Student: Allison Fujimoto
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Writing Assignment Used for This Interview
For these assignments, you will be asked to read or view the assigned course materials (organized by week in the resources folder in Laulima) and write an essay up to one page long. Doing this will help you remember the key points covered in the readings, and will help me to assess your understanding of the materials.
Additionally, I will distribute discussion questions one week before each journal is due (4 journals total). You will be asked to answer the discussion questions in a 2-3 page essay. Please include your discussion essay at the beginning of each of your 4 submitted journals.
I will grade your weekly reading journal entries as well as your answers to the discussion questions using two criteria: 1) how well you captured the essential points of the course materials; and 2) how clearly you expressed yourself.
Be very sure that all direct quotations are properly indicated, using any standard system of bibliographic citations. Below is the essay format for your weekly reading journal entries
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 11 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Mauna Kea is considered a sacred site for Native Hawaiians and they want to build a telescope there... It's supposed to be one of the best telescopes, and Mauna Kea is a really great place to have a telescope due to its location and little light pollution. But, it's considered a sacred space for Hawaiian people so that's kind of the conflict.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 10 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: To really understand [a text] you have to be able to pick apart certain things in critiquing... I think both of them are like pretty linked, because in order to critique you have to really understand it, and therefore leads to good understanding.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 9 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I'm interested in the relationship between language, culture, and the environment because I think they're very intrinsically linked... There are a lot of endangered languages... If you lose a language, you lose a really unique perspective of the world you live in, so I think it's really important to preserve those languages within a globalized world. A lot of languages are projected to disappear. I think that would be a real tragedy, so I think hopefully in the future I can do something with that.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 8 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Hawaiʻi is a really unique place and we have an abundance of natural resources but we also have a lot of problems that come with that especially like biodiversity problems... For Hawaiian people but also for many indigenous people concepts of land ownership is really different than people who came (missionaries, colonizers) and I think in many ways the unfamiliarity with this kind of new system just changed a lot of culture and I think in many ways was used to disenfranchise indigenous people but I think yeah like you can see how it relates to Hawaiʻi because just notions of land ownership is very different than you know plots of land and you can't trespass on this front. I mean now that's like how we think of it a lot of the time, but I think it's also important that as people living here we know a different viewpoint because then you know when conflicts do come up it's kind of like you can see where they're coming from instead of just being like what are they doing trespassing on my private property.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 7 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I don't know if I learned more in terms of content knowledge, but the tools with which we were learning how people relate to the environment you can use to better understand Hawaiʻi. I would say for example right now Mauna Kea that's a big thing right now and I think you can really use the tools of what we're learning in class in how people relate to the environment it's very different for Hawaiians than it is for you know some other people so that's why there is a conflict of interest.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 6 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Since this class is specifically kind of more like political ecology and people in relationship to the environment, I think when hearing specific news stories you kind of take more of a critical approach to when you hear it... I think one of the most important things I learned was kind of how nature is pretty subjective in terms of how we define [it]. Everyone's definition of nature is different, even though we use the word a lot and so I think it's really important when you hear stories, for example conservation practices, and we tend to think of conservation practices in a really positive light and I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's also important to critically analyze how these conservation practices [might affect others]. If you're setting aside a piece of forest, are there people living there? Then you might be like making them homeless and they won't have their land, so I think a lot of times since right now we're into the whole sustainability-conservation thing, I think it's important, but I think it's also important to take a critical look at it and not just feel like oh 'conservation great, not conservation bad.' I think there's good stuff and bad stuff about both and you really need to look in order to make better policies and make sure that people don't get disenfranchised.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 5 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I tend to be a detailed-oriented person, so I think that helps [with my] writing in terms of unpacking the nuances of certain things. Especially when I'm doing critical analysis, a lot of times it's maybe this really broad concept that you find challenging, [or] it also can be a broad concept and that's important to challenge... I think sometimes there's certain things in articles that you'll read and [a few points] will kind of not resonate with you, and so I think critiquing [those areas] would be a strength... I think I'm pretty good at [summaries], but I think some of the like critiquing stuff is a new skill, so I'm still kind of working on that... I feel like you can't do a critical analysis unless you critically read because... [if] you take everything [in textbooks] as fact, then you can't critically analyze it, because... you won't challenge it even if you have your own objections to it.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 4 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I think the weekly [assignments] I would say motivated [me] in the sense that you had to read more critically... you can't just skim... if you have to ask specific questions or like talk about like the strengths and weaknesses of an argument then I think you have to read it more closely so when you're actually talking about it in class, you remember more of the article than you would if you were just reading it.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 3 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: For me I think the critique was actually the hardest part because in [the instructor's] syllabus she doesn't want us to just say the positives about [a reading] but kind of like the things that the writer could have improved or the things you didn't like about it. I think you're not used to that I guess like when you're coming out of high school and stuff because you're kind of supposed to take reading as being gospel, sort of like you're not supposed to critically evaluate reading, so I think it was kind of a different skill. I'm okay at doing the positives about reading 'cause you've always kind of done that. Praise all the reading that you're reading because you normally do that in high school but kind of being a bit more critical in terms of how this person organized the different things.
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ItemStudent interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Geography, clip 2 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: The service learning was interactive. We got put into different groups based on tools, so it was completely different and I worked with different people that I normally don't talk to and when we were eating afterwards we were all just kind of on our table interacting with different people so I think it was a great way to kind of bond... I think it might have been better if [the service learning project] was a little bit earlier... More towards the first half because then people are starting to get comfortable with each other... I feel like that familiarity makes people more likely to volunteer in class because if you know the other people you're maybe not as intimidated about other people judging your responses especially when it's kind of a discussion-based class.