Napping, listlessly staring out the window, and making polite conversation is standard fare for long bus rides. With that expectation in mind, the bus ride was not the place I expected to find my best friend. I suppose it is inaccurate to classify this particular incident as a completely unexpected encounter, as it rather is more like, in the words of Mary Louise Pratt, we were placed in a preconceived “contact zone”. Our encounter was hardly random as we were both there for a summer program, taking the bus with the other fifty-something participants. The parameters of the contact zone had been set before we had even arrived, by the facilitators who selected the applications and created the program. It was a community of people all in the same place, for similar reasons.

New Reflection

The classroom is a community that all of the members of it cannot avoid being included, especially in the young ages. If you want to stay in a safe position in the community that you cannot avoid participating in, you have to adapt yourself there. However, at the same time, unless you try to change the situation, nothing could be better or improved.

Sasha Moiseyev-Foster

Changing Our Story: Shifting Identities, Changing Environments

Professor J. Cohen

October 2, 2015

Laugh Until You Cry: The Use of Play as Stress Management in Children

Alison
ESem Paper #5
October 2, 2015

Different Background and Slippage

 “Dear guests it says under the name “Olive,” I will be your maid for the day. Please rate me: Excellent. Good. Average.  Poor.  Thank you." I tuck this memento from the Sheraton British Colonial into my notebook. How would "Olive" rate me? What would it mean for us to seem "good" to each other? What would that rating require?”

Elena Luedy

Professor Cohen

E-Sem

9/25/15

Our Own Jungle

            In my high school classrooms, most students attempted to “meet, clash, and grapple with each other,” (Pratt 34) as described in “Arts of Contact Zone” by Mary Louise Pratt, with their intellectual ping-pong, bouncing ideas back and forth. For example, my last English class before graduating was built around connecting original fairy tales to modern ideas about gender roles and social expectations. Some students were self-educated about the complexities of these topics while others were not and their opinions clashed during those discussions. Sometimes, as the discussions became heated, students would slip and unintentionally say things that would be inconsiderate of others’ beliefs.

Theorizing play

-The difference between children and adults -

October 2^nd, 2015

            Play. At first glance, play is a seemingly silly topic to be talking about in a serious college course. It certainly seemed that way when my Emily Balch Seminar (ESem) class first transitioned to that topic. Coming out of what I considered ‘serious’ college topics, the idea of studying play certainly came as a shock. But after reading the assigned articles and beginning to discuss them in class I began to see what makes play so important.