Week 3
Based on what we have done so far I feel as though the classroom analysis of “The Danger of a Single Story” – Chiminanda Adichie helped me better grasp how important it is when I’m telling a story. That it be not only true but explores multiple different perspectives and ideas. In addition the peer review helped me look for errors in not only mine but other people’s works. Which could be beneficial when reading a book or article enabling me to question “why did they see it this way” or “what could they have done better”
I require further explanation on Systemic racism: individuals and interactions, institutions and society by Banaji because it felt hard for me to understand what Banaji was talking about in her first two paragraphs likely due to the fact it felt as though she was trying these words at me all at once. I felt overwhelmed when trying to understand them all. If we don’t go over this though I will have to do more research into the history in which Banaji was talking about.
Week 5
The Rhetorical Situation: “Mistakes are My Superpower”
The author being me, Mariama Jammeh, my creditability is good being that it was written about my own personal experiences. My motivation was to analyze ways I’ve made mistake and then built upon that experience and learned. In addition to how that may have changed me as a person. I reflected on this so that I could better understand myself and the things I’ve been through. The audience I was writing for was myself, my classmates, and my professor. because they would all be reading my work making sure to give them minimal information for background onto the stories without yammering on. The Genre and/or format was a written paper that was non-fiction, because it was based on my real world experiences.
I feel as thought in writing this paper it enabled me to dig deeper past my experiences and really understand how I felt in those moments in doing so I better understood where i get some of my key treats from like my stubbornness.
Week 6
In one of the articles I looked into to help my research into systemic racism in the US public school educational system. I found that it talked about how one of the ways public schools could potentially gain more funding is via increasing property taxes or homeowners in the city. However, a downside being that people won’t likely be willing to help fund schools located in poorer neighborhoods. this helped me understand how unwilling people would be the solve problems for poor/persons of color. to better understand why though I would need to do more research into the history of public schools that could be contributing to this.
Week 7
A learning component I’ve developed so far this semester in is analyzing this was done through looking at my peers work. Trying to understand their intention for writing their pieces and seeing if they points where clear. also trying to analyze works, for example when going over Chimimanda Adichie’s – The Danger of a Single Story, I have to look past what she was simply saying to look into the deeper meaning behind her speech.
Week 8
Bringing in my annotated bibliography was probably to more helpful thing gone over this week. because I was able to ask for help in citing my sources in APA format. I still semi-struggle with citing sources but being able to voice my struggles, although a little embarrassing, was really helpful. Also seeing that i wasn’t the only one struggling gave me piece of mind. Overall the whole process moved faster because of it. I do feel like I might need more help explaining the relevance of articles I find but being that the time to ask for help in class has pasted I hope to wait for office hours or asking my older sister whos been in college longer then me for some backup.
Weeks 9-10
All of the research sources I plan to use are all articles except for one which is a film. The articles all discuss current issues in educational systems, how they work, and how historically they developed. they also helped me form a clearer definition of systemic racism. Because if was having trouble understanding how it translates over to public schools. Although the film helped me visually see the impact of racism in education on students mental wellbeing and see how the students fought back against it.
Week 11
For my research essay, “Educational Disparities for Kids of Color In US Public Schools” I intended for it to be read for academic purposes. Because it’s unlikely anyone outside of the academic world at the moment will read a paper like this all the way through. The main goal of the paper was to inform the readers of issues that US public schools struggle with towards minority students. such as the lack of adequate funding, various unconscious biases and a non-diverse teaching Staff . The paper would then move towards persuading the reader to take action against the department of education, not violently but passively, through advocacy, community organizing, and policy management. In order to accomplish this I will need to make sure my arguments are clear and concise to insure that the reader doesn’t get lost a lot in reading, they can’t advocate for something they don’t understand. The format is a research paper which means I need to build a clear outline to where it’s simple to follow along from the readers point of view and my arguments must be relevant. meaning I can’t rely on outdated policies, ideas/ studies, or time periods otherwise the whole argument will be invalid.
Week 12
After continuing with my research I changed the overall structure of my paper. The first paragraph originally was about public schools lacking a diversified teaching staff. Touching on how having teachers that were of the same race or ethnicity as a student helps build their sense of belonging and more often white teachers tend to doubt the success of minority students more, crushing minority students confidence. However, the point that there aren’t enough teachers of color in schools, although there might be evidence to back that claim, I was unable to find relevant evidence for it so I made the choice to change my argument to schools lacking a diverse curriculum. Because it was simply way easier to find evidence to back that claim and I feel like it meshed better with my paper. Seeing as how it was pointed out that the claim that minority students needed minority teachers implied that there should be some type of segregation among teacher student relationships.
Week 13
In writing both my research paper and muilt-mode translation I motivated to spread awareness about systemic racism that occurs in Public schools around America. I wanted to get my reading to be passionate and informed on the issues going on within the department of education. Where my paper and MMT differ is in the intended audience. For the research paper I wanted academic or government workers to be the readers because unfortunately that was the only group of people that would sit down and read through the whole paper. In contrast I wanted for parents and students in k-12 schools to view it because of that fact it was an infographic ment it would be shortened and more palatable for people just looking for a quick read. And it was a colorful and bright graph and picture so that I would catch their eyes. I wanted for parents and students to read the section on what they could do to feel as though they had the power to fight for a better education for themselves or their children.
Week 15
Through peer reviews I learned that I need to focus on keeping my sentences clear and concise. I tend to make my sentences a bit choppy or hard to read. I think this is because I don’t reread my paragraphs or wait till the very end to go back over it which means I end up reading my sentences with tired eyes making me less likely to even realize where the mistakes are. Additionally I think another mistake of mine that contributes to my hard to understand; choppy sentences is that all throughout high school I always wrote with filler to learn to focus only on writing meaningful sentences that add some to my papers helped my composition process.
