https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-dKkPtVrxJkEkReXoPnHOemCi5X8L1DZ5-qRJdUWmEI/edit
Month: November 2019
Draft 1 Project 2, Jason & David
Draft 1 Mimi Riley
Draft 1, Project 2
Draft/ Project 2
Peer Review Draft of Amanda Regan
Praise: You are very clear and concise on the problem of education on how students aren’t given enough courses that focus on their major but rather other courses. The problem is well established and your quotes re very strong to support Percys ideas.
Constructive: You need to transition into the quote in your paragraph and not start it as a new sentence. Also, I think you need a clearer thesis of the problem and the 4 ways you intend to solve how student’s education can be improved/or is necessary to have courses beyond the major.
Use of Percy: Your use of Percy here is very strong and evident to support your idea. try to think of a solution to fill this gap rather than critic it.
project 2 topic 1 draft
Project 2 Draft 1
Meg and Sam Draft #1
Mark Twain once said, “Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.” In many ways, this quote pertains to the ideas of Percy. Percy sheds a positive light upon learning from experience and he believes that it is important for someone to teach in order to learn. However, in college it is sometimes hard to learn by experience because they are constantly in a classroom or a lecture hall being taught subjects that do not correlate to their major. Throughout the next few years of education here at college, students will be taking many different courses with the main goal of earning a degree in their major of choice. It is a requirement for all students to take courses unrelated to their major and it is often viewed as a waste of time, effort, and money because it does not focus on their major.
Percy explains how, in order to truly see the whole picture, we can not focus on one small detail. If students only had to take one course, they would not be seeing the whole picture. In today’s world, society is constantly worried about small details rather than the big picture. Being a well-rounded citizen means having knowledge and awareness of multiple subjects rather than having tunnel vision to what is important to that one individual. If a student is only learning classes that involve their major, they are unable to become a well informed student who is able to hold an educated conversation about any other topic. On the other hand, if a student is being taught a variety of subjects they are able to develop a stronger understanding of what goes on in the world around them. Throughout his article, Percy states, “The sightseer may be aware that something is wrong. He may simply be bored; or he may be conscious of the difficulty: that the great thing yawning at his feet somehow eludes him.” Referring to the quote, it is clear that Percy believes students will get out as much as they put in when it comes to their classes and the benefits of hard work. Applying this to the overall topic, if students are required to take extra courses, it may seem like a waste of time if they do not put in any effort. On the other hand, if they decide to take it seriously and truly apply themselves, they are allowing themselves to open up and learn a new subject. This will make taking the extra classes that much more beneficial rather than a waste of time.
Additionally, it is important that students learn different subjects because then they have the ability to become the teacher. For instance, by placing a biology major and a sociology major in the same class, both of these students have the ability to teach the other about their own major. This will require those students to think outside of the box in a way that will help to explain their major to someone who knows nothing about that topic. In the end each student will grow strong in the classes that refer to their major.
Amanda’s team draft #1
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17eDXSViJqy-IvysGGLNvkM_Zmcvm6SrVQyvCBr1qwI0/edit
Amanda Jiang & Leah Schreffler
Dr. Randall Cream
Writing 120
3 November 2019
Good quality teaching involves interaction and socialization between students. A good professor takes time to understand the student’s background and needs. The teacher builds a relationship with the student. Teachers take shortcuts by posting powerpoints and feeding the information to the students instead of taking the time to teach the content of the class, this way goes against Percy’s and Freire’s ideas of teaching. The way the teacher can teach can be alternated by the students. Creating a learning environment where students are not taught by the teacher allows for a different way of learning. One class that West Chester offers is Transcultural health, a class that teachers teach students as passive objects. Transcultural health can be improved by observation and students teaching classmates.
