Week 15 - An absolute rose?

After a week off from blogging, I had students return to their projects and blog about what they have been working on.  I've been going through a series of quick little lessons on what smart people do.  So far I've said that smart people reflect, read, and think flexibly.

As I was reading some of my students' older blog posts, I read a student's that had great potential.  She is a part of the Peer Assistance Leadership team at our school and she blogged about going to a workshop at a nearby community college.  Perhaps to her, her blog is like when Daisy Buchanan says Nick reminds her of "an absolute rose."

This is untrue.  I think she is bit off in adding real purpose and valuable content to her blog.

At the workshop she attended three sessions: one dealing with gun violence, another highlighting how everyone is valuable, and lastly a session on seeing signs of abusive relationships.  She merely summarized the topics of those sessions a instead of reflecting on what she took away from them.  They seemed like pretty powerful presentations, but merely summary.

The purpose of my blogs has been to use it as a reflective tool as well as sharing with others.  I think that even in my blogging, that my writing has leaned more towards what I have done rather than what I've been thinking.

I think I'll need to address this idea of some deeper self-reflection as they continue to work on their projects and blogging.  This is sort of new genre of writing for myself and my students.

Next week I'll present on how to add a bit more reflection to their blogs and why that matters.