Having Our Say Reflection

The aim of this essay is to highlight the importance of reflection. Initially by breaking down individual skills including curriculum vitae (CV) writing, book and journal evaluation and self-evaluation through sources such as the initial skills identification tasks and evaluation workbook (InSITE).

Throughout my first semester at the University of Portland, the quality of my writing progressively increased. My English 112 class contained many different activities that contributed to helping me become a better writer. Informal writing assignments, class discussions, peer review sessions and the writing center were just some of the resources available to me that helped progress not only my writing ability but my overall reading & writing analysis skills as well. Not only did I make new relationships with my peers, these relationships also helped me understand the content more thoroughly, work out any problems that I had with my ideas, and encourage me to be more social among my fellow classmates as well. Nearing the end of this

When I first started elementary school I was horrible at writing and speaking English, despite English being my first and only fluent language. I started every sentence with "also" and I could hardly say my name. I generally looked at my mom to say pronounce it for me. To be fair, though, Xzavior is a hard name for someone in Kindergarten to pronounce. I was so bad that the school had to put me in an extra English class, so that I did not fall too far behind. Sadly, I did not improve quickly and created a horrible(and hilarious) sentence stating my improvement by first grade (figure 3). Luckily, by fourth grade I had improved enough to only take the required English course for my grade. However, "artistic" writing has never been my forte

After revision and revision I perfected my think aloud lesson plan and was very confident going into this lesson and was very pleased with the outcome! I feel as though the students learned from my lesson in many ways. I know they learned from this lesson because they were using sentences with the new words they learned about. They also were telling other friends who did not get to participate in the activity about frogs and the facts they learned! It was awesome!

After working on the "They say I say" project and thinking back on it I would give myself a basic on almost all accounts. The presentations my group and I gave was awful and obviously unpracticed. The PowerPoint wasn't even finished and it was obvious my group and I didn't fully understand chapter 6"Skeptics may object" or any of the other chapters. The only good thing my group and I even did decently was referencing the other chapters prior to chapter 6"Skeptics may object"and providing an example for chapter 6. Looking back on it now, I accept the grade I got and the grade I have now because simply put I deserve it. I know I could've done better if I had put more time and effort into my presentation and PowerPoint and that if I want to pass

The Community Meeting, I attended was at First Baptist Church in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The purpose of this meeting was to inform residents of the community changes that the councilman wants to make in the area. The members of the church wanted to address some of the issues in the community and the positives of the community such as the organizations that are working to help the community. Three of the main issues spoken upon at the meeting was Crime, Affordable housing, and Health care services. The members at this meeting were members of the church and the community, nonmembers were in attendance as well. Ages varied at the meeting from about 12-75. Most of the members in the meeting were on some type of government assistance, low-middle income class families. The meeting consisted of male and female members. One of the topics were affordable housing. The community believes they need more low income housing apartments for seniors, individuals and families that are working minimum wage jobs. There are 12 homeless shelters and rooms are being occupied for rent in three of the neighborhood hotels by homeless individuals. The residents in these shelters are victims of domestic violence, substance abuse, eviction, and unsafe conditions in their apartments. They want to eliminate some of the homeless shelters in the community and put residents in some permanent housing programs such as LINC and CITYFEPS are needed for assistance. Homeless prevention programs are needed to assist

All professionals will find that reflecting on the way they carry out their work can help them improve the quality of their skills. This is even more important in work involving a continual increase in understanding, such as fields with ongoing research like osteopathy. (“Ncor” 2017) Reflecting has become a necessary skill for those in healthcare who want to provide the highest level of care they can for their patients. It has been proposed that reflection is a more meaningful method of learning than formal teaching. (Jasper 2003) This essay will question that statement; briefly describe how to reflect and will contrast the benefits and drawbacks.

Reflection is considered as a vital element of professional practice as it precedes to insight and then subsequent change in practice. The hypothesis of reflection is not new as it can be tracked as far back in the 5th century by the influential Greek philosopher, Socrates and to the 1930s primarily focusing on John Dewey’s work. Dewey is one of the founders of learning from experience. He theorised reflection as ‘active, persistent and careful consideration’ (Dewey, 1933) initiated by a specific situation which was opposing, perplexing or uncertain. One of its most common use today is coming up with a thought, an idea, or opinion made or an observation made as a result of concentration, suggesting in essence a way of thinking in which one looks back and meditate upon (Agnes, 2004).

