*Note: I was not present for the first two class sections since I had not been added

to the course
yet and was on waitlist.

Source 1: "How to Feel Like You Matter”

Reading Notes
- Reciprocity between feeling valued and wanting to add value to others’ lives
- Creates a chicken-egg cycle
- Significant quest theory - starts with feelings valued/taken care of
- Does this have to be external, or can it be internal
- Hard to create internal source, especially if having experienced childhood neglect
- Pressures to fit into standards during childhood/adolescence
- Must send message to young people that THEY need to add value, not just that they are
valued
- Not just participation trophies
- Obligation to demand fairness for oneself and create fairness for everyone else
- Both environmental and personality related reasons for why people may feel they are
being treated unjustly
- Vindictive mattering - resorting to extreme measures to feel like one matters, even
having a negative impact, ex. School shooters
- Adding value on your own is very actionable, whereas forcing others to make you feel
valued is not
- Take responsibility

Journal Entry
1. Think of a time in your life where you felt you mattered and describe that time. To what
extent do you agree with Isaac Prilleltensky’s claim that feeling valued and adding value
help people to feel like they matter?
a. A time in my life where I felt as though I mattered is when I did well academically
or received a new opportunity. I definitely feel like this correlates with
Prilleltensky’s claim in the sense that I felt like these moments meant that I had
potential to really contribute to society, that I was on the right path to do so, which
in turn made me feel valued. I agree with his claim almost completely, although I
also think that the extent to which it is true varies from person to person based on
personality.
2. What are small, actionable steps students can take in a classroom environment to add
value? What are small actionable steps teachers can take to help students feel more
valued?
a. In a classroom, students easily can add value by meaningfully participating in the
class and genuinely being interested in the class material. Teachers can do
similar things—I always feel valued when a teacher is passionate about teaching
the material, as it signifies that they believe that the students have potential to
make an impact with what they are learning.
 3. Drawing on the idea from Robin Wall Kimmerer in the excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass
for Young Adults, what is a gift that you have? What is a gift you might share with our
class this quarter?
a. A gift that I have is that I am able to take authority in situations where it is
needed, but I also do not mind letting others take charge if they so wish. This gift
may be something I utilize during class or small group discussions. Although, as I
said, letting people take charge and seeing them feel good about it also fulfills
me.

Source 2: Kimmerer "People of Corn - People of

Light"
Journal Entry
1. What was it like reading this piece?
a. Reading this piece felt very humbling in that it told a story of two human eras, and
when it posed the question of which era we were in, I truly did not know how to
answer, and my gut told me that we were the first era, based on the way we treat
the earth. It was also humbling as it reminded me that we are only a niche in the
natural world, with different gifts than other species.
2. What resonated for you?
a. The part about the Mayan Story of Creation resonated with me, especially the
part about the two eras of humans, as I talked about above. Another part that
resonated with me was when it talked about the Western world’s ilbal, which was
science. I definitely agree that science is our main way of seeing the world, and
although I have always thought that was for the better (and still do) I thought the
questions posed were very interesting—does it respect other species enough,
and does it allow room for appreciating what cannot be seen and can only be
felt? Anyways, I thought the entirety of the piece was very interesting and a
valuable read.

Source 3: "How Your Brain Responds to Stories"

Reading Notes
- It is important to make people feel seen, especially when you are in a position of
authority
- Stories are much more effective at getting people to listen to your ideas
- Processing info via a lecture etc happens in wernicke’s and broca’s area
- During a story, your entire brain is activated as it visualizes what is happening
- Neural coupling: listening’s brain lights up the same as the storyteller
- Listener gains empathy for storyteller: oxytocin is released in the brain, making the
speaker seem more trustworthy
 - Listening to plain data is different
- Data does not change behavior, only emotions do
- Decision making starts in the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain
- Patients with damage to their amygdala could not experience emotions
- They could not make decisions
- Data does not speak for itself. Everyone’s understanding of data differs without a way to
guide them through
- Stories answer questions about context, outcome, and conflict
- Stories also build tension, which keeps your attention
- Stories build an idea that you cannot unsee
- Don’t tell story about data itself, tell story parallel to data that pulls key points from data
- Takeaway: storytelling is effective because it connects with our emotional centers, where
decisions start and which gets our attention.

