**NOTE: This post was actually supposed to put this entry up a really long time ago, but I never got around to do it. So enjoy! =D
I have a really weird feeling that I was supposed to post another entry for journalism... I don't remember what the subject was supposed to be, but since we just finished a video project, I guess I'll reflect on that.
Assignment briefing:
Video interviews. TOPIC: alumni of my school and why they came back as faculty/staff.
I thought that the concept was my group's topic was very interesting. There are many places alumni of my school (Punahou School) can end up, as recently demonstrated/proved by Barack Obama. So why in the world would they want to return to their school?
The answers from our three interviewees were interesting. Two of the interviewees were teachers and one was a dean. The teachers both said that they really liked the environment at Punahou. The dean said that he actually didn't want to become a dean, but came back because Punahou let him "discipline the way [he] thought was correct." But after thinking about his response (in relation to the rest of his interview and his time as a student), his return also had to deal with the environment at Punahou.
I was assigned to interview the dean, Mr. Hata. After asking, "Why did you come back to Punahou?", I thought it was necessary to ask how student life was when he was a student. He said, "There's a lot of differences. It was suffocating! I lived to break the rules. It was a block schedule, unlike now. There was a break that wasn't a break. Freshmen and sophomores had mandatory study hall while all the juniors and seniors had breaks. All I did was stare at them and be jealous."
I found it interesting when he answered my second question because it made his answer to my first question crystal clear... If he thought that his time at Punahou was suffocating, it makes sense that he would want to change the way Punahou disciplined its students. => The less suffocating the environment is, the better time a student will have at school.
Maybe it was reverse psychology that forced Mr. Hata's final decision to become real. I wonder if something like this will happen to me sometime during my future.... We will see...
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1 comment:
I think the environments theme is accurate. A lot of my colleagues spent time elsewhere and then returned because they felt that this is a school that encourages individual choices and individual voices in ways that many other schools do not. They found they missed it, and they wanted to get it back.
Right now we're involved in a self-study for WASC (the Western Association of Schools and Colleges) who will be sending a team of visitors to the campus next year to evaluate the strength of our program. One of the recurring themes in our discussions as we talk about the goals of the school is that we are a school which aspires to "create environments which encourage flexibility, collaboration, and individual attentiveness." We may not always be successful at that, but there's a strong sense of common purpose that that is what we're at least trying to do.
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