This is my formal first serious piece of writing.
I'm here writing because I happen to disagree with or critic some things that have happened in the classroom and just wanted to share my thoughts about these things, aiming to improve our coexistence in the classroom.
First of all, we should all sign a letter asking the directives to change the Monday classroom. It's a pain in the butt checks all those mosquitos, and they're pretty distracting too.
Second, I truly believe that we all deserve respect, we as students and our teacher as a figure of respect and guide; what leads me to the third and last point, providing feedback without being disrespectful or annoying.
Since the argumentation exercise did by Tabares, Coronel and J. Camacho, I noticed our teacher has a unnecessary abrupt and rude way to provide feedback and critize students work. It was enough to look at the group faces to realize they were really uncomfortable with the way the exercise was being developed.
I think that there's always the right way to do and say things, and in my opinion the teacher's feedback technique doesn't aim at those things. Students are sensitive to critism and I think it's responsability of a teacher to find the way to help them improve their work by suggesting and critizing without demotivating them. Professor Omaira Vergara told the Classroom Research class (last semester) once: "Hay que aprender a aceptar criticas de personas que buscan enriquecer nuestro trabajo. Los investigadores que no comprenden del todo una teoria y la critican son los que estan mas equivocados".
Then, it came what happened with Grajales in the free-topic writing exercise. She wrote a short story (definition of short story provided by Merriam-Webster dictionary: "an invented prose narrative shorter than a novel usually dealing with a few characters and aiming at unity of effect and often concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot" MW dictionary . Definition of short story provided by Cambridge Dictionary: "an invented story that is no more than about 10,000 words in length" C dictionary ) and I think I'm not the only one that felt the feedback was horrendously done, this is why I think this. It's NECESSARY to correct gramatical mistakes, but everyone's style in writing should be respected, as professor Lirca Valles -our living trinket with 3 Ph.D and tons of love to share- said once defending her writing style : "Cuando mande mi libro al corrector del editorial, terminamos peleando. Es mi libro, son mis palabras, no las de el. A la final les dije que no iba a publicar con ellos y tuvieron que dejar mi libro tal como lo escribi". It's annoying trying to be always right just with opinions. Also, I consider unnecesarry, bothersome and irritating making emphasize in small details that are perfectly understandable (to reader's comprehension), and I said understandable because it requieres no complex background knowledge to give it a logical interpretation. The case would if we worked with the famous poem Elegy by W. S. Merwin: "Who would I show it to?" I think that is easier to imagine what a "man with jeans" means than understand what the heck just happened in that poem. Or maybe with the absolutely famous short story by Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn". In addition, claiming that literature has always a concrete end is a nonsense. That's an opinion, not a fact. That will implie that authors like Borges and Cortazar are not literature. Borges - Un sueño Don't get me wrong, all of this is acceptable, a classroom is a place to share knowledge and interchange opinions, but the problem came when the teacher claimed that Grajales' work didn't count and literature and even worse, it attempted against it, in teacher's words "No le hagan eso a la literatura". This was the thing that touched the ceiling. I even happen to think that trying to politely correct describe the process of an spermatozoon fertilizing an ovum but telling a student her work aims against literature is really hypocrite. One thing is to analyze and critize a student's work, but a very different thing is to judge it and consider it as dangerous for literature. That was very rude, and it was the main reason for this letter. Who gives our teacher the right to determine what's literature and what's not? (I think he realized he made a mistake and with J. Camacho's work he was more respectful). How can our teacher tell how much have we read in our lives to claim we should read more in order not to attempt against literature? I think you guys remember I asked the teacher what he considered as literature and gave us the explanation about it and even how it was related to academic writing, but again, he even mentioned that classic literature (beggining, plot, conclusion) is not the only one, being the most famous and important throught the history doesn't make it the only one. To conclude, I just want to say that I'm not critizing or judging our teacher, I'm critizing and judging the teacher's way to provide feedback, so no one here should take it personal. It's all about building criteria.
The reason for me to write this is to ask our teacher to look for a better way of providing feedback, a way where students feel their work has a value.
Christopher Camacho.
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