Of “Common Sense” & SMART Goals: Practice using Mentor Texts

This semester, Bayan Scholars asked professors to devote formal time to helping them prioritize and set goals - academic and otherwise. To that end, we played with the SMART protocol, an acronym that spells out traits of an effective plan: Specific, Measureable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time Oriented. Instead of relegating this topic solely to the Personal Development class, the professors wove SMART goals activities throughout the program. 

After a range of activities at the Winter retreat and Personal Development classes to develop ideas, students met up with both the Bayan professors to share their preliminary written SMART plan brainstorms. During these individual conferences, Bayan scholars received feedback, and subsequently revised and added in their journals more ideas into their prewriting.  

After all that, students had developed quite a lot of content they could use to create a statement, a narrative of their goals. In the English class, writers began to shape that content into a formal essay. 

To do so, students analyzed three “founding documents” of the United States: "The Declaration of Independence," The Preamble to the Constitution, and an excerpt of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense.” Our purpose was less about the content than about the “moves” the authors used to express their ideas, the decisions they made around structuring their content - the "bite" the authors' patterns of expression. 

For instance, the Preamble is basically made up of three “chunks,” three distinct moves that answer the questions:

• Who are we? 

• What’s our collective problem? 

• What do we propose to do? 

Snowballs and Transitions to Higher Education

The academic core of the Bayan Community is a pair of linked classes: English Composition and Personal Development. Most of us have a good idea about English classes. We write. We read. We write and read - a lot, practicing the analytical and critical skills students need to succeed in college and beyond. But what about Personal Development? What is "PD"? What do students do in a PD  class? 

This semester’s Personal Development class is PD 114, “Transitions in Higher Education,” a course that provides a step-by-step approach to preparing for the culture and rules of higher education as well as acquiring and practicing the “soft-skills” required to the move from community college setting to a four year institution. This also include in the process of selecting and applying for college and securing funds to pay for it all. 

The very first activity of the semester students did is emblematic of the work students do in PD. Professor Crystal Alberto, Bayan’s coordinator and counselor, canvassed from students the obstacles, barriers, and issues they anticipate facing when they get to the college of their choice. She used one of the students’ favorite routines, the “snowball fight,” to brainstorm different items. Students jot down answers to a series of questions onto a sheet of scratch paper, crumple up those sheets, and toss them in the air to simulate a snowball fight. Students pick up the "snowballs", unwrap them, and share written responses with the entire class. A discussion follows to debrief and unpack ideas. Here's a link to guidelines for the activity. 

Because of the Filipino focus in the Bayan Learning Community, Professor Alberto used questions that compelled students to look for a "Filipino" angle regarding transferring. To be sure, many of the items on the list Bayan Scholars generated apply to all transfer students. And still, noting the particular "flavor" of their obstacles helped students see that their cultural and ethnic identities are constitutive, at least part, of what they may experience. That identity piece is definitely a worthy angle of investigation. 

Agbayani Village Trip: Pride and Provocation

Once again, Bayan Scholars made our way to Agbayani Village in Delano; it's become a yearly tradition for our learning community. This year, we visited this historic site on November 7th and 8th, a few weeks after Filipino American History month. To prepare for the trip, we devoted class time to begin untangling the difference between history and heritage. We also studied sections from Dawn Mabalon's Little Manila is in the Heart to familiarize ourselves with the plight of Filipino farm workers and the significance of Delano.