Dear Dialog,
I was probably one of
a few who signed up at my conference to receive 500-level graduate credit for
attending the conference. Now just because I attended the conference, doesn't mean
that I got the credit that easily...
Just like I tell my
students... "Having your butt in a seat does not earn you a grade, the
work that you do, does."
The same applies to
me here. I have four assignments I have to complete by November 3rd with an 85%
or better on all four assignments to receive a passing grade. This is only for
one quarter credit too!
I completed and
submitted my first assignment last night. My assignment was to state what each
of my workshops were about and what I learned from each.
The
first workshop I attended was called "Empowering Students Through
Action Research and Storytelling to Transform Classroom Culture" This
particular workshop, I was not fond of. In this workshop, I felt, based on the
description, that we were to learn about how to Action Research and Story
Telling in our classrooms and how that would change the dynamics of a teacher
oriented classroom to a student orientated classroom. I felt like the
presenter was not prepared and used this workshop to get feedback towards her
Master’s thesis rather than how to use Action Research and Storytelling within
the classroom.
The second workshop I
attended was called "Contemporary Issues that Inspire Historical
Fiction".
I
found this workshop to be very informational. This workshop demonstrated how to
turn characters in real life stories, whom you may not have any information
about, and create a back story to them. In this particular session, we read the
transcripts of an NPR session about tomato farmers in Florida. This story dealt
with illegal immigrants and the hardships that they face on the fields.
The
assignment for this workshop included first writing a short story about an
experience you had with a tomato. The leaders of the workshop then played for
us the transcript from the NPR session. After that, we discussed the audio clip
and had the assignment to write a story about one of the characters involved in
the clip. For my assignment, I wrote about a young girl named Esmeralda who was
taken by a coyote and forced to become a domestic servant for a local family in
Florida.
The third
workshop I attended was called “Minds
Matter: Case Studies in College Counseling for Low-Income and Underrepresented
Students”. In this workshop, I learned about the Minds Matter Program and how
it has been an asset to low income and underrepresented students in the
Portland Area. In this class, I learned several different methods in how to
help students identify what they want to study and where they might want to go
in college. I was also given information regarding different schools who specifically
gear programs towards first generation and low income students. Schools like
that of Western Oregon University or Southern Oregon University.
Some of the questions I learned to ask
are:
- What are areas you might want to study?
- Do you want to be in state or out of
state for college?
- What are your study habits like?
- What are some strengths and areas that
might need to be improved upon?
- What is the cultural diversity you are
comfortable with?
- What
is the educational background of your parents?
- Are you willing to talk about family
struggles in college essays?
- Reveal single parent, homelessness, teen
parents, talk about school struggles, jobs while working and going to school?
- Should we look at no-loan schools?
While there are
always going to be pros and cons about any conference and any workshops that
you attend, there is always a learning experience. I feel that I learned a lot in
this conference and I am glad that I went. I hope to attend this conference next
year.
