An Opportunity Like None Other :: Teaching Teachers Education Essays

An Opportunity Like None Other The opportunity to touch someone’s life is given to everyone; however, what one chooses to do with this opportunity sets people apart. Teachers are people who are given this opportunity each day. This power of opportunity is both surreal and intriguing and is my reason for wishing to become an educator. As a future teacher, I believe our society’s paramount initiative should be to educate our youth. To shape the minds of the future will be a daunting task, but one I except with great enthusiasm. I came to teaching not because of a sudden epiphany or because a certain teacher touched my life. It was an intrinsic feeling that developed in my heart and showed me the beauty of sharing love and knowledge with the children of this world. I want the fulfillment that teaching has to offer, because I believe there is no greater joy than touching the hearts and minds of youth. The truly curious individual is the one who continues their education and never stops learning, and I believe my curiosity will drive me to be the best teacher I can be. Every aspect of our lives has a beginning, an establishment, or a foundation. As a teacher in today’s society, I believe it is important that educators start with a solid foundation of knowledge. With the launch of sputnik in the 1950’s, our society turned to its educators to insure our nation was producing quality students, especially in the sciences. It was then that our nation realized we needed to improve our education with a â€Å"back to basics† approach. William Bagley, an essentialist, established a foundation for America with the intent to instill students with the â€Å"essentials† of academic knowledge and character development. It is here I find my philosophy. The â€Å"back to basics† approach has brought about an application of knowledge needed for the real world. An approach that provides people with the knowledge they need to be able to survive in society. Leaders such as William Bennett, former US Secretary of Education, believed strongly in the essentialist approach to education.

Life Changing Experience Essay

This essay is a major part of my life, and it means the world to me. So I want to share my experience of me getting married and/or being married. I will be informative with how it came to where I am today of being married and how I have learned from prior mistakes that was made in my life. And I will also tell how our love for each other has grown stronger and how we have become closer in our path of life. This is a hard journey to accomplish and make it last a lifetime. I was young and had lots to learn about being married and becoming a wife, the thought I had in my mind that marriage was supposed to be easier, as they make it look in fairy tale stories. I then realized it was not so easy. I was married to a man that never took marriage seriously and it affected our relationship drastically. Our marriage lasted for only six months. In those six months he refused to work to support our family. After several months of financial struggle, I woke up one day with the realization that my sons and I did not deserve this type of life. I decided to move on and search for someone who valued a marriage the same way I did. When I think back on when I first met my husband, it still gives me butterflies. Our first encounter was while we were doing laundry at a local laundry mat. I was standing there folding clothes and when I looked at him I felt my heart melt, like a hammer to a nail in a board. . A few days had passed and my friend introduced the two of us. I thought for sure it was love at first sight. He was so sincere and respectful to my home. He would ask me questions about my boys and things that I was interested in and what my hobbies were. Our marriage has been one of the biggest blessings in my life. It has taught my husband and I many lessons and values that have brought us closer together and our love stronger. Our marriage began on a warm sunny day. Driving to the courthouse, I could feel my heart pounding so hard as though it was going to beat right out of my chest. It felt like butterflies fluttering over a breezy meadow. The closer the time got for us to say our sacred vows to each other; my heart felt like a rose blooming endlessly. As I turned to him and the judge pronounced us man and wife, I felt like I was on cloud nine. Our marriage is full of surprises and happiness. The blessings of our marriage began when we were blessed with another son. We learned a true lesson on how to be the best parents that we could be to these boys. I could tell he was scared about being a father. He is a wonderful father to the boys; he loves to go out and shoot basketball, and kick around a soccer ball with them in the yard. He tries to be a decent father figure in their lives. Being able to teach the boys right from wrong is another lesson for us to learn as couple. There are times he has to discipline them for things that they do wrong. We always do our best to work as a team to work out our disagreements. I found for us to work as an effective team, we have to listen to each other’s perspectives and find the pros and cons to our disagreement. The present is here, the future is to come with more blessings for our marriage. Every time I look at my husband, he still continues to make my heart race. I am unsure the road that lies ahead of us, but I am sure my husband will hold my hand every step of the way as we continue to grow and learn together. My husband and I have a powerful bond between us, as we have an unbreakable trust. We know each other’s limits, how to make each other laugh, and how to work well as a team. I know deep down in my heart that our marriage will last a lifetime. We have learned much about each other and realized how our marriage is a true blessing to us. I would have never picked any other man to spend the rest of my life with. When I look at him in twenty years, I’ll still see his charming smile; that very smile that took my breath away in the first moments we met. My husband is my present and future. We are two halves that make a whole. With his half, he is the one that truly makes our family complete. He has helped me become a better person, given my sons stability as a father and it has been a true blessing being married to this man.

