Personal story and insight about an article.

First I would like to talk about an experience I had in high school with Choice Theory. It was in my high school American Government class my senior year. The project was to create the United States cabinet using person, fictional or real, that we wanted to and write why we did. We were allowed to pick our groups and I was in a group with three of my friends. The Choice Theory is about having a memorable experience because it was fun, there was some freedom, you felt like you belonged, and you had power. To me this project had it all. First it was fun because I was able to work with my friends and I really liked this class and thought it was a cool and unique project. Also, every group had freedom to choose who ever they wanted in their cabinet and there was really no boundaries set up by our teacher, Mr. J. When you are able to get your ideas out in the open in a group and your members except your ideas, you feel like you belong to that group and they really care about what you have to say and what you think. In my group I felt like I had a lot of power because I took on the responsibility in writing the paper part of the project and everyone agreed in letting me write it. Maybe it was because they had trust in me to do a good job on it or they just didn't want to do it themselves, but whatever I liked writing about the project. I really enjoyed going over our ideas with the rest of the class and in return for all of our hard work we got 100 percent on the project, which always makes things so much better.

I could see myself using the Choice Theory in my classroom because it keeps the students interested. Whenever you can make learning fun and memorable that means you have done something right as a teacher. I want to be a high school History teacher, so I can see myself using the concepts of making fun, letting the students have some freedom, yet feel like they belong to the whole class, and letting the students have some sort of power in the classroom. Out of all the material we have learned about this semester, this is the first I have actually liked and could see myself using in the future.

To change the focus for a minute, I want to blog about the article by William Glasser. It was about having violence-prevention programs (VPP) in all schools to help reduce the violence. In the article it was about have counselors there for unhappy students so that they would not go out and start fights or do something worse. I believe that having someone there to talk to does help some students feel better and probably will prevent a lot of school violence, but coming from a high school that on average had probably two to three fights a week, just because there is someone there doesn't mean that the violence will stop. My school had extra security and had counselors to help with any problems, but in the article it talked about only unhappy students going out and starting fights, and my school had gangs to deal with. I knew kids that wouldn't talk to anyone because they felt like they were putting themselves in danger if they told anyone about anything that might happen. There needs to be that trust and when students know that whatever they say might be told to someone else, that is when they stop talking. I am all for VPP in schools, but I don't believe that it will stop all the violence especially if students don't talk.