GoPost #1: Reflecting on the Deresiewicz and Brooks articles, what does it mean to have moral

imagination and moral courage? How are we taught (or how do we learn) these qualities? What
stands in the way of us learning and embodying them?
Both Brooks and Deresiewicz articulated ideas I have been thinking about a lot recently. As a
middle and high schooler, I identified as one of the high achievers that Deresiewicz describes always pushing myself because that's what I was good at, and trying to adhere to the path that
"smart kids" are supposed to follow. And of course this includes going to college. But now that I
am here at UW, I find we all face the question: "How then shall we live?" The first step is often
thought of as deciding on a field of study. It is easy to choose courses of study that have clear job
prospects at the end of four years, but in some ways this only prolongs finding your true self especially if clear job prospects are the only reason for choosing said path. This is where moral
imagination and moral courage come in. Perhaps living a life based on self-love, ingenuity, and
empathy (to name a few) is more fufilling than following the expected formula for a "sucessful"
life. Moral imagination means having the creativity to think beyond the expected, concrete path
set by society and instead pursue a way of life that fulfills your whole person, and moral courage
is having the strength to take action on these dreams.
These qualities can be achieved from experiences that result in many of the "moral bucket list"
items that Brooks describes - humility shift, self defeat, dependency leap, energizing love,
finding the call within the call, and the conscience leap. A lot of these experiences cannot be
planned, and often times even when they happen, many people are unable to glean the important
lessons that can help build their moral imagination or moral courage. So I think the first step is to
be aware of these scenarios. Next time we face self-defeat, perhaps we can find more of
ourselves from this experience and in doing so develop more humility which in turn could lead to
recognizing our interdependence - it all adds up to our journey towards radiating inner light, as
Brooks said.
The last paragraph in Brooks' article especially spoke to me: "But eventually, at moments of rare
joy, career ambitions pause, the ego rests, the stumbler looks out at a picnic or dinner or a valley
and is overwhelmed by a feeling of limitless gratitude, and an acceptance of the fact that life has
treated her much better than she deserves." Developing limitless gratitude helps us to embrace
our moral freedom to choose our answer to the question "How then shall we live?", which again
is a crucial question that all college kids face.
Overall, I loved these two articles. They spoke to me and a lot of themes I have been
contemplating lately. Although some might criticize the articles for being too vague or
unachievable, I believe it is better to be aware and idealistic than to resign ourselves to a way of
life that has the potential to leave us feeling unfufilled. It is valuable to bear these ideas in mind
as we prepare to welcome new students into a turbulent time of life where they too will have to
start developing their own sense of moral imagination and moral courage.

Go Post #2: What did you learn from the the mini-teach? What did you do that worked? What
would you change to improve the experience? What did you see a peer do well that you would
incorporate into your teaching?
One of the main things I learned from my mini-teach is the importance of having an
understanding of what your students already know. For my task, I chose to teach my group how
to read music notes in the treble clef. I had prepared my lesson plan assuming that no one in my
group had any musical experience; however, little did I know that each person in my group had
been a musician at some point in their life. Consequently my lesson plan was well below their
ability level and while they were kind to go along with it anyways, I know that probably would
not work in a real teaching setting. Now I know that it is important to plan my lessons based on
what my students already know in order to maximize productiveness and engagement during the
lesson. This could take the form of surveying kids the week before or coming into a lesson with
multiple different ways and levels at which to teach my kids the material depending on their
prior knowledge of the material. In summary, I think being flexible and coming prepared with
several plan B's of how to convey material will be important.
I really enjoyed the mini-teaches of my peers in my working group. I liked how Anna provided a
visual handout which immediately drew me into the material and made it easy for me to follow
along while she verbally explained to us our task. I liked how Jonathon was engaging and
encouraging throughout his lesson even though his task of juggling was difficult for some of us.
He made me feel like it is okay to mess up and try again. I hope to incorporate appealing to many
different learning styles and an encouraging attitude into my lessons this fall.
GoPost #3: After doing this week's readings, reflect on high-impact practices in your own
education thus far. Choose 2 practices youve experienced and discuss how you envision them
impacting your life (both professional and personal) in the future.
All of the High-Impact Educational Practices are terms that I have heard many times during my
first year here at UW, indicating that all of these opportunities are available to be had! Six of
these experiences I have either completed or started so far, but I hope to experience all of them
by the time I graduate. The two that I would like to discuss here are Service Learning and
Learning Communities.
This quarter I began a service learning project as a part of my English Composition class. I chose
to volunteer with Reading Partners, a national non-profit organization that provides one-on-one
tutoring sessions for elementary schoolers at low income schools who are below their reading
level. Every Wednesday morning, I bus down to Sanislo Elementary in West Seattle and tutor a
couple different kindergartners. Even though my journey with Reading Partners has just begun, I
have already learned more about myself and the community I am serving. This is actually my
first experience officially volunteering with an organization. I enjoy reading to and interacting
with my kids and trying to understand how their brains work. Sometimes it is hard to tell exactly
the impact that my 2 hours tutoring each week have on my kids, but perhaps this will become
more apparent as the quarter progresses. The most important take aways from my experience
with Reading Partners so far is, as the article describes, I am now able to connect our discussions

