Reflection

Melissa Nicolas

        I feel that any class that encourages individualism and independence through guidance and teaching is a classroom that will positively impact any student in some way. Being that I am generally a student that likes to work alone and likes complete control of what I am doing it was relieving a number of opportunities given to me to choose the direction I was going to take my work. For past years I always believed English was my worst subject because I am a very concrete thinker and in the past, I would have trouble thinking abstractly when it comes to finding symbolism and alternative meanings in literature. I found myself having a more positive experience in English through the discussion based activities and independent reading on Fridays'.

       At the very least I enjoyed reading one time a week. I say this because I greatly appreciated the opportunities Fridays gave me to explore various books that I enjoyed. There were multiple times a year when we would be reading several books at once but if I was ever discontent with any of them I knew ob Fridays I could always fall back on a book that I did like because I was given the chance to read what I wanted. Fridays were my break from any stressing assignments or difficult books I was previously paying attention to.

       I definitely read more books this year than I have in previous English classes. I think at most, we would have to read three to four books throughout the entire year. I think in English this year we used our time wisely and were able to read a multitude of books while reading any independent reading book on the side. Often I would find my independent reading books so interesting I would read them before bed sometimes if I was truly curious to see how it ended.

       I can't imagine describing my writing and revisions in this class labeled as anything less than authentic. Most of the time we would be given an assignment and most of the time it was up to us which direction we wanted to take it. We were allowed to develop our own opinions and defend them in our writing, Our rubrics were meant to give direction on stylistics of our writing. When asked to write a blog post of our independent reading books, we didn't have to follow the guidelines of a traditional essay following a 5 paragraph format. It could be as long or as short as we wanted as long as it encompassed our true feelings and opinions towards the book.

       A prime example of when I had some control over my own learning in English was through our book club projects. It was left completely up to us to convey our knowledge and comprehension of the book in a creative and organized project. It could be anything we wanted, and as you looked around the class not one group had the same project as another. Our book was Their Eyes Were Watching God, we chose to set up a video presentation of a cooking show describing a primary character in the book as ingredients to a pastry, followed by a brief discussion of the book.

    There isn't much that could be done differently with this class. I personally didn't find it incredibly challenging, my favorite parts of the class were anything that had to do with group discussions and debates. I think participation and discussion were highly encouraged in this class and those can be some of my strong suits at times.