Elementary @ MindSay

I think the authors of this article are either out of touch with reality or working for computer manufacturers.

http://tinyurl.com/4w98ya

I wouldn't entrust a laptop to a kindergartner no matter how much it weighed. The kid can't read or write, but you're giving them a multipurpose general computing device? Teach reading and writing with paper and pencil first. Then when they have the motor dexterity to use a pencil, introduce them to the keyboard.

When the time comes to put a computer in a kid's backpack, here's how I see it working. Assignments in the early elementary school grades are very targeted, with specific rules and expectations. Why shouldn't the kid's computer be the same way? They can't take their paper math assignment and use it to play with Pokemon without some legitimate creativity. I envision an elementary school kid's laptop with a small screen, small keyboard, enough flash memory to store an assignment with video, meager general purpose computing power, and GPU for powering video. The teacher would load the day's assignment into the flash (no operating system = big savings!) via wi-fi, and the computer simply wouldn't have anything else on it. (Again, no operating system. Just the assignment.) Sturdy case material, no moving parts, low-power everything. You could absolutely mass-produce that for $100.

But first, pay me for my $0.02.

A lot of people who know me now don't know what my life was like back in elementary and jr high.  I don't really like to talk about that part of my life because I don't want to relive it.  I just watched a movie tonight and it made me realize that I really should speak out more on a certain topic.  Bullying.  I was not the bully, I was the unfortunate victim.  Here's the rundown of my hell...

 

My first memory of school is from kindergarten.  I was shoved into a corner and had stones thrown at me.  It was downhill from there.  I brought my newest toy to school in grade 1 for show and tell.  It was a Polly Pocket that had little rabbits in it.  The rabbits were made of a velvety material.  Some asshole came by and pushed it out of my hands into a mud puddle.  In grade 2, I had to have a chat with my teacher every single day after class about how I was treated that day.  We would write down on little cue cards what had happened to me that day and what I did to assert myself.  She kept it and I never saw it again.  They put me in a class away from my friends in grade 3 because they wanted to keep me out of the regular class with all the bullies.  I was put into a split class instead.  It felt like they were punishing me instead of the rest of the people.  In grade 4, I was once again put into a split class.  It was there that I discovered my talent for writing stories.  I wrote better stories than the rest of the class for our writing exercises.  The rest of the class claimed that I cheated and had my parents help me because there was no possible way for me to have written those stories.  In grade 5, I was tormented by both the students and my teacher.  She was an evil bitch that locked kids in the closet when they misbehaved.  She knew not to put me in there because my mom would most likely beat the shit out of her.  This teacher once put a kid in the closet when my sister was in her class and she came home and told my mom what happened.  My mom had a little chat with her the next day and basically said "If I hear of you putting anymore students in your closet, I'm gonna lock you in there and see how much you like it!"  This teacher told me that I plagerized because my work was too good.  She gave me a month to do a report and I did all the work.  Just because she thought that I wasn't able to do well, that doesn't mean that she was right.  The students pushed me over and into coat hooks.  They pushed me into walls and corners.  They bumped me so that I would hit my finger on broken glass.  I lost my best friend because she started spreading rumours about me.  I did get one punch in though.  David was the worst bully of them all.  He cornered me with his friends and he had his arms out so that I couldn't escape.  So I punched him in the jaw.  The funny thing is that I never got in trouble.  Even when he complained to a teacher.  My family moved to the other side of the city when I was going from grade 5 to grade 6.  I thought that it would be a fresh start.  It sure wasn't.  I was called "No Neck" because I wore turtlenecks during the winter and I have a short neck.  I had notes put on my back all the time that usually said things like "I'm a fag", "Kick me", "I suck", "I fucked Ian", "I fucked Alex", "Loser", "I'm a loser", and more.  I tried to be nice and they became more cruel.  The pushed me.  They threw balls at me.  The tormented me.  I remember one day walking home from school and one of the guys lived on my street.  He and his friends were like the gang leaders in the class.  I'll never forget the day that they chased me home on their bikes and then circled the street chanting that they knew I was in there.  My teacher did nothing at all.  The principal ignored me.  I finished there and went on to jr high thinking that things would be different.

