Extention off Emily Onufraks: Education is Politics

The quotes Emily Chose.

 

" It is the students who decide to what extent they will take part in the syllabus and allow it to form them. Many students do not like the knowledge, process, or roles set out for them in class. In reaction, they drop out or withdraw into passivity or silence in the classroom. Some become self-educated; some sabotage the curriculum by misbehaving." (Shor 14).

 

Emily agrees with Shor on how the role of the syllabus does not work well for all students, and that students do indeed learn at a different pace. She also acknowledges what Shor says that it is up to the students in deciding to the extent that they will follow the syllabus, and sometimes the end results become to overwhelming and students will drop out of the class, or become home schooled. My experience with this pretty much hits the hammer on the head for me. Reason being is because looking at a syllabus for any class is very nerve wrecking, maybe not for all students, but for the first day of classes looking at the syllabus i want to freak out. Freak out because school is not my thing, i have to work over time just for the grades i get, and knowing that i have to work twice as hard as some students makes me feel overwhelmed, sometimes during mid course of the semesters, sometimes i just want to give up, and call it quits. I never manage to do it because so far i never failed any classes in my college career and the family structure or " the culture" i grew up in wont allow me to give up. 

 

"To be democratic implies orienting subject matter to student culture - their interests, needs, speech, and perceptions - while creating a negotiable openness in class where the students' input jointly creates the learning process." (Shor 16).

 

I completely agree with Emily and Shor with saying that the students are the ones who should be making the classroom a learning space along side the teacher. This quote means a lot to me, because of this class i look at school in a whole different perspective. This class gave me the knowledge to look at a situation and see how it really is, like "wow that is a delpit moment". I would never be able to do that if our classroom wasnt structured the way it is. Not only does the class control the conversations because of Dr. Bogad the class has a openness where our inputs are actually considered instead of other classrooms and professors saying "no that is not correct". We as a class are democrats in the class because we might not be reading our interests, but we talk in big discussion as a class like it is, and our conversations help us learn on what is going on instead of reading a 15 page article then taking a 120 question exam to "see" if we understand what was written. This quote i take deeply into consideration, because i can now say i have somewhat of a structure in mind on how i will get my future students engaged and willing to learn, just as i have. Hopefully.

 

 

"In the first session of an introduction to journalism class, to encourage immediate participation and questioning I routinely ask students to define what "news" means to them and to write down questions they have about the news. Their definitions and questions launch our class discussion, not a lecture by me." (Shor 28).

 

Again this quote reminds me of how this class is ran. From the first day Dr. Bogad tolds us as a class dead up, that each of us will have to talk at least once each class in order to gain participation points. This may have had some students, or maybe all students a little bit nervous because no one knew each other. Also Dr. Bogad makes us in every assignment to define what the experience was like for us, not to define definitions but, on how we took the experience and compare and contrast it to the past readings that we had in class, and then that what we wrote in our blogs from the readings will be the topic of discussion. If a student does not understand a article that was assigned, we can always look back at what other students of the class wrote to help us better understand what was said and done, because it is sometimes easier to learn from peers rather than experts.

 

 

 

Well, Dr. Bogad you pretty much hit the head on every point. Well done.