Literacy Wars

A vast majority of the participants in the war of literacy agree that individual tutoring by a trained teacher for struggling students is very effective alongside regular school instruction. However financial problems arise for the cost of tutoring because the schools that can least afford it are the schools where it is most needed. It has been known that many schools provide tutoring by people that are not teachers. The tutoring is typically from parent volunteers and sometimes by paraprofessionals. This nonprofessional tutoring program is not very effective because it is usually single-schooled and the teachers do not practice the most effective tools. As Robert Slavin, director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education and the creator of a school wide reform technique Success for All, states “having an adult sit with a kid and read back and forth may be successful... but not [for] improving reading performance for a kid who's running into a lot of trouble learning to read” (qtd. Rosenberg, Tina). The children have a need for organization, special attention and a step-by-step curriculum which is shown in the article An Untapped Force in the Fight for Literacy by Tina Rosenberg.

Many schools use task-shifting because it is beneficial where resources are short. They can teach the students well at an affordable rate because of the movement of jobs to the lowest paid and lowest-trained people. This is more beneficial because it saves money and there are no worries about having to pay teachers overtime. A well respected group MDRC founded an organization called Reading Partners, and another organization called AmeriCorps that helps with the improvement of literacy, and can help with the financial problems.

The volunteers of AmeriCorps, which started in 2003, are used by the Minnesota Reading Corps organization. This program is capable of working with any curriculum. They receive money from the federal government either as a full-time or half-time tutor. Full-time tutors teach about 15-20 students at once training for only 3 days. The children are tutored five out of every seven days for 20 minutes each. They are taught ten different lessons that the schools’ reading specialist chooses at every gathering. Spreading in 2012, within 2 years, the AmeriCorps program has reached 7 other states. In Minnesota 30,600 ( 85%) students out of 36,000 students are in the program. It is believed that the resources needed for effective tutoring are in every state due to literacy experts living there. Some people have opposing views on the resources because the program costs about 800 dollars a student; a cost that is too expensive for some states. Michael Lombardo said “If California were to replicate the program on the same scale as Minnesota, it would take the entire AmeriCorps budget”(Michael Lombardo); this shows an example of how the program is too expensive for some states.Because of this reason, it makes it difficult to scale the AmeriCorps program nationally.

If a school decides to join Reading Partners they must accommodate a room and some money that can range between $10,000-$25,000. AmeriCorps members are interlinked with this program so they are hired to supervise the volunteers and arrange tutoring so that it is in the daily reading instructions. The site coordinators train for a couple of weeks before the school year begins and then constantly coaches throughout the year. Parents or community members volunteer and work about one hour each week with as many children as the program allows. The students get two forty-five minute tutoring sessions a week. As the site coordinator watches and coaches the tutors, the tutors are sitting at different stations with normally 8 tutor/student pairs in a room. Detailed lesson plans and scripts are used to direct the tutors what to do in each lesson. To keep the program efficient, the tutors are recommended to take notes. Note taking is important when it comes to absences because it provides the fill in tutor with an understanding of what the child needs help on and they can pick up where the student left off last. The student to teacher relationship matters because typically students feel more confident in asking questions to someone that they are already use to. The principal, Kristina Beecher, believes that the program should be based on increasing the childrens’ confidence, understanding of the material , and the resulting test scores.

A common problem is that individual tutoring is sometimes too expensive for some families so family members and community members volunteer to help the students who are not reading at their grade level. Finding organizations that can help train the volunteers at a low cost is very useful for this matter.

The researchers of the MDRC discovered that Reading Partners is efficient for a variety of schools and students and it is not very expensive. Reading Partners does not vary by grade level and it benefits the students with low literacy skills the most. The key component to the results are loyalty and faithfulness because it guarantees that the tutors can perform the lessons correctly which makes the struggling students more successful.

I believe that a child who works with a tutor in person, one-on-one, is more capable of overcoming his/her literacy challenges alongside with normal teaching while also making tutoring affordable. It is most common for people to open themselves up and be comfortable with one person, than it is to have to be comfortable with multiple people. Individual tutoring gives the students a chance to ask questions and make mistakes more openly. If the tutors are teaching correctly and by the students needs, then the students will learn more quickly than trying to learn in a group that has too many students and not enough one-on-one time. This can be related to everyday life because most people feel more confident in a smaller group of people than in a bigger group of people. Imagine how you would feel in a position like this. An example may be performing a song or dance in front of a crowd, or speaking in front of a lot of people. A person will typically feel more comfortable if it was in front of 10 to 20 people compared to 50-100 people.With volunteers teaching these struggling kids, it makes the programs less expensive. If there are more volunteers, the percentage of students overcoming their illiteracy is sure to increase.The fight for literacy is ongoing, but children will soon defeat this fight.

