Super Blog!

I believe using blogs was convenient to a certain extent, but it also could be very stressful sometimes. Doing them helped me to stay on task with what was going on in the classroom, however getting started and connecting with blogs website was very confusing to what I and most students are probably not used to using on a daily basis. My proposal to better the online blogs would be to use a different source that is useful for one to use, discuss the assignment in class more frequently what the blogs will cover, and allow more time or fewer assignments due to the papers being turned in every other week.

            My biggest problem with blogs was how to even create it. Your instructions were accurate, but because I was unable to familiarize myself with the program, it took awhile to adjust and learn how to function the site. Even to this day, I am still unaware of the things you can do on the blogs. For example, every student I would assume has, or once had, a Facebook account. Because students are familiar with how this program works, they would feel beyond confident in turning in their assignments. For one, they most likely are on there enough hours of the day, and two; they would notice the assignment because being on there so frequently. By using Facebook, you could set up a private account that only students in your class would have access to open up their account and attempt their assignment. Because students have a better understanding for Facebook, finding their fellow students would be no problem. When you assigned our blogs and asked for our account names along with our group member’s names, I never could to this day find any of my student’s accounts because of the difficulty of looking up their names by their accounts. Facebook, however, gives a broad search to find anyone throughout the world by just the type of their name, or even first few letters of their name. I believe setting up Facebook would be the easiest route for students to feel comfortable in doing their assignments with ease.

            Not only would a different source be beneficial to you and both students, but discussing the assignments more frequently in class would help beyond what you could imagine. I feel when I know the assignment is due Wednesday night at midnight, and I have a few days to work on this, despite my other assignments, I find you explaining in class what exactly you expect from us can make a big difference. Not only would it help to remind the students about the assignment in general, but it would help to guide the students in what direction and expectations you have for the blogs. Some students, like myself, feel scared to even attempt an assignment having no assistance what so ever. Not to say you never mention the assignment, but a bit more elaboration could help me and the others who feel intimidated to try assignments on their own with little or even no guidance. My proposal to better the blog assignments would be to take at least one to two days a week, if given an assignment once a week, and to take rather ten minutes towards the end of class to discuss and remind the students about the topic, when it is due, and a brief explanation of what to expect.

            Because so many students have assignments in other classes, they feel as if fewer online assignments would possibly lighten their load of stress. Doing an English paper turned in every other week can stress me out as it is. Writing the paper makes me focus 100% on getting a good grade. Doing this helps me to forget the importance of my other tasks for passing your English class. Not that I intentionally want to skip the assignment, but having other assignments in English and other courses have me easily forget. I believe by doing fewer blogs in your class would have students stressing less to focus on other courses and writing their papers, which for the main purpose, is far more important. Doing less assignments online would allow you the help discuss what the prompt is for students to soak in the information rather than to feel obligated to just write a sloppy answer for the credit needed. By allowing students to soak in the information would allow them to focus harder on turning in a legit response to help better themselves and practice their class for future assignments whether in your class or beyond. When grading wise, if the fewer assignment situation does not work out, make the assignments worth more points making the students understand how important the assignments really are. Some would think, because there are so many assignments given, they feel they can slack off because obviously there are many prompts which must be divided into smaller individual grades rather than more points.

            Overall, the ability to better the class due to blog assignments would be to use another source to where the student is confident in using, discussing the assignment more frequently to capture the attention of most procrastinating students, and to allow fewer assignments worth more points to help make the students realize how importance and serious the grading is worth. I find these proposals easy to understand and actually realistic solutions that could help you prepare for next class assignments you present to your students next semester.

Week 13

At University of Louisiana at Lafayette, students can not schedule their classes for the upcoming semester without meeting with their advisor first. My first experience with getting advised was horrible. All I would hear in any of my classes was, “Have you been advised yet?”  Hearing this drove me insane because I was new to being advised. During summer orientation, my department advisor was able to go to each student in my group and tell every one of us to take specific classes with very few options. After going to each class for my first semester, time for advising            was soon to come. Although the only difference it seemed like with my friends and I was that they had all had received emails from their advisors explaining to them where to meet for getting advised. I, on the other hand, had to wait for an email, that never came, then I decided to finally write my advisor. Not only did I write my advisor, but I had to wait a few days to receive a four word response that read, “Meet in Moody Hall.” 

