February
1
ELA 10: Feb 1 “It Happened In Montgomery” poem and discussion…
- We began the class with a quick viewing of the video we attempted to watch before the bell went yesterday. The clip was from a movie titled Mississippi Burning that is based on true events during the tense times when civil rights for African American people were slowly
becoming more recognized. Many southern people were very reluctant to accept these new rights for the Black people in their society and they continued with their extreme acts of aggression towards them. It is somewhat shocking to imagine that a person could ever have been raised with family morals to beleive they had the right to kill someone because of the color of their skin. - We talked about how social changes that happen in one country will most likely have a ripple affect in other countries. Where rights are given to a particular group in society, other groups of similar power in different countries will take action to fight for the same rights.
- The civil movement in the south of the USA gave power and protection to the Black people of the country. The First Nations people of Canada were, at that time, being treated in a similar way by the people of Canada and the government. Recognizing that change can happen and advances made for their community of people, efforts were made in Canada soon after the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. Through the 1970s, several changes were happening. By 1982, though, it was finalized by the introduction of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the benchmark and core of what today make up Canadian values. Things are still changing today, such as legalization of Gay Marriage and the possibly inevitable legalization of marijuanna. The Canada you live in today may look quite different twenty years from now. Can you imagine what types of changes in what is considered acceptable in our society through that many years?
- We read the poem about the Rosa Parks incident where one moment changed history for all races of people in the United States. We read it several times, picked out some of the figurative language that created certain effects for the reader, and answered a few questions.
- The students have been asked to create their own learning blogs to use for their reading reflections, instead of having a journal booklet that is so one-dimensional. Today, students watched a video I was able to make last night (that, admittedly could have used more editing) that showed the screen image of me creating a blog. Reading through instructions to create their blog would be one thing but watching and listening to me make one myself should be more effective. Students will have time next week to make their blogs but I was excited and pleased to see that some were interested in starting even this afternoon with their own. I do hope this is a personally relevant project for them. There should be something more to be received from this English class rather than checking off the readings as we do them and understanding the format of genres of literature. We’ll see!!