Emily Arnold’s ePortfolio

I hope you enjoy viewing my ePortfolio!

Going along with my policy essay, I am also going to focus my Advocacy Project on teacher tenure. My goal is to raise awareness about the problems tenure poses on school districts and inform the general public about my proposition for reform.

I plan on targeting our own study body as well as any K-12 administrators I can find. I am going to inform particular education majors here at PSU and inform them of the issue.

I am possibly going to use posters with short and concise points about what the issues are and they will also include  just general knowledge about the topic. I also plan on creating a website about my tenure reform plan in particular. The website will be factual, interesting, and include my  policy paper in order for audience to understand more specifically what the tenure problems are. My goal is to spark change in the minds of students and teachers alike and hope that they will see the tenure problem from my point of view.

Tenure Reform

Teacher’s have the ability to shape the minds of young and old students alike and are an extremely important asset to our society. With that said, it is crucial that we have the best and brightest teachers guiding and instructing students. A teacher can aquire “tenure” by teaching at a school for a certain length of time. Tenure offers job secutiry, meaning, it is more difficult to get fired if you are a teacher with tenure than if you are a teacher without tenure.

I see this as a problem becuase teachers with tenure are often no longer looked at and evaluated with the same tough standards as teachers with tenure. In order to ensure that every teacher, with or without tenure, is being effective and reaching his or her full potentail in the classroom, a policy of greater oversight and evalutions needs to be placed upon all teachers. While my policy idea is still in the making, I am sure that I want to reform tenure and make it more difficult to gain tenure and so that those teachers who earn tenure are still susceptible to getting fired if they prove very inadequate or display inappropriate or poor behavior.

I have found a lot of scholarly articles in favor of tenure, but a lot have pointed out the flaws of a system where firing is almost impossible. I also found a bill enacted in 2010 in the state of Colorado which reformed tenure policies in a way that is similar to what I would like to do. I plan on using the act as a model and comparison for my policy proposal. There is also a lot of data that supports my claims that many teachers with tenure are not fired even if they display failing teacher qualities or bad behavior. This will bolster my argument for a need for tenure reform.

Are you kidding me? Do I really have to do this? I don’t want to, none of my friends are doing it and it’s going to be stupid. Not to mention a complete waste of time. These are just a few of the whiny words I shared with my mother four and a half years ago when she told me that I was going to cross country practice the following morning. I wasn’t fat or out of shape, that wasn’t the problem, I just didn’t want to do it. Plain and simple. But of course, my parents won. I was fifteen with no valid excuses for disobeying them. I had no choice. I would set my alarm for 7:19 a.m. so I would be awake and ready to endure an awkward car ride to practice with my mom.

A few months later and long story short, I decided that I had an incredible passion for running. Even if there was a light drizzle coming from the sky or if ice cold snow was dancing in the wind, I ran. I depended on running. I looked forward to it, cherished it, and felt a sense of great relief from it.

Running became my friend. Not the kind of friend you go out to lunch with or watch movies with, but a friend who would listen to you when you were feeling down and encourage you in your brightest moments. Sometimes running was mean to me. Are you actually making me get surgery on both legs two weeks before my senior track season? Id ask in utter frustration when running would cause my so much pain in my legs. Running and I had our share of fights. I was pretty mad after my surgery, but I didn’t give up. I knew that I had developed a passion for running I could not let go. I regained that friendship by resting my body and attending physical therapy three times a week. Running made me work to heal our broken bond. But it was mended with time, teaching me patience.

I believed and still believe in running because it is a friend that accompanies you up hills and even mountains, who only listens to you; but never fails to silently challenge you with its cunning nature when it feels like presenting a challenge to your body. Relationships are never easy. They take time. With running, sometimes it was my fault because I pushed running too hard. Sometimes running snapped at me and sent shooting sharp pains down my legs, but we always worked it out. I definitely came to terms with running, understanding our relationship would never be an easy journey. But I did realize that the joy I experienced when running outweighed its struggles. I believe in running, because it has taught me patience, determination, and the ability to never give up.

The two CI topics I have considered are: human trafficking and the health care bill. For the first topic I would separate the issue into five categories discussing the who, what, where, why, and singificance of human trafficking. For healthcare bill, I would talk about what is actually is, why it was implemented, who it impacts, debates for and against it, and the future of the bill.