The Role of Madness in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

The novella Heart of Darkness was written by the British novelist Joseph Conrad and appeared, before its publication in 1902, as a three-part series in Blackwood’s Magazine. This frame tale or â€Å"story within a story† follows the lead character Charlie Marlow as he describes his adventures to a group of men aboard a ship. It also tells of an earlier event in Marlow’s life, at a time when he was working as a steamboat captain in a country whose name is not specified in the book. The story provides readers with a glimpse into the mind and soul of Marlow as he travels through the literal â€Å"Heart of Darkness† and comes face-to-face with the atrocities of racism and slavery. Marlow’s predecessor, the government-employed ivory agent Kurtz, dominates the natives through violence and coercion. When the two men finally meet, Marlow recognizes in Kurtz a mere shell of a man, the substance and soul of which has been devoured by the contempt of his own morals. This realization propels Marlow to scrutinize his own virtues and to decide whether or not to compromise them for the sake of wealth. The novella revolves around three central themes: â€Å"the hypocrisy of imperialism, madness as a result of imperialism, and the absurdity of evil† (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/facts.html, 2006a). In Heart of Darkness, madness is closely associated with the concept of imperialism. In the text, Africa is presented as a cause and catalyst for diseases of the body and of the mind. Madness also serves two functions in the novella. First, it functions as â€Å"an ironic device to engage the reader’s sympathies† (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/themes.html, 2006b). As Marlow is informed from the beginning, the ivory agent Kurtz is â€Å"mad†. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that this madness is relative; that madness in the context of the setting in which the characters move is quite hard to define. This causes the reader to develop a feeling of sympathy towards Kurtz and a sense of doubt and mistrust towards the Company. It also propels Marlow, who was initially suspicious of Kurtz, to sympathize with him. Madness also serves to create the â€Å"necessity of social fictions† (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/themes.html, 2006b). Even though rationales and social norms are strewn throughout Heart of Darkness, they are ultimately proved to be utterly false and even causative of evil. However, they are indispensable in the quest of providing a sense of personal security and harmony among groups. In Heart of Darkness, madness is the result of having been detached from one’s own social realm and being permitted to become the lone arbitrator of one’s own actions. Therefore, madness is associated not only with supreme power and moral genius but to man’s primary and deep-seated imperfection: the character of Kurtz answers to no one but himself, and this proves too much for any one person to tolerate. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz proves unable to resolve the contradictions between his own moral beliefs and cultural assumptions and subsequently sinks into madness when he begins to identify with the natives. Marlow says that Kurtz had gone mad because his soul â€Å"Being along in the wilderness,†¦ had looked into itself, and by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad.† (http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng109/HeartSG.htm). This is in contrast to Kurtz’s nature of being power-hungry. The madness begins when Kurtz, who is mad with power provided by his absolute control over his domain, begins to succumb to the lure of the wilderness and the native people. He goes mad when his greed clashes with his growing affinity towards the natives. The subsequent moral dilemma proves too much for him. Marlow, in his recounting of his adventures, says that the moment of the native ceremony was the moment when he realized that Kurtz had gone mad when he went alone into the wilderness, when his spirit had been left alone with itself. Marlow recognizes that Kurtz is under the spell of the wilderness and tries to understand what had drawn Kurtz into â€Å"the edge of the forest†¦ towards the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations;†¦ beguiled his unlawful soul†¦ beyond the bounds of permitted aspiration† (http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng109/HeartSG.htm). Marlow, who is uninterested with wealth or advancement in the Company, is focused chiefly on keeping his sanity amidst the madness in his surroundings. Nevertheless, his experiences leave him broken and distressed. The physical and mental torment he was forced to endure proved to be too much for him. Through Kurtz, Marlow had been drawn into the horror as well. When Kurtz says his last words, â€Å"The horror! The horror!† (http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng109/HeartSG.htm), Marlow was forced to face death. The experience leaves him bewildered and disturbed. He tells the group that when the natives buried Kurtz, they had almost buried him as well. When he returns to the city from which he came, Marlow finds the people there stupid and he continues to dwell on Kurtz and the remnants of the life Kurtz had left behind. When he goes to visit Kurtz’s fiancà ©, he feels the presence of Kurtz’s spirit entering the house with him. As Marlow proceeds into the fiancà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s house, he imagines the natives dancing around their ceremonial fires, and hears Kurtz’s voice discussing ivory. Madness, as a theme in Heart of Darkness, serves to reinforce the fact that when given absolute power over himself and those under his influence, man is susceptible to his own dark nature. Work Cited Conrad, J. (1899). Heart of Darkness. In Davis, et. al. Eds. (1995). Western Literature in a World Context Volume 2: The Enlightenment throughout the Present. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Retrieved from on November 15, 2006. Sparknotes. (2006a). Heart of Darkness Study Guide. Sparknotes: Today’s Most Popular Study Guides from Barnes & Noble. Retrieved from on November 14, 2006. Sparknotes. (2006b). Heart of Darkness Study Guide: Themes, Motifs and Symbols. Sparknotes: Today’s Most Popular Study Guides from Barnes & Noble. Retrieved from on November 14, 2006.

