Weekly Writing & Blogs

Sean Redding 

Randall Cream

WRT120

December 6th, 2019 

Changes at West Chester University 

         All throughout college many students are forced to sit through gen-ed’s and lectures that easily cause the student to become distracted and unfocused. Even with classes that deal with one’s major, students are prone to zone out in class and retain less information. I believe that one major change that would be beneficial to the overall education community at West Chester would be for the school to enforce more interactive classes as well as bringing the reverse classroom method into action. By allowing classrooms to be more interactive and hands on with the major, students can stay in tune with a class and achieve a higher level of learning.

A benefit to the interactive classrooms is that students would be able to constantly be kept involved in the class, not allowing students to zone out or lose focus from the class as commonly done in classes that are lectures. A good example of what interaction in classes per major would look like is maybe requiring students to perform a certain amount of hours for some type of mock field work. A more specific example would be for a criminal justice major in pursuit of being a police officer or detective being required to do a internships or ride alongs at the local police departments. Not only would this be a great change from a standard lecture class, but students would also be gaining experience and information on what their desired major would be.        

With the ability to interact directly with the major, student can receive the best and most realistic learning experience. As some majors do have this, such as nursing programs in the hospital, and practice teaching in real-life classrooms, but almost all the other major are left in the dust. With these interactive hands-on classes students can get a taste what it is really like in the field, and if they really want to pursue said career. Not only will they be graded based on hours worked, but the student would be graded on weekly reports on what they did for job. This allows for students who can’t pay attention to lectures and normal class setting to learn in a way they can retain the information being taught.

         A common struggle for students with ADHD and ADD is that information is not being taught in an appropriate method for their minds to be absorbing any of the information. Alongside this, it is also extremely difficult for students with these disorders to pay attention in classes when the professors are constantly just giving lectures every class. By allowing students to take part in the reverse classroom methods, these students that have different learning styles will be able to teach themselves information in ways that are beneficial to themselves, seeing that every student has different learning styles and the standard lecture class is not fit for every learning style.  By having reverse classroom styles and expanding the interaction in classrooms, Percy and Freire’s educational theories are being supported in the fact that students at West Chester University would now have more of an opportunity to take charge of their own education. 

         In the end, working with a company to help further your education would create many opportunities for students looking to excel in school. Not only will the students get to see what they’re going to school for first hand, they will also have the ability to stay away from the normal classroom setting. The many affected by learning disorders such as ADD ADHD will get to learn in a way that helps them instead of hurts them.  With these changes WCU and many colleges alike can change the way students learn.

Bella Bedore

Adam Griffith

Sam Livorno

How has this class changed the way you view education, in relation to Freire and Percy?

I know that after taking this class and talking to prof Cream about my writing, I will never think of class the same. By realizing that there is an unseen barrier between students and learning or professors and students makes me very interested to see how my next semester classes are going to be like compare to this now ending one.

Topic: We will discuss what we learned in this class. How we felt about each project and if we feel prepared for writing classes we will take in the future.

Date and Time: Friday 12/6 3 pm

Location: Sykes, Second floor, Center for student involvement

I will be hosting a Discussion group on Sunday at 10 am at Tyson hall benches to discuss the differences between Friere and Percy and how we can correlate their thoughts and opinions effectively for essay 3.

Group members: John, Bella, Liv, Noah

I went to the group at the tables next to Einstein’s at 3:30 on December 5. We were there for 10 minutes, but the leader did not show up.

Group members: John, Bella, Gwen, Noah

I went to Mia’s group that was being held at the tables next to Einsteins in Lawrence at 3:30 on Thursday and waited for 10 minutes with the other group members and she never showed up.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ejkutXx8enkhV8ybzwJEEx8GA4Roev-Z09xcvPD_V5g/edit?folder=0AMTacXSP39flUk9PVA#slide=id.g75d2d9fd98_0_245

Do you think the writing groups helped understand the material, and do you think that they can be changed in any way. Also did the writing class help build off of what you already know for writing?

