Workshop Reflection

What advice did you receive from each member of your group? Explain each person’s advice separately and be specific.
Rachel told me to correct some grammar in the dialogue so that the flow of the play would go smoothly. She also told me to change the subject of my question to students in general because it is hard to address African Americans. She also suggested that I try to find another source to show some type of contrast or another opinion that would oppose what these authors are claiming. Brian told me that the structure and the story line of my dialogue was good. Since the tone was mostly formal, I should be consistent and not include slang unless I change the whole tone of my dialogue. He also said to make the dialogue sound like something my characters would say. He said that I go from regular conversation into factual information that doesn't flow. They both suggested that I change tryna to tryin' and to put the source's information in my own words.

What was the most helpful piece of advice you received? Explain.
The most helpful advice was to be consistent in my dialogue as far as grammar and the way the characters speak to each other (informal or formal). The dialogue would flow more smoothly if I didn't jump to a different style of speech. I am going to be informal in the dialogue then, I should keep it that way throughout the play.

What was the least helpful piece of advice you received? Explain.
The least helpful piece of advice was changing tryna to tryin'. It is not important as the content of my dialogue so it may be overlooked when proofreading or revising. I mean I can change it but I don't see how it would affect the dialogue as a whole.

What are your plans for revision? Be specific. I should be able to understand exactly how your work will change in exactly which places.
I will revise the dialogue so that the style of speech is consistent throughout the play. I will summarize the technical information to put it in my own words as if I was really having a conversation with the other people. My sources really address students in general instead of African Americans so I think that changing my focus to students will allow me to get into depth more throughout my inquiry process.

Joining the Conversation Step #1

The Sound of Music

Written by Dominica Beverley

CAST

Sharon Lee (SL)

Regional Education Laboratory (REL)

Veda Brown (VB)

Margaret, Donna, Alison (MDA)

(They are considered to be one person; as one source)

Marc Hill (MH)

Dominica Beverley (DB)

[It is a cool Friday evening; Kendrick Lamar is having a concert at the Time Warner Cable Arena. Many fans are in attendance and as “The Crew” pulls up in the parking lot, you can hear the bass from one of his songs, “Poetic Justice”, emanating from the arena.  After the concert, “The Crew” goes out to dinner then back to campus to chill.]

Sharon Lee: (kicking off her heels and sits on the couch) Whew! Kendrick Lamar did his thing out there. He puts on a great show. Don’t you guys think so?

Veda Brown: Yea girl! I just like the beats of his music. They make me wanna dance all over the place.

Margaret, Donna, Allison: I wish I could listen to this music during school or at least play it while I’m working on an assignment. I would be jammin’ but at least I would get my work done.

Regional Education Laboratory: Does that not distract you? You know that you get distracted real easily; you can see that in your grades.

MDA: No, It helps me focus actually.

Marc Hill: I agree with MDA because I feel motivated to do my work when I listen to music. It’s like I block out everything else and I focus on the task at hand.

Dominica Beverley: I understand what REL is saying but saying we get distracted when listening to music could be a stereotype. Not everybody can focus while listening to music, but everybody is different so some people may use music as a way to concentrate.

SL: Not only that, music has some type of psychological effect on people especially students like us. Music is mostly used to motivate us or to comfort or change our mood. Just think about when you are working out or cleaning up your room. You can’t have no slow songs playing while you tryna bench press. I mean, if that’s your thing then so be it, but different types of music have different effects on people.

REL: I mean majority of the students at our school are categorized as those who are lucky to have made it to college and since they made it here, they are predicted to be struggling throughout their courses. I see this as problem.

VB: I think that introducing something that they are familiar with such as music, whether it is hip hop or not, into the classroom setting, they will have some sort of motivation because they can relate to something from a cultural standpoint as African Americans and Black students. I mean it is easier to learn something if you integrate it with something you are interested in.

SL: Well how do expect these professors to integrate these concepts and materials that could potentially enhance our learning experience?

MH: I figure that scholars have gained considerable insight into the extent to which hip-hop does things to young people, but they have learned very little about the motivations, processes, or nonclinical consequences of youth engagements with hip-hop.

DB: Uhhh… English please.

MH: (takes a deep breath as if he is about to explain in layman’s terms) Well…

SL: I got this Marc. (turns to DB) What he means to say is that the professors know what effects hip hop has on the youth but they don’t quite understand how and why they have these effects on the students. Luckily, I can answer that. It all has to do with the psychological processes that music affects. Whether we know it or not, music that is played in our environment and our surroundings can have some effects on our mind. Several theories propose explanations for arousal or excitement caused by music. When applied to listening to background music, this means that any given person has an optimal level of arousal at which they will perform certain tasks most effectively, and music can help him achieve that optimal level. Meaning that, in a culture where music is constantly playing all around us, it is important for parents, students, and teachers to understand how music may help or hinder us in the completion of our tasks.

