HUMANITIES/ US HISTORY

EXPECTATIONS & THOUGHTS

Prior to junior year, I was very excited for this class because in the past, the students would read a book called Ishmael. Ishmael was one of my favorite books that I read on my own time in sophomore year. It was about a philosophical gorilla that could talk and was teaching someone about how humans were destroying the world. However, the teacher that brought that book into the school was no longer teaching 11th grade, which was disappointing in a way because I knew the new teacher, Mrs. Hood-Esparza, would not read that book with us. Even though I knew that one of my favorite books was not going to be read again, I was still optimistic about the new books that she would introduce and the new perspective I could take from her being so different from the past teacher that I was really looking forward to having.

PIVOTAL MOMENT

Throughout the entire project, I tried to keep the details about it away from my family. I was afraid of the outcome and misinterpreted ideas that could have been made. I didn’t realize it, but I had been contributing to this societal conformity that I had observed in the classroom. We tend to only see the negatives rather than all of the positives that can betide if we were to share a certain part of ourselves with the rest of the world. This hinders our ability to connect with people and fully trust.

HUMANITARIAN EVOLUTION

As a humanitarian, I have learned that as class who has been together for many years, we still don’t know much about each other. Through the years, we have done group work and communicated with each other daily, but have refused to share more about ourselves to promote our safety and development in fear of judgement and/or carelessness.

At the beginning of each new year we are asked to do ice breakers which is always a drag. We state how we are already comfortable with each other and an ice breaker won’t make that connection any closer than it already is. In my peer group, when we all were asked to share our stories out to each other, it was very nerve wracking. This was surprising to me because of how often we communicate to each other and how “close” we say we are with each other. After hearing each story, you learn such an influential point in someone’s life. It made me realize that we don’t really know each other and where we come from; all we know about each other are our masks that we wear daily to portray the idea of a “normal” person. Although everybody has abnormalities and flaws, we refuse to show them to others in fear of judgement.

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