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Mr.
Fred |
Mr. Fred has been a teacher
for 24 years, and has a B.A. in History. Most of his formal higher
education was required military schools throughout his career. He
served a total of 18 reserve and active duty years as an infantry officer
and communications officer in the Marine Corps and eventually achieved the
rank of Major. He teaches a class called Character Education that he
designed himself in order to help at-risk youth deal with their
incarceration experience and prepare them to make positive changes in
their lives. He believes that at-risk students have potential, and
the most to gain from his classes. He enjoys traveling, hiking and
camping. Below is where you will find information about what Mr.
Fred does in his self-designed Character Education class.
Mr. Fred working with some of
his
students on the model airplane unit.
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Grasping for the Wind Unit |
Historical Model Planes Unit |
|
1.
Where do we come from? |
Every
year, Mr. Fred does a project with his students where he buys
model airplanes that depict historical airplanes that were used in
wars. The students then study Aces from the wars and do a
project on them. Click on the pictures below to see the
projects, before and after completion:         All students, as part of this project, are required to paint their airplanes according to historical painting. The students also get to watch movies during this project such as "Wings over the Pacific", "Blue Angels", "Thunderbirds" and "Dogfights". |
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Distorted Thinking/Errors in Thinking Unit |
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In addition to the above
units, Mr. Fred really shines when switches up his class, and
instead of studying others, the students become the subject of the
class. In this unit, composed of three parts, students go
through PowerPoint presentations and instead of Mr. Fred doing all
the talking, the students get up in front of the class and talk
about each individual slide and discuss it with the class before
Mr. Fred speaks. The students have an amazing insight on the
different slides and each class is unique in it's own way.
As Mr. Fred always tells his students: "You can never have
the same moment twice. Every experience is something
different, and everyone's input is something that I've never heard
before." First, the students go through a presentation
on Distorted Thinking which lists Thinking Errors and the students
must challenge them and discuss why the Thinking Error is
wrong. As expected, some students have a hard time
challenging some of the Thinking Errors because they believe
them. But Mr. Fred is always patient and he spends his time
helping the students along. His second part of the unit is a
presentation of Errors in Thinking. These Errors in Thinking
are composed by a man names Dr. Santon E. Samenow, who has spent
his life studying people. The last part of the unit is
education and a wake up call just the same. In this unit,
students get to watch videos of male and female inmates in Caņon
City being interviewed by Dr. Samenow and they are tasked with
pointing out which Errors in Thinking are present in the inmate's
interview. Click here to view the Distorted Thinking slideshow Click here to view the Errors in Thinking slideshow |
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"Grasping
for the Wind" is a series of videos directed by John
Whitehead. These videos take the students through the years
to see how different artists, musicians, leaders, movements and
historical events have shaped who we are in the present. The
students take notes during the videos and are tested at the end of
each video. This series is built upon a huge painting by
Paul Gauguin that asks three questions:
