Take aways
431 has been a really relevant class for me so far. I feel like it’s one of my first classes that I’m learning how to be a teacher. One thing I really like that we talked about in class is responding to a memo all at once as opposed to vague comments written on an essay. One thing I hated as a student was turning in a paper that I slaved over and then the only person who saw it was my teacher. The idea of contributing to a community and making a space where that’s possible is super important to me. I love Shipka’s proposal to let the student design and share their own assignments. Basically this assignment gives students the opportunity to work on something they are interested in. By asking students to create something multimodal they have the opportunity to share their ideas in a creative, unique way. For me to actually do this, it seems hard. But eventually I would have a product from it and be able to communicate to many people who are interested in my topic. This type of assignment highlights diversity too. One student in my internship workshop has a YouTube channel where he teaches men about using makeup. This is an awesome extra curricular yet I presume it rarely overlaps into his school work. For this assignment he’s researching historical associations of men using makeup and decided he would share his findings over his YouTube channel. He’s already connected to an interested and relevant audience and can use this to share his assignment. Students have such different talents and resources and I think teachers’ assignments can often limit them.
Another thing that impresses me about the way this class is set up is that it works like a community of practice. English 130, mentors, interns and students are all busy learning together. I don’t know how I would accomplish this at a high school level but it would be an interesting endeavor to figure out. All the readings from the beginning of this class make a lot of sense when thinking of the assignments the English 130 students are doing now. In my internship I can offer my trained eyes and knowledge about writing. I can observe my mentor and learn from them. In 431 were learning the technical terms and skills and are asked to apply them.
I’ve learned a lot in this class and my three major take aways include how to respond to student writing, how to develop a community of practice in a class room, and how to assign something that students can make their own.