The Green Power Movement: Then and Now

     Life is changing everyday as we know it and it will continue to change for eternity. It is now 2050 and we have come a long way since 2014. We humans are always in search for bigger and better things although sometimes new technology can negatively affect our Earth. For many years the United States has focused on energy independence due to the energy crisis. President Barack Obama had created an administration towards the Green Power movement to help solve the energy crisis that had been happening. Many factors of technology advancements contributed to the Green Power movement which has altered the professional work lives and homes of the country’s citizens.The world is in our hands and we have the power to change and create a better future.

     Cars are an example of a continuous effort in advancing in a direction towards more efficiency and less pollutants. Different vehicles serve different purposes and that is why it is difficult to just have one vehicle solve all issues. The cause of change had been the increasing oil prices, the concern about tailpipe emissions, and Global Warming. The USA had been too dependent on global markets for oil. America was facing an energy crisis that was said to be "the moral equivalent of war" (Bryce, 488). In 2006, 60 percent of consumption was dependent on imports of oil, petroleum, gas, and other fossil fuels. In a report of an Independent Task Force it was said that “the steep rise in energy prices...is the false expectation that policies to lower imports will automatically lead to a decline in prices” (Independent Task Force, 484).  The constant disappointment had caused a search for change on the dependence of oil.

Electric cars and Hybrids are two cars that we now have that are more efficient and less of a pollutant to our environment because they release no carbon emissions into the atmosphere which had been a major cause of Global Warming.  Globally, Electric cars have contributed to the prevention of the oil-related disaster that could have happened due to the cars that ran on gasoline. In the early 2000s it was said that “Hybrids served as a mental bridge to electric cars by creating public acceptance of battery driven vehicles and what they could mean; a much larger role for electricity in transportation” (Yergin, 526). The earlier plug-in hybrids were said to “run for some distance on electricity and then the battery runs down and a combustion engine takes over, either recharging the battery or directly providing power to propel the car, or both” (Yergin, 526). Some people had feared this because they were unsure if their car would travel long distances. Many cars today run on electricity from a battery, but there are charging stations just like there were gas stations in the previous years. Dieter Zetsche, the CEO of Daimler in the early 2000s said “We’re investing billions and billions and basically we’re going for everything- from diesel to hybrids to batteries” (Zetsche, 533). It is seen that many efforts and many different outlooks have contributed to the change in the transportation system. America had to constantly be open to new ideas and inventions. Looking back on the past, Joseph White said “efforts yield a solution to any challenge” (White, 537). He is a witness of the continuous efforts that the United States have made. Two factors that supported the USA’s dedication are the technological challenge of the Manhattan Project and the race to put a man on the moon. Unfortunately, financial problems have always played a major role in the creation of environmentally friendly vehicles which have caused some doubts to the creation of these new cars some decades ago. When Obama was president, his administration had provided $5 billion in grants and loans to battery producers, entrepreneurs, auto companies, and equipment suppliers to jump start the electric car and to create the infrastructure systems that would help it. The government had to implement many regulations, incentives, and subsidies to find an affordable price for the making and buying of the new cars.

In the early 2000s, rapid growth in solar installation had sparked an interest in society. Energy from the sun is priceless, renewable, abundant, and it is not dangerous to produce.  The falling prices for solar panels had made the solar panels more popular. It was said by Paul Krugman that “prices adjusted for inflation [were] falling around 7 percent a year” (Pulmer, 510).  Compared to the early 2000s, solar panels are now extremely cheap. It has been discovered that electricity from solar panels is less expensive than generating electricity by burning coal. Many solar panels are used to power our homes.  The first state that had benefitted from this new advancement was California. In California, around 2007 it was said that “rows of gigantic mirrors cover[ed] an area bigger than two football fields” ( Dickerson, 505) showing the amount of space it the city needed to conduct a good amount of energy. Some places had also depended on solar thermal plants such as Ausra. Solar thermal plants were enormous boilers that were made of glass and steel that used the sun’s heat to produce steam to power turbines for electricity. Executives of Ausra said that their technology could “generate enough electricity to meet the entire nation’s demand” (Dickerson, 507). Although it seems to be a cleaner and more efficient energy source, it still requires high-voltage lines and old fashioned power towers to reach to people’s homes. Also, the sun does not always shine so problems continue to arise because fossil fuels must be used as backup power, unless there is stored energy. Although we have to burn some fossil fuels, it is very minimal compared to the amount that was burned in 2007. It was said that "Less than 12% of the states electric came from renewable resources" (Dickerson, 506). In the beginning of the twenty-first century “state lawmakers told investor-owned utilities that they must procure 20% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2010” (Dickerson, 507). Since then we have been able to acquire a minimum of 45 percent of electricity from renewable resources.

