Introduction
Throughout the first half of the semester, I’ve gained significant insights and developed various skills, particularly in writing, critical thinking, and narrative development.
One of the things I’ve most enjoyed has been the process of storytelling, particularly in crafting my narrative essays. Exploring how community shapes individuals has been both rewarding and insightful. I’ve enjoyed learning how to take complex themes like personal growth, belonging, and the role of positive influences, and expressing them in ways that resonate with young readers. The challenge of using metaphors, like the seed for personal growth, has been both creatively fulfilling and a great way to deepen my understanding of narrative structure.
However, I’ve also faced challenges, like in balancing my creative ideas with the goal of making my writing accessible and engaging. For example, in my “How Community Shapes You” essay, I initially struggled with deciding whether to tell multiple stories or focus on one. While I eventually decided on a single-story approach, that change in direction was difficult at first. I also sometimes find myself revising ideas more than I expected, which slows the writing process. However, these struggles have ultimately helped me grow as a writer, forcing me to refine my ideas and hone my storytelling techniques.
As for the goals I’ve excelled at meeting, I think I’ve done well in developing my skills for crafting compelling, relevant content that speaks to my audience. Whether it’s creating a strong narrative arc or integrating community themes into my stories.
Looking ahead to the second half of the semester, I want to continue developing my ability to take creative risks in my writing. I’d also like to focus on expanding my vocabulary and refining my writing style, especially when it comes to incorporating more varied sentence structures and deeper layers of meaning. Finally, I’m excited to continue pushing myself in the area of balancing creativity with clarity, so that my writing can both engage and inform my readers effectively.
Overall, I feel that I’ve made solid progress, and I’m eager to build on these skills as the semester continues.
2.B Critical & Creative Thinking (10%)
[Takes risks in assignments and in approaches to learning to create new knowledge.]
Writing this essay pushed me out of my comfort zone because I relied heavily on the seed metaphor to tie together my ideas about personal growth and community. I took a risk by structuring the entire piece around that metaphor, knowing it had to be both creative and clear. The process helped me learn how to blend poetic language with storytelling, all while ensuring that my message would resonate with young readers. This taught me how to present abstract concepts like purpose and belonging in a relatable, tangible way. Incorporating my faith-based perspective felt vulnerable, but it was important in showing how community played a key role in helping me flourish. This was also a risk because I know my faith is not one that many people are too fond about, especially in an educational setting. Knowing this, I still wrote it anyways.
Next time, I might push myself to experiment with different narrative techniques or maybe adding dialogue or shifting perspectives to challenge myself further. I could also explore using different metaphors to represent the theme of the writing, which would allow me to take my creative risks even further.
13.B Written Communication (15%)
[Uses appropriate, relevant, and compelling content to illustrate mastery of the subject, conveying the writers understanding and the shaping the whole work]
I initially outlined the essay with plans to include multiple stories that each represented different aspects of community influence. However, as I developed the piece, I decided to shift my approach and focus on telling one cohesive story. This change allowed me to dive deeper into a single narrative, which I believe makes the message more impactful and personal.
Starting with the idea of writing several different stories helped me brainstorm the various ways community can shape individuals, from role models to peer pressure and support groups. However, as I began writing, I realized that focusing on one story would allow me to explore the emotions, challenges, and growth of a single character in more depth, giving readers a stronger emotional connection to the narrative.
This shift in approach pushed me to refine my storytelling skills. Instead of trying to juggle multiple storylines, I had to think carefully about how to weave all the themes—role models, peer support, and finding purpose—into one character’s experience. This challenged me to focus on character development and plot pacing, ensuring that all the important aspects of community influence were still included but mixed into a single story.
By including this artifact along with my first narrative essay, I’m demonstrating my growth as a writer, not only in terms of storytelling techniques but also in learning how to adapt and refine my ideas to make the final product more compelling and focused.
7.C Skills for Lifelong Learning (30%)
[Reviews prior learning inside and outside of the classroom to reveal significantly changed perspectives about educational and life experiences.]
