Real Estate prestige (prices)

Here are some homes for sale listed in 2014 with their prices.  Notice how widely the prices vary.

Waukegan, IL
$65,000

 Grayslake, IL
$299,999

 Lake Forest, IL
$1,200,000

 Lake Forest, IL
1,600,000

 Grayslake, IL
$469,000

 Grayslake, IL
$499,000

 Lake Forest, IL
$1,120,000

Waukegan, IL
$230,000

A Just Harvest

Sign up for A Just Harvest - December 13,  2013 3:30 - 8:30 Helping to serve meals to the hungry. Volunteers will meet in Parking lot C. Ms Fainman is the chaperone for this event. Do you need hours for your Social Studies classes? This is a great way to give back to the community and get the hours you need for class. Hope to see you there!

https://www.ugive.org/Opportunities/Detail.aspx?projectid=59712

Final Paper: Reflecting on Your Service Experience (Step3)

Click here for a google doc for the final paper or you can read it below: Looking back at your experiences in community service, reflect on what you did and relate it to sociology. This paper should be about your experiences in general. Do not simply restate what you have already written in your journals. Instead, look at your journals to refresh your memory about what you experienced and then try to make some generalizations about the experience. Apply these generalizations to the three areas below. You do not need to respond to every prompt below, but you should have well-developed and authentic answers to each of the three areas: application, sociological themes and sociological content. Each area should be written from your perspective as an individual. Your paper will be graded on the following components. This is due the second to last Friday before final exams. Journal: Please refer back to your journals to remind you of your experiences as you think about the three areas below: Application of the Experience: Evaluate the importance and value of voluntarism. How has this and will it affect your life in the short term & long term? Do you think that being involved in community (through the service experience) gives you sense of belonging and a feeling of being necessary that teens often lack, and how? Can you see how volunteering and helping others can contribute to the happiness and well-being of the volunteers? In what ways do you think that you have benefited from the experience? Was the experience rewarding/fulfilling? What did you take away from this experience? Sociological Themes: How might your experience reflect the idea of a sociological imagination? How are the private troubles of the people you served, a part of larger social forces? Use your sociological imagination to discuss why the people you served need volunteers. How are their lives (their reality) constructed by social forces? Has this experience helped you to become more sociological mindful? Why? Why not? Has this experience impacted the, “mark that you want to leave?” See Schwalbe’s Sociological Mindfulness for more on this idea. How might your service experience help to show the interconnectedness between people within society? Use examples from your own experiences. You might want to lookup what the organization you volunteered with does. Who do they help? Where does there money go? Sociological Content: Relate your experiences to sociology content. What aspects of class (or our blog) does this encompass? What connections do you see between the content of our class and the community service? Use our class notes, readings, and your blog to review all the ways your service experience might relate. Some ideas might be: What stereotypes were there before starting? Did any of these change? Was there any relation to gender, age, social class, race or any other group we discussed in sociology? Think about how the people you helped (and perhaps yourself) are socialized to think about themselves. Does culture play a part in the service experience? Maybe American values can be used to analyze the service experience. Perhaps you can think of the group as a subculture. Is there deviance involved? Perhaps the group you are working with is considered deviant by society. How might that affect those people? Maybe you are considered deviant for volunteering. Use the suggestions on the back of this sheet for other ideas of how the service experience connects to sociology. Also use at least 4 references to class discussions, activities, readings and videos. If you need help remembering all of the specifics of what we did in class, use my blog. Go through it and refresh your memory. Format: Write in proper format. Use a standard font type, size 10-12, margins .5-1.25, double space. Use proper prose and paragraphs, be cohesive and turn it in on time. Besides proper academic writing, your paper should be authentic. Do not fill your paper with generic clichés. Explain why and how from your unique perspective. Used detailed examples from your own experiences to support your answers. Here are some ways to help you think about how your service experience relates to sociology content: Culture: Identify unique elements in your service experience, such as: material culture, norms, values and sanctions. Consider how these cultural elements aid in the functioning of the organization and how they contrast with mainstream elements of culture. Socialization: Analyze the modes of interaction that you engaged in during your service. Where there differences in the way that you acted towards the clients versus other volunteers versus members of the organization? Did you see any processes of socialization occurring with yourself or with the clients that you were working with? Deviance: Reflect on the whether the organization or clientele of the organization where you were volunteering bears any stigma from the larger community. Often times, community-service organizations have the primary goal of aiding individuals who carry a deviant identity. Whether it is poverty, substance abuse, illness, age, disability, etc. Observe how the clients manage their stigmatized identities. How do the workers at the organization treat the clients? Do the clients manage or reject the label of deviant? How does the work of the organization help change societal perceptions of the stigmatized? Social Class: What role does class inequality play in their organization? How is the organization funded? How do community service organizations in general generate enough interest for people to volunteer their time and donate their money to help others? How does charity fit into the American Dream ideology? Do you believe that most Americans are willing to sacrifice some of their own wealth to help those in need? Why? Why not? Race/Ethnicity: Reflect on the racial and ethnic dynamic of their organization. Is there a difference between the racial or ethnic composition of the staff, the volunteers, and the clientele? Did your experiences of the racial or ethnic composition at the organization parallel your everyday experiences? Have you gained any insight into a particular group? Explain.