DB: I get it now, but just because they understand how it works doesn’t mean they will use it in their instruction. I wonder why.

MDA: I think it’s because some teachers don’t know how to incorporate it in the curriculum or don’t know whether it is allowed to incorporate in the curriculum. The challenge for educators is to determine how pop culture is connected to, addressed, included, and excluded in classrooms. Instruction must provide opportunities for students to think critically and to develop their facility with 21^st-century texts.

VB: Well if they could include music in the curriculum, then adolescents' attitudes about school, material success, appreciation of themselves and others will seem to be shaped to a large extent by the music they listen to.

DB: True. Well it’s about that time. I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow in class. I’ll get my dose of hip hop whether it is in class or not (laughing ).

[DB leaves the group and goes back to her room. The rest of “The Crew” starts to disperse in their own way and it’s lights out.]

Annotated Bibilography (Sources 1-5)

Works Cited

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

In this article, the author is explaining how music affects us as we go about our daily lives. Music is an important part of our culture and it can influence some of the decisions that make regarding our everyday routines, especially those of students in school. The author argues that the different types of music can cause different reactions in students whether they are good or bad. She also argues that the music can be beneficial to a student as well as distracting when trying to complete tasks. Throughout the article, Lee gives examples of studies where music is introduced in the classrooms and analyzed the results of students’ performance with music.

Sharon Lee conducts several tests and analyzes the physical, social, and psychological effects of music on students in school. She is trying to get the reader to understand the technical processes that happen within the body that allows a person, a student in this case, to act a certain way under the influence of music. Lee discusses how the psychological processes are mostly affected because of how the music manipulates their mood. And once the mood is altered then one’s actions or course of action may change. Sometimes we cannot even control the way music makes us feel or react.

. I am looking for research in which I find out whether the lyrical content as well as the beat of the music contributes to the performance of a student in school especially in African American students. I will use this source to lay the foundation of my research. I will first find out how music affects the body and the mind before I find out how it can influence a student to do something that a stereotype suggests. This article goes into detail about brain waves and arousal levels that give me a bit of background knowledge that will help me better understand how music really affects adolescents in school. The article tells me about music and psychological processes that are being affected by music especially in our culture and society today.

·       “In an 1991 article, Giles states that 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).

·       “Adolescents naturally seem to use music to monitor and manipulate mood, motivation, and task completion, but understanding the effects of music could enable them to make appropriate decision” (1).

·       “Also important are the effects of music we do not choose, but are subjected through our environment choices such as restaurants and stores” (1).

(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.

In this report, the authors discuss the threat that stereotypes have on Black students and how these stereotypes affect their intellectual ability in school. They have conducted research and have come up with strategies to reduce this threat as well as narrow the achievement gap between White and Black students. Some students feel that because a stereotype says that they perform lower than the nonminority students, they have a fear of failing and living up to that stereotype. This report is trying to fix this issue by introducing social psychological interventions to reduce stereotype threat while increasing Black students’ academic ability.

Most minority students, especially Black students are aware of the stereotypes of their culture, so in knowing that they may not be able perform to the best of their ability because they will have that pressure on them not to support that stereotype. With all this pressure on the students, it can take a toll on their performance in the classroom. The authors and researchers are conducting studies that will find ways to reduce the stress of negatively reinforced stereotypes. Since the Black racial group faces many negative stereotypes already, it is hard to not focus on those while trying to perform at the best of their ability along side of the rest of society reinforcing them as well.

I chose this report because this tells about stereotypes presented in the classroom of Black students. I need to know how these minority students are viewed before I can assess how other factors play into why they are viewed this way. There are charts and other forms of data that will help support my claim or answer my question.

·       “Stereotype threat arises from a fear among members of a group of reinforcing negative stereotypes about the intellectual ability of the group” (1).

·       “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).

·       “It was hypothesized that Black students in this condition would worry that performing poorly could confirm a stereotype about their racial group’s intellectual ability” (2).

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.

The article discusses how hip hop music affects middle-school students’ psychological being and how teachers can use the consumption of hip hop to help in the academic field as well as in the classroom. Brown talks about how adolescents follow trends introduced through music and shows how they are greatly influenced by this music. She asks questions as to why they are so easily influenced by the music industry and why they are targeted for this type of market. She goes into detail about what exactly about the music appeals to these students and what emotions or behaviors this evokes. They hope to take these same types of appeal from music and implement them in the classroom setting.

