Assignment 5C

Assignment 5c
1. What difference did you notice in your choice of topics in the first part of the class versus the topics found in the texts My California and Train Go Sorry?

The difference between My California and Train Go Sorry was that My California was focused on many different people’s thoughts and feelings about why they loved California so much. My California allowed you to see California through the eyes of the reader and see how they perceive California and their experiences. It is a group of different authors sharing their California with you. In Train Go Sorry it is a more somber story of a girl who grows up in the shoes of a hearing person but wants so badly to be part of the deaf community. Train Go Sorry brings you into the deaf community and tries to explain what it is like to be a deaf person in a hearing world and also what it is like to be a hearing person who wants to be included in the deaf community. Both of the stories were actual events as portrayed by their authors yet they are two very different subjects one of a beautiful state and one of a beautiful community.


2. What difference did you notice when you read your classmates work regarding the same topics versus your own opinions? Did their works make you think of something different?

I noticed that sometimes they interpreted things differently than I did. It is interesting when two people read the same book and get two different opinions out of it. I like to know what my classmates are thinking. I think it helps to shape my own opinions when I have other people’s interpretations and I can combine and compare and contrast them with my own. I think that reading my classmates opinions helped me to enrich my own thoughts about our assignments this semester.

3. How would Freire and the idea of dialogue and scaffolding play into your answers?

Dialogue is what we were doing when we shared our blogs with each other and read what each others’ work stated. Scaffolding was our own evolution of thoughts when we learned from our classmates and were able to see other people’s opinions. When we read each others’ blogs and learned something that we never knew before we were scaffolding their interpretations with ours and coming up with new conclusions. I think that this is what Paulo Freire was meaning by dialogue and scaffolding.

4. What was your overall experience with these topics?

I learned that California means many things to many different people. I learned that everyone should have their California any way that they want. I think it signifies our hopes and dreams and reminds us that life is short and we should dream as long as we live. From Train Go Sorry my eyes were forever opened to the world of the deaf. I did not realize how much the deaf community was struggling to define its own culture and how the hearing world was sometimes an impediment to that culture. It seems sad but also I was happy when in the end James Taylor made it to college and was able to avoid a life of crime with his brother and Leah Cohen became a part of the deaf community as an ASL translator even though she was a hearing person.