Source 4: "The Dark Side of Storytelling"

Reading Notes
- Stories we tell are negatively impacting our lives
- Stories are fundamental to being human - not all storytelling is bad
- Attribution bias - making systematic errors when we are trying to find reasons for our
own behavior.
- Armed with a story, this is a dangerous bias
- When asked, people think they are the reason for their own success in investment
decisions
- When asked to tell a story about when they were unsuccessful, they blame
others
- Majority of individuals tell 2-3 lies per hour
- Humans resist the truth, and get defensive in critical learning situations, 99% of the time
- Timothy Mcvey, a 25 yo man, wrote a letter a year before he bombed a building that did
not blame himself
- He was bullied when young, justifying his actions to himself, when he bombed
the gov’t he said the gov’t was his biggest bully
- identify own unique patterns in our storytelling to see lies
- Taking in the truth can make brain more conscious about our own behavior and
thoughts, allowing us to truly learn

Source 5: "Dispositions Towards Learning"

https://ucsb.instructure.com/courses/19820/assignments/233647?wrap=1
Reading Notes
- Common for people to have aspirations even though they don’t know where to start
- Numerous factors that can facilitate or get in the way of learning
- Can be something like the physical environment is too noisy
 - Or, the teaching style
- Resources are also important
- The learning disposition of the learner is the other important factor
- Learning disposition defined as: tendency, mood, or inclination of the learner to learn
- Not only the person’s ability to learn that counts
- Also their perception and inclination to make use of the ability in the right
situation
- Dispositions
- Are not intellectual traits
- Can positively or negatively affect the learning environment
- Determines students’ sensitivity and willingness
- Can change and may apply to every situation or only certain situations
- Dispositions differ from knowledge in that
- In new situations you have previous knowledge (declarative knowledge (facts),
procedural knowledge (knowing how)
- However, dispositions do with how you draw from that previous knowledge and
use it in the new setting - called knowledge transfer
- Dispositions also change from one situation to another
- Types of dispositions
- 1. Expectancy-value
- People learn better when they care about what they are learning about
- In situations where you can’t make the student care directly about the thing they
are learning (ex.writing), connecting it to something else helps
- 2. Self-efficacy
- Essentially that students who believe in themselves will be more likely to carry
out the steps that lead to their own success
- 3. Self-regulation
- Not an inherent trait
- A process learners go through when they choose how to adapt to learning
situations
- Ex. the ability to set reasonable goals, to pick strategies to achieve goals, time
management, etc
- Linked to self efficacy - students with high self efficacy more likely to self regulate
- 4. Attribution
- To what/whom people attribute their success to
- Who gets praised/blamed
- High internal locus of control - when a learner attributes their success/failure to
themselves
- High external locus of control - when a learner attributes their success/failure to
external factors
- Locus of control can change from person to person
- Extremely high internal locus of control can be negative - self blame can lead to
loss of self esteem
- 5. Problem exploring and answer getting
 - Well structured problems are easy to understand, ill structured problems are not
- Problem exploring dispositions tend to make one open to trial and error, exploring
possibilities
- Answer getting dispositions see right answers quickly, not open to multiple
possibilities
- With ill structured problems, answer getting dispositions more easily frustrated
- Takeaway: reflecting on your own dispositions can help you revise ones that are not
working for you and consequently learn better

Source 6: "Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking"

Reading Notes
- Putting aside a need for control/vigilance in the early stages of writing is beneficial for
thinking
- 1st order thinking
- Intuitive, creative
- Doesn’t strive for perfection/control
- 2nd order thinking, aka critical thinking
- Conscious
- Direct
- Controlled
- Both have their own strengths/weaknesses
- 2nd order thinking can often bring out people’s worst thinking: thinking carefully causes
people to overanalyze their own thinking while they are supposed to be thinking about
something else
- 1st order thinking heightens intelligence
- Exploratory writing brings out insightful conceptual ideas that are rooted in
experience
- Gathers ideas to the point where it all clicks together
- Gives a more rich array of insights
- Flip side: we are also likely to be fooled by 1st order thinking
- Can be steered by unconscious prejudices/assumptions/biases
- Sometimes, no coherent ideas click into place, and no organization among the
chaos emerges
- In first order thinking, we can be steered by subconscious thoughts. 2nd order thinking
allows us to take the wheel and have more control instead.
- Two different writing processes enhance the two different orders of thinking
- Critical thinking, second order thinking is most heightened not by writing down
initial thoughts, but going back to them and revising them, essentially thinking
about your own thinking
- Freewriting enhances first order thinking, maybe not as well as conversation, but
conversation is not always available whereas freewriting is
- Intuitive thinking is thought to be enhanced by passive activities such as taking a walk
 - However this often just postpones thinking
- Whereas writing is active and often acts as a positive feedback loop, inviting
more ideas as you go on
- List making or diagram making are not as effective as writing (syntax, speech on paper)
- Harnessing the two opposites of 1st and 2nd order thinking often yields surprising
results, there is not only one way to think or write and there are benefits to be reaped
from each
- Working on the two types of writing/thinking separately is often best
- Fear of being foolish in first order thinking dissipates with the reassurance that the bad
parts will be weeded out in second order thinking
- So it is often best to start with creative/freewriting, then revise
- The two methods of thinking should be mutually reinforced, there is no need to support
one and criticize the other