Veda Brown breaks down her research into a couple points. She wants to explore how motivational music is to the middle school students, how the music appeals to them (ie. marketing strategies), and how the teachers and parents of these students can use these strategies to make learning appealing to students. She wants to see how meaningless lyrics and catchy beats affect the students’ behavior in the way they approach subjects or scenarios and why they take to them. Most of the middle school children listen to hip hop or just music in general to evoke emotion or as a form of release to life’s problems.

This article will help me in my inquiry paper because it focuses on the mind of students and how it affects their behavior and psychological status. It also focuses on a specific group of students; I’m not sure of what ethnic group but I am assuming African American students because they mention hip hop. I am using the information found in this article to prove or to illustrate how music and the how the rhetoric in music can change or significantly affect a student in the academic field and why this happens.

·       “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).

·       “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).

·       “In contrast, 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).

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.

            This book is about how pop culture introduced in the classrooms can be beneficial to the students and the teachers who are using pop culture texts or materials in their instruction. It also discusses research that was conducted to find out how pop culture can connect to the student’s identities, social networks, belief systems, and their literacy learning. This book is serving somewhat as a guide to other teachers and those in the profession of education who want to try to get through to students as far as learning new material or connecting to the pop culture of modern day.

            From the perspective of the reader, the authors writes this book to help steer teachers, whether they are new teachers or experienced, to assess how much text is used by different types of people in different fields. The authors write from different points of view and show how the “textual” day changes for everyone. By finding out how much text is used or not used, you can then assess how the students are being influenced by other sources of information and then incorporate that in educational practices.

            I chose this book because it gives a different viewpoint other than what the students think. It shows what the teachers think and how this study can help them assess how students learn with the accompaniment of pop culture (music, social media, tv, etc).

·       “They also include pop culture texts, which are mass-generated print and nonprint 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).

·       “While some educators easily incorporate pop culture texts into instruction, others find it difficult because pop culture texts often fall outside the definition of textual practices used at school” (3).

·       “The challenge for educators is to determine how pop culture is connected to, addressed, included, and excluded in classrooms. Instruction must provide opportunities for students to think critically and to develop their facility with 21^st-century texts” (26).

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

           

            This book discusses how a hip-hop culture will enhance the curriculum and tells the results of what happens when you bring hip hop into the classroom. Teachers integrate hip hop and literature to learn about how a student learns. They are trying to find out if this type of pop culture will improve the students’ motivation, critical thinking and media literacy in schools. Also they want to know if introducing this type of music to urban youth will make learning more favorable and appealing to them.

             The author explains that in the urban youth areas, these students are around hip-hop a lot and it appeals to them. Hill wants to use take something in pop culture that appeals to the students and apply that to education to see if that will appeal to them as well. He tells about an instructor who combines the two and teaches a Hip Hop Lit course to test this notion that he has. Throughout this course, he sees the different identities that emerge from the students taking this course.

            I chose this book because it directly integrates music and the hip hop culture that African Americans are familiar with and it shows how it affects students of this race in education.

·       “Given the salience of hip-hop culture in the lives of many urban American youth, the educational community has begun to pay considerable attention to the pedagogical possibilities of hip-hop culture within formal schooling contexts” (2).

·       “In particular, scholars have shown how the elements of hip-hop and other forms of popular culture—rap music, turn-tablism, 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).

·       As a result, scholars gained considerable insight into the extent to which hip-hop “does” things to young people, yet very little was learned about the motivations, processes, or nonclinical consequences of youth engagements with hip-hop” (4).

Self Assessment Reflection

My goals were to get an answer to my inquiry question through research and finding sources to answer or support that claim. For the paper, my goal was to inform someone about the effects of stereotypes in movies and music on Black students in education in the real world. I am somewhat close to reaching my goals but I have to close it up by connecting all of my sources to answer my question and show to my readers what I was trying to inquire about.I was struggling with time on developing this paper because of my busy schedule with the basketball team. I really liked the fact that I got to workshop my drafts in class and got to see what my peers thought of my work and what I could improve on or need to change. During class time, I could really focus on the task at time because the distractions were at a minor.I see that my writing is changing gradually because I am starting to get out of that traditional form of writing in a set structure. I am able to organize my writing but not writing in "blocks". I appreciate the help I received from Megan and the inquiry groups i was apart of who helped me out during workshops. As I progress, I learned that I am getting better at organizing my thoughts and I am getting better at analyzing what the author wants the reader to know form reading their work. The hardest part of this paper was trying to find sources that connect with one another to answer one main question. My paper is and informational paper so there is no back-and-forth of opinions through the texts so I decided to build my answer with foundational text that leads into what my inquiry question is asking.

Workshop Reflection

1.What advice did you receive from each member of your group?  Explain each person’s advice separately and be specific.