Teachers assign assignments outside of the classroom where students are forced to teach themselves from observation. Activities, where students observe information outside of the classroom, allows for comprehension and an advanced way of learning instead of being fed information. A quote from Percy states, “…that they have in common the stratagem of avoiding the educator’s direct presentation of the object as a lesson to be learned and restoring access to sonnet and dogfish as beings to be known, reasserting the sovereignty of knower over known” (Percy 5). Percy explains that the only way a student can learn is by avoiding the teacher’s way of teaching. When students are assigned readings or video assignments, they do not learn as much compared to going somewhere and observing. Students only focused on watching videos and answering given questions rather than understanding the true concepts. Learning outside the four walls of the classroom can significantly improve a student’s academic and developing environmental awareness. By assigning observation assignments beyond the classroom allows students to think outside of the box. This allows students to take the chance to explore and expand their critical thinking. Students can not learn from the teacher and have to discover other ways of learning.
A new way of changing the way students learn is by having the teacher creates activities that will make students teach students the information. College is all about training students to be future leaders and for this to happen, students have to recognize that they have a voice and an opinion. Speaking for yourself is a hard thing to do and learn. Having interaction in the classroom and in the criteria of the course will allow students to learn to become involved in the class. Seeing the bigger picture of the outside world creates an opportunity for students to seek the moment, creating a new way of learning. “No, but it means that the student should know what a fight he has on his hands to rescue the specimen from the educational package. The educator is only partly to blame. For there is nothing the educator can do to provide for this need of the student. Everything the educator does only succeeds in becoming, for the student, part of the educational package” (Percy 5). Percy is saying that the students have to create their own ways of learning because the teacher is not there to provide the students what they need.
Draft 1 Project 2
Lauren’s Team Draft 1
Writing project #2 draft 1
Education Beyond the Major
If a student at West Chester University is majoring in physics, then why should they have to take an art class. It would seem to be a waste of time, unless there is a justified reason. Students seem to moan at the thought of taking a class they don’t feel is necessary to their degree but in reality could help them in the long run. Walker Percy is an author who talks about these topics of education in his passage called The Loss of the Creature. Even though Percy never directly writes it down, he is pushing this message of education beyond a students major. West Chester is no exception. Most of the students time at West Chester University are spent outside their major because it helps them learn indirectly through mistakes and challenges them in ways they aren’t used to or familiar with.
There is a saying that in order to succeed in life you have to fail first. Humans learn from their mistakes than from their successes. A physics major might find math and sciences easy but when you give them a paint brush they might struggle. Percy says, “If the failures are “wrong” enough, as these are, they might still be turned to account as rueful conversation pieces”(3). This means that just because you fail doesn’t mean you are a failure. The art class is going to be a different type of hard for the physics major student and that will help them deal with situations like that for the future. Taking classes outside of the major prepares the student to not learn the material but know how to deal with situations they are not used too. At West Chester students need to take more classes to they are not used to to open them up to failure and from that failure come success and knowledge. Without these courses outside of the students major, the student might not be challenged enough to learn.
When a student is used a certain type of learning from the same subject and gets thrown into a new environment and type of teaching it can be challenges them in ways they aren’t used too and to learn. The content does not have to be hard. It can just be a different way of learning that is difficult. Percy says, “The great difficulty is that he is not aware that there is a difficulty”(4). This means that people should always expect and prepare for the worst but hope for the best. When that physics student walks into that art class with a bad attitude then they are going to end up with a bad grade. If someone thinks lightly of any class then they are going to be surprised with the difficulty level compared to if they prepared properly they would be fine. All students fall to this statement at some point in their educational career. Every student is not perfect in every subject and in every class. The reason to take classes outside of the major is to find those weaknesses and work/fix them.
Project 2 Initial Draft
Abbey Johnson, Nick Nolan, Isabella DeSario
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S1mhsWLMHyeKqTziqltVTeDBH4-Yp_Xh4JH884uM6mU/edit?usp=sharing
writing project draft 1
The American education system is…not the best in the world, it’s still stuck in the Industrial Age. The structures of education are one of the pillars of a healthy society, as the way a society views education and engages with it on an institutional level will determine the kind of citizenry it has. At W.C.U the school has worked to modernize not only in technology but with procedures and making a shift from lecture focused classes to more interactive methods. Working towards improving education as to be in line with Paulo Freire and Walker Percy’s philosophy about teaching without teaching. In pursuit of the goal of a more egalitarian form of teaching, I propose student led labs, for teachers to better emulate the maieutic virtue by facilitating group discussion, having presentations/seminars led by students, and the removal of tests in place of experience based projects/simulations.
