I’M GIVING UP!! AAAAHHHHH!! Literally how I feel at this point but nobody quits in April so I gotta stick around. Let’s get down to business.

Shipka talks about the gooooood stuff. I like it. It speaks to me. Shipka discusses how students work with their peers to respond to writings, write on their own, research, and involving school activities outside of the classroom. Teachers have the same goal, but helping the students reach that goal is what makes the difference. Students leaving the classroom after writing a paper will not have the same reaction as students who leave the classroom after presenting a video they created with their group.

The things that could make a difference in learning are communication, activities, finding what works for students, and creating a FUN learning environment. By giving many ideas and resources to reach a goal, each student could find what works for him/ her. In order to make sure that the student’s are getting some type of knowledge, Shipka’s idea of revision presents a whole new set of ways to help the students develop their knowledge on their own. A student going through their own work and finding new ways to develop it is essential, to me, because I personally find it to be more effectual.

• Try using LPP to think through your internship space: what is the relationship between the participants? What is the space like? What materials and resources are used? How do the relationships, materials, and space shape the learning environment? What does the mentoring look like in the internship?

Through my internship, I find a lot of ideas that relate to LPP. The participants, usually students coming in for help at the ESL Resource Center, don’t interact with each other but rather interact with the tutors. The help they receive is usually with academic writing. The center is set up in an organized way, each table has all the resources that the participants need. Papers, pens, pencils, help books, grammar books, format book, etc.

The relationships, materials, and space all come together to provide a comfortable learning environment for students who come nervous to the center. As tutors, we’re there to provide assistance and comfort for students.  I don’t see the mentoring/tutoring as difficult, it might be a little challenging to try to figure out how to act towards the students as someone who is in charge but not be an arrogant person in authority but I think if each tutor looks at the material that he/she is working out, they would learn from the students as well.

This really long and boring article really made me want to sleep..
No but really, it had a lot of good points that I agree with. “Inventing the University” is an accurate representation of what university professors expect of their students. For example, when taking a class that isn’t in your major but the professor is expecting you to write how an expert in that field would write, it becomes exhausting and the student doesn’t really learn anything. Google is usually my bestfriend when I’m writing a paper for a GE class and I don’t care to understand what I’m reading and writing because I’m just looking to write the way that the professor wants.

Personally, I used to have more difficulty with writing when I was in high school than I do now. I had just learned English and writing papers was definitely not my expertise. Sometimes, even though I understood the material, I couldn’t put words onto paper. In 9th grade, I was taking a Biology class, and I understood most of what I’m being taught, I just didn’t know how to write a paper, probably because I had never written a paper at the time; it was my second year in the US. Instead of helping me with the biology material, my teacher asked the administration to put me in an ESL class “because I don’t understand what I’m being told.”
I didn’t care about being in ESL but the laziness in helping students understand the material baffles my mind.

I’ve learned to change my voice/tone according to the subject I’m talking about and/or the professor. It’s very important to know what the professor wants and get to that point BY using your own voice and not using the professor’s voice. If that makes sense.