Inauguration '09
The above text is hyper-linked to the transcript of President Obama's speech from Tuesday. We spent a lot of time on Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech in class. What effective strategies did Dr. King employ that you can find elements of in President Obama's? Would you consider this a moving speech? Why or why not? If so (or if not), do you think it achieves its purpose, whatever purpose he intended?
What thoughts do you have after our initial unit, which is a foundation for the class? We have discussed prejudice, discrimination, racism, anti-Semitism, genocide... Were there things you wanted to say in class, but didn't? What are your feelings on having watched "GATTACA"? Can you see the dangers of an "equal" society?
What can we say about a THREE DAY WEEK!?!?! How lucky are we? :)
Wednesday, January 21
Holocaust/Shoah/anti-Semitism/Genocide
Notes, group activity
DUE: Stereotyping TV log
Thursday, January 22
Test over Unit 1
Elements of Drama
Intro to "Fiddler on the Roof"
Begin "Fiddler"
Friday, January 23
Watch "Fiddler"
Don't forget your Mindwatch journal! I have had a few entries in mine this week.
In our introduction to the class, we talk a lot about identity and the fact that we have to really know ourselves and how we think and perceive the world around us. These are a couple of outstanding examples of the "I Am" poem we started with this semester.
Who I Am by Paulina
I am a mixture of cultures but can't speak the language
I am sure of where I am going but not how to get there
I am a football fan who doesn't know the rules
I am sunny beaches and a snowy day
I am a swimmer who is afraid of open water
I am a world traveler who hasn't really been anywhere
I am a reader of food labels but don't care what they say
I am aware, but not involved
I am comedy
I am quiet but my thoughts are loud
I am a friendly smile
I am a busy bee looking for things to do
I am a keeper of random facts
I am an observer
I am spiritual and religious
I am done with this poem
Who I Am by Elliott
I am movies that make you cry
I am an airplane flying to a different place
I am stars twinkling in the night sky
I am salt water and sand between toes
I am a lounge chair soaking up the sun
I am chocolate raspberry in a waffle cone at Brewster's
I am the thrill and adrenaline before a roller coaster ride
I am the bud to a flower blooming
I am sunsets in the sky
I am bike riding, hiking, and snow skiing
I am swimming pools and hot tubs
I am bright colors, yellow, pink, and lime
I am TV Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and the OC
I am creative, fun, loud, and friendly
I am soccer in the fall
I am ambitious and know what I want in life
I am books that can't be put down
I am the lightning in a thunderstorm
I am the one laughing in a group
Well guys, I do feel pretty good after Friday's discussion. I am sure that over time we will all get more comfortable with each other and our topic. This week should go along way in doing that, as we will have many more such discussions!
Monday, January 12
Stereotyping
Fact vs. Opinion
Circles of my Multicultural Self activity
DUE: Parent letter and "I Am" poem
ASSIGNED: Keep a log of television watching and record when you see a character being stereotyped.
Tuesday, January 13
"GATTACA"
DUE: Fact/opinion activity
Wednesday, January 14
"GATTACA" and discussion
Thursday, January 15
Racism
Friday, January 16
Holocaust/Shoah/antisemitism
Genocide
Don't forget your Mindwatch journals!!!
Well guys, welcome to our class blog. I will be requiring you all to comment once a week on the blog. I will certainly try to put interesting discussion topics, resource material, and conversation starters on here, as well as hopefully some amazing work by all of you. I cannot begin to express to you what it means to me to get to teach this class, a class on my passion for Holocaust education. Last year's class was beyond amazing and I know that you all will raise the bar even higher.
If you haven't seen it yet, "Valkyrie" was quite a good movie. I was most impressed with the accuracy to the historical information and contexts, as I know it. I also just finished The Book Thief. This book is narrated by Death and, as you might imagine, that provides quite an interesting format. I am anxious to start our class reaading and discussion. Have you read anything Holocaust-related lately? Seen anything?
