Journaling

In my life, I view almost everything in a way that creates freedom and form. However, what I think would be one thing that gives the most balance between the two would be journaling. When I journal I am still writing, therefore, I do not throw all convention out the window. For the most part my words form sentences, or at least follow an order that creates sentences. However, my thoughts seem unorganized because I freely write rather than try to make one entry have a theme or main topic. The most form that my journaling has would be a basic sentence structure or perhaps when I journal poetry I may create my writing to seem to be in more of a poetic form. But what is so freeing about journaling is that it is simply my own thoughts, however they may enter my head, thrown on a paper without censorship, or worry of judgment. You could also say that my journaling sometimes receives form by my own experiences. By that I mean that the writing comes alive simply because I experience things and write about them. You could say that it is limiting in that way, because it is limited to my own knowledge, experiences, and mind. But I love how much freedom I can have with writing when I do it, though I often do find myself trying to make it "sound good."

Ranking, Liking, and all that Jazz

Our discussion in class on grading opened my eyes to a few things. While reading the article I was interested in the whole idea of "liking" and how that may influence our grading and evaluating as teachers. When I think back to teachers I have had, on more than one occasion I can think of how discouraged I had been by seeing a letter grade on a piece of writing with no real explanation as to how the teacher had reached that judgment. I think more often than not we convince ourselves that we know what an "A" paper is versus a "B" and so on, that we forget that students are the people who really need to know what exactly those letters entail. The evaluation free zones could be helpful in a class I think especially when trying to help students at least grasp some confidence in their own writing. Although I would not say that we need to do away with ranking all together, I think when we do use ranking as teachers, it needs to be with great explanation and justification as well as trying to rank off of a variety of pieces of work rather than each individual assignment.

Assessment

I'd like to take a quick minute and discuss assessment. Honestly I hadn't really though too much about how often students really just want a grade and work for a grade and how often this can take away from their actual learning. I think Peter Elbow makes a lot of good points in his essay about Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking, however I think at times it's a little optimistic. Yes it would be great to say that we could as teachers avoid ranking and do more liking but often other rules and regulations and expectations of our schools and districts would prevent us from always doing so. I would say that within the capabilities within our classrooms it would be great to try to apply Elbow's methods but as he has said, it won't be easy.

Pedagogy

I am going to stray a little bit from discussing alignment because I think that it can be beneficial to discuss each element of the alignment separately also. Recently I've been thinking often about the pedagogy present in my classes. I think it can be interesting to first get into a class and think you know exactly how that professor teaches but then be surprised. For example, it is no secret that your friends may tell you what professors to take and why. Perhaps one never gives tests and only has group work, or maybe you hate group work so you love the professor who lectures and then just gives three tests. I know that for me when I think about what type of pedagogy I enjoy the most in a class I can't really choose one method. I much more prefer classes that give me the opportunity to work in groups, but also at times work on my own critical thinking. Though I do not enjoy as thoroughly the classes that consist mostly of lecture, at times I still feel engaged just listening and comprehending the material as it is taught to me. This probably has greatly to do with the fact that I have never really been able to say which type of learner I am above all other styles. I could say that I'm a visual learner but I know at times I am more auditory also. As teachers I think it's important to realize how much impact our own pedagogy can have on our students interests and engagement. Though it may be difficult to appeal to everyone, we must make effort to grown, learn, and adapt to our students' needs as well as our own.