 

Life can be a bitch sometimes.  I started jr high thinking that because I was in a whole new school and everyone else was new as well, I would be okay.  In grade 7, I made my first real friends.  I had 3 friends.  Christina, Magda, and Jesse.  They were my only friends for 3 years.  In grade 7 I was teased and tormented once more.  It got so bad that I actually had a nervous breakdown.  I'll never forget the whole family just sitting in the hallway and letting me vent my frustrations.  No one said anything as I cried and screamed and told them everything that I had ever been through in my first 7 and a half years of school.  The next day my parents came into the school and had a meeting with my teachers and principals.  They said that action would be taken but nothing happened.  Well, that's a lie.  It got worse.  In grade 8, things escalated.  I was put into a class that the school had put all the troublemakers into.  The girl that made my life hell sat next to me.  She had spent her summer in juvi because she took a crowbar to an 18 year old (I would just like to take this moment to say that she is now a single mother who is addicted to crack).  On the other side was the psycho who got kicked out of school because they found a hit list in his locker.  I was on that list because he stole my calculator once and I yelled at him and took it back.  Also because I was on the peer support team.  My brother was on there as well because of Peer support.  The creepy thing is that it was supposed to happen the same day that Columbine happened (I would just like to take the time to mention that he is now in jail because he shot and killed someone).  I hated school so much at this point.  I remember this one time during AIDS awareness week, some of the kids in my class kept throwing pamphlets about AIDS at me and calling me a faggot.  I also remember them telling one guy that if he got to close to me, he would get AIDS and die.  If this seems like hell compared to your grade 8 year, then wait till you hear about my grade 9 year.  I watched a friend get thrown into the lost and found.  They knew that they weren't to touch me or I'd get the law into the school.  They did other things though.  They threw things at me (like coke cards, paper, books, etc).  They called me names.  They took out a book under my name at the library and made sure that it was overdue so that it would be posted on the bulletin board.  The book they took out was "Is is Love or Sex?"  My dad was so pissed off that the next day he came to school with me, ripped the bulletin off the wall, and took me down to the office.  It was that day that the principal told me that he wouldn't transfer me to another homeroom because (1) everyone would know why I was transferred (okay I think that they already knew that I didn't want to be in that class for the very reason that I was getting verbally beaten every single freaking day) and (2) that I am like a chick in an egg waiting to be hatched.  If you help the chick get out of the shell, then it will die because it won't be strong enough to survive in the real world (yeah, I thought that he was full of shit too).  I had to go see the counciller on a regular basis and one day he asked me to point out who were the main bullies.  He told me that he wouldn't tell them I had pointed them out.  He told them anyways.  Guess who got thrown into lockers that very day.  They didn't want me to get the drama award so they gave it to the most popular student (even though everyone knew that I deserved it).  The only time I got respect from any of my fellow students was at the end of the year.  Because I was in advanced drama, I had to perform for the Celebration of the Arts.  I played the Wicked Queen in a play.  When I finished the play and was walking back to class, a bunch of kids came up to me and said "Good job."  They never said anything to me again.  In grade 9 I was almost pulled out of school and put into home schooling.  I was 3 months away from finishing and 3 hours away from a home program.  My parents told me that it was up to me.  So I did what any insane kid would do.  I stayed.  I didn't want them to win.  I couldn't let them win.  It just wasn't in me.  They had beaten me but they couldn't break me.  And so I graduated from jr high as a St. Cecilia Tiger. 

