Americanized"as we are now, because we have now been under direct American influence for over a hundred years. Back then it was just a couple of decades so we were still as "boricuas" as we could have been.

     Now we have adopted a lot of customs and traditions from the US and we have lost some of our traditions, but I think its not that we surrender our traditions to adopt the ones from the US but that the capitalist system, in which virtually all country in the world are part of, has forced us to adopt certain customs that are more convenient in this kind of system. The fact that we take them from the US its due to he fact that first we are part of it and second they are probably the best ones in this capitalist system so why not copy the best one? Hey it is helping! In this same line of thought a competitive systems makes a perfect "training" for a capitalist society in contrast a cooperative system its not the best way to go in a system in which you have to fend for you're self and that if you don't know how to do something you will get run over by others.

     Now, I am not saying that being cooperative is a bad thing but neither I am saying that being competitive is also. But that a system is probably a reflection of the society and its circumstances. But here we are talking at a collective level, sociologically we should say. If we go down to an individualistic  level or a pshycologial level it takes a whole new meaning. This is because at an individual level we may have different motivators such as not liking the person at our side so we will not help them. Maybe we know the teacher personally or a family member does and we are afraid that helping others could bring a bad situation. But then again it comes down to the circumstances.

Jim should have tried this.

Riview on: A Room With A View

      A Room With A View, the 1985 film  is a movie based on E. M Foster book, it's a story about a young man and woman who fall in love while vacationing in Florence and how they altered each others lives forever. But also it is a story about how a single travel and the experiences it encompasses can change you'er perspective and therefore you're live and the way you see things in it. Also it presents class stereotype issues in the British culture. In this film the room with a view is a very symbolic name and a very assertive one. In the movie the characters called for a room with a view and its of understanding because everybody wants the best view on a hotel room when on vacation. But the message I understood was much more than just a good view. You see in a room with a view, you can stare at the view that place has to offer. And for me this movie had just that staring at different "stereotypes"different kind of people. In the movie most of the important characters have an antagonist. This provides for broader view of a topic for example the clergymen are suppose to be very strict and "by the book"but in the movie one of them was like that and the other was kind of more liberal and of free spirit. An other example is the one between Charlotte and Lucy were the first one is a very old fashioned classical  style of women, also depicted with her age, she is old. The other one Lucy is the open minded more liberal one, also depicted with her age, she is young. There are other examples of this in the film but for me this was a pretty good relation between the characters and the title. Because they provided the view that we wanted.

A View

On Peter Roberts, Identity

     In this post I am going to talk about Peter Roberts paper "The Roots of Caribbean Identity: Language, Race and Ecology.""  In this short essay Roberts talks about the identity of human being, more specifically about its national identity as he says "...in the modern, political world human beings are automatically identified with a country, and national identity is generally established by place of birth or place of residence."  This topic will be addressed towards the national identity crisis being experience here im Puerto Rico. Roberts also talks about Language and about how language has both beneficial and detrimental aspects to it, as he says "Language therefore establishes bonds between all communities of human beings but at the same time set up barriers between communities".  Roberts talks also about sameness and how it allows people to associate with one another as he says  "...it is the senses of sight (color/race) and sound (language) that provided the initial and usually most deep-seated conclusions about sameness and difference in identity."  This concepts will be developed with the intention of deepening our concept of identity.

Barcodes define identity.

 Someone with national identity is someone with a sense of belonging to a nation, in most cases to the nation they were born in to. People from the United States are a perfect example of people with a clear national identity, they have such a strong national identity that they have spread their culture all over the world. Puertorricans national identity never had the chance to mature, it was becoming stronger and stronger before the US came and stunt our developing nations identity. Since then our national identity has been under constant bombardment from other nations cultures and it have felt the damage but somehow we have persisted, somehow our pillars have not fallen. But by no means it has stayed intact. We developed the ability to be flexible with our identity we let somethings go, we let somethings come in and absorb them into our national identity. But there is a filter that must be passed before becoming part of our identity and that is language. We have gives up countess cultural rituals and costumes but not our language.

Fingerprint defines our identity

     Language is the most important pillar in our national cultural identity with out our language we could have not been able to stayed alive as a nation until this day. Our language is rich and strong but flexible, it conserves its structure but allows minor changes and that make some considerable effects on it. Our languages gives us the ability to connect with ourselves and with other within our group but as all languages it can create some barriers, but this barriers as not as hard to overcome because Spanish ans especially our Spanish is so flexible that it allows for easier barriers to overcome.