of literacy in my English class with real world experiences, and I have a broader perspective on a
community in Seattle, what a low-income school is like, and the opportunity to learn from kids
who have had a variety of different childhoods. I can carry these perspectives with me into my
education here and into future service learning opportunities I partake in.
The Honors Program here at UW seems like the pinnacle of a Learning Community. My fall and
winter quarters this year I took two Honors classes - the first one was Person-Planet Politics:
Being Human on a New Earth, and the second was Disaster Science: Interdisciplanary
Exploration of Marine Oil Spills. I chose these two classes because of my interest in climate
change and environmental studies, and both of these classes provided extremely different
perspectives on these related issues. Person-Planet Politics was philosophy based, including a
large contemplative dimension on our relationship to our Earth. Marine Oil Spills explored a
specific type of environmental problem, using a more scientific approach to describe
implications of an oil spill and possible solutions and prevention techniques. Both courses
incorporated Collaborative Projects as well, through which I was able to take ownership of these
topics with my classmates. Another important aspect of the Learning Community is not only the
connected courses, but the students. I had a couple classmates who were in both courses with me,
and the Honors program as a whole is designed to have a certain group of kids taking classes
multiple classes together, making it a distinct Learning Community. I know the Learning
Community I found by taking these two classes contributed enormously to my learning and made
me more excited to pursue further learning on similar topics.
GoPost #4: Reflect on your group teaching experience. How did your teaching session go? What
surprised you about the experience? What went well? What would you do differently if you were
to teach the same lesson again? How does it compare to your mini-teach and your reflections on
that experience?
I liked how our group worked well as a team. I think we prepared well and were able to speak
our about our different sections without notes and with confidence and enthusiasm. That being
said, I definitely learned a lot from this experience and there are a few areas I would like to
improve upon.
First, I think we should have used more visual aids. We made a decision not to use a powerpoint
because we did not want to be tied to a screen, but based on the feedback we got I think having
some slides with visual representations of all the components of the honors curriculum we were
trying to teach would have been helpful to have a visual component to follow along with. I liked
how another group that presented had handouts with all the information about coursework,
experiential learning, and the portfolio and then had creative slides to explain the WHY we do all
these things. For my lesson teaches in the fall I want to work on having some creative visuals to
help teach the content.
Second, we designed our activities to be pertinent to our teaching content and keeping in mind
our time constraints but I felt like we could have developed our activities a little more and been
more creative. All of our activities were good, and going forward I want to incorporate maybe

some more different types of group work and personalized activities designed to help my
students think about how all of these ideas are relevant to them individually.
This group teach was different from my mini-teach in that it involved covering a lot more
content that was inherently more complex than simply teaching a skill. It helped to have other
peers teach with me, and going forward I will combine my experience teaching individually from
my mini teach and skills gained from teaching more complex content in the group teach to work
towards teaching the honors curriculum individually to my students next fall.
GoPost #5: Reflect on our retreat. What did you learn about your leadership style? Additionally,
share one idea or suggestion from the PE community that you now want to incorporate into your
class in the fall. Feel free to share any other thoughts you have following our time together.
I had a wonderful time on the retreat - so many great things happened. First of all, I was able to
talk further with returning Peer Educators and benefit from their experienced advice and insights.
In addition, there were a lot more self-reflecting excercises than I expected, but these turned out
to be my favorite part and were just what I needed. Through all the activities, I had the
opportunity to really work through my own feelings about UW, Honors, myself, and what
leadership means to me, and now I feel so much better prepared to move forward from here and
use this knowledge to get ready for my class. And, of course, all of us had a lot of time to bond
naturally and I think this was extremely valuable because now I feel like we can all support each
other better.
I definitely identified as the spontaneous motivator - I like to get people excited about things and
lead through motivation because that's what makes me happy as well. I did also see parts of
myself in all the leadership styles, and I especially want to work on aspects of the "relationship
master" and pay attention to individuals in my fall class to make sure no one is feeling left
behind.
I also would like to incorporate the speed write into my class next fall. This was my favorite
activity from the retreat because it allowed me to really open up to myself about how I was
feeling and where I was going, and I think everyone - especially freshmen - can benefit from this
exercise.