Tag: community

Number three

John Corrigan
Daily writing prompt
How would you improve your community?
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During the week I wake up, perform my morning rituals and then drive into work. After work I usually spend a half hour at the gym, then the grocery store and finally I head home. I spend the majority of my time during the work week at home (my 1st place) and work (my 2nd place).

Ray Oldenburg coined the term 3rd place. Our 3rd places are where we come together as a community and exchange ideas, have a good time and build community. Today many of our 3rd locations have become digital, some may even argue that wordpress and facebook are 3rd places.

Photo by Ricky Esquivel on Pexels.com

My wife and I have worked at soup kitchens and my favorite part about the soup kitchen was meeting family and community members. I think that the soup kitchen functioned as a 3rd place for many of the community members.

I would love to develop for my community a third place that is safe, open, fun, and helps the community. I would imagine a place with a cafe and meal times (free meals). Then a lounge where the community can sit and talk play games watch tv. A true third place. A physical third place.

Growing up my third place was the local library. I would improve my community with a partnership with the local library. I would love to see the local library become more of a third place. I got to go now and donate some time and money to my local library.

Choices

John Corrigan

As I stand in the class and look at the poster I wonder if this type of motivation is the correct motivation. The poster reads “Students fail by choice.” I try hard but it becomes pretty hard to understand what good this poster serves. I know that the audience is a student and the purpose is to have the student understand that their choices are powerful. Choices are powerful that is true but to say that a Student fails by choice seems a bit simplistic.

Critical thinking and decision making can be difficult often we want to satisfy our immediate desires in spite of damage that can result in the future. Obviously we want to teach our students the importance of critical thinking and decision making and one way to teach them is a scare tactic like the poster points out however, I cannot help but put myself back into my shoes in school and consider how many poor choices I made and wonder how dire the consequences actually were.

I had a pretty amazing support structure with family and community while growing up. My parents, other family members, teachers and community members did a great job to make sure that I was safe healthy and that I could drive. There were moments when my parents “got real’ with me and used some scare tactics but they were few and far between definitely not enough moments to warrant the creation of a poster about them,

I know that choices matter however I do not think anyone ever choices to fail. I think everyone wants to win and when we see someone who seems to choice failure they are making a choice that seems like winning because of how dire their situation is. Perhaps instead of scaring a student time would be better spent understanding how that student sees the world and maybe opening their perspectives so that they can make a better choice.