Applying this to say a comparative politics class for the sake of context would go as follows :Student led labs, as in the dogfish is splayed upon a table and the students go ahead and work with little more than their tools and an objective to learn. Perhaps an exercise on a topic of interest in relation to the class, for example if the class was Latin American Politics a student could decide to research something in the region related to its development and politics. Percy said that “He(consumer) carves his initials as a last desperate measure to escape his ghostly role as a consumer.” So the labs in which students find their own topics which will then be used as a base for their presentations will allow the students to reclaim their intellectual sovereignty. The labs offer practical skill learning for research data collection and team work. By students working to create something they learn. When students then present on the topic of the labs and what they found, sharing what they discovered through the fruits of their pursuit of learning. Removing the banking approach from the institution we learn by removing the object from the educational package by which the information is wrapped in. As having no instruction equalizes the dynamic of learning therefore making it not an “exercise in domination” but an exchange of information.
The role of the teacher; they do play a part in this ; is to be the midwife the facilitator that is there highest role as anything more will just be part of the educational package. In practice that would include things like asking questions which propose problems like “What could this indicator suggest? What do these factors point to?” etc.. Therefore allowing the proliferation of thought. The simulation and experience based projects would include having students go out in the field and perform the qualitative/quantitative data collection that will be routine in the field of political science. “…English major who began poking around in a dogfish with a bobby pin would learn more in thirty minutes than a biology major in a whole semester;” Experience is the best teacher after all
Writing Project 2 Initial Draft
Rough Draft-Project 2
Project 2 Draft 1
Rough Draft
Topic 4Team- Kyle Owens
Paragraph 1
What should good teaching be? This is a question that has gone unanswered for quite some time. Percy and Friere have spent much time trying to answer this question. Although Percy and Freire both value the role of the teacher, they caution against the act of teaching .Freire states that “the people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation”, in this case the students have to fight for their education. From a students point of view I agree with the ideas of Percy and Freire. Professors should be able to cater the lesson plan to the specific needs of the students. Professors are able to support real student learning by being more open to teaching the class a way that increase student interaction, and will benefit students most, not the professors. Some ways this can be done include project based learning, student lead discussions, (sub point 3) and (sub point 4 ). The most relevant idea that came to mind was implementing project based learning in the classroom.
Paragraph 2
project based learning, no exam (groups or individual) would allow students to essentially teach themselves. Although Friere and Percy value teachers they believe in “avoiding the educator’s direct presentation of the object as a lesson to be learned.” They would be more inclined to work on their own schedule in a way that is most productive to them. Students should have both options of working in groups or working independently, as students benefit from these options differently. When only one option is used some students are given an advantage, while others are put at a disadvantage. I believe that this is essential for this topic, all students know how they learn best. Percy believes not all students would benefit the same from the premade lesson plans and class rules that have been used for years in a row.
Paragraph 3
The next example of good teaching stems from the thoughts and beliefs of the students themselves. 2. Student led / student contribution discussion group / speeches As Percy has identified, the educator can do nothing for the student. In order to achieve teaching without teaching here at West Chester University, classrooms need to become more student based and incorporate styles of learning that benefit the student individually. Percy states ‘”For there is nothing the educator can do to provide for this need of the student, everything the educator does only succeeds in becoming, for the student, part of the educational package.”Good teaching should include input from the students on how the class is run, as all students have their own unique ways they learn best. College students have been taking classes for years now and are able to identify what learning styles will be most beneficial to them.
“Avoiding the educators direct presentation of the object as the lesson to be learned.”
“The educator is well aware that something is wrong, that there is a fatal gap between the students’ learning and students’ lives.” pg 4
Paragraph 4 Paragraph 5 Paragraph 6 In conclusion
