May 24,2012

Today the children were focused a lot on science and reading. In my classroom the children read a book named Number The Stars a book about the Holocaust and the rough times that they have been through. The teacher read to them three chapters of this book and together each child read one page in every chapter. Throughout the chapters the teacher would tell them different vocabulary words to explain or visually describe to her. The interesting thing that I found out about this activity is that the children were able to verbally explain their responses to the teacher about the book, but they struggled with writing them out of how they interpreted the book and the plot. The little girl that I usually work with was surprisingly not "up" from her A.D.H.D and with her being settled down she could actively and constructively participate in the conversations. It was surprising through all the complaining that she normally does, on this particular day she did not and all of her answers that she replied to from the questions of the book were correct.

May 22, 2012
 This day was had to do a lot with the 4th graders taking responsibilty for their actions and self-discipline. I learned on this day that though it is good to connect with the kids on a personal level that there are times when you have to crack down and be serious. I noticed that the little girl I worked with everyday had been asking me everyday to go to the bathroom and when I would allow her to go she would stay in the bathroom for long drawn out periods of time. On this day I went behind her into the bathroom without her knowing just because I knew something wasn't right about her staying in the bathroom for so long. I learned that day that she had just being going into the bathroom to talk to friends for a long period of time. When she came out she noticed that I was standing in the hallway and I explained to her that I trusted her to go to the bathroom and come right back and she didn't do as she was told. I also let her know that I wasn't happy with her just playing around in the bathroom and that she needs to follow directions and she replied to me, "Ms. Pronty you're getting mean your acting like a teacher." Though that kind of hurt me inside and I wanted her to like me, I understood at this moment that it wasn't about her liking me it was about her respecting me.

overview of the week

A couple of my coworkers took me to different places to see different sides of social work.  The first place I went to was a nursing home.  At the nursing home I learned about the different services that are out there for the elderly.  I also learned that social work for older people is just as challenging as any other sector of social work.  Making sure the elderly is taken care of and safe is a challenge when there are nursing homes who do not take care of their tenants.  I also learned that working with older people will not be apart of my furture plans.  I say that because of a personal interest I am more into children and helping the youth of cleveland.  When I visisted the family and child services I saw alot of the families and children who need help.  When I met with a friend of my Coworker Yolanda we talked about the issues deaing with teenagers in this day and age.  We also talked about how there are many children who have to grow up very quickly and get into to things that a child should not, just to survive.  For example a young boy has been a drug dealer since he was 12 because his mom left him and his sister due a drug addiction.  His older sister took care of the kids and he sold drugs to bring money to the house hold. I know children have to go through tis just because of my experience in East Cleveland.  It makes you look at situations different, a child selling drugs is not selling because he wants to or is a bad child.  He is selling drugs to provide for his family, since there is no parent to bring in income he had no choice at 12 years old.  As a social worker you have to leave your personal biases and expectations at the door.  When dealing with people and different situations anything can happen and anything is possible.  I learned that there are alot of sectors of social work, some lighter than others.  I know that i want to wor in the family and children services and help children.  I know that it will be hard but worth it.

Working With my Sponsor and Sugar Alcohols

Last Monday I went with Jeremy to do his workout with him at the gym, and we talked about different machines for weightlifting. One of the most sought after qualities of a good machine is having individually moving parts for each arm (this is not as prevalent or necessary with leg exercises). Such a set up allows the paired muscles to work independently, which helps to force a weaker muscle to work on its own and not be coddled by the stronger of the pair. Hammer Strength equipment (a division under Life Fitness) does a good job at this, as well as produce overall quality equipment.

I have also been doing research on sugar alcohols, which are used as sweeteners in protein bars and often times in sugar free products. They have no more than 4.32 calories per gram, but are noted for having virtually no affect on glucose and insulin concentrations; meaning that blood sugar levels are not notably affected, and that there is no sugar spike. These properties keep sugar alcohols from triggering the storage of fat. This property is further shown by no notable affects to respiratory quotient from mannitol or sorbitol (two alcohol sugars), which shows no affect on metabolic rate as measured by carbon dioxide production. However, sugar alcohols are slight laxatives, and in excessive amounts can have ill effects. Despite this fact, alcohol sugars are not toxic.