Two possible TIB ideas would be the importance of running and the impact it has on relieving stress, happiness can’t be bought, and teammates in sports and the life lessons they can teach us.

Two additional Passion blog topics I could write about would be about food and show reviews. I would pick a particular type of food that is unknown to most people and discuss it’s significance, history, and use today. For the second topic, I would research a show and notify readers about the interesting facts and stories they didn’t know behind their favorite shows.

In order to make my blogging better this semester, I am going to make all of my posts more comment friendly. I want to make sure that people have an easy time sharing their opinions about my post when they are done reading them and I would be curious to hear what the class has to say. I will try to make my information very new and fresh so people are engaged in my posts.

Because my group is not shooting any video footage, the first video was irrelevant to my project, although it was humorous in a very corny sort of way. Commenting on the first video, though, I can use those techniques in the future. Using pizza boxes or any type of white boxes to reflect light was very interesting in my opinion. I also never took note of my actual stance when shooting a video, but after watching the video I will be more conscious of my posture.

While the first video was simply useful knowledge, the second video was very beneficial. Since my main task of the project is to compile pictures, music, and video, and match them to our topic, I will be doing a lot of editing work. The man’s suggestion for transitions was very helpful since a lot of changes from picture to video or picture to picture can be very choppy and look unorganized. By creating a fade in or fade out transition, the video looks more professional. Also, adjusting the music so it suits the topic, as well as creating a proper volume in accordance with the spoken script, is very important.

When comparing my project to this video I think we have a lot of editing to do but we are in the right direction. Because our topic is not too popular, finding visual aids to assist the script was difficult. Searching for pictures that were free to use was also a challenge. The professional style that my group wants to achieve for our project also has played a role in the music and picture selection process. While there are many cartoons and fun animations I would love to add to our project, this project calls for pictures and music with a serious and clean cut tone so they can both appropriately fit our project.

As our Thanksgiving break approaches and discussion of Black Friday shopping is on the rise, it is interesting to look at the ways in which various stores will choose to entice eager consumers to purchase their products. Looking at one example in particular is an advertisement by Target.

While this advertisement is very simple and generic, there are many little uses of rhetoric the company uses to attract buyers. My eyes are immediately drawn to the red target sign and the red television. These colors are bold and contrast sharply with the white background paper. The target symbol makes it clearly known thatthe advertisement is for target and the tv screen clearly  states the purpose of the advertisement.

The  choice to use the word “spectacular” rather than amazing or great has a very dramatic meaning connected to it simply because, spectacular is one step above the extraordinary and means something is really above and beyond. The second part of this ad that caught my attention was the bold prices on the ad. They are black because they highlight great importance to the consumer. In addition to the bolded dollar signs, the pictures also play a vital role in relaying a message to consumers. Because the pictures are 3-D looking and very clear it makes them more attractive and more marketable. Also the choice of displaying multiple colors of headphones makes the ad more colorful and noticeable.

Another interesting aspect prevalent in many ads is the manipulation of small versus large print when explaining particular sales. Clearly the most attractive part of a deal is what money you save, which is generally in a larger print, while the hoops you need to jump through (i.e. spend x amount of dollars or purchase something else) are generally printed in a smaller and sometimes even a difficult to read font.

Have you ever seen ads like this use the techniques I just described? If, so let me know how they compared to this Target ad!

The preparation for my speech was time consuming, but I enjoyed practicing and adjusting my speech as a whole. Although it was difficult to only look at the interesting and important parts of my paper, rehearsing my speech in a story format helped the memorization process. I think that being knowledgeable about the topic before hand helped in presenting the information, because it was not simply forced memorization of facts. I rehearsed my speech a countless amount of times and graded myself on each one I presented which I think really helped my final delivery. Although I did not memorize my speech at any point or read off any type of script or outline, by the time I actually presented my speech, it just came out so naturally.

One aspect of class that we learned and I incorporated into my speech was the famous rhetorical triangle introduced by Aristotle.  I utilized the “ethos” and “logos” parts of the triangle in my presentation, or the credibility and logical appeals. When I explained the factors that enticed our society to smoke I explained the tactics that tobacco companies use to gain customers. One way that the companies tried to seem credible, doctors appeared on some posters endorsing cigarettes to falsify any health suspicions that skeptics raised about smoking.  In addition to this example, certain brands of cigarettes claimed that by smoking their cigarettes one would become skinny. The tobacco companies used numerous tactics to convince the American public why their cigarettes were the best, and a lot of the rhetorical tactics they used is similar to some of the various rhetorical techniques we have already discussed in class.