Week 12: "A Week in the Life of a Part Time Teacher"

1. a. They could possibly propose for a monthly meeting to catch up on things specifically with school. They could ask what was right and wrong to them to fix things.
     i. This request should be allowed to work around with time because it has no cost. If teacher's were there to teach, they could at least be there to have meetings.
     b. They could propose a request for a teacher who would be willingly be there only for students with problems that occur daily.
     i. This request, in my opinion, would be simple if they could find a teacher with the time at the same cost that a teacher gets paid to listen to student's problems and consider them.
2. Her problems make her have less confidence within herself which decreases her will to help people.
3. a. The students could request a counselor to be available on school days.
     i. This request should be fine if they school were able to hire a counselor and get paid a fair amount salary. The timing would be important for the counselor to be available for the students whenever needed.
     b. Another request could be student-teacher conferences once a month to allow both students and teachers to talk with one another to discuss problems and their grades.
4. The administration cut the lab's budgets.
     a. Another cause would be not being able to work enough hours in the lab.
     b. One argument an outsider can say is that the person can work hours in other labs or a library to help receive hours.
5. a. The teachers part can not request to be as "picky" due to the fact that they are the higher power within the school, therefore they should be shown as an example.
     b. I think the student's part of requesting proposals should remain the same because they are the one's paying for school. If they weren't paying for the school, then there proposals would not be considered so delicately.

Monday Nov. 7, 2011 Online Class Assignment

1.     After reviewing the information about the drafting introduction on page 3, review your own intro and decide what you can do to:

a.     more clearly show what is at stake for your issue:

-If I focus on satisfaction over dedication then you may get lazier and forget what your main goal is in your career.

b.     more thoroughly contextualize your issue with background information (this is helpful for both intro and conclusion)

-For background; gym owners trying to satisfy the customers besides themselves. I can go into more detail how gym owners attempt to satisfy themselves over customers.

c.     write a few sentences for a. and b. that you will insert into your next draft.

Being satisfied with your job leads to being too relaxed, and when your relaxed you do not want to do important tasks for your job so your business fails. For example, if a customer were angry about his/her food being undercooked, they have a right to order the employees to cook the food to their taste without the employees having a problem with them.

2.     Review your topic sentences of your body paragraphs:

a.     Whether you are doing org. plan 1 or 2, your topic sentences should contain the criteria that you are discussing in the paragraph.  (Review bottom of page 4 and all of page 5). 

b.     If you have any main topic sentences (do at least two here) that don’t contain the criteria of your definition that you are about to discuss in your paragraph, paste the old sentence, then write the revision of it that you will change in your next draft, like this:

                                               i.     OLD SENTENCE:   Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful.

                       ii. NEW SENTENCE: Some people would think that only going to work to get a paycheck does not make you successful because if you are just going for the money then you are not happy with what you are doing.

                       iii. OLD SENTENCE. If someone were to own a gym and not be content with great satisfaction of their customers, they might as well choose another career path that suits their needs.

                       iv. NEW SENTENCE: If you as an owner put your needs before a customers, then this career field is not for you because owning a gym is about other people and not yourself.

3.     Now, go through your body paragraphs and make sure that in the evidence sections of them, you are “developing” the criterion you are discussing, which means: explaining/defining each criterion for your definition.  By the end of your paper, we should be able to tell a) your definitions, b) the criteria for those definitions, and c) the definitions of those criteria. (Look at page 5, description of BP1).

a.     Find your shortest body paragraph. OLD PARAGRAPH:  This is a quick way to determine which one needs more development. Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them.

c.     Then paste in a revision of it that contains more details and explanations of the criterion under discussion. Revision:       Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation.To please the customer means to make sure there food is cooked well and done, make sure they have everything they need, and make sure they have help whenever needed. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. For example, many of the fast food restaurants horror stories that people have heard throughout the years have not killed the business.Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them.

