Final Reflection

Dominica Beverley

Megan Keaton

ENGL 1103

29 April 2013                                                                                     Final Reflection

            Throughout the course of this semester, my writing skills and abilities have taken a journey that has changed my writing and my identity as a writer.  In the beginning, I was so stuck in the traditional way of writing: introduction, body, and conclusion. In Megan’s English class, she taught me ways and processes through writing assignments that showed me how to get out of that traditional sense of writing. The first part of the journey started with the Writing History Response. The writing history response gave me a basis to figure out where I was strong and weak in my writing. Even in writing the history response I still was stuck in the traditional writing structure that I learned in high school. A way to help with my writing history response was with my Writing Timeline and Schooling Trajectory. There were so many influences to my writing that had an impact on the way I write. I feel like most of the English teachers I encountered impact my writing in some way. They all raised my level of thinking in some way. In elementary school up until high school, I did a lot of free writing during my leisure which did not require any structure. So when I got to school and I had to write during class and I struggled with getting what I had to say from my head to paper all within a certain structure. 

            Some things that gave me more critique and feedback on my writing was the workshops and the comments from my inquiry groups and Megan. Reading these responses gave me insight on what I needed to change or expand on. For my Exploratory Essay Reflection, Annotated Bibliography Reflection, and Joining the Conversation Reflection, I received all types of feedback that really helped me improve those papers so that not only I could write a great paper but so that my way of thinking could change for future papers and essays to come.

Meanwhile, on the journey to find my identity as a writer, I have come across assignments that let my mind wonder and just ask questions. The Exploratory Essay let me write about things I was curious about to include in my inquiry process while displaying the synthesis of themes between the other pieces that we were discussing in class. I noticed that with Step One, I was still stick in the 3-part paper structure from middle and high school. I had an introduction, a big body paragraph and a conclusion. Megan and my group pointed out things that needed to be fixed like actually trying to get the reader to see the different points of view with the readings and articles I was synthesizing in my essay. After incorporating their feedback into my paper, I saw that my writing changed and I was starting to break up my thoughts into more paragraphs instead of one big body paragraph.

Seeing the different stories and watching the different videos in class about education made me wonder about music in education. Especially with the Writing Into the Day entries, I was really interested in the dynamics of school and its purpose in a student’s life. As a student, I know about some of these discrepancies that arise when discussing the topic of school and education. The Research Proposal let Megan and others know what I was going to inquire about. This took my writing to another level. Since the proposal was in the form of a letter, it helped me practice of a different form of writing while still trying to get my point across to my audience. Once I had my inquiry topic in place, I had to actually research the subject. I learned how to use the library’s online catalog system and I found scholarly articles to help me answer or even begin to answer my inquiry process. Once I found these sources, explaining why I needed them or how it was going to help me in my inquiry paper, was when I found out about an Annotated Bibliography. Before this class, I always heard about citing sources and bibliographies but an annotated bibliography really opened my eyes as a writer, especially if you are writing based off of research.

Once I started to inch away from the traditional sense of writing, my analysis started to decrease or needed more work. In my first draft of my Annotated Bibliography, I was summarizing the articles when I was supposed to analyze the text. I had such a hard time but in order to get some type of analysis of the author’s point of view, I had to really think critically about the author was trying to get me to understand while figuring out if what the author is saying makes any sense to me and my inquiry.

Continuing the journey, we did a fun but challenging assignment which was the Joining the Conversation piece. This allowed me to really step into the minds of the sources and the authors and make them talk to each other. This was another form of writing that I was not familiar with, but I just took it as another chance for me to go crazy creative. The second step to the assignment was to turn the dialogue into a paper. I found this exercise to be quite difficult, so I found that using my annotated bibliography gave me the most support when trying to write a paper. I think this was the one assignment where I did incredibly well on the structure and the points that I wanted to make. I tried something different with my writing where I use subheadings not only to break up my paper but to sequence the topics I touched on my paper. After getting comments from Megan and my group, I feel like I just wrote the most detailed paper and informing paper in my school career.

Writing Into the Day

January 16

Make a list of the characteristics of school. What do people do there? Who is there? What is purpose of school? What does “success” look like in school?

