As an English lover, I was very excited to see Honors Intermediate Composition as a seminar choice this year. I am required to take Intermediate Composition for my major, so making it an Honors experience was a bonus. My section of the course focussed on service learning, but more specifically service that benefits communication and literacy. For the first few weeks of the course, we learned about literacy and how it impacts a person's life. We also discussed intellectual disabilities and read Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison. After the introductory part of the course, we explored our past experiences with literacy and how learning to read effected our lives. I am extremely passionate about literacy awareness and I really enjoyed considering my own journey with literacy. During this time of the course, we were required to write a literacy narrative. Click on the button below to view my literacy narrative where I discuss my educational journey and why literacy is so important to me as a future educator.
After we finished our literacy narrative, we began to discuss what a discourse community is. By reading numerous essays and having classroom discussions, I was able to identify that my other Honors experience (OSEPI) is a discourse community. I critically analyzed communication in the UC OSEPI Team and wrote an essay deciphering Google Hangout posts and research documents. This essay was beneficial because I have never analyzed communication from a discourse community standpoint and really enjoyed creating this paper. Visit the "Ohio Student Education Policy Institute" tab for more OSEPI information!
As we began to dive into our service learning, we had an individual choice to make about where we would do our service for the semester. As a future educator, I wanted to gain more experience in the classroom and chose to do my service at Parker Woods Montessori Elementary located in Northside. I had never tutored at a Montessori school before and I was very excited to work with students in 4th-6th grade. I tutored at Parker Woods for a total of 16 hours during the semester, and also tutored 18 hours at Winton Hills Academy for OhioReads. I enjoyed learning about Montessori education and interacting with almost all of the students in the classroom I observed. My favorite thing to do with the students I worked with was reading or working on their writing and comprehension skills. I was able to experience different reading levels during my time at Parker Woods and got to use the knowledge I am learning in college about education. The most valuable part of my experience was learning about the students' lives and their interests. Often, the students would tell me their favorite and least favorite parts of school, as well as what makes a good teacher. It warmed my heart that the students felt comfortable enough to share this information with me and that I was developing good rapport with them. At the end of the course, we were required to write a capstone essay about our service and what we learned.
Overall, Honors Intermediate Composition was a great Honors seminar. It was not the typical composition experience which made it special. I was able to gain additional classroom experience while still completing the requirements of the course. I recommend this course to any Honors student!
This is a picture of myself and some of the students I worked with while at Parker Woods in their classroom. Picture approved by their teacher, Judy Ganance.