Greetings and Felicitations!

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Maggie Herlocker, I’m a fourth year English Education student at Chico State. I’ve changed my major plan about 6 times I think, I’ve taken so many classes that I started getting emails from the university pestering me to apply for graduation because I have so many units. Too bad all those units don’t add up to a degree, unless the university wants to give me a degree in knowing a little bit of everything. I currently have no plan after I graduate, maybe teaching, maybe grad school, maybe stand up comedy, maybe being a rock star… We’ll see where the wind takes me. I’m really excited for this class because I think it’s going to help me solidify some idea of what I want to do in the future. I’m really interesting in teaching and in education, I’m just not sure if I want to be the one teaching and educating.

What I found very interesting in the Wenger reading was the part about how learning is not an individual practice. So often in school students are told not to talk to their neighbors, to do their own work, to not collaborate. No where in the real world is there ever a time when you can’t ask a friend for help. School becomes boring and painful when students are just expected to sit, memorize, and regurgitate. When I was in school I always had the hardest time with classrooms like that because I don’t learn well that way. Those classrooms are set up for teaching, not for learning. It made it really difficult for me to sit in classrooms, especially one’s where I wasn’t allowed to talk, or ask questions with my friends. Learning is much more effective when it doesn’t feel like “learning.”

 

(I chose John Mulaney as my featured imagine because a. I love him, b. his ideas about education are spot on, and c.  his comedy specials on netflix gives me life and y’all should go watch them. Now. Do it. Watch them and laugh.)