One other tool that has been invented is generating electricity from wind power. When it had been first introduced it was seen to be very efficient because it could be a clean, free, and safe source of energy. Another advantage was that “Wind power producers get tax credits and state incentives, and don’t have to worry about fuel price increases, pollution production or long construction delays” (Kolbert, 515). The way that it worked was that the windmills would catch the wind by either turning into or away from air currents. The wind would move through a propeller which would turn the shafts to work the generator and the mechanical energy would be turned into electricity. Although this seemed to be a smart energy source to depend on, it had eventually been discovered that it had many flaws and was not as effective as it was thought out to be compared to the amount of electricity generated from burning fossil fuels or from nuclear power. Some disadvantages were that the installation was sometimes costly, the turbines were loud, it was dangerous to birds and the windmills had taken up a large amount of land. Wind also has many different variations of speed at which it blows; it can only generate power within a range of 8 to 65 miles per hour. When the wind exceeds this limit it had to be shut off for the possibility of it being blown down. Environmentalists had worried about the windmills damaging fragile ecosystems. Some migratory bird species such as Bald and Golden Eagles had been endangered because of the large blades. Some say that the industry had “tricked its way into unspoiled countryside in ‘green’ disguise by portraying wind farms as ‘parks’” (Burnett, 521) when really wind farms were just like highways, industrial buildings, railways and industrial farms. They had taken up a lot of space and would only create a fraction of the energy of a conventional power plant. It was proven that they take a year to produce less than four days’ output from a single 2,000-megawatt conventional power station- which takes up a 100 times fewer acres” (Burnett, 521).  All of these negative effects had resulted in a movement in another direction and we no longer see windmills around.

It can be seen that not all problems have been solved due to the new technological advancements, but we continue to work toward a better future for ourselves and the Earth. The world has changed drastically compared to what it was like about four decades ago and we will keep pushing towards a better and a more environmentally friendly future.  Electric cars, Hybrids, and Solar power has greatly impacted our world. Our professional and home lives will continue to change and hopefully there will be no existence of the energy crisis that there once was. The inventions will continue to be a trial and error to see what is most beneficial to our world. What do you believe the next big advancement will be?

 

Works Cited

Bryce, Robert. “The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum.October 2006: 488-492, Print.

Burnett, H. Sterling. “ Wind Power Puffery.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum

February 4, 2014:521-522. Print.

Dickerson, Maria. “State Solar Plans Are As Big As All Outdoors.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum December 3, 2008:505-508. Print

Kolbert, Elizabeth. “ The Island In The Wind.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum July 7, 2008:514-520. Print

“National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependence.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum October 2006: 483-487. Print

Plumer, Brad. “Solar Is Getting Cheaper, But How Far Can It Go?” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum November 7, 2011: 510-511. Print

White, B. Joesph. “Why The Gasoline Engine Isn’t Going Away Any Time Soon.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum September 15,2008 : 534-539. Print

Yergin, Daniel. “ The Great Electric Car Experiment.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum 2011:525-534. Print

course evaluation

 In the beginning of the year, my downfall while writing papers had been picking quotes to put into my my papers and incorporating them into the rhetorical situation. I also did not make the first paper more "me". I needed to use my voice more instead of just taking the authors details and rewording them. Another weakness had been the length of my summaries. They always had unnecessary details that could have been incorporated into the quotes. As the course went on I started to develop more skills and my papers had been more comparable to a college paper.
I would say that some of my strengths had been having a strong and arguable thesis statement. I always questioned if my introduction paragraph had been too broad of a idea but it did not seem to be a problem to my professor. As the course continued my in-text citations had improved and related to the rhetorical situation. I would say that this was an effective course.
One thing that I would say I need to improve on is shortening my summaries, clarifying analytical tools and my increasing my sentence structure difficulty.

The Meaning Behind Fairy Tales

What values would a parent want their child to learn from a fairy tale? If a parent believes that a fairy tale should have a therapeutic value, like Bruno Bettelheim, then “Cinderella” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm would be a wise choice of story to read. Fairytales have many characteristics that make up a story. They contain magical objects, good and evil, a damsel in distress, and a hero which is typically the happy ending. Bettelheim also believes that fairy tales teach children that “a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable,” and “if one does not shy away but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships one masters all obstacles and emerges victorious” (qtd. Tatar 231). In life there are always times of struggle because it is inevitable; if a person remains strong and keeps moving forward then they will be able to see that they have conquered their obstacles and they will soon become successful as demonstrated in Grimm’s version of Cinderella.