Well I was split up into another group so I got advice from people outside of my inquiry group. Blair told me that in second source to add some examples of some of the negative stereotypes to support the claim I am trying to claim. In my third source, she advises me to get more into depth about how the author presents her research. Danielle suggests that I tell about the students’ reactions to music and fix minor errors like finishing a sentence. She also points out that I have placed a quote inside a quote which requires a different citation and that I need a hanging indent for my source if I am using MLA format. Instead of saying the author “talks about” she said I should say the author “explains” to make it sound more academic. Danielle also told me to give subjects and scenarios of how “meaningless lyric and catchy beats” affect students. Calvin told me that I should not use first person in the analytical paragraph but instead I should analyze how well the author did. He also said to try not to repeat sentence starters (She…. She…) instead (She… The author…). I don’t remember what the other boy’s name was in that group but he told me that I should not use “I” in my analysis paragraph. I should use “The reader” or “One” to exclude my own personal opinion. While excluding my opinion, I should tell whether I agree or disagree with the author.

2. What was the most helpful piece of advice you received? Explain. 

The most helpful piece of advice came to me collectively as a group. Majority of the group told me to fix my analysis paragraph on my first source. They just asked me to provide more in depth about what is going on and to try not to summarize the source like I did in my first paragraph. They asked me to provide more examples and things that the author is trying to say in the source.

3. What was the least helpful piece of advice you received?  Explain. 

The least helpful piece of advice or the least important piece of advice was the grammatical corrections like the hanging indent or the missing words. I accept the mistakes I made but they are not as important as the content that needs to be fixed.

4. What are your plans for revision?  Be specific.  I should be able to understand exactly how your work will change in exactly which places.

I, first, have to fix and add to my analytical paragraph. I need more examples and I need to talk in reference to the author and not from my opinion. I need to proofread my work to check for grammatical errors and other writing errors. I will fix my in-text citations to avoid plagiarism.

Annotated Bibliography (Source Three)

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.

The article discusses how hip hop music affects middle-school students’ psychological being and how teachers can use the consumption of hip hop to help in the academic field as well as in the classroom. Brown talks about how adolescents follow trends introduced through music and shows how they are greatly influenced by this music. She asks questions as to why they are so easily influenced by the music industry and why they are targeted for this type of market. She goes into detail about what exactly about the music appeals to these students and what emotions or behaviors this evokes. They hope to take these same types of appeal from music and implement them in the classroom setting.

Veda Brown breaks down her research into a couple points. She wants to explore how motivational music is to the middle school students, how the music appeals to them (ie. marketing strategies), and how the teachers and parents of these students can use these strategies to make learning appealing to students. She wants to see how meaningless lyrics and catchy beats affect the students’ behavior in the way they approach subjects or scenarios and why they take to them. Most of the middle school children listen to hip hop or just music in general to evoke emotion or as a form of release to life’s problems.

This article will help me in my inquiry paper because it focuses on the mind of students and how it affects their behavior and psychological status. It also focuses on a specific group of students; I’m not sure of what ethnic group but I am assuming African American students because they mention hip hop. I am using the information found in this article to prove or to illustrate how music and the how the rhetoric in music can change or significantly affect a student in the academic field and why this happens.

·       “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).

·       “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).

·       “In contrast, 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).

Annotated Bibliography (Source Two)

(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.

In this report, the authors discuss the threat that stereotypes have on Black students and how these stereotypes affect their intellectual ability in school. They have conducted research and have come up with strategies to reduce this threat as well as narrow the achievement gap between White and Black students. Some students feel that because a stereotype says that they perform lower than the nonminority students, they have a fear of failing and living up to that stereotype. This report is trying to fix this issue by introducing social psychological interventions to reduce stereotype threat while increasing Black students’ academic ability.

Most minority students, especially Black students are aware of the stereotypes of their culture, so in knowing that they may not be able perform to the best of their ability because they will have that pressure on them not to support that stereotype. With all this pressure on the students, it can take a toll on their performance in the classroom. The authors and researchers are conducting studies that will find ways to reduce the stress of negatively reinforced stereotypes. Since the Black racial group faces many negative stereotypes already, it is hard to not focus on those while trying to perform at the best of their ability along side of the rest of society reinforcing them as well.

I chose this report because this tells about stereotypes presented in the classroom of Black students. I need to know how these minority students are viewed before I can assess how other factors play into why they are viewed this way. There are charts and other forms of data that will help support my claim or answer my question.

·       “Stereotype threat arises from a fear among members of a group of reinforcing negative stereotypes about the intellectual ability of the group” (1).

·       “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).

·       “It was hypothesized that Black students in this condition would worry that performing poorly could confirm a stereotype about their racial group’s intellectual ability” (2).