Perhaps none of you check this blog yet, but just in case, I wanted to update you on a few things. First of all, I saw "Valkyrie" last night and it was amazing! You should see it. I can't wait to see "Defiance" in a few weeks!!! Secondly, I just bought The Book Thief and I will let you know how I like it. Finally, unfortunately, I got the following email this morning from the Executive Director of my Tennessee Holocaust Commission Fellows Program. It is in regard to the story I read to my classes all about the man and woman who supposedly met later in life and had been at the same camp, but on different sides. It has been proven to be fraud. Feel free to read below:
From Jodi:
I do not know if any of you have told this story your classroom-but sadly it has been exposed as a fake. It is hard enough to comprehend the Holocaust for its own historical event so it is very troubling when individuals embellish the experience.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gqrb4uMpbj8D7T-XHwX0ylu0Q-0AD95BQUR00
Anger, sadness over fabricated Holocaust story
By HILLEL ITALIE – 22 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — It's the latest story that touched, and betrayed, the world.
"Herman Rosenblat and his wife are the most gentle, loving, beautiful people," literary agent Andrea Hurst said Sunday, anguishing over why she, and so many others, were taken by Rosenblat's story of love born on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence at a concentration camp.
"I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story."
On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat's memoir, "Angel at the Fence." Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread. The book was supposed to come out in February.
Rosenblat, 79, has been married to the former Roma Radzicky for 50 years, since meeting her on a blind date in New York. In a statement issued Saturday through his agent, he described himself as an advocate of love and tolerance who falsified his past to better spread his message.
"I wanted to bring happiness to people," said Rosenblat, who now lives in the Miami area. "I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."
Rosenblat's believers included not only his agent and his publisher, but Oprah Winfrey, film producers, journalists, family members and strangers who ignored, or didn't know about, the warnings from scholars that his story didn't make sense.
Other Holocaust memoirists have devised greater fantasies. Misha Defonseca, author of "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," pretended she was a Jewish girl who lived with wolves during the war, when she was actually a non-Jew who lived, without wolves, in Belgium.
Historical records prove Rosenblat was indeed at Buchenwald and other camps.
"How sad that he felt he had to embellish a life of surviving the Holocaust and of being married for half a century," said Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum.
The damage is broad. Publishing, the most trusting of industries, has again been burned by a memoir that fact-checking might have prevented. Berkley is an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), which in March pulled Margaret B. Jones' "Love and Consequences" after the author acknowledged she had invented her story of gang life in Los Angeles. Winfrey fell, as she did with James Frey, for a narrative of suffering and redemption better suited for television than for history.
The damage is deep. Scholars and other skeptics as well as fellow survivors fear that Rosenblat's fabrications will only encourage doubts about the Holocaust.
"I am very worried because many of us speak to thousands of student each year," says Sidney Finkel, a longtime friend of Rosenblat's and a fellow survivor. "We go before audiences. We tell them a story and now some people will question what I experienced."
"This was not Holocaust education but miseducation," Ken Waltzer, director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University, said in a statement.
"Holocaust experience is not heartwarming, it is heart rending. All this shows something about the broad unwillingness in our culture to confront the difficult knowledge of the Holocaust," Waltzer said. "All the more important then to have real memoirs that tell of real experience in the camps."
Among the fooled, at least the partially fooled, was Berenbaum, former director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Berenbaum had been asked to read the manuscript by film producer Harris Salomon, who still plans an adaptation of the book.
Berenbaum's tentative support — "Crazier things have happened," he told The Associated Press last fall — was cited by the publisher as it initially defended the book. Berenbaum now says he saw factual errors, including Rosenblat's description of Theresienstadt, the camp from which he was eventually liberated, but didn't think of challenging the love story.
"There's a limit to what I can verify, because I was not there," he says. "I can verify the general historical narrative, but in my research I rely upon the survivors to present the specifics of their existence with integrity. When they don't, they destroy so much and they ruin so much, and that's terrible."
"I was burned," he added. "And I have to read books more skeptically because I was burned."