      Our senses are wired up and meant to give information to our brain so that it can make decisions. Site is the most influential of our senses when it comes to discriminating. I say discriminate but I am not talking in a dis respective manner I mean it in differentiating type of way. We discriminate because that's what were are wired to do we naturally like things that are the same as us and dislike the ones that are different. In society for example there are clubs which is a group of people that share some common characteristics and they decide to from a group. This doesn't mean that this people are completely the same, of course the have differences but they decide to let them apart so that they come together to work for a bigger purpose. Becoming part of a group is a human need we need to know and feel that we belong some were. This is because we are social beings we need interactions we need to be with people. This sense of sameness with the group gives us a sense of security that is compare to no other.

     We can conclude that national identity is based upon language and that our senses are our first tools of discrimination's, that we must master.

Tourist For A Day

     2:45 PM on Saturday I was at the airport waiting for my best friend Tristian to arrive with the Michigan Wolverines Men's Gymnastics Team for the annual Invitational Gymnastics Puertorrican Tournament. There he was, it had been almost a year from the last time i saw him, I have missed him so much. There I meet all of his teammates and his coaches they were all "White American" you're typical "gringo" expet for three of them, One of the coaches is Chinese and one of the team members is African American and the other is from Bangladesh. So after they got all their stuff we went to the hotel which was the Double Tree by Hilton in the Condado area. After they had settle down we went to a near by restaurant that offers local cuisine. Here i got the opportunity to meat some of the team members and Chow, the Chinese coach. After I helped them order their food and drinks I decided to not behave like a tour guide but to try to become one of them and be a "tourist". After we ate we went for a walk in the Condado area but not all together we separated in littel groups. The group I was in was composed of Stacy; the African-American, Syque; the guy from Bangladesh, Sam; gringo Olympic medalist, and three other that i don't remember quite well and of course my best friend and his father who was supposed to take care of the team because they were still under 21 and the university they are from is responsible for them.

This is an old one, but it was on my best friends birthday so whatever.

      When we were walking i noticed their amusement toward the atmosphere of the area. We then decided to go to the walk on the beach, most of them had never been on a beach never the less imagine how beautiful our beaches are. So we started walking on the beach and all the sudden i started to enjoy feeling the sand on my feet, i say this because normally i hate sand and it getting in every part of my body. So i noticed that if i could just think that i am not from here i could enjoy being on the beach and taking a walk  in it. Then we just stooped and started looking to the horizon and a "oceanic feeling" took over me i felt in peace. While we were all starring at the beautiful site the wind started blowing real hard and that windy noise was a bliss to my ears. Then just before were going to leave one of the guys asked my friend, "why did you left this place? I mean look at this Michigan is nothing like it." Immediately i looked at my best friend and he said " I ask myself the same question every fucking day while i have to deal with subzero temperatures and little sunlight." That just maked me appreciate more this opportunity ia have to live here. When we were done enjoin the view we headed back to the hotel but in our way back some girls  started screaming at us, calling us, yelling their numbers at us and when we all looked they started like screaming "locaaaaaaa mira mira OMGaaad que bellos". I am pretty sure that was because they saw the white boys, white skin, blues or green eyes, blond hair, big muscles. I looked like a broomstick standing by their side.



     So we went back to the hotel and decided we were going to hang out in Old San Juan  because Condado on Fridays its not the most visited place by the local youth. So we got ready and headed to Old San Juan. When we got there we started to ordered shots and a bar and at this point i feel part of the team you know I even talk to my friend in English I became fluent in like two hours. So we were at a bar and suddenly this four girls that a my friend Tristian knew came to us and started greeting us and when they greeted me they did in English so i said to myself " ok you all ready part of the group". So we went bar hopping and this guys were very loud they but like they look like tourist nobody says a thing. I took advantage of this like i could behave how ever i wanted and they didn't care and the locals could not tell a difference. Ordering in English was very funny because at the bars we were going, the cheap ones, the bartenders knew no English so i played the roll of a gringo traing to speak Spanish and all of that. Overall i think the most interesting part of this exercise was to see how locals treat tourist completely different compared  to the way they treat other locals and i remember walking down the street looking at the way the locals were looking at us and seeing myself in them because I am pretty sure i look at tourist the same way.  This is all I have for you today and ill see you next time.

This are the coolest guys I have ever hangout with, Tristian and I are in the right corner behind Stacy, don't ask who took the photo.