Journal 7 - Alyssa

In the film, Rafe said his "greatest fear is for them to be ordinary," he continued with "I want them to be extraordinary." This was a very powerful quote to me. Children growing up needs someone to look up to. Rafe is someone those children looked up too. It's very important that Rafe encourages them to do amazing things. If he were to not encourage him, these students who look up to them may not have the confidence they need to go on and do these amazing things. There are so many people that will try to knock them down because they don't care about the kids. It's very important that they keep looking back on the things that Rafe told them.

In the film, Rafe would often teach the kids about everyday things that every person would need to know. He explained things to him in a way that they could easily understand it. He respected the children and the children gave them the same amount of respect back. So many times there would be students who wouldn't respect a teacher so the teacher would just do the same back. Which would ultimately lead to a never ending cycle of back and forth disrespect. When I was in elementary school, it felt a lot like I was just mindlessly memorizing things and no one would actually explain to me why it was important. I had no interest in learning. Rafe actually explained to these children why it was important. One thing my teachers did, that I loved, was kind of like the money system they used. When we did homework, received a good grade on a test, whatever it was, they'd reward us with very colorful fake money. They would have these little carts that would come around from classroom to classroom where we could buy pop, candy, and other toys. Some of the things we could buy were cute little supplies for school. Like pencils, top erasers.

A goal that I would like to try to reach  next year is to work a little harder towards some of my classes. There are the classes that I will need for the profession I am going into to. But there are a lot of classes that I need to graduate. Those  are the one's that I tend to neglect. Next year I want to try to equally distribute my time from classes I know I need to the ones that I am not that interested and just need to graduate. I know I'm going to have to cut out a lot of the things I use to procrastinate. Like FaceBook, Netflix, YouTube.