paulo freire.

today was my day to give my GIANT REPORT in my history and philosophy of education class. for this giant report we are given an influential educator and we must research them and then give a 5 to 10 minute presentation on them and also write a 2 to 5 page paper on them and how their philosophy influences me. i was given the brazilian educator Paulo Freire.

we have known about this presentation since the second week of class, but, like any good college student, i waited until yesterday to start working on mine. I have been thinking about it though, and how i wanted to go about my presentation, and what would work best with freire's philosophies and so yesterday i printed out about 8 articles either about freire, his philosophy, and his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I sat down and read read read. I feel like I know this man inside and out. I put together a power point, which is what most of the other presenters have used for their presentation, but then, i decided not to use it. a stressful move on my part, but on the first slide of the powerpoint i put in part of his theory that says that "students should be involved in their own learning." so i got up for my presentation, pulled up my slideshow, told them who my educational giant was and read them the first page of the slide, and close it!! people looked very confused and could not figure out why i was not using my powerpoint. i then just pretty much told them it was time for them to get involved with their own learning and asked what they needed to know about freire to feel like they understood his philosophies. it ended up going really well and the teacher afterwards said she was impressed by how much i knew about freire. i was so glad! i had been so nervous!! ("all night" nervous to be exact, dont tell my mother;) but she actually ended up using both my paper and my presentation as examples of how people should be presenting. crazy!!! it makes me feel good, but at the same time i feel like the half of the class that already presented was glaring at me because their presentations apparently did not reach "my standard" and then the other half was glaring at me because now they had to make sure that their presentation reached "my standard". oh the difficulty of getting good grades. well, that is it for now. i should probably finish my homework for interior design.

today i am thankful for:

* the ability i have to function off of little to no sleep.

* a brain that, although it has difficulties sometimes remembering my life, is very capable of remembering the life of paulo freire.

* megan! (again, yes, it is true) and that she was willing to curl my hair (so i could look "professional" for my presentation) while i took a small nap. :)

* naps!!! i love naps. i love sleeping in the middle of the day! and today was one of the first days i actually felt i could nap because i hadnt slept much!

<3.