Looking at my presentation as a whole, I felt as though it successfully combined elements of organization, interest, and proper presenting skills. Because I executed the speech the way I wanted to, I am happy with its final performance. I am a proponent of organization in speeches and since I told a story in a chronological order I feel as though it was easier for audience members to understand, rather than just a random scattering of facts. Also, I thought the visuals I used in my speech were appropriate because while examples of advertising allowed the audience to have a visual aid, it did not take away from what I was saying. I only used visuals when giving supporting details. I did not use visuals when I was discussing very important points because; I wanted to make sure I had the audience’s attention.

One strong critique I have of my speech is that my hand gestures were a little distracting, particularly in the introduction. Completely unaware of what I was doing with my hands, after watching it I was surprised when I saw how much my hands moved. Since I did not practice my speech in front of a mirror, I think that may be why I was ignorant towards my hand motions in my speech. While some hand motions when discussing positive to negative shifts I think were very useful, some of my hand motions were simply unnecessary and rather distracting. In future talks, I will practice in front of a mirror to make sure I have correct posture and will not use unnecessary hand gestures. I will also try to create a story like format to make the memorization process easier.

For my paradigm shift essay I choose the evolving perception of smoking. For me, smoking was the first thing that came to mind when I thought about something in our country that has changed so drastically to being perceived as “cool” and harmless to negative and dangerous to oneself and society.

While I am going to stick to many of my ideas I mentioned in paper in regards to the reasons for the perspective change, I am going to utilize media and create a less rigid format in order to convey to the audience something more interesting then just reading facts off of a paper. In particular, I am going to use media images of smoking currently which are going to explain further how and why smoking is perceived so negatively.

In order to appeal to the pathos of the audience, I am going to show similar pictures of charred looking lungs and rotten teeth doctors and government officials showed those who smoked at the time. Because these pictures are very graphic yet very real, they will instill a wide variety of emotions such as fear and disgust. In turn, the emotions these pictures cause will support my thesis regarding the negative perception of smoking. I will also use the facts from my essay to present a notion of credibility. Although facts are not the reason for the perspective change I as mentioned in my paper, they caused the domino affect which led to the awareness of second hand smoke.

Another element to my speech I am going to add is the story element. After reading about how to perform engaging and well worded speeches, I think adding a story would be very important. I am going to discuss the evolution of the common smoker and begin by stating how “cool” he is and return to the story at the end discussing his inability to get a job, support a family, because of his rebellious attitude that was so “cool” in his late teen years.

When looking for examples of rhetoric for this post, I had trouble figuring out what I was going to discuss. However,  my idea was sparked by the jacket I was wearing which had the infamous Nike swoosh on it. I decided to discover how my favorite brand of all time’s slogan, “Just Do It” is rhetoric.  Let’s begin by looking at the first word of the world famous three word sentence: Just. When looking at instances where the word “just” you can recall that the term is generally associated with simple tasks or doesn’t imply anything major or extremely important. For example, “Just for two minutes” or “Just get one apple” are phrases in which just is placed before nouns or instances which are not time consuming nor a hassle. This connects to why the term “just” in Nike’s slogan imply how easy it should be to go out and run or work hard.

Combining the final two words, “Do It” show a vagueness associated with the term which is important because Nike endorses a variety of products.  “It” could mean an endless possibility of athletic terms and is a good word choice because it can be interpreted in any way the viewer would want it to be. “Do” relates to the physical activity Nike is attempting to convince the world to do, and is straight and to the point making it extremely catchy and memorable.

Now that I have looked at each individual word of the “Just Do It” slogan, it is important to look at the phrase as a whole and how it is effective. The shortness and directness of the phrase is extremely beneficial Nike because since it is easy to memorize and it’s conciseness allows it to be easily advertised, it is highly identifiable by society. Nike could have made their slogan “Do It” or “Just Do Sports” but they picked “Just Do It” for a precise reason. Clearly, it has worked because Nike is one of the most successful corporations in the world. Know of any other companies with impactful slogans?