What Does It Mean to Be an American?

Smithsonian Quests Badge

 

Reflection: I did not enjoy this process because it did not accurately target my subject interests and instead I decided to do something that was interesting, but not interesting enough to remain dedicated to it for weeks. I would have liked to somehow challenge myself to do things relating to my interests and make up my own tasks. I think that we should make our own goals to achieve what we want to learn instead of being forced to do seemingly irrelevant tasks. I chose the Tree Hugger topic and in order to get the badge I had to find a picture of a tree and write about what it looks like, feels like, and include any other scientific facts about it. I just feel like this is something that would have been done on the elementary school level. It was definitely not something that I learned from. The next and final task was to get a rubbing or a picture of a rubbing from a tree's bark and to talk about the texture. We had to think about why that texture was the way it is, and whether the environment was a factor in its appearance. I learned very little from this task as well and I earned the badge with extreme ease.

 

Notice of Badge Completion

Issued to:	moocow123
Badge issued by:	Smithsonian Quests
Badge awarded by:	10th Grade
Badge Issuer Contact:	smithsonian@learningtimes.com
Issued on:	May 30, 2013
Also issued to:	10 others

U.S. Intervention in Haiti

Recently I've been forgetting to blog, but we are now learning about United States imperialism. Currently, we are starting Central America and the Caribbean.
Today in class, we learned about U.S. intervention in Haiti and we were asked to blog about a question that was given to us in class.
"How have the Haitians responded to the presence of U.S. Marines in their country?"

 

HAITI UNHAPPY WITH U.S. HELP

 

       The people of Haiti are unable to recognize that the U.S. are trying to help them. They have begun to train the Haitian militia to be able to fight back and citizens have been instructed to resist U.S. influence. Charlemagne Peralte went to far as to lead a resistance movement and criticized President Wilson for "pretending" to respect the small nations in Europe. They claim that for years we have been insulting them by trying to help them out with all their problems. They don't see that the poverty and destruction within it can be helped if the right people, us, back them up. They have informed us that it doesn't matter if we burn their cities, that we should back away and leave them to their own lives.
       According to Mr. Peralte, we have no right to fight them, even though it is for their own general good. We simply want to establish the same principles as we have in America, since we are a successful Union and want other people to follow suit. We are an intelligent and well-rounded community that simply wants to show others how to be successful. They are fit to rule, yes, but they are not fit to resolve the growing conflicts amongst their people. They will not back down even with U.S. military reinforcements present in their own country, but they will not give up and they will not give in.

Red River Question

As we watched the movie "Red River," we were supposed to think about how the movie portrays the cowboys and how that's different from what we learned in class. In the movie, the cowboys were extremely stereotypical. In the west during that time, they did have hats to protect them from the sun and boots to stay on their horse, but the other getup was completely unnecessary. It was historically inaccurate to portray the cowboys in such a way.

Past Two Days: April 26

Today, if we had a device, we were to work on one of the many projects. Yesterday, we finished presenting the projects from the day before, in which we had to try to convince people to buy an invention from you.

April 23 Recap

Yesterday, April 23, we learned various things about what life was like in the west. For example, we pretended we were living in a soddy, which is a house-type structure, typically one story, that is made of a mixture of mud and grass. The walls were often 3 feet thick, a perfect insulator. During the activity, we had to decide where we would sleep and eat and such. We figured out that without much space, we would have to pack together tightly. The next activity was basically to sit still for one minute straight. During this time in the west, people had to be completely still while someone took their picture, otherwise the picture would be blurry. It was easier said than done- you had to keep your facial expression constant, which I had trouble doing. If I was living in the west without the advanced cameras we have today, there would be no clear pictures of me out there. The final activity was smelling sod, which made up the sod houses. We had to discuss whether or not we thought we would be able to get used to the smell. Most of the people in my group agreed that they would, but I thought differently. I would get so sick of the smell after just a couple minutes. Overall, I feel like I learned a lot of good background details about the west. I like doing activities like this because it makes the information taught easier to understand and remember.

Past Two Days: April 22

Today, we went to the media lab to work on a new project. We were given a link to a website that gave options for a quest. We were able to pick any topic that interested us and do the work for it. I like this idea because it gives us the opportunity to research or learn about things that intrigue us, rather than just learning things because we were told to.