Notes Towards Day 14 (Thurs, Oct. 20): Reflecting

(was it wonderful? did she convince you of the value
of a liberal arts education, esp. "wacky courses"??)

I. coursekeeping (Anne, 10 minutes)

welcome back to our (very full!) swamp

360 invitation: lunch Friday Dorothy Vernon Room 12-1:30
invitation to the English and Creative Writing Tea, next Tuesday @ 4:30;
Gender Studies next Thursday @ 4, etc. etc. etc.

entering Part III of the course, "on a classy, classical education"--
what's been going on @ BMC? what might happen here?

For next Tuesday,
read Helen Horowitz,  “A Certain Style of  ‘Quaker Lady’ Dress” and “Behold They Are Women!” Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s College From their Nineteenth-Century Beginnngs to the 1930s. New York: Knopf, 1984. 105-133  (in our password-protected file: /~adalke/esemf11/ --new full text just uploaded 1/2-hour ago!)

We will be joined by Jen Rajchel, BMC '11, now the Digital Initiatives Intern.

we'll also view a portion of The Women of Summer: The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, 1921-1938 (videorecording). Dir. Suzanne Bauman. New York: Filmakers Library, 1985. (55 mins.)

switching up the posting this weekend: by Friday @ 5,
respond to one (or more!) of the Parkway students' postings @
/exchange/courses/esem/f11/conversation

by Sunday @ 8 p.m.: 3 pp. paper due, revising assignment #5.
In doing so, consider your conversations about this paper
(w/ your prof and your writing partner) and our visit to Parkway.

so much else to talk about that we won't!
put up on our course forum on Serendip-->
* any relevant stories from break
(Anne's experiences w/ "the people's microphone," @
Meeting for Worship @ "Occupy Philadelphia")
* Karen Russell's talk
* check out pictures of ourselves--and of us @ Parkway!

II. from mid-semeser evals re: our learning together (Jody, 10 minutes)
on "thinking"--
* This Esem class teaches me to put myself in someone else's shoes. The more open-minded I am ... the less confident I feel ... I am questioning myself ... It is much harder for me now to reach an absolute conclusion.

* As a class, I have found that the opposing stances that we have held in participating in activities such as our classroom barometer has helped us formulate such ideas, forced us to take responsibility of what we think and test the credibility of the information we come across.

* In class out classed has put me on my own personal barometer. I am constantly reevaluating my opinions on the effects of class and education. This can be frustrating but, I believe it is a good thing for me because, it means I have kept an open mind throughout the class. This has in turn caused me to reconstruct my writing process.

on our classroom interactions--
* I am still learning the meaning of being in an educational "community" as opposed to just being an individual in a class....

* I have never really been in an environment where discussion is so open and productive as it is in ESEM ....This class has allowed me to improve the way I interact with people and how to create ideas from one's thoughts instead of just recieving information from a teacher.

* The dialogic nature of our class has constantly made me feel more dynamic of a learner. With every comment made in class, I've felt as though I've not only gained a new perspective and another facet to my beliefs and my opinions on certain topics, but I've also been inspired -- both to change from just sitting back and listening to the inspiring things that everyone around me is saying, to being one of those people inspiring my fellow classmates while always maintaining an open mind about other perspectives.

on your writing--
* After looking over the essays I've written and notes I've taken for this class, I've noticed that my work has become progressively more analytical. At the beginning of term, my writing mostly relied on personal narrative to convey my points, but as I've read more and begun making increasingly broad connections to outside sources, I've relied less on myself and more on my research... I often come away from class discussions and have a difficult time deciding what it is exactly I want to write about. And once I've decided, I often have trouble staying on one train of thought as so many factors can be addressed and focused on with each topic...

* the primary growth in my writing does seem to be in the personalization of my papers....however...a casual tone can lessen the authority of an academic essay.The next step in the process of fine-tuning my writing is now finding the balance between formal and personal.

on Serendip--
* I would like to see more of a conversation online.... I think our forum only really works if the majority of people engage with others and post entries other than those that are required. This is something that I think we need to work on a whole class.

* I learned how to frame my questions so it's asking a more general question that can be built on when I post my thoughts on the internet .... I think Serendip is ingenious but I still feel like some of classmates continue to be hesitant about what they post on here.

we're addressing these concerns specifically this weekend,
by asking you to post IN RESPONSE to one (or more!) of the Parkway students--
this is a dialogue we hope will be ongoing, both in person and on-line

(along w/ any independent posts you want to put up!...
can we make this a more playful, spontaneous place,
as well as a more conversational one??)

III. talking about Parkway (30 minutes)
write for a few minutes about what's on your mind now about that visit
get w/ your writing partner, then with another pair (=groups of four)
to share our reflections

and then (15 minutes in): what connections came up for you
w/ our texts in this class--Freire, Dewey, hooks, who else??

IV. writing pairs, working towards that 7th paper (20-30 minutes)
revising assignment #5, considering your conversations about this paper
(w/ your prof and your writing partner) and our visit to Parkway.