Quarter 1 Reflections

This year in history have proven to be more of an eye opener than any other history class I’ve taken. With the curricular not being just text book based it hast to participate and engage my learning. The emphasis on in-class work and group work has made it more fun to learn about the topics at hand. It’s a bonus in my mind that we don’t get a lot of busy work for homework; rather our homework is a more in depth continuation of our class discussions. This in combination has increased my ability to think critically use empathy as a way to help bring the learned topic into focus. One of my favorite activities this year was the sympathy vs. empathy activity. It was a great way to show how history is a multifaceted subject that needs to be seen from every aspect and helps to connect it to current events, thus making it more interesting.

In line with my growth as a thinker, its helped me to understand more about the aspect of slavery and controversy in the union army during the Civil War. When we studied slavery through the analytical use of movies it was interesting to see the actions of the slave masters to the slave, which seemed kind at first. But the underlying motive made it hard to see it as an act of kindness. The movie Glory was a wonderful cinematic recreation of the Civil War. It helped me to understand that even though the Union soldiers were considered the “good guys”, there was actually a lot of racism towards the black union soldiers from the whites. The culmination of this learning in an essay definitely helped to solidify my knowledge and newly learned knowledge. The essay also helped to solidify my use of technology especially hyper linking instead of creating a MLA works cited page. The use of quotations to help prove my point and also helped me to better understand what I was actually writing about.