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Pride Prom, 2024 - 060
No full texthttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/prideprom2024/1059/thumbnail.jp
Pride Prom, 2024 - 064
No full texthttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/prideprom2024/1063/thumbnail.jp
Unlocking Understanding about Giftedness
Get PDFThe goal of undergraduate teacher preparation programs is to prepare future teachers to work with all learners. Gifted and talented learners are likely found in every classroom regardless of where they reside, however, according to Rinn et al. (2022), Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Nebraska do not require undergraduate teacher candidates to take university coursework on gifted education. The goal of this presentation is to provide a general overview of gifted education specific to Kansas. This presentation aims to address myths and misconceptions about gifted education and gifted learners, characteristics of gifted learners, a basic overview of a general identification process, and strategies to unlock preservice teachers’ understanding about gifted learners and gifted education.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/oer-teaching/1012/thumbnail.jp
Landscape of Labor
No full textA close-up photo of a plaster cast of an aged, working man\u27s hand.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/wideopenspace/1016/thumbnail.jp
Two Birds
No full textI like alleyways because they\u27re filled with interesting shapes and light. This one snuck up on me—I was on a photo walk downtown, had the instinct to turn around, and found this composition sneaking around behind me. Photo taken Friday, Feb. 9, 2024.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/wideopenspace/1002/thumbnail.jp
Slides of University Club Opening Week
No full textSlides of the University Club including the stage, pool table, and arcadehttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/unihistoryphotos/1328/thumbnail.jp
Cafeteria
No full textStudent Center cafeteria with windows for hot entrees, grill, deli, and cuisinehttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/unihistoryphotos/1367/thumbnail.jp
Italian Mutual Aid Society of West Mineral Collection
Get PDFThe Italian Mutual Aid Society, Carl Marx Chapter was created by Italian miners in West Mineral to serve as a social and mutual aid society starting in 1906 according to the society’s ledger. This society helped hurt miners and their families, as well as families of miners killed while working in Southeast Kansas mines. Groups like these would go on to become unions, the members being important in negotiations with mine owners for better working conditions and benefits such as pay or money that went to the injured or the families of those killed in the mines. Examples from this specific society include giving funds to the widow of a worker who died in a mining accident due to the fault of the mine owners.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/fa/1440/thumbnail.jp
Study Guide to The Learning Tree - 2
No full text[Transcript]
Study Guide to The Learning Tree
Gordon Parks is a man of remarkably diverse talents. Perhaps the world knows him best in the role of photographer-his first career, launched during the Depression years. His photographic essays have appeared in Lite magazine for twenty years and have won him international renown.
But Parks-a sort of 20th-century model of the Renaissance man - has not limited himself to one field. What he couldn\u27t express through his photographs, he has written- in poetry, music, and fiction. His poems, illustrated by his pictures, are published in a book entitled A Poet and His Camera. His symphony and four piano concertos have been performed by orchestras throughout the world.
Parks\u27 career as a novelist started while he was in Paris on assignment for Life. He began to recall his experiences as a boy, the youngest of fifteen children of a poor black family in Fort Scott, Kansas. Poverty, prejudice, and hardship had not defeated his family, particularly his mother, who clung to the hope that her youngest child could break out of their bleak, restricted environment and make something of himself. Parks began to write a novel based on these memories of his Kansas boyhood. He called it THE LEARNING TREE, an echo of his mother\u27s advice. As Sarah Winger tells her son in the novel:
You can learn just as much here about people and things as you can learn any place else. Cherokee Flats is sorta like a fruit tree-. Some of the people are good and some of them are bad-just like the fruit on a tree .... If you learn to profit from the good and bad these people do to each other, you\u27ll learn a lot \u27bout life. And you\u27ll be a better man for that learnin\u27 someday . . . . No matter if you go or stay, think of Cherokee Flats like that till the day you die-let it be your learnin\u27 tree.
After THE LEARNING TREE was published in 1963, Parks dreamed of turning his novel into a motion picture. For years he had wanted to make a movie but was frustrated by Hollywood\u27s filmmakers-they would not risk trying out a Negro director. Finally, one studio decided to take a chance, and Parks was able to make his movie exactly as he wished. His amazing versatility took charge. For the film version of THE LEARNING TREE, Parks wrote the screenplay, directed and produced the picture, and even composed the musical score. The movie was filmed in and around his hometown of Fort Scott, where Parks was welcomed home as a hero by both blacks and whites.
After doing both novel and movie, Gordon Parks agreed to record THE LEARNING TREE for Scholastic Records. Working with Editor Sheila Turner, Parks decided that to condense his story to a length that could be comfortably read in two hours, he would have to concentrate on the conflict between Newt and Marcus, and on the murder trial which Newt resolves with his testimony.
Using the Record
1. Comprehension Level
The student who has trouble reading may find it easier to be introduced to THE LEARNING TREE via the record. Though he may have difficulty with the words in the book, he will have no trouble understanding the story through listening. After he has listened to the records, he may have developed enough confidence in his ability to understand the story that he will be able to tackle the book.
2. Maturity Level
While book and film are probably too mature for junior high school classes, the record presents scenes and language that will be acceptable by most teachers of mature junior high school students.
3. Change of Pace
The record of THE LEARNING TREE could be used either in small groups or in brief takes with students who may be reading other novels in class. In other words, you can have your students experience a book in recorded form instead of through reading. Students who have difficulty imagining the voice of the writer will find it easier to hear the author through listening to the record. If you do use the record this way, perhaps it would be better not to test or question students about the content of the story.
After having students listen to the record, you may want them to move to the book or film. The rest of this teaching guide focuses on the book and film.
If your students wonder what happened to Gordon Parks after he left Fort Scott at the age of 16, suggest they read his autobiography, A CHOICE OF WEAPONS. A CHOICE OF WEAPONS is also available in a two-record set from Scholastic Records, 906 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 07632.
Introducing the Book
Begin by discussing Gordon Parks-his work as photographer, composer, and author, his personal beliefs. Some critics claim that Parks is not militantly involved in the black struggle for civil rights. Parks resents this and claims that he is extremely militant - with his camera, with his pen. These, he says, are his weapons. Ask students how a camera and pen can be weapons, and how a man like Parks can be both fighter and creator. As they read THE LEARNING TREE, ask students to notice Parks\u27 kind of militancy, and to decide, at the book\u27s end, whether his weapons are effective in the black cause.
Analyzing the Novel
Most mature high school students will respond to THE LEARNING TREE. It is a universal story of a boy growing into young manhood, learning about life from a series of painful and illuminating experiences. It is exceptional only because the boy, Newt Winger, is black and because his story is set in Kansas during the 1920\u27s. But today\u27s teenage readers-whether country- or citybred, white or black, can easily identify with Newt\u27s problems, hopes, fears, and dreams.
You might center discussion of the book on the events most important in the shaping of Newt Winger. Treat each event as a learning experience, examining what Newt discovered about himself and other people in such key episodes as:
-His choosing to tell the truth about Marcus and the beating up of Jake Kiner
-His being forced out of the drugstore where he and Arcelia were sitting with white friends
-His feeling of disgust after he wins the free-for-all fight at the carnival
-His confrontation with Miss McClinock, his racist teacher at the white high school
-His decision to reveal what he witnessed in the murder of Jake Kiner.
Along with the conflicts of growing up, THE LEARNING TREE reveals the strength of a unified family and the relationships of blacks and whites in a small Kansas town. Ask students to give examples of Newt\u27s solid family experiences. How does Jack, his father, prove himself a good parent? What role does his brother Pete play in the shaping of Newt\u27s life? What contributed to the warmth and security of the Winger family, despite their poverty?
Newt sees that not all white people are hostile to him and other Negroes. Who are the whites his family knows well and trusts? When does being black become a problem for Newt and his friends? Is the racial climate really as mild as it seems? ( Cherokee Flats wallowed in the social complexities of a borderline state. Here, for the black man, freedom loosed one hand while custom restrained the other. ) Find examples of racial prejudice and fear, and Newt\u27s reactions to them. Why do the black parents organize to protest the exclusion of their children from the white high school?
Marcus Savage, the hostile, unhappy outsider is Newt Winger\u27s antagonist. What has made Marcus brutal and aggressive ... black and tough ... smart in the way that the desperate must be to survive, cunning in the way that the poor must be to cheat their misfortunes ? Why does Marcus hate Newt? Why does he break down and cry when he comes home from the reformatory, and why does he try to silence the world by putting pebbles in his ears?- Marcus tries to kill Newt, yet Newt lets him go, hoping he will escape Sheriff Kirky. How do you account for Newt\u27s feeling about Marcus?
The Film
After your students have seen the movie version of THE LEARNING TREE, ask them to compare the book and film. Some characters and events are left out of the movie, and students may enjoy speculating abouthttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/gparksphotos/1020/thumbnail.jp
Playing at Recess
No full textStudents stand in two rows wide apart, facing each other. At the end standing between them is a teacher holding up her finger. No date but appears to be the 1950s based on the clothing.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/unihistoryphotos/1179/thumbnail.jp