• Learn about different subjects
• sports/recreational play (gym, dance, art)
• Eat lunch
• teachers teach subjects of interest
• teachers
• studnets
• faculty
• purpose to educate student
• help them further their education
• help students develop their personal skills to prepare them for life after school
• success in school is doing your best and achieving good grades
• bettering yourself as a person

Exploratory Essay Final Draft

Exploratory Essay Final Draft

Annotated Bibliography Final Draft

Annotated Bibliography (Sources 1-5) Final Draft

Writing History Response Final Draft

Writing History Response

Joining the Conversation Step #3 Final Draft

Joining the Conversation Step #3 Final Draft

Joining the Conversation Step #3

Dominica Beverley

Megan Keaton

ENGL 1103

15 April 2013                                                                                                 Academic Essay

            As we go about our daily lives, we hear music all around us. Especially in the urban youth, music is a big part of their lives. It can motivate them, give them an emotional release, or even distract them from completing some tasks. Here is one thing I do wonder about, how does it affect them in school? Research shows that music has a significant effect on students in which the psychological processes in their brain can manipulate mood and when moods change, the actions of the person changes. Different types and styles of music contribute to this as well.

Music on My Mind

            As students, we have something that helps us focus and concentrate on completing tasks, for some students music is their motivator. Veda Brown says that, “Adolescents’ attitudes about school, material success, appreciation of themselves and others seem to be shaped to a large extent by the music they listen to” (49). She suggests that the types of music that kids listen to adjust their attitudes or plays a role in the way they behave. It is almost as if the music influences the decisions that students make in school. Similarily, Sharon Lee claims that even if we don’t voluntarily choose the music, the surrounding music has some effect on our mood and behavior as well. She also states, “Also are important are the effects of the music we do not choose, but are subjected through our environment choices such as restaurants and stores” (1). This is just like when you enter a shopping center or an elevator and you hear music playing over the loudspeaker or intercom system. The music they play is supposed to put you in a state that is comfortable to shop in. On the elevator, the ride up and down can get awkward especially if you are on the elevator with people you don’t know. The music can manipulate your mood so that the ride is easygoing. Brown says it may be the music that students choose that affects their behavior and Lee says that music affects students no matter where it comes from. Lee asks the question, “Can it [music] help students study more effectively, or does it distract from the completion of homework?” (2). She didn’t answer the question but I am trying to find that out as well. As far as I know, the answer could go either way depending on what type of student it is.

Different Types of Students

Different types of students are dispersed throughout the learning community. Every student learns differently and the aids that they use are different as well. Some students need complete silence to work or to focus while others need a snazzy beat in the background to keep them motivated while completing assignments. In the urban youth, students aren’t performing as well as the majority students (white students) and so they may need some extra help or an extra push to get them going. The Regional Education Laboratory, who has studied stereotypes about African American students, claims that, “In a society where economic opportunity depends heavily on scholastic success, even a partial narrowing of the achievement gap would lead to a positive change in the lives of academically at-risk children” (1). Since African American students or black students already have a hard time in school with stereotypes labeling them as failures, these students need some support to help them overcome this issue. Some of them do it by incorporating music in their study habits. Sharon Lee tells the reader about an article from 1991 written by Martha Giles and Giles said “Intervention programs for children at risk could use music to help them relax, build their self-esteem, and help them with their emotional problems” (3). Music not only can help students focus but it can act as an emotional release when the weight of school is overbearing. I know that when I get stressed out about something at school, the first thing I do is plug in my headphones and de-stress with some music. Most of the time I listen to songs that reflect my mood or songs that have a soothing beat.

Music in the Schools

            If music helps students perform better outside of school, why not bring music inside the schools and integrate it into the curriculum? Margaret Hagood, along with other authors, discusses the thought of including music in the teaching instruction. They suggest that it would give the teachers an edge if they include pop culture in their instruction and it would have the students more interested since the music already appeals to them. She states, “They [21^st century texts] also include pop culture texts, which are mass-generated print and non-print texts (e.g., comics, anime, TV shows, movies, videos, young adult books, music lyrics) that use multiple modes (e.g., linguistic, visual, aural, performative) to entice audiences to use them” (2). By incorporating music and other forms of pop culture into the instruction, both teachers and students will be satisfied. Teachers will gain student attention and comprehension and the students will be engaged because they have something that is interesting to them to make learning a little bit easier because the music appeals to the different learning types. Marc Hill agrees with this notion of including pop culture and music into the classroom. He says, “Given the salience of hip-hop culture in the lives of many American youth, the educational community has begun to pay considerable attention to the pedagogical possibilities of hip-hop culture within formal schooling contexts” (2). He explains of scholars who have made a course titled “Hip Hop Lit” which is a course in which you study different aspects of hip hop and listen to songs and analyze them. These scholars understand and have “shown how the elements of hip-hop and other forms of popular culture—rap music, turntablism, break dancing, graffiti culture, fashion, and language—can be used within classrooms to improve students’ motivation, teach critical media literacy, foster critical consciousness, and transmit disciplinary knowledge” (2). In my English Literature and Composition class, my teacher Ms. Woods used music in her instruction to familiarize us with analyzing text to find the author’s point of view. We were focusing on the theme of the American Dream and she used the song “Made It In America” by Jay-Z and Kanye West ft. Frank Ocean. This made the class interested in learning especially because we had to do an assignment on a popular song. However, not all teachers think that music or pop culture incorporated into the curriculum and teacher instruction is a good idea.