Preschool Privilege

One of the final points that the People Like Us movie made was that we are separated by class from a young age.  For example, when the wealthy take steps to ensure their child be accepted into the upper-upper class, they begin early. A few recent articles and a documentary highlight this subculture. Wealthy parents in New York City hire consultants and special tutors to get their child into a handful of elite preschools and then they pay costly tuition ($15,000+) to send the child there. This article from Bloomberg News highlights the competition to get in,

...An average of 15 applicants vie for every spot in about 200 preschools, Uhry said. According to its Web site, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received 22,754 applications for the freshman class entering in last fall and admitted 2,124 -- 11 applications per admission.

From the New York Daily News,

Consultants charge $10,000 a pop to share their secrets of success. A nose-picking habit is considered special needs.
As the mother of an 11-month-old already bemused by Manhattan's hypercompetitive baby-rearing culture, I watched the film with amusement and dread.
If, like Moon, I want my child to attend one of these nurseries - popularly perceived as "Ivy League feeder schools" - finding the annual $20,000 tuition would apparently be the least of my worries.

An interesting contrast might be comparing this to my post on the Harlem Children's Zone, also a rigorous program, but for parents of low-income, at-risk students.
Watch the trailer for a documentary called Nursery University which reveals the intensity around getting into the "right" preschool.

Social class and your possessions

In the movie People Like Us, they show many different things that people buy that represent their social class such as a Tuscan style kitchen, a 4 foot Mitsubishi TV, a Volvo. What possessions do you or your family own that represent your social class? Do you think that class is related to the things we own? Think about a possession that you own that could be much cheaper or much more expensive - why do you have the one that you have and not a cheaper/ more expensive one? You can go to the following website and take a quiz about how the things you prefer represent your class:
Chintz or shag

We also see a guy who goes into Williams & Sonoma and says that the store represents upper middle class because of the things it sells. Then we see Karen Hess (bread expert) who says the bread we eat reflects our class. We develop tastes that reflect our class. What stores do you shop at and what types of bread do you eat? How do your possessions reflect your own social class? You can visit the following website and take the quiz "Identify this" or "Name that class" and see if your values represent a class:
Identify this

Here's a quick example from W & S:
It is a set of wooden utensils - but not just any wooden utensils, "Canadian inventor and designer Tom Littledeer is known for his beautifully carved kitchen tools with fluid shapes inspired by canoe paddles. Each of the tools in this set is handcrafted from a single piece of North American maple..." $99.99 for a set of 5.

Barbie - one example of a toy that socializes girls into an unrealistic image of themselves.

Below is an image from a rehab center for eating disorders. Here is a link

Also, here is an image of how an average woman would have to be altered to fit the Barbie ideal: Here is a caption from the Huffington Post:

The woman in the photograph is model Katie Halchishick, co-founder of Healthy Is The New Skinny, an organization dedicated to "revolutionizing how we think about, talk about, live in and love our bodies." This is hardly the first time that someone has pointed out how unrealistic a Barbie doll's proportions are, but it's still interesting to see the proportions drawn out onto an actual body. Some initial observations: -- Oddly pointy chin. -- A chest about half the width of her chest. -- Giant eyes! -- A neck that seems unlikely to be able to support her head.

Halloween - holiday for Freaks and Geeks?

Episode 3 of Freaks and Geeks (click here to watch it on mediacast) highlights some different aspects of sociology and socialization. Look at how Lindsay and her brother are influenced by their mom to think about the holiday. We also see the peer pressure from their friends take them into two different directions: Sam influences his friends to dress up and embrace the holiday while Lindsay is influenced by her friends to go out with them and cause trouble instead of hanging out with her mom. With a careful analysis we also see the influence of religion, the media and school.

Another interesting dynamic in the episode is what sociologists call socialization through the lifecourse; that is, how people are influenced differently throughout their life. For example, when you are a kid you are influenced to dress up and trick or treat and then when you are an adult you are supposed to act differently. What we see in the episode is the difficulty in being a teen and not really being a kid who can embrace Halloween but not yet being considered a mature adult. This unknowing of what is expected of you is called role strain. We see this most obviously in the teen years. Are you supposed to be a kid or a mature adult?

Volunteer Op: Volunteer for a candidate

Another option for your service hours is political volunteering.  Stevenson will be hosting a campaign fair on the night of Tuesday, Nov. 5th from 7-9 pm.  We will feature the staffs of the governors' campaigns to recruit student workers for this winter and spring.  We'll also have campaign staffers from Rep. Brad Schneider, former-Rep. Bob Dold, 10th Cong Dems, Lake County Young Republicans and the Illinois Fair Map gerrymandering reform group.

Plus, we'll serve complimentary pizza.  Click here to rsvp. 

Volunteer Op: Sep 21st 12-5pm Car Wash

Sign up to work a 2.5 hour shift at the BG Culver's.  All the funds will go to  Stand for the Silent, an organization that seeks to end bullying.  There is a meeting sept 18th at 7am in room 2121.  Get some volunteer hours, have fun and make a difference!

Volunteer Op for Senior Class: Feed My Starving Children with Senior Class Board Oct 4

Senior Class Board is planning a service event for just Seniors at Feed My Starving Children in Libertville on October 4th and have about 90 spots open from 3:30-8. We as a Class Board are inviting anyone in the Class of 2014 to come to this event. 

If Seniors want to go, they need to register at www.tinyurl.com/fmsc2013. They will get their field trips forms in a few weeks. They will receive service hours for this opportunity. I think this would be a great opportunity for Seniors to come together for this event. We will be meeting in Room 2428 on October 4th the day of the field trip for pizza.