Booklink xLearningReflectionJournal-Week11-RevisedSpring20212 xHistoricalSkillProjects-FinalProject-LoveLetterstotheNextGeneration1 xLearningReflectionJournal-Week10 xLearningReflectionJournal-Week14 x
Step by Step Directions and Requirements
1. Figure out what format you would like to use in your love letter 2. Consider what vision and message you would like to convey to your audience (who is your audience?) You can either focus on a group of people or an idea/theme. For example, a vision (dream) could be of a more equitable American society for women. How has this struggle for equality and independence been fought, is being fought and your hope for the future? 3. What sources/evidence will support the message in your love letter to the next generation? 4. You will have to prioritize information here. This is not covering all that you learned in this class, rather one thread that mattered to you. 5. Your Love Letter to the Next Generation should include a mixture of artifacts. Artifacts can be primary and secondary sources, documents, images, maps, graphs, videos, songs, sections of podcasts, etc. If you add videos, songs, podcasts (please hyperlink them). 6. The historical narrative should include 3 to 4 primary sources (primary sources are artifacts that are created during the time period under study) from different time periods to support your interpretation. 7. In terms of length, you should be aiming for approximately 5 to 6 pages long (double spaced, 1-inch margin, 12 point font). Remember, you will be adding your images, primary sources, and other artifacts right to your letter. For example, think of how I construct the weekly “Framing the Historical Conversations” or the “Weekly Check-Ins” with images, links, songs, and text. 8. In your conclusion, please consider what your vision is for America and how it has been shaped by our history. 9. Cite your sources from the course materials in a Work Cited Page
http://www.americanyawp.com
Learning Reflection Journal – Week 11
Rationale Reminder: Many times, we try to hurry through the assignment, get the grade and move onto the next thing on our agenda without grappling and thinking about it. I would like us to slow down, reflect on the material and make meaningful connections to ourselves, other ideas and interests.
The title Learning Reflection Journal describes the purpose of this assignment. This journal is to help you to start to reflect on your learning process and also the historical material throughout the semester. By keeping a Learning Reflection journal, I am hoping to instill the practice of slow and deep thinking in addition to helping cultivate your own voice, thoughts and ideas. Each week the questions will vary, but I am looking for you to demonstrate that you have engaged with the material and growing in your analysis and interpretation.
Questions for Week 11:
1. This week we have been exploring the historical thinking idea of characters and chronology. Identify one individual (character) that you learned from watching The Abolitionists – why were you drawn to this character? What did you learn about that individual? What do you want to know more about?
Place your response here. I think angilena stuck out was she was strong in religion and she made a big choice by leaving to escape from the slavary I would want to know more about these people who helped abolish slavery
2. We often think of the 1960s and 1970s as a period of incredible social growth, experimentation, questioning and challenging traditional forms of authority and organizing to change or reform society for the whole or larger common good. However, most people did not support these movements (think Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, Women’s Liberation, farm workers movement, Students for Democratic Society, American Indian Movement, anti-war, communal living, environmental movement, etc.) and responded negatively which led to a period of “conservative” backlash. I would argue that the 1960s/1970s are the second wave or attempt at these reforms and many of these “reforms” to perfect society first occurred in the 1820s to 1860s in America- utopian communities (religious and non-religious), reforming education, free love, women’s rights, abolitionist, dress and diet reformers, and prison reforms to name a few. Pick one nineteenth century reform movement that we learned about this week to examine – how and why did they propose to change society? What did justice look like for that group?
Place your response here The civill rights movement was a powerful movement. It was a move for a better society and world, this movement was not only to abolish slavery but to better the rights for African American. Such as allowing them to vote
3. One of the lessons this week that I took away is that specific individuals were willing to move beyond centering their personal and group/community experiences and to think about the well-being of the whole collective, democracy or nation (or all of the above). If we think beyond individuals or individual reforms, what issues could be identify in American society (the cracks in American society)? What does this tell us about equality, justice and democracy in America?
In the early 1930s the movement for equality justice and liberty was just about to start. Change was shortly apprroching but this took much from them as many would not agree with the new government rule as the Northern states got rid of slavery many southern states would continue this creating much
4. Reading opens up new worlds and possibilities. Reading helps expands our learning. What is your favorite book? What lesson did you learn from the book?
Place your response here I don’t do much reading but one of my favorite books that use red before is I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson before Jackie Robinson most baseball players were all white this book speaks a lot about Robinsons story and how hard it was. He had to overcome many negative views form people to actually make it where he wanted to be a pro baseball player and to open up diversity in sports as this was a big movement but it started with him.
Historical
Skill Projects- Final Project
“Love Letters to the Next Generation”
Throughout the semester, many of you reflected on the fact that this was the first time you were learning new material or that it was presented in a different way by adding complexity and nuance. Many of you were brave and honest in your responses and admitted you had never had to think in that way before or acknowledged that it might be something to think about in the first place because it did not directly affect you. You now will have the opportunity to add your voice to the historical record by writing a love letter to the next generation.
