Assignment 26 - Ella Franklin

Let me preface by saying I genuinely enjoyed this class and moreover enjoyed you as a teacher. I'm not trying to kiss anything here. I liked that you recognized and gave us independence in your class. The days to work on our own stuff around APs was/is really nice and it shows that you understand our needs and that you are willing to address them. You were careful of assigning work when you knew we had a lot of other stuff going on. You were relaxed with us not because you were lazy but because you knew our abilities and that we didn't need a whip held to us to get stuff done.

I also felt like I really liked you as a person, but I'm really disappointed that I didn't feel like we got to connect with you on that level. Having a student teacher for a few weeks obviously stunts the growth of any bond (no offense to Ms. HH) but I felt like there wasn't much of an effort, or if anything an intermittent effort, to get to know the students. This is not totally your fault either, I take responsibility as a student for being bitter from time to time and not making an effort and things like that. It disappoints me because I've seen and heard from previous classes how much they liked you and how they will just walk into your room and talk to you and hang out but I feel like most of my peers and I didn't really develop that relationship with you.

I really hated visual literacy. I didn't hate the assignments themselves, they were fun at some times, but what I hated about it was the fact that we weren't applying any knowledge we gained in class to the assignments. It felt completely separate from the class, almost extracurricular. As I was doing the commercial for visual literacy I was thinking about how cool it would be if we were doing this but working in aspects of advertising we learned in class. They felt really pointless considering it had nothing to do with the class and nothing to do with the test. If you were to continue doing visual literacy in years to come, I would hope that you teach about it more in class and also send earlier reminders of when they are do.

I also really really loved doing these blogs. I thought they were interesting and introspective and I always had a really great time writing them. But I can't help but feel like they were just a participation assignment. Did you ever even read them? I put actual work in a lot of them and after I was done I was really proud of some of them. But I never got any feedback from anyone on them. Next year, I would recommend adding a feedback element to the blog assignment as a whole. Like in addition to writing the blogs, each student would have to comment on three other students' blog posts. And it would be nice to hear your feedback on them. I enjoyed doing them a lot but I feel like if you don't put any effort into it it doesn't really help you as a writer at all.

My final grievance is that sometimes you were a little too laissez-faire with us. Sometimes it was fine, like Woodrow Wilson in the 20s, but sometimes we really needed help and you didn't give it to us, like Herbert Hoover in the Depression. I hope the president analogies help you understand. It seemed like sometimes, like with visual literacy, we needed a lot of guidance from you and you just seemed to not want to give it to us.

That's all. You really were a good teacher and I think you're a cool guy. Thank you for being chill in a year where we really can't take any more intensity.