Source 7: "The Ladder of Abstraction"

What is the ladder of abstraction, and why is it important in writing?
The ladder of abstraction is a metaphorical hierarchy, used to categorize levels of specificity in
communication. The top of the ladder represents more broad or conceptual ways of
communicating an idea. The bottom of the ladder is more concrete or specific. For instance,
when referring to a person, the most broad way of referencing them would be to just say ‘a
person’, however, something more specific would be ‘my mother’. In writing, it is important to be
conscious of what level on the ladder of abstraction you are conveying your ideas. Often, finding
the right balance between broad and specific is crucial in effectively communicating your ideas.
It can entirely change what someone perceives that you are talking about and change the
context of your writing.

Source 8: "Shifting Academic Mindset in the

Learning Partnership"
https://ucsb.instructure.com/courses/19820/assignments/238442
Reading Notes
Introduction
- A positive academic mindset is extremely helpful for students to put in work into learning
and persevere
- Negative academic mindset leads to disengaging attitude towards school
- Stems from self doubt, not a bad personality
- Academic mindset is composed of 4 elements:
- Sense of preparedness based on past experience
 - Our sense of autonomy
- Belief in yourself
- Our narrative we tell ourselves about why we are good/bad learners
- At a certain point the brain believes same patterns will repeat themselves
- Creates schema
- Brain’s interpretation creates either fixed or growth mindset
Socio Political impact on academic mindset
- Negative academic mindset often result of external influence rather than choice of the
student
- Young students cannot grasp that their failures in school are not entirely their fault
Microaggressions and negativity bias
- Microaggressions are small comments that reinforce stereotypes about people of color
- Not overtly racist
- Framing student differences as a negative thing is a microaggression
- Brain has negativity bias
- Brain remembers negative experiences more than positive experiences
- Other forms of microaggressions
- Microassaults - misusing power in subtle ways to marginalize students
- Microinsults - ignorance towards other students’ backgrounds, cultures, etc
- Microinvalidations - invalidating a person of colors’ negative experiences
Setting the stage for a mind shift - must reprogram the brain to a positive academic mindset
Validation - Culturally responsive teachers validate students’ experiences
Self efficacy and the feedback loop
- Building self efficacy is key to helping students reconstruct academic mindset
- Believing academic success is proportional to effort
- Believing in ability to succeed
- Brain is happiest when making progress to solving a problem
Reframing mistakes as information
- Fixed mindset - mistakes viewed as confirmation of failure
- Growth mindset - mistakes viewed as information to succeed next time
Strategies to shift mindset
- Creating counter narrative for learning identity
- Use visual cues to target limbic region of brain, use positive images
- Positive reinforcement, acknowledge signs of a positive mindset
- Play to the student’s strengths
- Interrupt negative self talk
Implications for supporting dependent learners and building intellective capacity
- Must provide counternarrative to the microaggressions etc that students of color have
been hearing their whole lives about why they are incapable

Source 9: "Really Responding to Students' Writing"