4.     Look over one of your rebuttal areas.  If you have one (and you should; “considering the opposition” or “other viewpoints” is on the rubric) look for a way to revise it to be more developed, if you don’t have one, make one now to add into your next draft.  Review page 6 and the ways that you 1) acknowledge opposition to your argument, 2) but prove how the opposition is not strong enough to invalidate your argument.

a.     Paste in the old and new rebuttal sections:

OLD: Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them.

New: Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. However, success rates of any business goes up when customers give positive feedback. The way to get positive feedback from customers is making sure they are completely content with your service no matter how unhappy, tired, or miserable you are. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation.To please the customer means to make sure there food is cooked well and done, make sure they have everything they need, and make sure they have help whenever needed. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. For example, many of the fast food restaurants horror stories that people have heard throughout the years have not killed the business.Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them. 

b.     Or say that you hadn’t gotten around to that yet in your first draft and make one up now to include in your next draft.

prompt 10

Claim: Being satisfied with your job can help you be happy along the journey of your career.
Reason: Success means much more and allows you to be humble with yourself rather than gloating about your salaries received.
Warrant: Being experienced with your job can require street smart or book smart which will determine if you like your job because it is easier. You have to have experience with your job to have a better understanding which will result with enjoyment of your career.

prompt #7

        Robert D. King, author of "Should English Be the Law," has a purpose to his audience to compare our official language of the United States to other national countries debating on their language to unify oneself. Robert's attitude is strict and concerned with the agreement of unifying a nation by a language. His background involves writing many articles based on languages.  He is a professor at University of Texas at Austin and also has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. His purpose to his audience in academic journals is to persuade the reader that the language does not unify a nation because of their "unique otherness." His text is smaller than 12 font. Readers of the article should have an attitude to focus on his article to comprehend a better understanding of language unity. The audience's feedback will help his article and main points get across to society to comprehend his idea. His tools to make the text was a computer to print out the text. "Should English be the Law," was published in April 1997 in the "Atlantic Monthly.

"Self Respect"

1. In "On Self Respect," Joan Didion uses allusions to literature such as: Gone with the Wind, The Great Gatsby, and Wuthering Heights, to portray an image of self respect. The reason she does this is to give a better understanding to the reader of "self respect." Each allusion has an issue with self respect. She added these allusions to make the audience understand different examples of her opinion of self respect in a more complex way. The allusions are only helpful if you have had read the different works she had listed. If not, they are great sources of proof explaining that her work is legit and not just information she made up herself.

2. She lists that self respect has nothing to do with the approval of others. Most people would generally have arguments about this statement. She uses the quote, "Committing adultery without asking forgiveness to illustrate "courage of their mistakes" and "character". I think she uses this quote to demonstrate her own personal experience for people to think of it as a lesson learned of her own self respect. Maybe it could mean something else. Generally people could use many interpretations to determine what this means.

3. I believe self respect can be used in people's personal experience when writing. It would be a more complex understanding though deeper meaning to portray to the audience. Using self respect from your personal experience can be used however you want it as long as you have experience to tie with it your complex meaning of self respect.

Prompt 5

1. Who: professor
What: importance of French language to Cajun culture
When: 1604-present day
Where: University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Why: to use her knowledge to learn more about her Acadian heritage

2. Meal-Many benefits for speaking one's heritage language.
E-Examples and benefits; speaking french can help when traveling; it helped her relationship with the generation who spoke before her; also a better understanding of the culture with pride.
A- She shows an agreement from someone explaining how they love when they can speak French to their step parentes.
L- The analysis links the evidence to the main point summing up what she's talking about.

3. Reminds reader of time period of culture; Lists main points; Analysis of a quote; persuasion of saving the Cajun heritage and language; a quote saying how unique Acadian heritage is.

