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Today in class we talked about ideas and changes for the PLA senior classes moving forward. Here I’ll list some of my ideas.

  • Bi-monthly classes. I can see weekly classes being a bit of a struggle for seniors, but I think 2 per month is a good compromise. This gives us a chance to see each other more frequently, which will also greatly reduce the time between conversations we have. I also think the classes should be shorter, 1.5 hours long, or 1.25 hours.  I think 2 hours is a really long time to be in class, and I personally tend to drift off in those scenarios. So I think having more classes at slightly shorter times would help us stay more focused and see each other more frequently.
  • More small-group discussions. Talking can be stimulating…but we also can easily lose focus if we’re not totally engaged in what we’re talking about. And even if we are, having so many conversations in such a big group mans things move slowly. I think we should do way more conversations in smaller group settings. The small-group conversations tend to be quicker and more intimate than big group ones, and we can always come back and share what we talked about with the group. Honestly, just something for variety. All we really do is talk now and I’d like some variance.
  • Outside media to prompt/facilitate discussion. Today in class someone (Anj?) brought up the idea of watching documentaries to prompt conversation. We could watch it outside of class or inside. It’s just something different to provide us with knowledge and ideas and discussion. Not much else on this one, it sounds awesome.
  • Do more, talk less. I’ve always found that I’ve learned critical thinking better from doing things rather than talking about them. To that extent, I think we should be doing more than just talking in this class. Maybe we take on some personal project, maybe we work with a group of our friends to do something. Either way I think taking some action and then analyzing it through the lens of what we do in-class would be a better teacher of critical thinking and leadership than just conversing about it as we do now.

These are the first ideas that popped into my head. I will try to update more, but I believe class would be a lot more fun, interesting, and relevant with these additions!