63 Reflective Letter Assignment
This is the final assignment I have my students do. They get time to work on it during the last week of class. It’s a nice circle back to more personal writing that they did in the first essay, and I remind them that this no-pressure final assignment is all about documenting their writing journey and critical thinking growth that they have experienced over the course of the semester. I always get over the page minimum and way more information about the assignments [what worked, what didn’t] and most importantly crucial information on students’ individual learning, struggles, and successes.
_____________________________
Congratulations—you’ve nearly made it to the end of the semester! For the past several months, you’ve worked diligently on your topic for community change, all the way from identifying a community that you are a part of, to choosing an issue, to analyzing your complex issue from multiple perspectives, to creating a prototype for a solution. This last writing assignment will give you an opportunity to reflect on all of these experiences.
What is reflective writing?
The University of New South Wales (https://student.unsw.edu.au/reflective-writing) provides a valuable overview of what reflective writing is and is not:
Reflective writing is:
- documenting your response to experiences, opinions, events or new information
- communicating your response to thoughts and feelings
- a way of exploring your learning
- an opportunity to gain self-knowledge
- a way to achieve clarity and better understanding of what you are learning
- a chance to develop and reinforce writing skills
- a way of making meaning out of what you study
Reflective writing is not:
- just conveying information, instruction or argument
- pure description, though there may be descriptive elements
- straightforward decision or judgment, just determining whether something is right or wrong, good or bad
- simple problem-solving
- a summary of course notes
- a standard college essay
Requirements:
1) Direct your letter to me (Dear ____)
2) Single space the letter; you can skip a space between paragraphs or indent the start of paragraphs
3) About 1 and ½ to 2 pages (single spaced)
4) Address the assignments/activities as listed below as much as possible (or provide an explanation if you did not do/participate in those). You don’t have to address every little detail/question, but I think I have provided enough prompts within each section for you to address each unit sufficiently and that will include some critical thinking/metacognition on your part.
Organization of Letter:
Introduction: Give a brief overview of where you’re from, your intended major (or if undecided), the career you’d like to have. Talk briefly about your experiences with English/writing/composition prior to entering English 101. In other words, before English 101, what type of writing did you do or feel most comfortable or confident doing? Or, has it been a while since you have been out of school or written an academic essay? Or maybe you have always kept a personal journal, or perhaps you have done creative writing. Tell me about that and how that transition to academic writing went?
Body Paragraph 1: We began the semester talking about that word community. In your own words, tell me your definition of community. Then we transitioned to a community that YOU are a part of.. What was YOUR community that you chose (hometown, sport, hobby, etc.)? This was for the multimodal essay (slides + memo). Would you have covered this same community if you were to do it again? With this first essay, you were asked to incorporate rhetorical strategies [ethos, pathos, and logos] within the memo—how did that go? What were you proud of with this two-part essay? (from this point on, we are just referring to the community change topic—see topics in yellow below)
We then very quickly transitioned to the topic proposal after reducing the general community change topics to four, based on survey results. Which community change topic did you pick? Are you satisfied with the topic that you chose and wrote about for the topic proposal? Explain why or why not.
Body Paragraph 2: We then moved to the Visual Analysis essay. What image did you choose? Were you happy with your choice, or would you have analyzed a different one? You were asked to pick out 3 visual elements to focus on and then layer in rhetorical strategies [here we added Kairos in addition to ethos, pathos, and logos]. How did this process go for you? Overall, how did the quest to investigate the visual elements of some aspect of your community change topic deepen your understanding of the subject matter and its visual and rhetorical effects on you and other viewers?
Body Paragraph 3: After the visual analysis, you worked with your community change teams to create a questionnaire. How was that collaborative process? What would you have done (or asked) differently? What were you proud of? Then you interviewed 2 people—were you satisfied with whom you interviewed, or who would you have liked to have questioned instead? How did the individual empathy maps go? Were you satisfied with the profiles you wrote on these two people?
Now tell me about the process we went about next—analyzing and comparing the answers your teams got from the interviews + sharing and creating new empathy maps + determining dimensions? How did your critical thinking skills grow, or how did your thinking change during this process? What were any challenges? You then synthesized 4 interviews + incorporated two outside sources—how did this process go for you? Overall, how did the quest in investigating the ‘human’ elements of your community change topic deepen your understanding of the subject matter and its role in these folks’ lives and effects on you and others?
Body Paragraph 4: Then we transitioned to the argument/persuasive essay. You were asked to narrow your problem down to something that could be potentially solved. You considered stakeholders, scope, and incorporated blockers from naysayers after playing the How Might We game. Within the essay, you were asked to consider background/history on your issue, the major steps to implementing your solution, rhetorical strategies, and counterarguments (naysayers) + rebuttals. How did this process go for you? Any challenges? What were you most proud of in this essay? Overall, how did the quest in a holistic investigation of the problem and coming up with a feasible solution(s) with a call to action to your audience at the end deepen your understanding of the subject matter, its effect on stakeholders and communities in general, and the importance of solving this issue sooner rather than later?
Body Paragraph 5: Ahhhh, the final assignment: the prototype. Throughout the course, you have been challenged to view things from a design thinking mindset—considering the users (stakeholders), incorporating common or popular ideas and perceptions, thinking outside the box, and being solution-oriented. This type of thinking incorporates a multifaceted approach that considers multiple perspectives, testing (peer review), and just be bold and going for it (it may not be perfect but it’s really close or it’s a start) because the stakes are high if we don’t solve this issue/problem. You spent a couple of weeks designing your prototype and then presenting it to the class. Overall, how did the quest in creating a prototype deepen your understanding of the subject matter, its effect on stakeholders and communities in general, and the practical way(s) in which we can move forward with your idea or one like it to help chip away at this societal problem?
Conclusion: How have your thoughts about this topic deepened or progressed from when you encountered this topic in the second week of class? The world outside of class/college can have profound effects on our mindsets and wellbeing—this semester had various challenges that might have affected your performance in class. Have you encountered some personal challenges that you have had to overcome this semester? How have you seen your writing improve? To determine this, do this little exercise: compare the paragraph(s) you wrote for the topic proposal or multimodal memo to a few paragraphs in the argument paper. Do you hear or see visible improvements? Did you visit the Writing Center, take advantage of my office hours, or reach out to me via email for help? Did any of the following help you: planning worksheets, graphic organizers, live drafting sessions, group tactile/Post-It note sessions, naysayer game, etc. Explain what you are more cognizant of and feel more confident about in terms of your writing and approaching papers/topics. The purpose of this class has been all about encouraging you to be further involved and invested not only in the issue you chose but in issues that are important to you and in your community. In reading back your topic proposal, how has your knowledge base or thinking grown/matured about this particular topic since the beginning of class to now? How might you use the advocacy skills you acquired this semester in other classes or outside of class? How might you use and apply the design thinking skills you learned in other classes or aspects of life? Is there anything else that you would like to share or want me to know about you or this class?
Your Signature (digital is fine)
Timeline: Live Drafting next week. Final version due: Sunday, Dec. 10 on Canvas.
Templates (optional)–you do NOT need to use a template, but some folks like to:
Docs –scroll down a bit to find letter-specific templates
