SWS

At the student works symposium I attended the paper presentations dealing with political sciences. I sat in on the lectures given by Paige Ammons: The Ethics of Earmarks, Stephanie Seaman: Governor Perry’s Decision to Mandate Gardasil Vaccination for Texas School Girls: Good Policy? Good Politics? or an Ethical Dilemma?, Drew Diamond: The Second Gulf War and Personal Framing of a Security Threat, Taylor Spalla: What Is the Ethical Decision to be Made with the Remaining Detainees at Guantanamo?. I have to be honest, I was completely confused half the time about what the presentations were about. Political science is not my specialty but I did enjoy learning about what issues the government has to dealing with. I do remember the debate about mandating the Gardisal Vaccination when it came out a couple of years ago. The presentation covered both of the approaches of why it should or should not be mandated. I enjoyed the lectures but think I could learn more by going to a science based lecture. I did stretch myself quite a bit by attending political science lectures. I think that the presenters did a nice job communicating their research and the visual aids were very impressive. They all seemed so calm and collected talking in front of an audience. I am already nervous about giving a presentation in a few years.

The poster presentations I saw were very impressive and informative. My favorite was The Rubens Tube by Will Hardy, Sean Smith and Pelham Keahey. Basically, the Rubens tube makes musical sound waves visible with fire. I was disappointed that the tube was not functionally properly because of the wind but Will showed me a video he had of the tube working. It was amazing to say the least. The tube is lit on fire and a song is played through the middle of the tube. As the sound waves pass through the tube, the fire jumps according to the frequency of the notes. Just like how a stereo system has bars to represent sound waves, the Rubens Tube displays the waves with fire (awesome). I also went to Matthew Dorris’ poster: Heavy Metal Toxins in Dillo Dirt. I thought his study was very interesting because it extracted different metals from the dillo dirt. Dillo dirt is a type of fertilizer that has been known to kill plants and live stock. Matthew worked to determine what the toxins are in dillo dirt.

I was impressed with all the hard work the students at SU have done. I can’t wait (but still nervous) about my future presentation.

Final Session

The boys and girls club was fun and exciting. The kids loved us and loved to see what new activities we had in store for them. I think our sessions went well overall. We carefully planned out each activity but of course nothing went as planned. I felt like some of the kids started understanding what it meant to work as a team but others still had trouble with the concept. On the first day one kid ended up on the sidelines watching everyone play while he was pouting because he did no want to pass the ball in a game of basketball. I felt like that kid (I don’t want to name names, but I think people know who I am talking about) got better at working with others especially during the paper airplane building competition when he taught his teammate a trick to fly the paper airplane farther. I do feel that some children, such as him, will have to learn how to work in a team environment the hard way but I think the idea is floating around in the back of his mind.

Some of the kids were a lot younger then I expected. Some of the activities we planned for required more attention and understanding then they were willing or able to give. By the end we adjusted our activities properly to provide a good time for all the children. When we saw an activity heading south we would quickly change the focus to a different game. I think that went well because they all have such a short attention span to begin with. I did see why Daniel is so desperately looking for a conflict resolution session. Some of the kids argue about everything. One kid (still not naming names) would spend about 10 minutes arguing why he was not out in four square every time he played. The other kids would get frustrated with him and not know how to express their emotions towards him. He would sit and argue until Josh or Gerald came to take him aside. One boy I was standing next to during the other boys tantrum whispered to me “he always does this, but I’m not going to say anything. He is just a big baby.” I thought it was cute because he was trying so hard not to get in the middle of the argument.

