If you had to debate the opposite side, what would be your strongest argument?
I would elaborate on maintaining social order, it is hard to accomplish order in restorative justice because it is based on emotions, as they said.
Did you feel your personal biases affected your ability to listen to the other side?
No, because I haven’t chosen which side I want to totally agree with, both sides have their drawbacks, but my personal guilt of not preparing fully last night affected my ability to demonstrate our claims perfectly.
What new information did you learn from the other team?
I learned that they think restorative justice might lose sight of what is true. I’ve heard that someone in China who had only stolen a motorcycle received the death penalty. Maybe it’s because that’s in China, but some courts’ results are still mysterious. Everyone wanted to have the best solution on their side, when it comes to the conflict of benefit, nothing is fair, opinions could also twist the truth. So I think it is interesting to know others’ perspectives.
What was your best contribution to the group’s success?
Make sure to be specific and give examples.
I wouldn't say I led the group to success, and I’m not sure what it meant to succeed in a group presentation. But for me, maybe my goal for this time is just being able to talk regularly without irregular pauses. Experience from my last PBL presentation: Ms. Blackwood gave me, and basically everyone, an extremely low score (we screamed and yelled and complained about this). So I tried to practice my speaking before the presentation. I spoke with a Duolingo AI about my slide deck and verbal deliverables (there was a FaceTime mode, which I don’t need to type), and “she” offered me some improvements. I don’t know if my speaking skills have grown, but at least she is a good listener, compared to ChatGPT or my family, good that my mom paid for Duolingo.
After receiving the feedback, what improvements/changes can be made to your work? How do you plan on making those improvements?
Make sure to be specific and give examples.
The midterm paper discusses which justice approach is the best in the situation of the book The 57 Bus about a biologically male but agender teenager, Sasha, whose skirt was set on fire, resulting in severe burn damage. I argued that restorative justice is the best justice approach.
After receiving feedback from a classmate that my sentences and thesis statement were too separate, I tried to add a connection in the final version of the paper. Still, I found out afterwards that some of the combinations aren’t really relevant, so I am planning to learn more conjunction words before we have a similar paper next time.
We wrote slam poetry and presented it in this unit. My topic is “Mosquitoes and me”, I tried to describe mosquitoes’ traits and my reactions to them in this poem.
A piece of peer feedback that pointed out where to improve my pacing helped me the most. I revised every sentence again to make them connect. For example, some major spots that do not rhyme well were detected and deleted (no rhymes are better than bad rhymes), and some terms and phrases that I used incorrectly were corrected. While my final work still feels a bit off, it has improved significantly, thanks to the feedback.