Mason Spounias

Mrs. Storer
English 3 Honors: Block 4
9/20/19
Socratic Circle Reflection on The Crucible
I felt somewhat prepared for this Socratic seminar. I feel that I lagged in catching up with
everyone else during the conversation; however, I was still able to follow along to some extent
with my prior knowledge just from reading the book. I felt I was falling behind with concrete
details. I felt my contributions were pretty good. They could have been better as I didn’t speak
too much, but at the same time I was the facilitator and I tried to get everyone to talk before I
gave more input. My few contributions however I felt were good and started a discussion. I also
think our teamwork was really good in our inner circle. The quality of feedback I gave my
partner could have been better. My partner was a facilitator just as I was, and her group didn’t
talk to much. She did a decent amount of talking and facilitating, so I didn’t really know what to
tell her to do since her group was kind of unresponsive. I feel that I could have helped her bring
more people into the discussion with my feedback, but at the time my feedback was bland and
useless for the most part. To personally improve what transpired, I probably would have cut
some people off. Most people gave their opinion, and a lot of good ideas were going around.
There was a lot of repetition. Being that I was the facilitator I probably should have cut the
conversation to either expand further, instead of staying on the same point, or ask someone who
hasn’t spoken their opinion just for variety. Next time, If I am the facilitator again, then I want to
try to make the conversation expand rather than hear the same ideas over and over.
As a group, I feel half of us were on it and the other half were lagging. When I was in the
outer circle, the inner circle was falling behind. There were one or two people who always
talked. They weren’t hogging any time, but they were the only ones willing to talk. I think in the
entire group, there were people hesitant because they weren’t well prepared. The conversation,
however, I felt was decent. People were answering the questions with good answers and there
was a discussion going. However, like I stated before, there was still a lot of repetition. Many
people built off each other’s ideas and we were fluid about expanding the discussion. My only
issue was that a lot of the time people ended up saying the same thing and eventually it got
repetitive. Overall I think my group was a little shy, being this was our first Socratic seminar,
and I think we can all only get better in the future.
An imaginary thesis I might come up with to explain the importance of the ideas
expressed in the selection of the text would be “The crucible portrays humans natural instinct of
following the crowd because of how many people are accused without real facts, and how the
accused are treated even though they have not been proven guilty.”
The main points I would make in this imaginary essay would be that of Bret Kavanaugh,
myself, and Elizabeth Proctor. I feel all three share something in common, something was setup
against us and because of that we were all stereotyped. Not only that but I would also bring up
points about how accusations can taint someone without even being true, like how rumors are
hurtful even if not true.
 For example, Mr. Kavanaugh was accused of horrible crimes and because of that, many
people assumed he was a bad person and began to dislike him. Once you look at the evidence
and realize he was acquitted, it is hard to removed negative connotation from his name. Me,
another example, just naturally was drawn to “Stoner” things, like long hair parted down the
middle, playing lacrosse and guitar, being in a band, and hanging out with like minded people.
Because of this many people have thought I was someone who would use marijuana, and people
make fun of me for it. I didn’t do anything other than what I like to do.