Unspoken Agreement Rewrite

  On my first day of class in INTD 105 my Professor Dr. Beth McCoy asked the class for our thoughts on the course epigraph in the class syllabus. The epigraph was a small excerpt from the book, “Blood Child” by Octavia Butler, and is stated here: “If we’re not your animals, if these are adult things, accept the risk. There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner.” During class due to the quote’s ambiguous nature several interpretations arose, however I believe this quote could be used to characterize a mutual unspoken agreement between students and our teaching institution.

            I believe this agreement leads to a partnership built upon trust and accountability from each party, and if observed it’ll lead to a successful learning process. First of all, us students need to be able to trust in ourselves, as well as the learning process that has been laid out for us by our professor. We’ll be expected to push the envelope in terms of our current abilities. These heighted standards are shown in Dr. McCoy’s syllabus for INTD 105 where it is listed under Values“Learning: embracing high expectations for intellectual inquiry, scholarly achievement, and personal growth”. I believe that if us students are unable to have faith in ourselves and the process, we won’t be able to grow as learners. I think this situation can best be represented by a quote from Henry Ford, “whether you think you can or you can’t, either way you’re right.”  This is why I feel trust is important for student success.

Secondly, students must remain accountable, “if we are adults”, we are expected to act as adults would which means taking responsibility for our actions and inactions. Along our academic journey we will inevitably stumble at one point or another, whether it be missed classes or a failed exam. However, the real test of whether or not we are achieving accountability comes from the actions that we take after we stumble.  We can take a mental inventory of what happened, why it happened, and how it happened, then use that information to better ourselves in the future and prevent it from happening again.  On the other hand, we could choose the unaccountable reaction, which is taken by many students, which would be to forget about it and simply hope that it doesn’t happen again, because the thought of it makes us uncomfortable. The key distinction in the mind sets listed above can be demonstrated in Dr. McCoy’s syllabus where she writes in the Goal Setting Rewrite section “feedback does not constitute a list of things to “fix.” Rather, feedback offers you the opportunity to slow down, think, and unpack so that readers (none of whom can get inside your head) can follow you responsibly”. I believe this quote states the importance of the ability to learn from mistakes, rather than just doing the minimum to fix them, which is a part of being accountable. Being accountable also means that we won’t cheat, because in doing so we’d be circumventing the learning process that has been laid out for us by our instructor and thus preventing ourselves from growing. This is shown in the Course Syllabus under the section Academic Integrity and Plagiarism where it states “Milne Library offers frequent workshops to help students understand how to paraphrase, quote, and cite outside sources properly. These sessions are meant to educate about the importance of using original ideas and language, and how to incorporate paraphrases and quotes into writing”. This quote gives information about classes that teach how properly cite information to avoid plagiarism, thus stressing the importance of academic honesty.  Further more students must remember that to be accountable we must respect ourselves and those around us. That means giving our full attention to a lecture and not allow ourselves to get distracted with phones or side conversations. If we do allow ourselves to do these things, we’d be disrespecting ourselves by not getting the most out of our education and those around us by becoming a distraction to their education. This claim is supported by the participation grading listed in the syllabus which states “E. Absent frequently and thus unable to contribute. May be present but is watching sports/shopping/checking social media.” This grading procedure places an emphasis on keeping students engaged and therefore keeping them accountable for their own education. This is my opinion of what’s necessary of us student in order to ensure the partnership with our intuition is a beneficial one.

            For the learning process to work, trust and accountably is also required from our teaching institution. Our teaching intuition is required to trust in its student and our abilities to meet our responsibilities. If an institution’s trust is misplaced in a student that doesn’t live up to their expectations, then they would potentially be giving that student the spot that another, more deserving, student could utilize to a higher potential. This scarcity of resources is also expressed in the course syllabus when Dr. McCoy talks about Office Hours “The office gets extraordinarily busy; it is not unusual for students to show up unannounced and find six or seven people in front of them. If you make an appointment, I can reserve a slot for you.” Our teaching institution also needs to be held accountable to provide its students with the tools and information they need to be successful. I believe this means that they should be able to provide adequately sized rooms for classes to be held as well as areas for students to study. In addition, they must make clear what they expect from their students as well as what their students can expect from them. This means making information like how grading is done as well as assignment due dates readily available to students. The importance of making information and expectations known to student was proven when Dr. McCoy stated in class that the reason her syllabus is so long was because each section of it has a story behind it. This shows the importance of information in keeping both us students and our teaching intuition accountable. I believe this is what’s need from the teaching intuition in order for the learning process to run smoothly.        

     I believe this proves that good academic partnerships are built upon mutual trust and accountability. In addition, as I was writing I began to think how I played a role in this proposed relationship as a student. This led me to my goal for this course which is to learn to be more trusting and confident in my thoughts and abilities as well as to becoming more honest and reflective with my short comings.

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