Rough Draft of my Vignette

This is my rough draft of my mini stories/scenarios of students struggling with their writing. I’m envisioning having each mini story/scenario in an individual box using the thinglink app.

The mini stories/scenarios are written in a way that you could sort of like see the “behind the scenes” of the students’ lives; their reality as to why they could be struggling with their writing. 

Some of the mini stories/scenarios are showing how the students are really trying to work hard on their papers with every minute they have but others also show how the lazy student just doesn’t have any interest in learning.

1.      As if is not enough with your daily family drama,

you are not doing very well in your writing class.

You feel like your professor just doesn’t understand

how hard you are trying. You get home after a full day

of work and you want to work on your papers, revise them,

read them aloud, go over printed copies rather than

just reading them off your computer, but there is noise

all over your home. Your parents are constantly arguing,

your nieces, who are 5 and 3 years old, live in the same

home with you and they run all over your house. You are really

trying to dedicate time to your papers but it seems like although

you are giving it your all, it’s just not enough.

2.      You wake up before the sun comes out to prepare

breakfast and lunches for your three little ones.

You go to work after that all day, and then sit

through your classes at night. All you want is an

education so that you can give your kids a better future.

After you put your kids to bed, you stay up until late

writing and revising your papers only to have your

professor return it saying that it needs to be revised.

But you revised; you spent all the hours you could possibly

have in your day revising it and you just don’t understand

what else could you do with your paper to make it better.

You must have a talk with you professor and ask what it is

that you are doing wrong so that you can improve that.

3.      You were just a kid when your parents decided to

come to this country. You never asked them to bring you

here. You were doing just fine with your studies back home

but now you are struggling as an ESL student. You

must learn the language. And every time you make the

same mistakes in your papers, your teacher writes “you

keep making the same mistake all throughout your paper”

without explaining to you how to fix it. When you ask your

teacher for help, she wants you to figure it out on your own.

She says that this way, you’ll be able to better learn to not

make the same mistake again. You look things up in

dictionaries and you try to ask classmates but if your

teacher could just guide you a little better you know

you’ll be able to do much better.

4.      There are just no excuses for you, you sleep

through classes and you think that just because

you have an athletic scholarship your writing

teacher will just go easy on you. The truth is that

you have to work as hard as the other students.

You must draft and revise your papers, otherwise

you won’t write quality papers that will make you

earn the grades that you need. The grades you need

to keep that scholarship. You must wake up

and work hard.   

  

5.      Your mom abandon the household 5 years ago

and since then, you somehow became a house wife.

Your father and brothers won’t clean anything after

themselves. And there you are, tired after work and school,

coming home to clean and cook. There is no time for you to

revise and rewrite and do all the things your professors are

telling you to do in your writing classes when you come

home from work. So after you cook and clean you stay up and

you read and write and read again and again. You take your

homework to work, and every free minute you get,

you spend it working on your papers. You hope that

this could help you improve the quality of your writing.

You are really giving it your all, but you are not sure

if it will be enough.