- Taking time to peer review effectively vs. just getting through the assignment
 - As a responder, view yourself as a friendly reader that is test piloting the writing
- Be supportive but don’t fool them into thinking it’s amazing when it’s not
- Point to areas that could use improvement in a constructive way
- Keep in mind that it is not YOUR paper
- Make suggestions, but frame them as samples, not corrections.
- Your task is to convey to the writer how you read from the paper
- What you gained from it, what you found interesting/confusing, what you wanted
to hear more of
- Can offer advice or ask questions
- Think about the circumstances/context of the writing before you start peer reviewing
- Look at writing in scope of the assignment
- Keep in mind the aim/goal of the writer
- Keep in mind how the writing should tie into the work being done in class
- Keep in mind the stage of drafting the writing should be in
- With these things in mind, only address the things that are most important in the given
circumstances
- Idea: use marginal comments, but also with a summarizing note at the end
- Don’t overcrowd the writer’s space with comments
- Don’t make the tone judgy or teacher-y, try to sound like a friend
- Write comments out in full sentences, don’t be stingy or vague
- Be more specific than general
- Always praise but expect more at the same time, not just one or the other
- Can be critical but other ways of commenting are
- Saying your interpretation/understanding of the paper
- Soften criticisms
- Offer advice
- Ask questions
- Follow up on earlier comments
- Offer praise
- Keep ratio of praise and criticism roughly equal
- Take into account what you personally know about the writer, for ex if you know they
have been struggling in class, offer more praise
- Jeremy’s response to todd’s paper is well done - full, thoughtful, and respectful

Source 10: "How to Revise"

- Motto: kill your darlings - means we may need a new perspective, and may need to
make radical changes to our writing, even our most darling ideas
- Happens during revision
- Revision means to see again/change our view
- Not small changes, big changes → affects whole page
- Can even lead back to drafting
 - Revision happens before editing
- Plato’s forms - the idea that there is a perfect form in the universe of everything here on
earth
- We might view writing the same way, always trying to perfect our draft
- However, no writing can be perfect/can be perfect in many ways
- Revision is to make the draft excellent, not perfect
- Discovery stage - recognizing our writing could change/take a different form, picking the
best one
- Alignment stage - making sure writing aligns with our perspective as well as what we
want to convey for our target audience - making sure the work achieves what it was
originally meant to achieve
- Content revision - adding missing things, removal of repetitive things, etc
- Structural revision - revising the organization/chronological order of events, etc
- Normal to have to revise more than once
- 3 techniques to approach draft reflectively:
- Self review: looking over your own work, can be limited
- Talk to: read your text while adopting multiple perspectives (ex. Imagining your
text is the best, imagining it is the worst, etc)
- Peer review: having another person that is in a similar position as you look over
your own work
- Peers usually are not experts
- Can provide multiple perspectives

4/24/24
1. How do the ideas presented in “How to Revise” compare with your own understanding of
revision up to this point in your writing career?
a. They definitely provide a better, more effective perspective compared to my
understanding thus far.
2. What ideas or “stories” or experiences contributed to your understanding up to this
point?
a. Experiences of revising others’ writing in class has been the main contributor up
to this point.
3. Pinpoint any critical moments in your writing career that contributed to your
understanding. A particular assignment? A particular teacher?
a. I can’t remember very well, although I think my most meaningful revising
experience was reviewing my college essays; since it was a high stakes project, I
was very motivated to write the most meaningful stories possible.
4. How does this video challenge or expand your understanding of revision and your writing
process up to this point?
a. It challenges my view because I realize now that revising sometimes means to
completely redo, even getting rid of things you really liked
5. In what ways have we already been engaging with revising on Project 1?
a. When Dr. Warwick leaves comments on our work, it can prompt us to change
things, pick a different memory entirely, etc.
Source 11: "Literature Reviews"
- Literature review is essential part of research process
- Helps you understand the topic
- Helps you develop your own ideas
- Lets you demonstrate knowledge
- “The literature”=all scholarly writings on the topic, ex. Peer reviewed sources/articles,
dissertations, etc
- Include major works, and then other studies that build upon the major works
- Network of research that interacts with each other
- Dr. Classen says that research is like writing a continuous story, but reading the literature
allows you to know where you are in the story currently so you may know how to
proceed
- Figure out loose ends to see how to address the loose ends
- Reader must understand context/background of loose end that is being
addressed
- Literature reviews can be selective or comprehensive
- Literature reviews can also be standalone or part of a larger work
- Multiple steps in writing literature review:
- 1. Choose topic
- 2. Research and collect info
- 3. Use brain to evaluate usefulness of what you find
- 4. Analyze, critique articles
- 5. Keep track of citations
- 6. Revise paper
- 7. Create bibliography
- Make sure your paper is NOT a summarization
- Instead, synthesize new connections
- Create concept map