A Jeanne Site
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: December 12, 1999
Faculty on the Site.
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2640These short statements of my perception of your learning are what grew from my review of all the records and our experiences in class. In a cooperative learning world, in which our objective is to help each other gain critical insights, what should matter, instead of "grades" is such a report. Learning that I can tell you I have seen, either directly or through some of your work, and that you can confirm. That is learning accountability.
As we gain skill at this, a paragraph of recommendation should be your goal for the end of each course, each semester. If you were to realize that this is how I will end the course, and you were to want the best possible recommendation of your learning, we could interactively check our respective records all semester, and the recommendations could be detailed and helpful to all who want to know about your learning.
Visit Letters of Recommendation for clues on how to do this.
I realize that you had some initial difficulty with e-mail. You did a good job through October with exercises. Then the e-mail slacked off. I know you well, and I know that you worry, and reasonably so, about situations that force you into a time bind. For that reason I have relied mostly on our exchanges and on your contributions in class, since the constraints on your writing were not of your own choice. I would, however, like to see you early next semester to talk about how we could best have measured your learning, given the technical problems.
You handled the description of the "doggie bone" well in describing the educational system's non-learning autopoietic functions. That was an impressive transference of learning, and shows that you have some appreciation of structural violence. I am also impressed at your persistence in checking to see that the work for your whole group came through. You showed enormous patience and a high tolerance for ambiguity. I think that says a lot for your academic growth in the past couple of years.
I liked that you found a group to work with. Your group's pattern of consistency in submitting e-mails f was good. I liked that your group turned in answers in their own words. I wish I could have had more time for discussing them with you, but there were many factors to distract us. Given our time constraints, I thought your work showed good pacing and thoughtful study.
It was also fun to share moments in the soup kitchen at school when we could unwind after a lecture and play with the concepts. Our amorphous group kept changing, as each of us wandered across the campus and eventually landed at a table at which criminology and law and structural violence and peacemaking could be spoken, and at which we could quietly sip the daily soup while others piced up the threaded discussion.
I look forward to many more semesters of research and theory and praxis.
It is clear from your comments that you hold your students to high standards. But sometimes you judge them harshly by those standards. Us, too. I would ask that you stop and think about the fact that you have not done one miserable thing I asked you to, including read the syllabus. You substituted your own agenda, up to and including taking another student's advice to write a term paper, when I will not accept term papers. To judge you strictly by that would be as structurally violent as your judging of your students and us. Because I teach peace-making, I don't want to do that.
You have clearly demonstrated your concern for justice, your willingness to move beyond set boundaries, your energy to take others with you. So I grant you credit for that. But we did discuss your working with your own students to move some of our support mechanism into the local high schools. I understand that not all plans can work out. But I would appreciate if you would acknowledge the plans, then redesign other plans. Dominguez Hills and this community need you.
At the very least I know that you are able to send me e-mail, and that you can participate in the discussions if you wished. So also, could and did your two friends. But that does not give me, amongst the whole group, enough authentication of your having mastered the basic concepts to a level at which you are comfortable discussing them. Your learning to communicate over the Internet, your attendance, and your fairly regular attempts to relate to me have all contributed to your passing grade.
I have been lenient because I suspect that this semster we discovered a fundamental problem to interactive teaching: shyness on the part of those of you who don't know what to say to the teacher after you say "hello." Our whole set of interactions seems to me to indicate that. I hope that you will come and share that shyness with me so that it will no longer encumber your efforts in working for good grades.
Even more so than you did in the past, you substituted your own agenda for mine this semester. There were a number of projects related to cancer prevention that pulled you away. That was acceptable, especially because your intensity and enthusiasm were high when you were available. It was clear that you were processing every ounce of learning so that you could more effectively use it in your work.
Most of all, though, I have been impressed by the extent to which you have chewed over some of the ideas from our discussions, such as the contributions of structural violence to a juvenile's formation of identity. You were so sure at one point that the juvenile could simply "say no." Then, slowly, you began to consider the labelling, the insistence without rhyme or reason that rules be followed, the refusal to hear the juvenile's validity claims, and you eventually voiced a profound understanding of the ways in which the social structure's patterns of structural violence contribute to the violence of responses. I expect that over time, you will come to some balanced position on structural violence, but it is clear now that you will not shut out the voices of the young in coming to that position. I hope that you will transfer that learning to all the contexts in which you work.
Very near the end you did come to talk with me. I wish we had managed that earlier. I think the face-to-face interaction is an important part of the bond you need to form with your teachers in order to get useful feedback on your learning. I hope that you will find more chance to talk with me next semester.