So Bartholomae. Yeah. That was a fun read. -shakes head- Okay it kind of was, but to be honest there were really only  two things that stood out to me. The first being the comparison in what is implied as “freshmen” papers. This was particularly confusing to me because the one paper was well written, grammatically correct, something I can easily imagine a teacher giving an A grade on. The other basically sounded like the student was using phrases he had heard and popped them all together, to create a piece of written work. Both papers received a high grade.  One because it was well written and grammatically correct and the other because the person tried to use words and structure and whatnot that is just beyond their level??? I don’t know about anyone else but when I tried to go beyond  in such a way and my papers sounded choppy, like the one in the article and I never got a high grade. There were notes like “see me” or “re-write” There was nothing that said that what I did was even remotely the right thing to do. I think attempting to go above and beyond like that should be encouraged but at the same time I have to wonder if giving them a high grade was a good thing considering they now think that it is good and it will not need work in the future, not taking into account that the student will have multiple teachers with multiple styles they will have to deal with.

 

The second was about acting in authority, specifically if a student says i don’t know it’s not because they do not know but because they do not feel they have enough knowledge to speak  with authority about the subject. Sometimes this is very true for me but other times i legitimately do not know. I am in school to learn, not because I know everything already.  In the moments after is where some learning can happen, because someone will answer the question. The student that said I don’t know will learn a possible answer that will help them speak with authority later. There are times where i am not sure if people don’t speak in class because they feel they lack authority or if they lack the confidence. I think those two things work together in a way.

Well I suppose it is that time once again for introductions.  HELLO!!!  My name is Cherie, currently an English Ed major, avid netflix user.  I spent most of my break on netflix watching 1960’s television, specifically The Munsters and Star Trek.  I am at Chico State simply because it was the most financially feasible possibility, and i am in this class because it was on a list of classes I needed to take and wanted to take it with Kim.  I suppose if there is anything else you could possible want to know, ask. Now onto the reading!

 

The reading focused on communities of practice and how everyone has multiple communities that they are involved in and all of them help them in one way or another. There are as many communities of practice as there are social circles we may consider ourselves  part of. I think it is hard to pick out one thing to talk about since I had so much exposure to it last semester.  I really liked how she went in depth as far as what are considered communities of practice, which i talked about just a second ago. The trick is, i think, that we need to remember that all of these places are considered a community of practice. For different things and different areas of life but they all have the same purpose.