Activity 1.1: Response to Our First Class

     I’m not going to lie, before beginning this class, I was nervous, because I participated in an online distance learning class once before and hated it.  There were so many technical difficulties, and each class I was so worried about the technical issues we had that I don’t think I got enough out of the actual content of the class.  So, as one could imagine, I was hesitant to be a member of another class such as this.  However, like Dr. Usher, I was surprised at how smoothly the first class went, and I left the class feeling excited about the next eight weeks.  I am a lover of learning, and our first class together left me feeling hopeful about the knowledge I will glean during the course of this semester. 

     From the Monty and Johnny exercise, and also from the story of the Mullah, I learned that I do often use my own experiences and background (my “light,” as we talked about from the story of the Mullah) as my building blocks for thinking about reasons why students might be struggling, and also for coming up with solutions for those children.  As we began delving into Johnny’s situation, my mind was flying a mile a minute trying to think about similar situations I have experienced, both first hand and through observation.  Middle school was hard for me, and it may be a formalism to say that middle school is hard for most people, and so in that way my group did make a formalism about Johnny, out of our own experiences.  I don’t know anything about veterinary science, and so it was easy for me to say, “Take Monty to the vet.”   My group had more hypotheses about Johnny than we did about Monty, because we all have more experiences with children than we do animals. 

     The story of the Mullah opened my eyes up to the fact that most of the time, I do search only in my light for answers; in fact, I realized that I have been quite afraid of branching out and searching in the dark, so to speak.  I think the story of the Mullah is valuable for our class because it challenges us all to think outside our comfort zones.  Thus, as I have entered this class, both the Johnny and Monty exercise and the story of the Mullah have challenged me to go beyond my light and towards the darkness in order to connect beyond myself.