Final Reflection Essay: What have you brought to the table? What did you take from the table?
DUE: 11:59pm, Monday May 10, 2021
LATE submissions will be accepted until 8am Thursday May 13 but subject to an automatic 10% point reduction.
NO ESSAYS should be submitted BEFORE our final group critique of all the finished bowls on (hopefully) Wednesday April 28, 2021.
Length: minimum 1500 words, double spaced
For the Final Reflection Essay students will draw on their overall experiences in this course.
As you prepare to write your Final Reflection reread your previous reflection assignments and reflect on what you said then and compare that to how you feel now.
Most important for me is how this class builds community, both in and out of the studio.
You may use some of the content from your other reflection essays, especially if it addresses any of the prompts below. However please DO NOT cut and paste word for word large sections of earlier essays. You may use the content or ideas from earlier reflection essays, but it must be with renewed research and/or personal reflection. Use the Final Reflection essay as an opportunity to revisit or revise previous viewpoints.
You may copy word for word the self-critique you submitted for the Final Studio Production assignment submission, as well as include photos of your bowls, garden creations and/or coloring pages if these help illustrate your Final Reflection narrative.
You may find it helpful when organizing your essay to use headings for different sections. However I will still want to see an intro and a conclusion. Examples of headings could be “Service for Siena/Francis”, “Working for social justice in the studio”, etc.
Your essay should include the following:
- a brief statement about your Empty Bowls experience. I want to use these statements in the promotion and display for the next CU Empty Bowls event (2022). You can lead with this statement (like an epigraph before the body of your essay) or include it at the end. Just make sure I know where it is, so I can easily extract it.
- A reflection on one or more of the
and describe how they manifest in this course. - Clearly articulated self-disclosure and connections between course activities relevant to the learning objectives listed below. For some objectives or group of objectives I’ve recommended possible course activities (studio time, service, readings) you can use to discuss your experiences relevant to the objectives. You do not need to address all of the objectives individually.
Intersections
- Students will become engaged in a problem (Homelessness and food insecurity in Omaha), explore its complexity through critical reading and research (course readings and previous essays), analyze and evaluate alternative solutions (studio and service activities), and justify a chosen solution with a reasoned argument.
- Students will describe personal involvement in work related to service and/or advocacy for social justice. (relate how your work in this class contributes to the mission of Siena/Francis and the CU Empty Bowls project)
- Students will integrate learning from various disciplines and experiences to articulate their vision of justice, of serving the common good, and of working as agents of social justice as community leaders, and global citizens. (How did this class relate to your major? Was there something you learned in another core course that was reinforced in this class?)
Designated Ethics
What are our ethical responsibilities as informed citizens?
What does it mean to “give”? Was it difficult to give “away” your bowls?
- Students will apply analytical tools, content knowledge, and ethical principles to contextualize social conditions, evaluate the consequences of injustices, and identify opportunities to promote social justice.
- Students will distinguish the morally relevant features of complex practical situations in the context of a chosen academic discipline, profession, or sphere of ethical responsibility.
- Students will apply fundamental moral theories and principles, such as consequentialism, deontology, and/or virtue theory in a chosen academic discipline, code of conduct, profession, or sphere of ethical responsibility.
- Students will critically evaluate the relationship between their ethical presuppositions, their responsibilities to society, and the values of their chosen academic discipline, profession, or sphere of ethical responsibility.
AcSL
Did this class motivate you to continue working toward the greater good? If so, how?
- Students will integrate learning of disciplinary knowledge, gained through classroom exercises, with experiential knowledge, gained through direct contact with the everyday problems of real people.
- Students will encounter, serve, and form relationships through structured opportunities with individuals and communities that might otherwise remain outside their personal experience.
- RECOMMENDED but not required: Photo-documentation of course activitieswhich supports the content of your essay. This may include your bowl making process, finished bowls, bowls in action, service for Siena/Francis, etc. This photo-documentation can be imbedded in your essay, listed as an Appendix with references such as “see Appendix figure 1”, or included at the conclusion of your essay. Whichever way you choose to visually represent your experiences in this course make sure it is easily followed and accessible.
Papers should be well written with little to no spelling or grammatical errors.
This semester was extremely challenging and this essay is an opportunity to communicate to your professor your ideas on improving this course in the future. A vital component of this essay is personal reflection on the combined efforts of all involved. Therefore all essays should include an assessment of the class as a whole, not just your individual contribution. As such no essays should be submitted prior to our last class of the semester.
Please let me know if you need feedback on drafts or have questions.
