Seminar+Paper

Participating in the Socratic seminar process helped me to pick up on many skills. I was able to **listen** to my peers and pay attention to the points they each made. I listened carefully to each person who spoke and found that the conversation was easy to follow and stay involved in. I **understood** each of the points made by my classmates on the different topics we discussed as they made themselves clear and had very thoughtful insights. Also the seminar showed me that I am able to **make choices** for myself a lot easier then I once thought. Hearing each side with the different perspectives of others involved help me to form my own opinions each day on the various topics. I learned that when partaking in a discussion there is no right or wrong answer. People speak, you listen, and you don't necessarily need to come to an agreement. Each person is allowed to have their own thoughts and feelings on the subject. You can voice how your feeling and it's accepted by your peers or members in the group. I also saw that with the different topics comes different rules and barriers. Each state has rules and regulations set up with their beliefs on how to run community. Depending on where you are and what you are doing law can be different and so can the outlook of the people living there. With the difference in changes, barriers, laws, etc. some topics and discussions can be very offensive to others. Discussion can escalate to higher ranges of anger if someone becomes offended by the topic of discussion or decisions being made by others in the group. Leading a discussion is far from easy. It takes a lot of preparation and can be very time consuming. The information that is being given out must be factorial and interesting to keep your audience entertained. Points need to be made clear for all members to understand. Equal time must be given to everyone so that they can speak their minds on the topic as well without feeling left out or unheard. When working with a group it's important to make sure everyone is on the same page working to complete the task. Everyone should be working to their greatest abilities as well as coming together as a team. My classmates I found to be very respectful of one another and their topics of choice. They listened and responded to each one in an acceptable manner. The environment was controlled and no one was angry with anyone for the comments they made. Each person was allowed to speak their minds and be heard without being judge. It was for everyone a positive environment. No one person felt singled out or unheard and most people had the same thoughts and feelings on the daily topics discussed. For my own grade I think anywhere in the "b" range would be acceptable. I was there present in class for all seminars except the first because I was over at Dutchess handle college preparations but I did write a two paragraph response to the topic of children and their innocence. I thought I was very open-minded. I didn't get angry at anyone comments; I sat back and listened to each one considering their points of views. In a discussion it's very important to be able to put yourself in other people's shoes to understand where they are coming from which is something I do on a daily basis. For my group presentation we were well prepared. We struggled finding quotes and political cartoons but everything came together in the end and our hand out was eye catching and interesting. The group I worked did well together, we listened to each other and took each person's feelings into consideration on the our topic of discussion which was the media's influence on society. Our group was organized and kept our discussion going. The effort was put in from each person. I participated but I know I could of done better. I am pretty outspoken. Any thought or idea I had someone always beat me to saying it and then other topics I didn't really have feelings on or understood complete enough to make comment on. I don't think I did too bad during these seminars.