While stressing about her feature story, Anna Zheng of Charlottesville, Virginia, relaxed when her instructor, John Kupetz, told her she could never disappoint him. With their mix of individual feedback and personal talk, instructor conferences provided a space where Zheng could grow as a journalist without fear of judgment, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy instructor always starts his feedback with something positive and closes it with something motivational, like, \u2018You can do this,\u2019\u201d Zheng said. \u201cWith how positive he is, it encourages me to do better. I want to make him proud and do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
An essential part of the program is the weekly one-on-one instructor conferences where students work through their writing, ask questions and get personal feedback on each of their assignments.<\/p>\n
Annika Singh of Fremont, California, said the program\u2019s focus on feedback rather than grades not only helped her improve her journalistic skills but also fostered a new sense of collaboration with her peers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt school, we\u2019re used to receiving a score for our work,\u201d Singh said. \u201cHaving the opportunity to grow without worrying about being compared to others is refreshing.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Matthew Kim of Los Altos, California, edits from instructors showed him the staff\u2019s dedication to working with cherubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like individualized feedback because it shows that your instructors actually take time to read your work,\u201d Kim said. \u201cTheir criticism is detailed but never demeaning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite being among 84 cherubs, Singh said she could depend on the conferences with her instructor to gain personalized feedback outside of class sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find it helpful to just sit and talk it out one-on-one,\u201d Singh said. \u201cYou get to ask a lot more questions that are more personal to your work than in a lecture setting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Instructor conferences provide each cherub a space to improve their journalistic skills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":1966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[175],"class_list":["post-884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":175,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-jkim","display_name":"Julia Kim","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3134,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/3134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}