Crosby Manufacturing Corporation Case Study

AbstractNext to first-hand experience, case studies are one of the best ways to learn project management skills. In The Crosby Manufacturing Corporation case study, Harold Kerzner reports on the executive-level exchange between the company president and other department heads regarding a new Management Cost and Control System (Kerzner, 2009). This paper will give a synopsis of the case, analyze the case study communications issues and risks, and evaluate Livingston’s selection of a project manager. It will also discuss the possible reactions from the employees, the impact on the cost and time on the project as well as which constraints ultimately compromised the success of project.Crosby Manufacturing Corporation Synopsis of the CaseThe Crosby Manufacturing Corporation case study details a discussion between the organization’s executive officers over their plans to implement a new Management Cost and Control System (MCCS) (Kerzner, 2009). The president, Wilfred Livingst on, has successfully reorganized the company into a more efficient matrix organization over the previous three years and seeks to implement the new MCCS so the company can compete on new government contracts. Crosby’s existing MCCS falls short of government reporting and auditing requirements. At the beginning of the meeting, Livingston lays out the case for the new MCCS.The Management Information System (MIS) manager initially responds with a plan to perform a feasibility study with a detailed requirements analysis. The Engineering manager responds with a schedule and proposed vendor evaluation metrics. He suggested starting software development immediately. Livingston closes the discussion by assigning a project manager from another group and, after committing his support to the project, lays out a list of project planning items he wants to see the following week (Kerzner, 2009). Due to miscommunication,  Livingston’s plans cause potential risk to the projectâ€⠄¢s success.Evaluation of Livingston’s Choice of a Project ManagerThe President of the corporation had the right to decide on a project manager by employing an individual that would off the necessary services needed by the government agency to complete the job. Mr. Livingston gave the management staff an opportunity to come up with the proper approach but they were unable to. In line with the project objectives, they will fail to come up with the right milestones, detailed schedules, and design review meetings and feedback necessary from the management staff. As the leader of an organization, you have to be able to choose individuals as leaders that will be able to perform the task efficiently and effectively with the corporation’s best interest in mind. Was his choice a mistake?Yes, I think that this was a major mistake in appointing Mr. Emary as the project manager because he had little experience in such a major task and something that the company was depending on h eavily. Though Mr. Emary was an outstanding planner and got the job done, this was not one of those times when you need someone with little experience leading such a major project and to make the statement that Mr. Emary had less knowledgeable then other on the project did not do much to console the employees of his competence on completing the task.Reaction of the Functional EmployeesThe reactions from the functional employees in response to the appointment of Emary as the project manager had to be shocking. They probably had my questions and concerns about the potential success of the project and its completion under the supervision of Emary. Even if Mr. Livingston had confidence in his abilities, that said nothing about his ability to lay out the necessary and detailed schedule needed for the project completion or even know what resources were needed to be successful.Impact of Cost and Time RestraintsThe three constraints of project management will almost always be competing with each other. If a team decides to enlarge the scope of a project, the time will become larger as well, along with the cost. If the time  constraint is tighter, the scope may be reduced, but the costs will remain high. If the team should decide to tighten the budget, the scope will become smaller but the time will increase. To become skilled in project management, the project manager and their team must be capable of dealing with these constraints in a way that will allow them to successfully complete any project that they plan. This will have an impact on the kind networking techniques used and project schedules. Changes in projected costs to actual costs will in most instances stretch the length of time it takes to complete projects and at the same time determine the kinds of techniques to be employed.Constraints that could Compromise Project SuccessAlthough there are many project constraints, these should not be barriers for successful project execution and for the effective dec ision-making. The main three interdependent constraints for every project are time, cost, and scope. Quality is not a part of the project management triangle, but it is the ultimate objective of every delivery. Hence, the project management triangle represents implies quality. Many project managers are under the notion that ‘high quality comes with high cost', which to some extent is true. By using low quality resources to accomplish project deadlines does not ensure success of the overall project.So like with the scope, quality will also be an important deliverable for the project. The important aspect is to deal with it. The project manager needs to strike a balance between the three constraints so that quality of the project will not be compromised. To overcome the constraints, the project managers have several methods to keep the project going. Some of these will be based on preventing stakeholders from changing the scope and maintaining limits on both financial and human resources. A project manager's role is evolved around responsibility. A project manager needs to supervise and control the project from the beginning to the closure. Understanding that it is always a requirement to overcome the challenges related to the project and if you do so, those constraints will not ultimately compromise its success.