4. The key idea of paragraph 2 is "Not stopping at that," which states there is more to be described through the next paragraph. The 4th paragraph key is "because," which simply states her main point again leading to a new main point through the next paragraph. The 5th paragraph "It has been approximated" and "it is clear," states that she is summing up her main point leading to a new discussion later in her paper. I could not tell because she was stating an example of her traveling to France and back. As I read the beginning of the next paragraph, culture did sum up what she had said in the previous paragraph. For nearly four hundred years now, the Acadian's culture have been struggling to live the simple life that they desired..etc.

September 28, 2011 8:39 PM

Discussion Prompt 4

1. This passage applies to both women and men. The fact that women should not have the upper hand in their intelligence even from the past is just absurd. I feel as in any race or gender should have an equal chance to have an education, therefore women should have respect towards themselves to not be condescended from men.


2. When Rich says "ethical and intellectual contract," she is referring to personal boundaries in the classroom. From an ethical standpoint, teachers have boundaries and moral codes that they must stay within. The intellectual contract refers to boundaries of a teacher's ability to instruct and a student's ability to learn. Teachers must teach to the best of their ability, and beyond. Students must always learn whatever they can and then try to absorb more.

discussion prompt 3

Jonathan Landry said...

1. I normally look over a paper assignment at least 10 times before, 10 times during, and 10 times after. The reason is because I tend to blur the words out of my mind while reading it the first few times because I am usually telling myself I do not want to do this assignment. After I catch on reading, I double check myself while working on the assignment and after to make sure I have followed everything the assignment asks for. The benefit for looking over the assignment after completing it is simply to check for errors you could have possibly skipped over.


2. Considering evidence is your feedback. It is your proof to audience that you are not making up the information given to them. There is proof from sources to explain your argument. Dealing with a personal experience and beginning to explain can be one thing, but having the reader understand and believe you is another. Having legit sources can persuade a readers' mind to understand and believe you. It can also give the audience a picture in their mind to remember, for those who are visual learners.

3. The most useful information from "Academic Writing is an Analysis", is
explaining what analyzing really means. Giving this information gives a more broad explanation of what the term really means. When told to analyze something, I usually freeze and take a few minutes to interpret what the instructor has asked me to do. Reading these three things on how it should be interpreted really benefits my needs. I believe giving more information about having your essay be the result in your analysis would be very helpful. Thinking about this confuses me when reading it.

4. The similarities of section "Three Characteristics of Academic Writing" and to the rubric of assignment 1 is all the same. The section provides you with information based on what other professors from another college university believed an academic writing essay should claim. The same things are based on the rubric comparing to the article in simpler terms for the audience to read. The only difference comparing the two pieces are the wording. Although the wording is different, the expectations are precisely the same.

September 13, 2011 8:18 PM 

Discussion Question Two

1.  The values of "homemade" things are very important because they are memories that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Homemade things can be made good in the way we teach our kids to play sports. Our parents may yeah us the way they were taught, but when we get to co-league and high school they try to change many things we have been doing for many years. The coaches sometimes think that their way is the right way, no matter how good you are or even how far your habit has gotten you. No I do not think anyone else has educated themselves.

2. Malcom relates his freedom and education very close to one another. The education allowed him to have much more freedom than the other cell mates had. He was allowed to stay in the library for many hours copying the dictionary and reading books. He even says, "I wouldn't rather be anywhere other than where I am now, reading." He would hide from the guards during the late hours when he knew he was suppose to be sleeping, but his education was much more important than the freedom he knew he would lose if he got caught. Hooks quote relates a lot to how Malcom felt with freedom and education.

3. I am passionate enough to pursue studying science. My goals would be to go out and teach others everything I had learned from being locked in a cell and the only thing to do was to read about my passion. I would need to achieve how to make hypothesis, theories, explanations, and experiments. My new found literacy would help me to go out and teach others and even learn more about my passion.