Reflection on Reflection in Presentation

Generally, when I write reflections, they are reflections on experiences. I tell the story of a certain event and as I tell the story, I find ways to connect it back to the class or the reading that I'm supposed to reflect on it based upon. This idea of "looking back" is essential to the process. The reflection, then, is the way in which one looks back. "Critiquing is part of our...identity; it's what many of us have been rewarded for our entire academic lives. But saying what we like, what we value; that's tricky. Having that kind of discussion requires a disclosure that parallels what is asked of the composer of the reflection-in-presentation...revealing what we value in such a text makes us vulnerable in ways we discomfit."

Critiquing a concept as a student will make a student unconsciously think about the class (new information) in light of their new experience or a text they have read because it is criticism. Purely the way in which someone criticizes a concept says something about who they are, and a lot of people are aware of that. In talking about things they like, though, it's easy to go off on tangents of unrelated things. Or, rather, that's the common idea associated with talking about personal values. Students commonly fear that they aren't connecting enough material back to class-related concepts and are merely rambling about themselves. It's a common issue, and it's easy to do.

When someone reflects on an experience, they remember certain main ideas and they have takeaways. No two takeaways are going to be the same because nobody experiences the same thing in the same exact way. They will tell different stories and relate to different aspects of class material.

For this class, we have tangible experiences. We've had visits from different nonprofits, we've made a visit to a nonprofit as a class, we've explored aspects of nonprofits in groups where we get to unpack and combine the ideas that came from those experiences and from things that we have read. In all of this, we are keeping the idea of the reflection in the back of our minds. We're reading the theories and literature, discussing them, and then putting them in practice in the real world.

Structuring those pieces in a coherent reflection would consist of taking the main points of each of those pieces and expanding on them.

"At the same time, this is another narrative characteristic of reflection-in-presentation--a narrative of the course, of what she learned inside that context." There isn't a single statement, in this case, to summarize what I have learned. Despite the fact that I have had experience working with nonprofits, I didn't have quite as immersive an experience as is discussed in this course. To answer that question, I plan to go through my notes from my texts, the pictures I have gathered, and notes from meetings and visits.