For English 1301 we had to write about John Pekins and about a discourse community we were a part of and one we wanted to be in. Within John Pekins’ chapter we had to pick a side if we believed in what he was doing and show the proof behind it. For his paper I chose his side of how students could better their studies by reading more instead of being on the internet or on any type of electronic. While writing about my discourse communities I had to pick something that had a big part of and where I want to go in my life. In high school I was what some people would consider a band nerd. Marching band was a big portion of my high school career. It helped me step up my actions to others. The other part for the discourse community is where I want my future to be. Stepping up in band should me I could become a leader of some sort, so I am choosing to become a SPED teacher. With this I will show my leader skills and it deals with something I love, children. 

While I was writing my learning unit 2 for this class, I had to identify different key points from John Pekins article “A Community College Professor Reflects on First-Year Composition”. Within these key points I had to find a side to agree with. Pekins’ article showed me specific areas of studying I have passed on for most of my high school education but had to change for my 1301 English Composition class. It gave data to prove where he was coming from and what he believed he could fix with years to come. He took polls from his classes on how much the students read and grab advice from other colleagues to enhance what his main plan was. Before I could have started this essay, I had to write building blocks to put all of my thoughts of certain questions on a paper. When writing these answers, I had to pinpoint my thought behind it. With that becoming paragraphs I had comments behind what I could have fixed with my writing. For example, in my Pekins building blocks I couldn’t pick a side. I had to go through and fix that and add in fluff to make it all flow throughout the final draft. Writing this learning unit over Pekins helped me establish key points within my learning unit 3.

When I was writing my third learning unit, I had to connect a discourse community I have been a part of and where I would see myself in the future. For these topics I picked marching band as my discourse community and becoming a SPED teacher for where I would see myself. For many these two things are completely different but when you really look for the deeper meaning behind it all they are actually more alike than you would think. For marching band, I was forced to learn how to read people’s attitudes throughout the fall semester to make sure that our show would flow better with the music. If a person was having a rough day then their show would be even worse than expected. I would have to make sure that their body language was reading the show with energy and excitement before we could move on to run full shows. With SPED it is almost the same thing. I have to be able to read the kids to see if their day will be tough or not. When teaching SPED, I would have to see when a kid is having a bad day and see how I could help fix their day to make their attitudes better.  While figuring this out, I wrote building blocks just like I did back for LU2. With these building blocks I had to write about two different objectives. for the first building block I wrote about my process in band and how it impacted my life. With this I had to go back and find what it was I wanted to say about my experience in band. I had to tell different techniques I learned and how learning the ways people’s attitudes are can tie together with what I want to do in my future. With being a SPED teacher in my future reading the way kids are is the most important aspect. Writing my other building block for this unit I had to look up different aspects to be a teacher and working with special needs kids. 

 My Pekins’s analysis has characterized my discourse community essay by making me understand what angles I had to come from. When I was writing both of these, I wasn’t sure where I should have started but they both just flowed out on me. From writing the analysis over Pekins it helped my writing over the discourse community by setting up steps on how I could have written it. My discourse community essay was better fit than my Pekins analysis because I knew from the analysis what I needed to add to the learning unit 3. It was an easier set up after I knew where I went wrong on the Pekins essay. Using the building blocks as a way to write my thoughts is a great way to start my essays. We have used these throughout the whole semester, and it has helped me write all of my learning units in a better way. These building blocks have tied over with the same objective. They have a criterion of certain questions that we have to answer to have our readers understand the points we are trying to come across.   Each one of them has been a set up for what our final draft would be like without the “fluff”. After adding the “fluff” to the building blocks our draft for our final has been completed.