REFLECTION #1
The planning process with the individual and group projects has been going well. We all already have our individual products planned and got to brainstorm on how we are going to go about doing the products. For the group project, we discussed our website and what to do and the things we are going to add and change. I think our group is going well due to the fact that we are a small group and that we are all different in terms of race, backgrounds, interests, etc. The diversity helps us to come up with many different ideas that relate to our fields of study but also that our different ideas help to build off of each other. Just like in the reading where they use the example of ants and how the small individuals work together to build a whole colony. I feel like that applies to us.
REFLECTION #2
During the first part of the reading where a story is being told, I feel like both the work I do in CODES and my personal life can relate to that. In the story an indegnous girl finds some sap and then introuduces it to those in her community. When first demonstrating how she did this, it was not working right away, but those around her wait patiently and her mother encourages her. Eventually she suceeeds and her community cheers her on and this method she used was then passed on from generation to generation. I feel like in CODES I’ve taken lots of risk with certain assignment I’ve choosen that may have been challenging but had support from my peers. I also believe in my life I have an amazing community that is supportive and patient with me even when things do not go exactly as planned. I think about my major changes from early childhood to speech pathology for example and how supportive the people were around me when those things were happening.
REFLECTION #3
In the past semesters of CODES, I believe some of the principals that were most relevant in our work was communicating in images. We worked a lot with digital storytelling so choosing photos that properly portrayed the message of the story was something that we were familiar with. I also think that this goes into telling better stories. I think that was definitely a principal most relevant with our previous CODES semesters.
I think creating meaningful calls to action and invoke emotion with intention are definitely ones that we are focused on now. I believe that with our final project a lot of us are adding in little pieces of our own personal skills or personal lives within it which can relate to evoking emotion with intention. As well as creating meaningful calls to action since a lot of the work we are doing is with the purpose for the audience to utilize it to their advantage with either helping other or themselves
In these reflections, I can see how my perspectives have shifted academically and personally, demonstrating growth as a lifelong learner.
In Reflection #1, working with a diverse group showed me how collaboration can be enriched by different perspectives. Initially, I saw group work as task-oriented, but now I recognize how diversity fosters creativity and problem-solving, both in school and in life.
In Reflection #2, I explore how taking risks with the support of my community has changed my approach. Like the indigenous girl in the story, I’ve learned that persistence, even in uncertain situations, leads to growth. Where I once hesitated to take risks, I now embrace challenges, knowing I can rely on my support network to help me succeed.
In Reflection #3, I reflect on how my understanding of storytelling has evolved. Before, I focused on the technical side, but now I see the power of using emotion to create impactful narratives. This shift has helped me better connect with others, both academically and personally.
These reflections reveal significant changes in how I approach collaboration, risk, and communication, showing how my learning experiences continue to shape my perspective.
9.A Problem-Solving Skills (30%)
[Constructs insightful problem statements with evidence of relevant factors]
I plan to use my second product for this skill as well as our problem statement from our team.
12.C Collaboration (15%)
[Works independently toward goals by contributing and meeting deadlines set by our team.]
[add an artifact or two here and a few sentences about how the artifact demonstrates your learning; you should talk about process. How did this assignment help you develop a new skill, push you to try something new? What might you do differently next time? Note that when you have a heavily weighted goal, you should include more than one artifact]
My narrative essay, “Roots of Purpose: Finding Purpose Through Connection,” fits perfectly with the goal of working independently toward group objectives and meeting deadlines. As part of our team, each of us had specific products we needed to complete individually to contribute to the larger group effort. This essay was my contribution, and completing it on time helped ensure that we, as a team, stayed on track with our overall goals.
Working on this essay required a lot of focus and time management, as I had to balance my personal writing process with the deadlines we agreed on as a group. I took responsibility for my piece, making sure I put in the effort to meet our shared timelines while still producing a high-quality, thoughtful essay. Even though we were each working on separate pieces, it was important to me to make sure I held up my end of the team’s work by completing my contribution in a timely and organized way.
This experience reinforced my ability to work independently within a group setting, and it felt rewarding to know that by meeting my deadlines, I was helping our team move forward as a whole.