Location: Sykes entrance/ sitting area.

Time: 9:00 am

Discussion Topic: Do you think this writing course prepared you for other higher level writing courses and do you think this course has made you a better writer.

Location: First floor Main Hall by the food stand

Time:12:30

Group: John, Noah, Olivia, Gwen, Bella

We showed up to the discussion group at the tables inside of Lawrence next to Einstein’s at 3:30 and waited for 10 minutes and the leader did not show up.

12/5/19

Sam, Isabella and Adam

How did the course content of WRT 120 change or not change our point of view of higher education?

Freire and Percy have solidified in my mind that you cant learn in a traditional classroom setting. We discussed that the course did change all of our points of view on higher education. After doing peer reviews and reading different essays, it all made us feel more connected. It made us realize that a lot of our ideas and morals are similar to each other. For example, we all talked about similar ways students can learn outside the classroom. This discussion made us think more about having student connections and how they are beneficial to us. Discussion groups were a major part of this because they helped us meet new people also see anew point of view on different ideas.

leader- olivia

participants- sabrina lindley

In this discussion we talked about WRT 120 and how it helped us this semester. We said that writing 120 helped us to understand education and our classes better by reading Percy and Freire. I got a better understanding of what good education is. We also said that having meetings with our professor helped us to become better writers by getting feedback and critiques on our work. The discussion groups also helped me to understand the content of Percy and Freire better by learning other students’ perspectives on the content. I also enjoyed the writing discussion groups because we got to get out of the classroom and go to different locations and meet other students in a different environment. Writing 120 was very beneficial to me and definitely improved my writing skills and I will take all that I learned and apply it to my next semester WRT 200 course.

Topic: We will be discussing how these discussion groups helped us this semester as well as the pros and cons and what can be done to improve them.

Location: Inside Lawrence at the tables next to Einsteins.

Time and date: Thursday @ 3:30

Participants: Meghan and I

In this mornings discussion group, Meghan and I talked about how the past semester has gone and what we learned from Percy and Friere. We discussed the different teaching styles we went over and how effective they are. We also talked about the different project topics and what we learned from them. Seeing as Meghan and I worked together for both projects, we compared idea while working on our projects and what teaching styles could be most effective to students success. In our last project, we combined different ways of indirect teaching styles like student-led classes and fieldwork experience. By doing this, we learned a lot about how important it is for professors to really do the method that is proven most effective for the given major.

Topic: We will discuss our overall thoughts on Writing 120 and how we think this class helped us with our first semester at WCU.

When: Thursday December 4th @ 12:15 in Sykes lobby

Problem: Students at West Chester are not able to do work in classes because other classes are giving more work or not enough work in classes. The students cannot be successful in their main courses if classes are not a main priority.

 Solution: Change the workload in the classes that are not a big effect on the person’s major/grade. Also, for major courses have more work but relates to my major and I will use for future reference. 

Effects: Students will only focus on their major and work for those classes only.

Students will be less stressed about the classes that are not as important. 

 Professors can work mainly on the material that they want to give the students instead of having to give extra work. 

Students now can focus on extracurriculars and get a job. 

Problem: “learning” is through lecture based, memorization classes and it prevents students from correctly processing the information given to them.

Solution: Restructuring student schedules to have smaller class sizes for students

Effects: More one on one interaction between classmates and teachers

Class structured not to memorize but to understand information

more balanced teaching styles to all students

more student engagement by opening up the class to more discussion based activities

Problem: Most lecture based classes are taught on a memorization structure. This is a problem because actual learning does not take place in these kinds of environments.

Solution: Implementing an additional class period containing smaller number of student for more one-on-one interactions and have more of a group discussion based structure.

Effects: Students get the interactions between each other and the teacher for actual learning to take place

Less memorization is taking place

Maybe difficult to schedule these class periods for all classes

Leads to better overall grades