Teaching lesson plan Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Teaching lesson plan - Coursework Example which include making student read facts about their animals and restate nocturnal/diurnal classification of animals, are fully aligned with the objectives. In addition, making the students point out the many animals that are diurnal and nocturnal makes it clear for them on what they must learn in the lesson. Evidence in demonstrating mastery of the lesson includes being able to identify and classify animals on whether they are nocturnal or diurnal, as well as having a comprehension check. c) Learning experiences planned in this lesson, which includes making the student describe their habitat and asking how they would adapt to it, relating it to the adaptation technique of animals, and relating it to their native language all express relevance to the objectives. d) Instruction in this particular lesson plan is not differentiated. However, there are benefits that ELL or special needs student will get from this lesson, including relating their own experiences and understanding to how animals adapt to their environments. The activities that support learning modalities include relating the lesson to personal experiences, the extensive use of visual guides, and relating it to the native languages of the students. e) There are frequent ways to check the student’s understanding in this lesson, and strategies used includes identifying prior knowledge of the students to the lesson, making them recite the differences between nocturnal and diurnal animals, and making them classify animals on their own. a) The lesson objectives, which include presenting the alternative French version of the Cinderella story, determining story elements, discussing story themes and making students respond fully align with academic standards. These objectives helps students analyze the story according to their parts, and trace cultural differences within the variant Cinderella story. b) The assessments, which include making the students read the variant story, summarize it, and composing a

Zoo Activity. Monkey Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Zoo Activity. Monkey - Essay Example However, this does not necessarily mean that human beings and apes such as monkeys belong to one single species. The truth, as has been revealed by several researchers, is that these organisms are related. They must be having something common in their DNA which proves that they were initially belonging into the same species. However, as time went by, several changes occurred in the environment which necessitated the development of more species from the already existing ones. For instance, as a result of the plate tectonics, several regions of the world were separated a part. As a result, the continents separated by large masses of water emerged. This lead to the separation of organisms which were initially living together. It explains why there is a morphological difference between the Homo sapiens and monkeys. Had there been no such separations, the human beings would not have developed more advanced features which were later relied on to distinguish them from apes. When organisms which were once enjoying similar lifestyle were separated, the connection between them was permanently cut off. Therefore, going into new environments meant that they had to look for ways through which they would survive.

Literature review and evaluation of the evidence Essay

Literature review and evaluation of the evidence - Essay Example With the patient as the â€Å"unit of analysis,† comparing the feedback-2 period with baseline, the proportion of patients who received any promoted strategy increased from 0.7% to 45.6% (P Pouzeratte et al (2001) reported that thoracic epidural analgesia was more effective with bupivacaine than with ropivacaine when these two local anesthetics are used in a mixture with sufentanil after major abdominal surgery and ropivacaine alone was less effective than ropivacaine in combination with sufentanil. Intensity of post-operative pain was assessed with a reliable and valid Visual Analogue Scale. The study was planned well with a prospective double blind design. In order to assess the tolerability and efficacy of a single dose of paracetamol solution infused intravenously (1g) compared with those of a single dose of Propacetamol (2g) in patients with moderate to severe pain after minor gynecologic surgery, a randomized, double blind, active controlled, 2-parallel group study was performed by Marty et al (2005). The study concluded that a single dose of IV-Paracetamol infusion was associated with better local tolerability, simlar analgesic efficacy, and greater patient satisfaction compared with a single bioequivalent dose of Propacetamol in patients with moderate to severe pain after minor gynecologic surgery. Charghi et al (2003) examined the hypothesis that pain treatment with patient controlled analgesia (PCA) using iv morphine is a suitable and safe alternative to epidural analgesia in morbidly obese patients undergoing gastric bypass surgery. They concluded that PCA with iv morphine is an acceptable strategy for pain management in obese patients undergoing gastric bypass surgery. Mujadi (2006) in a prospective, randomized, double-blind clinical trial reported that preoperative gabapentin decreased pain scores and postoperative morphine consumption in patients following thyroid surgery. Reuben (2000) evaluated the analgesic efficacy of administering a single preoperative dose of celecoxib or rofecoxib for spinal fusion surgery. The study found that rofecoxib demonstrated an extended analgesic effect that lasted throughout the 24-h study. The morphine dose required was significantly less in five of the six time intervals in the rofecoxib group compared with the celecoxib group. Rockeymann (1997)compared the costs, quality of analgesia, and side effects of postoperative patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) with bupivacaine/ sufentanil versus an epidural bolus (BOLUS) of clonidine/morphine in 68 patients with pancreatic surgery. An epidural clonidine/ morphine bolus technique resulted in inferior analgesia, more side effects, and comparable costs compared with a bupivacaine / sufentanil patient controlled