Grimm’s Cinderella is different in many ways compared to the well-known Cinderella which is also known as the Walt Disney version. In this story the mother had fallen sick and had told her daughter that if she remains good and kind at heart, that good will come to her as a reward. With that being said, the daughter had always done what she had been told to do and took orders from her new, evil, stepsisters and stepmother. One day Cinderella’s father had brought Cinderella a branch that she had asked for and she planted it by her mother’s grave. She whimpered so much that all of her tears had fallen and watered the branch. It soon grew into a wonderful tree that a little white bird would always come to. Whenever Cinderella had wished for something, the bird would grant her wish. The King had planned a festival that every young and beautiful girl could attend in which Cinderella wanted to go to but her evil stepmother constantly made up excuses and demanded Cinderella to do ridiculous tasks so that she would not be able to attend the three day festival. The family had gone without Cinderella as she went to her mother’s grave and cried. The white bird that had always sat upon the tree threw down a beautiful dress and on went Cinderella to the festival. The Prince and Cinderella had danced with each other all night and every night for the remaining days of the festival. On the final day the prince had a strategy to find out who the beautiful Cinderella belonged; his strategy involved her leaving one of her slippers behind as she ran away. Every girl was to try on the shoe and the two stepsisters had gone to the extremes to be able to marry the man. They were punished viciously for their falsehood when the prince had realized that Cinderella was the women whom he had been looking for. In the end, Cinderella and the prince had gotten married.

In the Walt Disney Cinderella, the prince was having a ball instead of a festival, there was a fairy godmother instead of a tree and a bird that granted wishes, and it was not as vicious as Grimm’s version was. The Walt Disney version had appealed more to children. I believe that the Walt Disney version is what is typically seen as a fairy tale because it had a happy ending, good and evil, and it had hope which can portray a valuable lesson.

The inevitable struggles in life help to characterize a person by how they react to the issue. Many factors had contributed to the person that Cinderella became. An inevitable struggle that Cinderella had to face was when her mother had passed away and her father had taken on a new wife. The wife also brought along her two daughters and all of them were very cruel to Cinderella. As stated by Grimm “Now began a bad time for the poor step-child”(Grimm 241). She had to do hard work from morning until evening while constantly getting mocked and demanded to do things by her step family. She was not allowed to sit and eat with the family because they believed that she must earn that privilege. The stepsisters had asked her sarcastically “Is this stupid goose to sit in the parlor with us?” (Grimm 241). Even after a long and hard day of work she had no bed to call her own and she slept by the fireside next to the ashes. When Cinderella finally had an opportunity to do something that she enjoyed, her stepmother had ordered her to empty dishes of lentils into the ashes. When she was finished she had excitedly shown her stepmother because she believed that she could go to the festival but the stepmother had denied her the permission to go so the stepsisters had demanded Cinderella to comb their hair and brush their shoes. The stepfamily had believed that she was not worthy enough to attend the festival and that going to the festival had been a privilege that was granted by her stepmother but it was out of Cinderella’s control. Cinderella had obeyed her stepmother, and reacted well to the situations she had been put in.

 Remaining kind at heart and obeying orders, even from unkind people such as Cinderella’s stepfamily, typically can result in something to that person’s advantage. Cinderella had done everything that the stepfamily had asked of her. She did chores such as carry water, cook, wash, and light fires. She also tolerated the family when she was asked to do unnecessary tasks. Although the stepmother could have given her all the necessities to wear to the festival, she chose not to share all her good fortune even though she received it from the family she had married into. She had taken away all of Cinderella’s material things and made Cinderella appear as if she had come from an impoverished family.

The little white bird that was always seen on top of the hazel tree where the mother’s grave was could be seen as a symbolization of Cinderella’s mother. The bird helped Cinderella with her tasks, provided her with dresses to wear to the festival and had revealed the truth about the stepsisters dishonesty. In the end, Cinderella had been rewarded for her honesty and kindhearted soul. Everyone had seen her true beauty. She had married the prince and lived happily ever after when the prince realized that it was her foot that had fit the slipper. Before trying on the slipper, the stepmother had told her daughters to “Cut the toe off” and  “Cut a bit of thy heel”  so that their foot would fit the slipper and they would be able to marry the prince (Grimm 244). Karma had eventually caught up with all the wrong that the stepfamily had done. All the pigeons had punished them by pecking out their eyes which made them blind for the rest of their lives.

In Grimm’s version of Cinderella there is a therapeutic lesson that can be seen. The constant struggle that Cinderella had to deal with and her response to those actions show the amount of tolerance and strength that she had which resulted in victory. There had been “light at the end of her tunnel,” as quoted by Ada Adams. A person who has read this story can believe that the stepfamily had become the less fortunate because they will now have to become dependent upon the kindhearted people to care for them due to their physical impairments while Cinderella gets the chance to live the prosperous life she once had long before the stepfamily had been introduced.