During the first meeting with Bill I remember he said “you’re very timid with your book.” At first I didn’t understand what he meant, then he brought up the point that the book was MY book. Then he marked it up a little, wrote a few things and highlighted the readings for me. From then on I constantly annotated in my book. It has been very helpful in keeping my thoughts situated and helping me remember what a particular phrase, paragraph or sentence means.
My engagement in class has definitely gotten better. I think the first day we were all pretty quiet for the most part. But after I became comfortable with my fellow scholars through Bills’ exercises I became more engaged with our discourse community. Now we have conversations daily and don’t think twice about expressing our opinions. I hope more instructors can do similar exercises to make their scholars more comfortable in their learning environment and discourse community.
It was a little harder for me to stay focused when reading some of the articles, probably because I was in the comfort of my home and was easily distracted. I wasn’t able to finish all the readings but I tried to keep up as much as I could. This is my first time taking summer sessions, and boy, it is intense with two classes and a job.
Toward the end of this session I’ve been late to class several times, I guess I just feel I need my coffee every morning even if it makes me late.=p I’m usually very good with staying on top of things and getting my work done on time, but I posted my blogs late yesterday and I didn’t reach the goal of four posts on Friday.