As I stated earlier, I am not sure if the kids understood the theme of our sessions. They liked having our attention and playing games with us. I liked how their faces lit up when we would walk into the club. I don’t know if I made a difference in a child’s life. I don’t even know if the kids will ever remember me (come on, we taught them how to make boats out of aluminum foil, how could you forget us). But I

First session

Today we went to the boys and girls club for our first session of team building activities. Overall I think our session was quite successful. I was worried before we arrived because we were told the entire club was going to be required to participate in our activities. However, the kids were given an option to participate. We first started with the name game which failed because the kids did not really understand the game. After a couple of rounds we learned names enough so we decided to move on to the next activity. For our next activity we played mafia. I think our game would have been better if we had older kids playing. I was not expecting to have kids around the age of 7. They did not really understand the point of the game. It was fun for the first few rounds but they lost interest quite easily. After the mafia game, we played chain tag. I believe the chain tag game was by far the most successful. We stressed the importance of working together in order to get other people. There was a problem with one of the kids. He would get frustrated with having to be locked in a chain and wanted to break free to chase after his friends. I think by the end the kids saw how important it was to work together for a common goal. We would decide who we wanted to tag and communicated with each other to chase after them. During the chain tag game, we also got a lot more kids to join us. We started with a majority of girls in our group. Toward the end of the tag game we attracted a whole lot more boys to our group. When we were done with the tag game we had an extra 15 minutes to spare so we decided to play basketball or four square. It was successful because the kids who did not want to play basketball were satisfied with four square.
I thought the dynamics of the boys and girls club were very surprising. I thought the racial groups were very diverse and the way the children acted were even more diverse. As a natural people watcher I learned a lot about the children by watching the way they acted. I tried to decide why they acted the way they did, for example some obviously did not get enough attention at home. Some of the pieces came together when we saw how the parents acted toward their children when they were being picked up.
I really enjoyed our first session and think that the kids really enjoyed having us around. The staff seemed satisfied with our activities, especially chain tag. I was afraid after today’s lunch meeting that the staff was going to be too strict preventing the kids from fooling around and having a good time. Actually the staff was great help. They stayed out of the way and let us regulate the activities. I did appreciate having Gerald around during the chain tag because he helped us make sure the kids were participating correctly and he knew how to handle the disobedient kids. I can’t wait for our next session.

As a side note: I just wanted to add this to the blog but I don’t think anyone will really read this. As I was playing with the kids I happened to see the conflict resolution group get out. When exiting one kid placed frosting from his cupcake onto another kids shirt. That kid turned to him and said “I swear I’ll hit you.” I found this interesting because they just exited from a session that should have taught them that violence is not the way to solve a problem. I am not saying that the conflict resolution did not work because I think it would be basically impossible to change someone’s raw emotions in just a few sessions. I just didn’t know if you guys wanted to address that as a scenario at your next session. I just thought that I would throw out something I saw from my observations.

JDA Lecture

I finally got to see the Jesse Danial Ames Lecture: Transgenderism and Citizenship: A Dialogue between Eli Clare and Matt Richardson.” During the lecture, much was argued about how citizenship is falsely defined. Eli Clare suggested that citizens believe that the government of there land should protect its citizens when in fact they do not, well not all of them. It seemed to be suggested that the government is biased to which people they protect, bringing race, disabilities, and sexual orientation into the mix. I disagree with much of the argument made. I feel like the government has made great leaps in the not to distant past to help all of citizens regardless of race, gender orientation and disabilities. I still believe that much improvement needs to be made but you can not change the minds of individuals by changing a government. Examples of hate crimes were spilled out left and right. While I do find hate crimes horrific I do not think it is right to assume a majority of people feel or act the way of the hater.

I did enjoy the lecture in the sense that I did not understand much about transgenderism. Reading the articles before last class period helped me understand the lecture a little more then I think I would have if I did not read them. Much of the information presented was new to me so I do enjoy that I learned something new. The speakers definitely did present a different view on things that I never would have thought about, such as the questions presented on paperwork. From my point of view I felt like some thoughts were a stretch maybe an over exaggeration to a poorly worded sentence. For example, the question are you a citizen or are you an undocumented alien, seemed like an over exaggeration. From my view point an alien is defined as belonging to another country or government. Eli interpreted alien as some sub human form. While there are two (maybe more, I am not sure) interpretations of an alien in today’s society, one being a foreign creature from space, I believe that the term alien first originate as a person who does not belong to the current government. I am not sure if this is what Eli mean but that is how I interpreted it. Overal the lecture did make me think. I thought about my own points of views and how I interpreted things. It made me think how different each individual is and how selfish it would be to ask someone to conform there ideas to suit your own ideas. I thought about how I wish every individual can see that everyone is different and not judge how they live their lives.