Letters or the written word is very powerful. As we move forward in this new digital and multi-media age, we are rapidly losing the art of letter writing. Journalist Catherine Field discusses this very issue, she writes about receiving letters from her mother-in-law:
Will this fading generation, I find myself quietly asking, also be the last to write letters? Messages crafted by hand rather than bits of binary code? Writing that carries emotions rather than emoticons? Letter-writing is among our most ancient of arts. Think of letters and the mind falls on Paul of Tarsus, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain; on love letters written during the American Civil War, or letters written to a parent by a frightened soldier at the battlefront.
A good handwritten letter is a creative act, and not just because it is a visual and tactile pleasure. It is a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do. You savor their arrival and later take care to place them in a box for safe keeping. ..We have always liked to pore over the letters of great figures like Winston Churchill and Abigail Adams for the insight this offers into their lives: the writing, the crossings-out, the very feel of history on paper. Sitting here, savoring the imminent arrival of the next letter from my mother-in-law, I wonder what will be the legacy of the digital letter-writing age.
In her book, Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times, editor Carolina De Robertis explains the power of love letters in the public sphere. She writes in the introduction:
Why love letters?
The epistolary essay, or essay in letter form, has unique powers. A potent example, one that inspired this book, lies in the great James Baldwin’s “My Dungeon Shook – Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” published in The Fire Next Time in 1963 (the same year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., penned another seminal and brilliant epistolary essay, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”) Baldwin’s letter is addressed to his young nephew, and it gives voice to the injustices of institutional racism, the beauty and dignity of Black Life, and the need for social change. The tone is at once tender and analytical, impassioned, and nuanced, sweeping and deeply personal. Baldwin showed us that letter-essays, as a form, are perfectly situated to blend incisive political thought with intimate reflection, to fold them into a single embrace.
And that’s where the love comes in. Love is the blending agent that fuses the political and intimate, providing urgency to one and context to the other. In a letter, the thoughts at hand are undergirded by the need to connect with the intended recipient- and this spirt of extension beyond oneself can link social themes to our personal spheres, to what cuts the closest and matters most. It is love that pushes us to face the journey toward justice without flinching, love that impels us to keep going on the long, hard road, love that provides the moral compass and the map.
As for the work dissent, it entered this project as an expression of how these letters defend truth in the face of repression. As my exiled grandmother could have told you, it doesn’t take a dictator to create an atmosphere of fear and shut down freedom of speech. All it takes is a bully at the helm, using threats and intimidation against any journalist (or former Miss Universe, or Hamilton actor, or ordinary citizen) to raise the specter of silence and censorship. And so, in such a climate, we can either silence ourselves and live in fear or we can stand taller and speak. Dissent is verbal resistance. It is the affirmation of our voices, of our worth. It is, in a democracy, a fundamental right. And in fact, dissent is not unrelated to love. They are complementary forces. In a climate where bigotry is an explicit value of those in institutional power, speaking love is an act of dissent.”
Rationale of Assignment – Many of you have passionately discussed and wrote about the American past, present and future. You are all now given the opportunity to decide on your topic of discussion by writing “A Letter to the Next Generation.” With this project, you will be crafting a historical narrative in the form of a love letter to the next generation. You are now practicing historians. You will be demonstrating connections between the course materials and crafting a historical narrative through letter writing. It is now your time to add your voice and interpretation to the pages of history. This project is asking you to engage in the material differently in that you are the author or creator of this love letter that is based on a historical narrative (story) that you develop. You will need a beginning, middle and ending. You can approach crafting your narrative in a variety of ways. I would like you to carefully think about the themes we have discussed throughout the semester: community, race, gender, class, region, equality, freedom, justice, liberty, activism, hardship, determination, persistence, character, education, hope, religion, optimism, resilience, resistance and agitation. Then, I would like you to write a letter to the next generation. You can address the letter however you wish and also how you structure the letter is for you to decide (a public declaration, a manifesto or call to arms, a love letter or a private family letter). The overarching question or idea should be: What is your vision of America (to build the world anew) moving forward based on what we have learned and discussed in class? You need to incorporate specific examples (historical and current) into your letter. Your historical narrative should cover the whole of our class. Chronology and context matter – be sure to take both of them into account as you are crafting your letter. You should feel free to incorporate the work you have already done in this class. This project can easily become massive, so I am going to try to put some constraints on your historical narrative.
Step by Step Directions and Requirements
1. Figure out what format you would like to use in your love letter
2. Consider what vision and message you would like to convey to your audience (who is your audience?) You can either focus on a group of people or an idea/theme. For example, a vision (dream) could be of a more equitable American society for women. How has this struggle for equality and independence been fought, is being fought and your hope for the future?
3. What sources/evidence will support the message in your love letter to the next generation?
4.
