When I look back at teachers and classrooms that I felt the most connected to, there are a few charateristics that they shared. The intructor/teacher: never stood behind a desk or a podium, the desks were almost never in perfect rows, and student did more talking than the teachers. I was very sure that I wanted to be the kind of instructor that had no barrriers. I struggled at first to find the balance of being a part of the learning environment and being the person assigning grades, but I seem to be more ocmfortable with the balance each semester. I once had a review at another school and the report said, egaged, passionate instructor, but she should not wear converse because her students will not respect her position and they will think she is a student. I was thrilled.
An example of a community based assignmnet we use is the sharing of resources. When we work on a common theme or share a video and then discuss it together, I ask students to post a source on out blog. Currently our 100 class is reading a memoir and I ask that each group post a discussion to the blog with a theme that stands out to them in the assigned pages. Additinally, they are asked to loceate an outside source that might be helpful in supporting the assertions they make, By the time we are finished with the memoir, our blog has dozens of posts with discssions, responses, possible outside sources, and really in depth conversations. Warnock discusses this when he asserts, ” He would warm up with easy questions, building our confidence and creatiing a classroom energy before delving into the difficult issues that were the objective of the class lesson” (31). I have not used this in my online classes, but I have employed it successfully in my hybrid classes because we can then discuss the results in a face to face group setting. I am fearful of trying this in my fully online classes, and even Warnock discusses concerns, “Truth be told, group assignments in fully online classes can go aery” (33) The sharing of the information with low or nostakes assignments seems to be working well. What I am eager to learn is how to help my students find “Their People” (What I say in class when they have each other’s back during prep and research). Below is an example of a group that decided to write about police brutality.
Police Brutality
Title One: Police shot and killed an unarmed black man in his own backyard. All he was holding was a cellphone.
P.R. Lockhart
This particularly website will help us learn about the past cases where African Americans had been wrongly accused and then had been violated by white Policeman. This one case is one of many, and it help to shed light on multiple cases where African Americans were wrongly shot or wrongly accused to be holding “weapons” and after, most were wrongly handled by white police officers.
Title Two: The Root// All Black People Are Victims of Police Brutality
Michael Harriot
This newspaper is very useful because this news’ article lets readers know that African Americans are the almost always the only ones affected when a case of police brutality is involved. Where does one see white people wrongly Affected by Police brutality? You don’t. One only sees on the news how many African Americans did something wrong, even if they were innocent. They wanna make it look like African Americans did do something, to mask over what was really done. They have put a bad name on them because of the past. There doings back then are not what it is now. Police should not carry those past details and past situations on to the future. Police should have an equal thinking about everyone.