Dear Mrs. Sippy,
            For my Inquiry Project I am proposing that my topics will be on the money issue with students and the busy schedule of students and how they correlate with each other. These topics pertain to me in many ways. I pay for my education what my federal aid doesn't help with. There is also the situation that i have little money left over after bills that I can use for food or anything else that I may want. As for the schedule part of my topic, I am a busy person. When I am not working I am studying and doing homework. With these topics I wanted to find out what are other students financial situations like and if that has any impact on how busy their schedule is. I am interested in these topics because it is something that I deal with daily and I am interested in how much of a difference there is with the different type of students we have here in UNCC.
        For the topics I have chosen, there needs to be a lot of research conducted. My research for my topic will span from taking interview form teachers and faculty to looking up information in the library. I also plan on going to the financial aid office and asking for information on students tuition payment types and roughly what percent have student loads, what percent have scholarships, etc. Just like the old saying "Time is Money", I wanted to see how students schedules vary based on the amount of money they have and how much bills and other expenses they have to pay off. For this kind of information, I was thinking of making a survey that will ask random students on campus select questions about their daily schedule. The survey will be on a small piece of paper and will be randomly given to students around campus. The questions haven't been finalized but will consist of questions that ask about a student's money situation and about their schedule.
    Some topics or themes that may come up in the inquiry project may be on money and how it affects student mentality. A recurring theme that may come up is that  stress over money. It is something that I see from everyone when I ask about money.
    This is what I am proposing to talk about for my Inquiry Project. These topics are important to me for they will shed some light on what other students are dealing. It will tell me what they are going through and if it affects how they plan out their schedule and the way that they handle their finances.

Sincerely , Karl Rivera

             The education system here in the USA is in trouble of being a system that favors those students that live in certain areas of a city. This system of ours has many flaws that include teachers that have tenure that don't care about the students and then there are the schools that are refereed as the "dumping grounds"  that take all the below average students where less then half ever graduate.  There was a documentary I saw called Waiting for Superman. In this documentary I saw the damages that the public education system was doing to these kids. 
              There are many changes that can be made to help the education system here to improve dramatically. First thing we can do is to change what it means to have tenure. There was a superintendent in D.C. that proposed that teachers had an option to sticking with their tenure and the pay that came with it, or not have tenure and have a yearly raise that could lead to a salary of 100,000+ a year. With this teachers would care more for the students and the education they receive.  The better the student do, the  better the teachers paycheck will be.  And if the teachers didn't like this proposal, they didn't have to take it and stick with their tenure.  This is a solution that would absolutely help the public education system and encourage teachers to do their job.  Unfortunately this proposal didn't ever see the light of day. The teachers union put a stop to it with even before it was it ever implemented. The unions  stated that this encouraged competition  and that it would worsen the system instead of helping it. The truth of the matter is that all they cared about was their jobs and the idea of losing it scared and angered them.  
              Another simpler solution would be to just require students to be involved in at least one club, sport or student organization. This way they will less time for them to be on the streets and be more focused on something school related that can help them in the future. Everyone would have to be involved for  this proposal for its large scale, but I believe that it will dramatically help the student in many ways.  

    This article connects with all the past reading we've had to do in that they all associate with how the classroom is taught and what goes on in the students heads. The 5 paragraph essay idea is something that I have been taught and is what I use as a model more then a format when I write papers.  I love the viewpoints  the authors are saying about this format of writing because I have always thought that it was con-straining my way of writing and that it gave me no freedom to write my way. This was more evident in high school where we are taught how to write every single type of essay. They are even kind enough to provide to us an outline on how exactly they want us to write the essay. I hated that more then anything because it didn’t allow me to learn to write essays my way and to learn from my mistakes.
    I agree with what the authors were saying about the 5 paragraph essay format. This is not the way that students should be taught how to write papers. In the real world there will be no rubric that tells you step by step how to write. Even in college I can only imagine the amount of struggling that students are have to go through to understand how to write an essay. Luckly for me I went to community college where I had an amazing English teacher that also knew the fault with that kind of teaching. Thanks to her I was able to learn to write without having a rubric in my hand telling me how to write.
    Overall, the 5 paragraph model is something that should not be implemented in school at all. It restrict the artistic freedom writers should have and instead implements a model of writing that is

There are many ways that the ideas of the banking model connect to what was discussed in Mike Ross's article. The idea that teachers pour information into students without additional input on what exactly it is is hurting the education process. The effects of this process can be seen in what Mike had to deal with in school and how he say school as. It is not hard to see why students cannot  connect with the material given to them in the classroom if the teacher is using the banking model.With this model students are uninterested in the class and are less willing to put in the effort to get a good grade as we say in Mike's article.
    As for the problem-posing method, it is vital that this be used more often in the classrooms of today. This is a method that can be used in all levels of education and it will no doubt have lasting benefits for all.  To me, the problem-posing method would look similar to a debate or educated discussion. There would be a problem presented to the class and the class would then have to discuss within themselves what they believe is the right answer. The students may not all agree with the same answer but that’s OK; that’s life. No one person will agree with everything that is presented to them.
    This article was interesting to me to read because it shows the two sides of how teachers instruct their students. I'm pretty sure that this has been experienced by many students and there is no doubt that their ability has been affected by it. For students to truly be passionate for their class and not be in there thinking when their going to get out, the ideas like the problem-posing model need to be more widespread.

          For this blog post I will be responding the article we had to read in class.  "I just wanna be average" by Mike Rose was an interesting short story of his high school days. Going from vocational school to college prep classes must have been difficult since most teachers didn't prepare him for such a move. Going over the idea of trajectories we discussed in class, Mikes trajectory was never set in stone . I was always changing based on where he was at the moment. When he was at vocational school mixed in with the different types of people, he was less focused on school and more on having a good time. His trajectory drastically changed with his move to the other class level and the introduction to a certain teacher that has helped make school more interesting. 
            This article makes me think of how my high school days were and how many of the teachers were less prepared to teach a class. Its even worse here at UNCC where some of these teachers just wanna have the students read the textbook and teach themselves then to do the actual teaching. Unlike high school where Mike Rose had to deal with these kinds of people, we cant slack around and do nothing. This article also makes me think of our education system. It loves to divide students based on their education level leaving the rest to unprepared, uninteresting teachers that sometimes don't care if a student fails or passes. 
            There were numerous ideas and phrases that interested me in this article. One of them was when Ken Harvey told his teacher that he just wanted to be average. (186) I had the same reaction that Rose had, average?! Who wants to be just average? The funny thing is that we as a society are bred to think uniquely and differently. But the truth if the matter is that everyone things averagely and its what the nation ultimately wants from us. Overall this was an interesting article that I could relate to since it was about school. The ups and downs makes this article very relate able and shows that a persons trajectory is always changing.   

- The first one is when I was at my high school East Mecklenburg.  There I decided to take a programming class.
-The second is me visiting the Microsoft branch here in Charlotte. 
- Getting on academic probation was a wake-up call.
- Receiving my UNCC acceptance letter.