Sugar alcohols are listed under carbohydrates on nutrition tables, as mandated by the FDA, but are not exactly carbohydrates. Sugar alcohols have a much lower caloric value than fats and have no nitrogen in their molecular structure like proteins, and have more similarities to carbohydrates than the fat and protein groups. Due to this they are categorized with carbohydrates, but are not carbohydrates in a more technical sense. The value to knowing this comes when selecting products (mostly protein bars) with minimal carbohydrate levels; the sugar alcohols should be largely factored out when determining the amount of carbohydrates in the product.

Speed Reading Class 3

      Friday May 18^th was my last lesson with Mr. Ulsenheimer. We started again with the eye focus chart exercise to warm up our eyes to maintain only three focuses on each line. We then quickly read through “Choosing a Career” at about 750 words per minute. This was an exercise to get comfortable with 750 wpm. Mr. Ulsenheimer was timing us as we read and would tell us to move to the next column if we fell behind the 750 wpm. There was no quiz for this exercise so we moved on to the next article, "Why Learn to Speed Read?" This article was 1734 words and I finished in 2:20 so my wpm was 743. Then, we followed with a quiz and I got a 10/10. My speed was more than twice as fast as the first day and I was able to answer four more questions than the first day. 

     Next, we went to another single column reading. These were tough when first started them the previous class so I tried to work on them between classes. I finished this one with 600 wpm and got 7/10 questions correct. It was much better than I expected and I got both of the fill in the blank questions. The next reading was a long scientific article with pictures and graphs. Because there were pictures and graphs we spent a couple minutes to survey and scan the article. During these first few minutes we were supposed to just study the pictures and graphs and any captions that might go with them. Then, after the couple minutes were up, we read through the article with a hi-lighter to make note of anything that stands out or what you might want to come back to if it was too complicated to pick up on. I read through it with 625 wpm and answered 9/10 questions correctly. We read a couple more articles and finally we finished with "Easier Public Speaking," which I read in 3:30 at 660 wpm. I got 8/10 questions correct. So overall, I saw significant improvement from the first class of only 308 wpm and 6/10 questions to easily twice the speed with better comprehension in nearly every case.

     After taking my last class I started reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Mr. Daly let me borrow it Friday and I read almost all of it, but I had to return it this morning. I spent in total about 6 hours reading it, and I got to page 376 of about 420. This book was unique because it included a lot of examples and exercises to try throughout the book so I started off slow, getting comfortable with this writing style. The first half I read between 326 wpm and 501 wpm. I tried reading one chapter at my normal reading speed without using by hand or focusing on just three parts on each line and I only read 239 wpm. The second half I picked up my speed and read between 490 wpm and 860 wpm. There were about 485 words per page so I was reading under a minute per page. As Mr. Ulsenheimer said, the types of books you read have big impacts on your reading speed, and so does the purpose you read each book or article. 

      I find I want to slow down, but when I slow down I get distracted easily and I have to reread to feel I understood the topic. When I speed up I somehow pick up everything better than when I went slower. The practice improves my focus, which improves comprehension, which makes it easier to read faster. Being able to focus is one of the most important aspects of speed reading. Practice also helps get used to using your hand to guide you down each line and it also increases eye movement speed. Hopefully, I will continue improving my speed as my practice increases.

     

Tuesday

 Today was spend mostly editing a photo. Yesterday, Bernadette, my sponsor, told us to take a picture of ourselves and we thought she said it would be going to be printed in a newspaper, so to make life easier for ourselves, we decided to take the picture in black in white. As it turns out, she was going to print for a poster, so she wanted it in color. I spent most of today making a black and white photo a color photo. This is incredibly difficult to do well. Skin-tone in particular is quite hard to match, but in the end, I think it turned out quite well. Attached to this blog post is a comparison of the black and white vs. color. Keep in mind that I added in all of the colors. None of them are true.

Week 3 Video

Hi all! Last week Aaron and I did a lot of working out and playing basketball at both Hawken and SPIRE and it was by far our most physically exhausting week. However, we had a lot of fun and we were even joined at Hawken a few times by Randy Keller, our close friend from Gilmour, since he is done with his project. His help made our drills a little more intense, fun, and entertaining and we thank him for that. This week we have some interviews planned with some pro athletes, sports trainers, and a sports psychologist so the week 4 video should be a real treat. So as promised here is the week 3 video. Enjoy!


http://youtu.be/CZWlSagMWcs