Weekly write-up #1
by Shams Waleed and Marwa Khamas
We are honored and excited to welcome every one of you, to the beginning of our school year at Georgia State university-Clarkston campus. This school year, we look forward to doing our best, working harder, smarter and achieving our next level of “greatness” that will push us to work beyond our limits. However, we would especially like to welcome the students In English 1101 class “Changing Writing, Changing the World”. Each one of us came from different backgrounds, so as a class each one of us will collaborate and work together to help and benefit each other so we can learn more, which is the main purpose of the “weekly write up assignment.”
Reading for class:
We started the first day of class by introducing ourselves. Our professor Dr. Crowther was the first one who started; she introduced herself to the students and she also shared some hobbies that she’s interested in and how she was able to finish her studies and become a professor. Next, Dr. Crowther asked each student to stand and tell their names and share something about themselves or something they are interested in. After everybody finished, Dr. Crowther started to explain more about the course and classroom expectations. She went over the syllabus and the calendar which includes the due dates for the assignments. Dr. Crowther also introduced the two books that we will be using this semester, Just Mercy and Changing Writing. Additionally, as a requirement for this class we have to have two notebooks, one for regular class notes and the other one for the daily grade writing, we also have to have the code for the book to use it on Launchpadsolo as some assignments will be posted there. We also have one extra book called Successful College Composition which is a textbook written by Perimeter college professors including Dr. Crowther. Finally, we went over the syllabus contract “which is giving the permission to the instructor to use your essays or work as a future sample for other students “and it should be signed by the next class.
As a reading, in the second day of class, we went over the introduction of Changing Writing. Writing has changed over the years, and writing is something powerful that has the ability to change lives, change minds, motivate people, and also change history. The way we write also changes constantly: to illustrate, in the early 1980s, researching and writing began migrating into the digital realm. It also changed again in the mid-1990s with web-publishing software that allowed anyone with an internet connection to publish their own texts online. It also became easier for other researchers to find what they want, while back in the days they used to look for books and search in the libraries. The introduction to the book teaches us how to write, be more professional, and flexible with the composition process. The introduction focuses on four components of writing: Purpose, “which is the reason why we writing something, audience which “is the person for whom a writer writes,” context which is the setting or environment in which the events take place. Finally, a text is any object that can be read by the audience. As we go further in this book we will learn more how to develop our texts and create strategies, and it may sometimes get messy but as it says in the book “part of accepting that messiness involves accepting that writing first” (7).
The third day in class, we covered the introduction of Just Mercy, and we also divided into a group of four to discuss what we understand. Bryan Stevenson was a Harvard law student interning in Georgia when he went to Georgia to intern for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC). On his way to the prison to meet a death-row inmate for the first time, Stevenson describes how he felt nervous because he had little knowledge of death penalty and it was his first time, and he was unsure of how to speak to a death row inmate. Stevenson arrives at the prison, the guards bring out Henry, a young black man with his hands and ankles shackled, and Stevenson starts to apologize because he doesn’t know what to say until he told him that he won’t be executed in the next year. Henry takes Stevenson’s hand and expresses deep relief. They spend three hours sharing life stories, although hey are only allowed to stay for one hour. The guard enters and he was mad because they overstayed, so the guard shackles Henry tightly and pushes him into the door, Henry tells Stevenson not to worry just to visit him again, and then Henry starts singing a church’s song that “Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.” Stevenson starts to describe the changes since the 1980’s in the criminal justice system. He explains the growing rate of the people in prison and shows that the death penalty conviction rate is very high for black males. In short, the main points of the introduction are focusing on how people being treated in the prison, without having lawyers because of poverty, and also how there is a huge increasing ratio in prison. He finally says “we are all implicated when we allow others to be mistreated” (18).
The fourth day in class, we went over the summary of Changing Writing, from page 15-30. Dr. Crowther started to explain how text conveys messages. Most types of writing have an argument which is the point on which the writer develops his work in order to convince the audience. Reading will always start with texts, and writing mostly starts with purposes, audience, context, text, and then makes a strong connection. Writing can express feelings, also graffiti can do so, sometimes a picture or a diagram can make a strong connection between the audience and the writer and so it might be easier to the reader to engage and understand the text, to illustrate, “readers in some cases make connections from one text (the graffiti flower) to another (website) based on their own experience.”
After the class lecture, Dr. Crowther gave us homework that is due next week Tuesday morning, which is exercise 1 or 3 on p.46. She also explains to us the first essay (editorial) and showed a sample from the “Georgia State university newsletter”.
Class/discussion/activities:
The first day of class we didn’t have any group activities other than introducing ourselves.
The second day of class one of my classmates brought donuts as he’s working at Dunkin’ Donutt, so in order to get one donut, Dr. Crowther asked everyone to tell her a reason why you deserve a donut? It was actually fun because we got to know each other more and it also leads to a class discussion. Soon after we started with the daily grade writing as an activity each day and must be completed for a grade. Our first question was “what kind of writer are you? Everyone in the class had a different answer.
In the third day of class, we should have read the introduction of the Just Mercy, so when we came to class we separated into a group of four and we had a discussion about the summary and answered the following questions: 1.Why is the chapter called Higher Ground? 2. How does Stevenson’s experience meeting Henry affect him? 3. What is just mercy? 4. Something that surprised you on Pg-15? After we done our group discussion Dr. Crowther asked us to start working on our daily grade writing, and the question was: What is Social Justice? And what issues you think is important? Everybody discussed and we had a variety of answers as it is shown in the picture. At the end, Dr. Crowther gave us a small note card to write our name, major, and one thing can help to learn more in class or one issue that may affect us during the semester so this way she will know about us more.
The fourth day in class we started with the daily grade activity question: Share one of your most interesting commercials? And think about why it sticks in your head? Soon after we finished everybody shared his/her answer as a group activity. After our discussion, Dr. Crowther started her lecture, as I summarized that in the fifth paragraph of “Reading for class”. At the end of the class, Dr. Crowther let us share and discuss with a partner our previous homework which is a letter to the editor.
In short English 1101 is an interesting class, and very helpful class that lead us to learn more, we would like to thank Dr. Crowther for giving extra help to the students and making everything enjoyable.
matches, and they accidentally caught the house on fire. Ian Manuel was participating in a robbery when he shot a lady in the jaw, so he was sentenced to prison, spending years in solitary confinement as a teen. Antonio was sentenced to life imprisonment for unknowingly shooting at police during a fake kidnapping. George Stinney, a young black male, was wrongly convicted of the murder of two girls just because he was the last to see them.
