Alivia's Site

October 23, 3018

Alivia Shattuck

October 19, 2018

Dr. Drown

Eng. 122

AsI was reviewing over the article “XXXL: Why are we so fat?” and my essay that I wrote on the key concepts to answer the question. I found a section of the article that drew in my attention. It explained how educators in a classroom setting lower expectation for children have who are overweight. As we know from experience, children in a school, do get teased because of their weight. I have seen it with my eyes and Elizabeth Kolbert, the Autor of “XXXL: Why are we so fat?”, she explains how “three out of five of the heaviest kids have been teased at school” (paragraph 27). It hurts me to hear that the teachers are contributing to the teasing. I directed this writing mainly to classroom teachers but in this scenario every other person does apply.  the real question is why are teachers holding lower expectations to those children who are overweight?

As a teacher in a classroom, you are there to support your students each and every day. You are there to help them grow, not only cognitively but social-emotionally, and physically too. As a teacher you should not base expectations of a children on their weight, race, gender or family income. Kolbert explains how “Teachers consistently hold lower expectations of overweight children…..” (paragraph 27). It makes me upset as a future educator that classroom teachers have different expectations for each child based on something that is not educational. My own view is that as a teacher or even a patron, you should never look at a someone and make an expectation on them. Youcould see someone who is homeless and think “that person is dumb” but maybe in reality they could be a genius. I have an example that relates to this. Last year I student taught in a kindergarten classroom. In the middle of the school year, we had a new student from Africa join. He did not know English. Throughout the year, I worked one-on-one with him to help him grow as a student. Teachers and other students thought that, because he did not know English he was not as smart and was going to stay back. Each day that I was with him, he excelled in the classroom. By the end of the school year, he was at the same level of the children who English is there first language. This relates to expectation of children who are overweight. Teachers should never have a different expectation on each student.

Even though I do not agree with this, I do understand that some teachers do this in a classroom. There are ways that you could you or someway you may know change their expectations on a child. If a student says “I give up” or they get frustrated when they do not understand something. You might automatically think “this child has no motivation” or “they’re lazy”. This issue is important to understand because you never want to make expectations on a student. In order to help raise your expectations, you should try going over to the child, sit with them and help them through their problems. Make sure to tell them that they are doing a good job and to keep it up. As we may know child obesity in the United States is rising and with that comes health risks. One way that we can help our students is to enforce healthy and activity. You can teach your children, the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods. In the classroom that I student taught in, each day the teacher would hand out fruits or maybe some vegetables. To help keep the students healthy, as many of them would bring unhealthy snacks to class.

As I read through the article “XXXL: Why are we so fat?” many statements that the author, Elizabeth Kolbert explained interested me. As I grew in up a house where everything was healthy. I always knew that junk food was very bad for you. After reading this article, I grew new information on the true reason on why they are bad for you. As I thought everything was interesting, there was one thing that caught my attention. It was that classroom teachers have lower expectations for children who are overweight. As I have spent 3 years working in a classroom, I could never treat a child like this. Not only does it lower their expectations but it also many hurt then mentally. This is very sad but children who are bullied are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide. I know that is something that we do not want to think about, but suicide does happen. In my opinion, I believe that no teacher or actually anyone should ever have lower expectations for someone who is different than them. Here is how I think of it. We are all human, we may not have the same education or look the same but we all should be treated the same.

October 22, 2018

Alivia Shattuck

October 19, 2018

Dr. Drown

Eng. 122

As I was reviewing over the article “XXXL: Why are we so fat?” and my essay that I wrote on the key concepts to answer the question. I found a section of the article that drew in my attention. It explained how educators in a classroom setting lower expectation for children have who are overweight. As we know from experience, children in a school, do get teased because of their weight. I have seen it with my eyes and Elizabeth Kolbert, the Autor of “XXXL: Why are we so fat?”, she explains how “three out of five of the heaviest kids have been teased at school” (paragraph 27). However, it hurts me to hear that the teachers are contributing to the teasing.

As a teacher in a classroom, you are there for your children each and every day. You are there to help them grow, not only cognitively but social-emotionally, and physically too. As a teacher you should not base expectations of a children on their weight, race, gender or family income. It makes me upset as a future educator that classroom teachers have different expectations for each child based on something that is not educational. As a teacher or even a patron, you should look at a someone and make an expectation on them. You could see someone who is homeless and think “that person is dumb” but maybe in reality they could be a genius. I have an example that relates to this. Last year I student taught in a kindergarten classroom. In the middle of the school year, we had a new student from Africa join. He did not know English. Throughout the year, I worked one-on-one with him to help him grow as a student. Teachers and other students thought that, because he did not know English he was not as smart and was going to stay back. Each day that I was with him, he excelled in the classroom. By the end of the school year, he was at the same level of the children who English is there first language is their first language. This relates to expectation of children who are overweight. Teachers should never have a different expectation on each student.

