Visual Project & Educational Occupations Prompts
This morning, please read the following material about education and occupations. Spend a few minutes writing a response (see the writing prompts below) and read or watch some of the poems below for inspiration for your own work. When you finish, please continue to work on your visual projects. These visual projects will be due to present next class.
Spotlight on education: Professional career or just a job? Our culture stratifies certain occupations. While all people are useful, there is a lot of prestige or lack of respect depending on the kind of work you end up doing. Sure, we all romanticize the wandering vagabond with nary a care or responsibility, but it may not be what you're looking for as a longtime career. To many people, a vagabond is just a fancy word for bum or homeless hobo.
Still other occupations are completely talent or skill oriented. A person can make a living by being clever, charismatic, or even manipulative. Actors or musicians earn a living by their talent and discipline, not by their education (although being able to read and write is usually necessary).
Most occupations whether that's a high school degree or higher require a sense of responsibility, ability to manage tasks and meet deadlines, and communicate effectively. These are typically some of the skills our society comes to expect from a high school or higher degree. Without these skills, it is unlikely a person would hold down a job for more than a little while.
How to use this information: When creating characters, it is important to consider the job or occupation in which the character has training. Certain personality and behavioral traits coincide with certain occupations. Wizards, for example, tend to be good at spell casting whereas a zoo keeper tends to have at least a passing interest in animals and taking care of them. These traits can help round out a character or provide conflict in a story, poem, or play. Knowing your character's occupation requires you to consider his/her personality. Who would, after all, take a job like this?
Writing prompts/ideas:
1. Write a scene between a high school dropout and a wealthy professional.
2. Put two unlikely occupations in the same locked room and see what happens. What do these characters talk about? What do they have in common? What do they assume about each other?
3. Write an article about a specific occupation or career. Try to find someone who does this kind of job and create a short documentary or oral history (or podcast) about what life is like doing this job.
4. Make up a job that you wish existed (or that you would hate to spend the rest of your life doing). What would be the prerequisite skills or type of personality that would likely take this job?
5. Write an ode praising an occupation; or write an elegy about someone (real or imaginary) who spent their life working hard at a job or occupation.
What a Teacher Makes by Taylor Mali
My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Hay for the Horses by Gary Snyder
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
HOMEWORK: Complete your cultural visual projects started last week. Bring them with you next class. Keep reading The Rabbit Proof Fence. Aim to complete this book next week.
Spotlight on education: Professional career or just a job? Our culture stratifies certain occupations. While all people are useful, there is a lot of prestige or lack of respect depending on the kind of work you end up doing. Sure, we all romanticize the wandering vagabond with nary a care or responsibility, but it may not be what you're looking for as a longtime career. To many people, a vagabond is just a fancy word for bum or homeless hobo.
Top legal job careers for people who do not have a high school degree:1. Restaurant worker or manager
2. Truck driver
3. Diesel mechanic
4. Heavy equipment operator
5. Carpenter
6. Welder
7. Automotive service mechanic
8. Home health aide
9. Telemarketer
10. Security guard
11. Cosmetology worker
12. Laborer/construction worker
Note that some of these jobs do require training, just not necessarily a high school degree.
Compare that list to legal job careers for people with a graduate or post graduate degree:
1. Teacher or professor (academic)Here's a CBS article attesting to some of these facts...
2. Doctor or physicians or therapists (of almost all sorts)
3. Psychologist
4. Lawyer or Judge
5. Business manager or entrepreneur
6. Engineer (of all kinds)
7. Clergy
8. Scientist or principal investigator
9. Federal reserve Board of Governors
Still other occupations are completely talent or skill oriented. A person can make a living by being clever, charismatic, or even manipulative. Actors or musicians earn a living by their talent and discipline, not by their education (although being able to read and write is usually necessary).
Most occupations whether that's a high school degree or higher require a sense of responsibility, ability to manage tasks and meet deadlines, and communicate effectively. These are typically some of the skills our society comes to expect from a high school or higher degree. Without these skills, it is unlikely a person would hold down a job for more than a little while.
How to use this information: When creating characters, it is important to consider the job or occupation in which the character has training. Certain personality and behavioral traits coincide with certain occupations. Wizards, for example, tend to be good at spell casting whereas a zoo keeper tends to have at least a passing interest in animals and taking care of them. These traits can help round out a character or provide conflict in a story, poem, or play. Knowing your character's occupation requires you to consider his/her personality. Who would, after all, take a job like this?
Writing prompts/ideas:
1. Write a scene between a high school dropout and a wealthy professional.
2. Put two unlikely occupations in the same locked room and see what happens. What do these characters talk about? What do they have in common? What do they assume about each other?
3. Write an article about a specific occupation or career. Try to find someone who does this kind of job and create a short documentary or oral history (or podcast) about what life is like doing this job.
4. Make up a job that you wish existed (or that you would hate to spend the rest of your life doing). What would be the prerequisite skills or type of personality that would likely take this job?
5. Write an ode praising an occupation; or write an elegy about someone (real or imaginary) who spent their life working hard at a job or occupation.
What a Teacher Makes by Taylor Mali
My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Hay for the Horses by Gary Snyder
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
HOMEWORK: Complete your cultural visual projects started last week. Bring them with you next class. Keep reading The Rabbit Proof Fence. Aim to complete this book next week.
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