August 2020

#1000BlackGirlBooks

Rebecca

The struggles that I have had to overcome due to my identity are nowhere near what other people have had to go through. For this reason, I always do my best to support and help those that are going through other struggles.  

In my memories of school, I can remember teachers and other male students looking down on myself and other successful female students. Teachers wouldn’t include us in group discussions that related to anything masculine because we didn’t know enough about it. Sometimes classmates, both male and female would try to discredit any achievements with outrageous accusations and put us down. In Kimmy’s Twitter thread, she writes about having a realization that her culture is powerful and a part of who she is. After watching Angela Duckworth’s TED Talk about grit, I was inspired to use the pessimism towards myself and other female students as drive to get to my end goal. For the first time in my school’s history, the Valedictorian, Salutatorian, and #3 in the grade were all girls and 6 of the top ten students were girls.  

Reading Journal for Elbow

Rebecca

 

Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page   

This is an article in an online database that can be accessed by anyone.
 

Elbow, Peter. “Inviting the Mother Tongue: Beyond ‘Mistakes’, ‘Bad English’, and ‘Wrong Language’.” JAC Online, https://www.jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol19.3/elbow-inviting.pdf. Accessed 24 August 2020. 

 

 
Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words  When I first read this article, I was reminded of teachers and students from my hometown. My high school was a majority minority school, meaning POC outnumbered non-POC by about 65% to 35%. Even in this environment, teachers were still close minded to other “mother tongues” and dialects. Elbow brings about points that no one’s mother tongue is the perfect SWE, which means no one can criticize or belittle another for having a different dialect from their own. A person’s mother tongue is powerful and integral to who they are as a person. Sadly, the attack on this diversity isn’t a new problem, it has existed for as long as language has been around. 

  
Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author. 

 

  “Full attention to speaking and rhetoric is not possible unless we can make the classroom a place that is safe for all forms of language considered wrong.” Elbow’s words here really stumped me. The culture of the world is so self-centered that any forms of diversity in dialect are just cast aside as “inferior”. The concept of throwing away the divide between these mother languages and celebrating what makes them unique is beautiful. The stigma that ESL speakers have would no longer distract from their education, and more people could really see how special it is. 
How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research? 

  

  I have done some light reading about social media culture in the past few months. Since the technology boom in the last 20 years, a new dialect has grown exponentially. From new slang to emoji’s to understood “trends”, social media lingo is its own language now. Young people can speak in a way off the screen that will confuse anyone who doesn’t stay caught up. This new dialect is far from the SWE and it is creating a rift between the students who are “superior” (having the closest mother tongue to SWE) and SWE. 
Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion.   How will the growth of technology and social media dialect affect younger student’s mother tongue in years to come? Will there be a day that all students have learn SWE as a “second language”? 

“Letter to My #Selfie”

Rebecca

My writing reflects a lot about my personality. I tend to be a perfectionist and my rough drafts upon rough drafts really show that. I wish that I was able to be a more confident writer the first go around, but it will take some practice and patience. My biggest writing strength is my drive to do more and do better. I don’t stop because I have hit the word count, I keep on writing and revising until I feel like my writing is the best it can be. I want to be a more confident writer this semester though. My biggest strength tends to be my Achilles Heel at the same time. I never feel sure that the first thing I write is correct. I hope that the class makes me a better writer the first go around as well as more confident in my own abilities. I am looking forward to all that I will learn from both my peers and my professor in this class, and how to apply that to all my other work as a student.

FASTrack/Writ 101 Round Table

Rebecca

The podcast had a lot of good advice that I definitely plan to take advantage of throughout this semester and ones to come. The first piece of advice that I really plan to use is managing my time. I haven’t always been the best about time management and much like Christian, I am a procrastinator. The other advice I found very helpful was making sure to do the daily work well and put effort into them because they will help you write your papers in the future. I’ve used this system in other classes before, but I plan to use this tidbit even more this semester. The podcast was overall very informative and made me feel a little more at ease about this class.

I am excited to be taking this class to develop my writing more. I am most looking forward to the structure of this class. Reading the syllabus really made me feel at ease about staying on top of work and overall succeeding in the class. I am least excited about having to learn to navigate a new online system. The community college I did dual enrollment through had a simpler website and I am having to figure out how to navigate and work Blackboard and this blog. So overall, I am feeling pretty optimistic about the course so far.

If I were able to give to give advice to a senior in high school, I would tell them to not let expectations from others influence any of the future plans they are about to make. It is something I wish I had been able to hear a year ago. Letting someone’s idea of you is not how you want to base the next chapter of your life. If you learn to let those opinions go, you won’t feel as overwhelmed with the decisions you are faced with.