Even though I do not agree with this, I do understand that some teachers do this in a classroom. There are ways that you could you or someway you may know change their expectations on a child. If a student says “I give up” or they get frustrated when they do not understand something. You might automatically think “this child has no motivation” or “they’re lazy”. In order to help raise the expectations, you should try going over to the child, sit with them and help them through their problems. Make sure to tell them that they are doing a good job and to keep it up. As we may know child obesity in the United States is rising and with that comes health risks. One way that we can help our students is to enforce healthy and activity. You can teach your children, the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods. In the classroom that I student taught in, each day the teacher would hand out fruits or maybe some vegetables.

As I read through the article “XXXL: Why are we so fat?” many statements that the author, Elizabeth Kolbert explained interested me. As I grew in up a house where everything was healthy. I always knew that junk food was very bad for you. After reading this article, I grew new information on the true reason that they are bad for you. As I thought everything was interesting, there was one thing that caught my attention. It was that classroom teachers have lower expectations for children who are overweight. As I have spent 3 years working in a classroom, I could never treat a child like this. Not only does it lower their expectations but it also many hurt then mentally. This is very sad but children who are bullied are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide. I know that is something that we do not want to think about, but suicide does happen. In my opinion, I believe that no teacher or actually anyone should ever have lower expectations for someone who is different than them. Here is how I think of it. We are all human, we may not have the same education or look the same but we all should be treated the same.

October 18, 2018

Alivia Shattuck

October 17, 2018

Eng. 133

As I read the article, XXXL: Why are we so fat? There were many things that I found interesting and surprising. This article can be seen as informational or controversial. The journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert, explains how America is one of the leading countries, obesity wise and why that is. She goes into detail on how and why our country is overweight. She explains the many different views, in order to help find an answer to why we are so fat? You can ask this question to anyone and they will all have a different answer.

I couldn’t help myself but having my own opinion to what Kolbert had to say as I kept on reading. One thing that David A. Kessler said that drew my attention was “Conditioned hyper eating works the same way another ‘stimulus response’ disorders in which reward is involved, such as compulsive gambling and substance abuse” (paragraph 15). This interested me because I did not know that food is as addictive as substance abuse. He also said, “brains react to sweet, fatty foods the same way that addicts’ respond to cocaine” (paragraph15). I do not understand what addictive chemicals are both food and cocaine, but I am intrigued to learn more. People who are overweight tend to eat more and this is where the addictive chemical plays into place.

Over the past decades, companies have risen the calories in their food. A small fry at McDonalds used to be two hundred calories. Today, a small fry is two hundred and thirty calories and a large fry is five hundred calories. As Kolbert states, “During the nineteen-eighties the amount of food that was counted as a single serving increased rapidly” (paragraph 23). That statement has a correlation to the increase of human weight. As people eat more, the more weight they gain.  Kolbert also says that “the bagels that Americans eat have in the past twenty years swelled from a hundred and forty to three hundred and fifty calories” (paragraph 23). After she said this, I was surprised because I eat a bagel almost every day.

While I was reading the article, I came across something that that worried me as a future educator. She explained how “three out of five of the heaviest kids have been teased at school” (paragraph 27). This statement really did hurt me. Children, no matter their size should never be judged. Then she went on to talk about how “Teachers consistently hold lower expectations of overweight children…..” (paragraph 27). Teachers in a classroom should never have expectations on children no matter their weight, race, gender or even their financial background. This conversation really did fight with my thoughts. I am having a hard time processing why this would even happen.

As you look throughout the United States you can see that people who are overweight tend to get rude things said to them or they are starred at. This is because we have a “size bias” (paragraph 28). In the U.S., it is seen okay to be skinny or underweight but when someone is overweight they are hated on. When people think of the heaviest country, they think of America. Francis Delpeuch, Bernard Maire, Emmanuel Monnier, and Michelle Holdsworth states how “Americans were the first to fatten up, they no longer lead the pack” (paragraph 30). As of current data, it reveals that Finland, Malta, Slovakia, Germany, Greece, the Czech Republic and Cyprus all have a higher proportion of overweight adults than America. This astonished me because I have always been taught that America is the fattest country.

When you go to the grocery store and you look at the shelves you can see that the unhealthy foods are always less expensive than the healthy things. With over 29% of adults in the United States being classified as lower class, some of the families do not have enough money to buy food. In that case, they tend to buy unhealthy food because it is less expensive. In the past few decades, fattening foods have become cheaper. In the book “Fattening America”, Eric Finklestein talks about how between “1983 and 2005, the real cost of fats and oils have decreased sixteen percent” (paragraph 12). There is a big correlation between consumption and cost. When people buy unhealthy food, they tend to be less expensive and come with more food. With the prices in food decreasing, children in schools being bullied, calories getting higher and many more. All of these examples are to help explain the question of “Why are we so fat?”

As I read this article, I thought of the ways that writer began and ended the argument. She began by starting the conversation with a question, “why are we so fat?”. As she kept writing and gathering information, she would ask smaller questions through the article. As she read other books and talked to people, she found out that there are many different answers to her question. Finding the real and exact answer to her question is going to difficult but know people know that sometimes you may not be able to get one answer out of a question.