“I’m sorry, Molly, but I can’t understand you”, “Can you repeat that for me? “I’m sorry, what?” “It's not _______ it’s ________”. These were the responses that I heard most often while I was learning to speak. When I was younger, I had a hard time communicating. No one could understand what I was saying and I was told that I frequently sounded like I was in a tunnel. These responses were very frustrating as I was learning to speak. I knew what I was trying to say and I was baffled why other people could not understand. My parents were actively trying to find a solution to help me speak more clearly. When my preschool recommended to my parents that I should do speech through Minnetonka schools, my parents decided that I should give it a try.

Finding a documentary that truly encapsulates the purpose of living, the essence of hope, and the journey of a man towards empathy is difficult to find; however, The Human Experience depicted the aforementioned points and more. Thus, I was immensely delighted while watching the film. The Human Experience greatly emphasized hope and the real meaning of being a human. Each experience manifested in the movie significantly moved me — it made me ponder and reflect on people’s lives and experiences. Through this reflection, I came to realize that despite the adversities and maladies an individual face, hope and the desire to succeed and to savor one’s life still triumph despair.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live in the shoes of someone who’s autistic or has extreme social anxiety? Either of these things can make functioning in society very difficult, but not impossible. At least that’s what I believe, some people disagree with that. The author seems to believe that is impossible to function in society if either of these things affect you. It is possible to function in society, it just takes a lot of patience and practice.

What type of feedback did you get, and how did you revise in response? The feedback that I received was to make my sentences clearer, such that my transitions to new sentences were rough. I also was informed that while my information I do present is informative, it was not set up in a clear manner. Potentially confusing readers with the reason for the Center for Urban Waters to be involved in a hatchery because of the location of key facts and information in my abstract. To adjust these two issues, I completed revisions on my precious manner in two distinctive manners. First as suggested, I adjusted my lead of sentences, making clear the reason for the partnership. Additionally, after reading through the documents that were sent to me (The END FOCUS principle & The GIVEN-NEW principle) I tried to increase the level of flow. Notably by changing the positioning of phrases within my sentences. These readings reminded me of the previous readings that I have done to learn about passive voice. It gives light to need for order in a sentence. I went about taking the need for adjustment in my writing by separating my abstract into each of its independent sentences and making adjustments so that the most important/new information was near the end of the sentence. I also took the step as to after separating them out into newly formatted sentences, I made additionally adjustments to their content.

As humans, we make mistakes throughout our lives; blunders that could have been avoided at the commencement. To prevent further plausible outcomes of harming peers throughout my community, I reflect on events that occurred in my recent life. Although, I rarely cause pain toward the peers surrounding me in the community I embody, I hurt a fellow peer while giving constructive criticism on a speech he delivered, I responded with shame feeling regret wishing I should have stated the aspects of the speech he has done well, and parts of the speech that needs to be polished without going straight to the negative points.

A seminar style course aims for an active discussion amongst all of the students and ideally with minor involvement from the professor to keep things moving. As someone who has never participated in this style of class and rarely raises her hand unless participation is included in my grade, this was a struggle. If I can avoid active participation without it hurting my grade, then I’m always going to opt for that because it’s a relief. But this class helped push me towards almost enjoying these discussions. I wish it was more natural and better balanced between the students, but I’m proud that I warmed up to engaging in classroom discussions with the help of seminar. Being able to speak up in an environment where it’s both encouraged and intended to be mutual allowed me to develop more confidence and comfortability in speaking more in my other classes while pushing me to engage further with texts.

Stand and Deliver, is based in East Los Angeles High School that would not typically belong to high achieving math students. However, when Mr. Escalante starts working there, things begin to change. First off, he was supposed to teach computer science, but was told he was teaching math when he started actually working. When he first started teaching, he was faced with many obstacles. His first day in the classroom, there were more kids than there were desks. Even so, the students’ first language also created a learning barrier. Mr. Escalante asked the students who spoke Spanish move to the front of the class, and students who spoke English were asked to move to the back. Throughout the basic course, and even up through his teaching of calculus, Mr. Escalante also had to combat the students’ bad behavior. In the beginning of the movie, a student decided to try to act like a thug, and threatened Mr. Escalante if he did not run the class like he wanted, the teacher would face repercussions. When Mr. Escalante gave the student, Angel, three textbooks, Angel granted protection from the thug students. Even so, as time progresses on