 

And that was the end of it.  I haven't been bullied since.  Well there was this one time but everyone in the school actually told the person to stop being an ass and had what was said about me removed from the internet.  In grade 11 I was involved with the making of a movie called "Pariahs".  It's about bullying and what it's really like in schools today.  Things have evolved from kids just calling each other names.  There are weapons involved.  I was threatened in grade 2 with a knife.  I know what I am talking about here.  I hope that I can be there for people in the future to help them through what I went through.

 

The movie that I watched tonight was called "Bang Bang You're Dead".  It was absolutely brilliant.  It was so real that it was heart breaking because I knew that I was once in that boat.  I never went as far as the people in the film do but I was once a victim.  Everyone needs to see this movie because everyone will learn from it.  There are no easy outs from what we do or how we treat people.  People just need to understand that.

 

If you are being bullied, tell someone.  Don't wait and hope that it goes away.  Just tell someone.  Tell anyone and everyone who will listen.  Make sure that something is done to stop it.  But don't go the violent route.  You end up nowhere doing that. 

The person I miss most from my past would be Joshua.  He was my best friend through elementary.  No matter who he was with, he would always come and get me and let me hang out with him and his friends.  He was a  sweetheart.  We told each other everything.  He left after 5th grade.  I haven't seen him once since.

Another person I miss is Bryan.  He too was one of my good friends.  He could always make you laugh and he was really great to be with.  He too was a good friend from my elementary school.  The last time I saw him was in the middle of 6th grade, after he was framed for having a gun in school.

If I ever get the chance to see them again, I won't let them leave.  I miss them so much.

I guess I should start here:

I grew up in Philadelphia, PA, not in Center City but definitely in the city enough to call it "the city". I went to a Catholic school with about 50 or so classmates who all grew up in the same neighborhood. Most of us went to kindergarten together and knew everything about each other.


Yesterday while searching through dozens of myspace, facebook, and all of those other bloggish things, I found a bunch of people that I went to elementary school with. I was excited to see what they were up to, what they look like now, and what their life is like now. Rather than finding college graduates, engagements, employees of well-known companies, I found strippers, alcoholics, high school dropouts, illegitimate children, druggies, and other things that make you go Hmm.

Rather than thinking, "Wow. I'm glad I got out of there before I turned into that," I think, "Holy crap... if I stayed, would I turn into that?" I'd like to think that the foundation of my personality is strong and no matter where I lived, I would've been the same; I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I'd like to think that the basis of "Lauren" would have and will always be there, underneath. My family has always been a strong influence on my life, and I know that they wouldn't let me turn out like the above-mentioned, at least not without a good fight.

I love you, Philadelphia, and I always will. You hold a special place in my heart. But I guess distance makes the heart grow fonder.

It's just sad to know that my peers didn't have the chance to get away and see things from a different perspective.

So if you are reading through this blog and you are from a "big city," I challenge you to become someone to be proud of.

What has been a part for so long,

Is ripped from my hands, and cast

Just a short distance, but just beyond my reach.

Is it love? Now I may never know.

 

For the first time I see her as what she really is

Strong, yes, but frail and tangible as well.

She is human, and she is among the flowers, fair and beautiful.

But it's beauty cannot be savored, not now.

 

She has been uprooted, and planted in another wild field.

Now I cannot gaze upon the beauty any longer,

Not while my eyes are bound with this mortal veil.

The oceans in her eyes and fire in her hair are no longer mine to taste.

 

I cannot say it is Love, for what do I, a child, know of Love?

My heart feels a love, but not The Love, spoken of by the true and faithful from every era.

One day I will look back and see this sensation,

After I have truly loved, and known if this was love.

 

Until then I must but long for the beauty left behind.

Life goes on, bleak and empty, without her radiant waves.

She will grow old, and live. Better off for it, I suppose.

But what she left will stay with me for ever.

 

She was an anchor to my past. A constant. A heavenly star.

One by one, these anchors are ripped from me

And the past begins to slide.

But the past is the one constant. I can only hope that one day, I will know what it is that I felt here.