It’s a Distraction

As it was stated in the previous paragraphs, not everybody can think of music as an asset when it comes to school or schoolwork. With students who are struggling, especially black students, may be emotionally distraught and use music as a release. It can, in turn, cause them to act out of character. For example if a song’s lyric has violence and an angry tone, it may cause the student to act in such a way. Veda Brown states, “Children who lack pro-social skills associated with stable emotional intelligence tend to be easily influenced by various environmental factors such as peers and media. Some adults believe that this emotional weakness in children may leave them vulnerable to ideas of violence, sexual promiscuity, and other forms of anti-social behavior that are often portrayed in some popular hip-hop songs and videos” (51).Some students give into peer pressure and wind up being susceptible to the acts of violence and sexual promiscuity which is prevalent in urban communities today. The adolescents are the main targets of music, videos, and other forms of pop culture; they appeal to them the most. Society has placed negative views on Black children and students and that is why it is hard for them to focus in school. These students are worried about failing and living up to that stereotype. The Regional Education Laboratory claims, “stereotype threat arises from a fear among members of group of reinforcing negative stereotypes about the intellectual ability of the group” (1). From a teacher’s and a parent’s standpoint, they oppose music only if it is negatively impacting their child. Brown writes, “Well meaning adults have often complained that the popular music of today seems to have a detrimental effect on children’s thought and subsequent behavioral patterns. Particularly, many adults believe that the lyrics of some celebrated musical artists such as Fifty-Cent, Nelly, Foxy Brown, Marilyn Manson, Lil’ Kim, and Eminem have often undercut the very attributes, skills, and values of emotional intelligence that form the basis for pro-social behavior” (51). I know of a song by Soulja Boy called “Throw Some D’s”. I can understand why a responsible adult figure would be very cautious of what their child/student listens to. In his song, he says, “I always be in school, but I be walkin’ halls/A lot of teachers give me test but they be super hard/I get into some trouble, then my mama calls/But after I get out the office I’ma tell ’em all dat/I’ma superstar and that’s best/ Every time you see me up in class, my head on that desk” (MetroLyrics.com). If I was a parent, I wouldn’t want my child or my student listening to someone who is promoting bad gestures in school. Since children listen to this artist and idolize him, they might be tempted to act like him, which causes a problem for everybody. In the song, he also uses bad grammar, “I always be in school, but I be walkin’ halls” (MetroLyrics.com). Parents send their children to school to get an education and when they go home everything they have learned is being erased when they listen to music like this. Most students don’t even listen to the lyrics of a song; all they hear is the beat. Once the words get embedded in their minds, it’s like mind control. They don’t even know what they are saying, let alone know what the lyrics mean. Music can be a benefit and a fault, but it all depends who you listen to and what message they are sending to the listener.

Works Cited

Lee, Sharon. “The Effects Of Music On Student Psychology.” Online Submission (2011): ERIC Web. 24 Mar. 2013.

(ED) Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, et al. "Reducing Stereotype Threat In Classrooms: A Review Of Social-Psychological Intervention Studies On Improving The Achievement Of Black Students. Issues & Answers. REL 2009-076." Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast (2009): ERIC. Web. 24 Mar. 2013.

Brown, Veda. "Guiding The Influence Of Hip-Hop Music On Middle-School Students' Feelings, Thinking, And Behaving." Negro Educational Review, The 57.1-2 (2006): 49-68. ERIC. Web. 25 Mar. 2013.

Hagood, Margaret C, Donna E. Alvermann, and Alison Heron-Hruby. Bring It to Class: Unpacking Pop Culture in Literacy Learning. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. Print.

Hill, Marc L. Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity. New York: Teachers College Press, 2009. Print.