I loved this project. I felt like I had total control over what I was doing and I could express myself and the information I learned in a new way. I had no problems completing the project aside from the time consumption that I put upon myself. I enjoyed working on it however, so it wasn’t time wasted and I didn’t feel like it was a chore.
I decided to make my project in a magazine format for many reasons. One was because I love graphics art and writing, which lend themselves perfectly to a magazine. Another was I felt like I could have fun with the advertisements and I had a lot of freedom to do what I wanted. The only thing that I didn’t love was it felt like I was regurgitating information I wrote about earlier in the semester in an uncreative way with the articles. While it turned out well and made the magazine whole, that was my least favorite part to work on. Yet another reason for creating a magazine was to test if I could make a magazine. I like to play around with the idea of an academic magazine that is creative, witty, and informative. Maybe a student created magazine (like The Orion, but in magazine format) would be an interesting project to work on in the future!

Link to project

Fun fact: In the header on the cover page, the part of the text that is shaded differently than the rest spells Chico!

1.     On page 413, what does Nelson mean when he calls students “true insiders” and teachers “naive outsiders”? Do you agree with his interpretation?

 

2.     Would you agree with the suggestion that instructors should position themselves as outsiders to the students interpretive practices? Would this theory make a difference in English 30?

 

3.     The “culture of school” is brought up numerous times in the beginning of the paper, but is never fully explained. How would you describe the culture of school?

 

4.     Kate becomes disillusioned to her teacher’s expectations when she remarks that all he expects is his students’ work to “sound like a textbook” (Page 416). As a result, Kate “was unwilling to take risks or expend much effort on subsequent assignments” (Page 416).

This implies that convention interferes with a writer’s identity. Can this be a good thing? In academics, should writers be constrained by convention at the cost of their identity, or is identity more important than convention?

 

5.     “Helen’s reading of her classroom context and assignment led her to approach her assignment with a sense of authority and commitment that appeared to be missing in the other students’ approaches” (Page 422).

What factors contribute to this difference? What enables Helen to approach her assignment with a sense of authority and commitment?

 

6.     Nelson’s paper explores how students read and interpret classrooms as text. Do you think the students in our workshops read and interpret the workshops in the same way? If yes, how and why would they read and interpret our workshops? If no, why wouldn’t they?

Hello, I’m Keaton Kirkpatrick. I grew up in the small town of Susanville, which is about 2 1/2 hours away from Chico. I lived in Chico for a couple years in my early teens and fell in love with the area, so I’m excited to finally be back. I heard about this class from Chico’s summer orientation, where Kelly Candelaria introduced it. I was interested because I believe studying learning theory and gaining practice in an environment where I can work with students will be great experience for me since I want to become a professor.

 

The passage I chose is on page 21.

[…] a training program that consists of instructional settings separated from actual performance would tend to split the learner’s ability to manage the learning situation apart from his ability to perform the skill. Given a sufficient disjunction between the skill being taught and the actual performance situation, one could imagine an actor who becomes expert as a learner – that is, who becomes a master at managing the learning situation – but who never actually learns the performance skills themselves.

This passage expands the idea that understanding and practicing are interconnected actions which can’t be separated if an individual wants to learn a skill. The first sentence says that a program consisting of only instruction which disallows performance (think lectures) puts a learner at a disadvantage for being able to learn and perform whatever subject the instruction covers. While the authors use an actor who learns about acting instead of actually acting as their example; I thought of it in terms of someone studying poetry, but who can’t and isn’t encouraged to write poetry. This example is effective in the second sentence because it exemplifies the disjunction mentioned as being between poetry being taught as an art and being able to write poetry. Thus, the individual may know the meaning of most poems, be able to explain why a poem follows a certain form, and what themes are present in a poem; but they are unable to actually create their own poem. This is why the authors favor apprenticeships. If such an individual were in an apprenticeship, then they’d learn how to both write and study poetry–leading to a greater and more meaningful understanding of the subject.

 

The passage matters because it expresses that the ability to learn is tied not just to instruction, but instruction and performance. If one receives instruction without performance, then their ability to perform is inhibited. Not only should one study a subject if they want to learn about it, they should do practice in the subject as well. This participation opens up their ability of learning a skill as opposed to understanding it.