You will have to prioritize information here. This is not covering all that you learned in this class, rather one thread that mattered to you.
5. Your Love Letter to the Next Generation should include a mixture of artifacts. Artifacts can be primary and secondary sources, documents, images, maps, graphs, videos, songs, sections of podcasts, etc. If you add videos, songs, podcasts (please hyperlink them).
6. The historical narrative should include 3 to 4 primary sources (primary sources are artifacts that are created during the time period under study) from different time periods to support your interpretation.
7. In terms of length, you should be aiming for approximately 5 to 6 pages long (double spaced, 1 inch margin, 12 point font). Remember, you will be adding your images, primary sources and other artifacts right to your letter. For an example, think of how I construct the weekly “Framing the Historical Conversations” or the “Weekly Check Ins” with images, links, songs and text.
8. In your conclusion, please consider what your vision is for America and how it has been shaped by our history.
9. Cite your sources from the course materials in a Work Cited Page
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
1. What is one new event/individual/idea that you learned from watching We Shall Remain – Trail of Tears ?
Place your response here. From the video the We shall Remain I learned that their were many struggles between the Americans and the Indians. By 1830 the ridge had a big bargain with the united states in return for his safety and to keep his land. As a young teen the ridge was challenged by the united states
2. What is one idea/individual/event that you would have liked to seen developed further? Why?
Place your response here. I wanted to see the development of the ridge and more of what his affect was on the cheroke society. Also how many adapted the writing and how they improved their literacy trough the years so quickly.
3. Find any primary source – a photograph, document, artifact, oral history, song, map, etc.) that relates to Indian Removal in America during the 1830s? Copy and paste the image here along with citation (title, creator/author, date and the url/website where you downloaded the artifact). What does it tell us about the time period? Explain its significance.
This show the native Americans being forced out by the us government and forced to move from their land.
Place your response here
4. This week the historical theme is “The Era of the Common Man,” we are exploring how the market revolution (economics) and expansion in democracy led to more inclusion of white men into the civic body. In what ways were the promises of liberty, equality, freedom in our founding documents expanded, limited and challenged during the early nineteenth century?
Place your response. Here the promise for liberty, equality and freedom in the 1830s was rough for the Cherokee tribes as they strived and gained knowledge to attempt to keep their land but the united states under Andrew Jackson dominated and took advantage of the land.
5. This week we have been exploring the historical thinking idea of complexity. As Professor Lacy argued in 12 Cs of Historical Thinking: “History is messy, complicate and not easily summarized – though it’s the job of historians to distill evidence and make some sense, or meaning, of history’s complexity….Assessing complexity involves rigor.” How do make sense of the evidence surrounding the Cherokee removal (differing views in the Cherokee nation, the role of President Jackson, the state and federal courses), Northern missionaries/reformers supporting the Cherokee, white Georgians, the military, enslaved and freed Black people in Georgia).
Place your response here. I think the best way to make sense of the events that occurred during the time Jackson was president is to pay close attention to the relationships between the natives and the Americans. Also the roles of the ridge and John ross as he caused much controversy trying to keep his land.
Learning Reflection Journal – Week 14
Rationale – Throughout the semester, we have been discussing and practicing the skills of both historical thinking and learning. This week, we are going to contribute to the historical record by creating what I hope will eventually be the LCC- Digital History Time Capsule. What do you want historians, scholars, learners, community members to know about living through this global pandemic, social justice movements and political unrest?
Since your responses will start to compose a collection, I am giving you three options to choose from:
____ Yes, I would like to be included in the LCC- Digital History Time Capsule
Name:
Age:
City/State:
Email (In order that I can share with you the digital time capsule):
____Yes, I would like to be included in the LCC- Digital History Time Capsule, but as an anonymous participant
___x_ No, I do not want my material to be part of the LCC- Digital History Time Capsule
Questions for Week 14:
1. What is one artifact that you would put into 2020-2021 history time capsule? Please put in your picture of the artifact (object) that you would include below?
Copy and paste your image here
2. What recollection/story/memory would you share about living through this time?
Place your response here
I think one thing I would share is a memory of when many these protest to end inequality and racial injustice strikes all around the country I think today the world is just waking up and taking a stand to this issue. I believe with awareness and people coming together the world can be a better place.
3. What historical lesson (event, idea, person,) that you learned about this semester, would you tell future generations is important to learn, know and study in the future? Why is this historical material/information important?
Place your response here
One lesson from this semester that I think is important is the lessons taught by Fredrick Douglas as he was a very brave man and he taught that knowledge was power and being aware brought great strength. I think this is important.
4. What advice would you give to future generations after living through 2020-2021?
Place your response here
I think for future generations my advice would be to live your life to the fullest during these couple of years many people around the world lives have changed with this pandemic.
5. What song best represents your experience of the last year?
Place song tile and link here
The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars
