Refection

Zoe Bonillas
3/31/09
Humanities

Project Reflection

I really enjoyed my Literature circle book; A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. It was about a boy in Sierra Leone who was forced to fight in the war. This book was my first choice and I am very glad that I got it because I learned a lot about a topic I didn’t know about. I didn’t know that kids were forced to fight in war and had their families killed in front of them. I think that one thing that would improve the LC process is if we checked in once a week with our group, just so we knew where to read to for the next post. I liked using the blogs better then the in-person meetings because it was a lot easier to say what you wanted about your book and how you felt instead of just following the order of quotes and vocabulary. The only thing that was a problem was if I couldn’t use the computer at the time. I felt like my group all pretty much felt the same about our book. We all thought that is was very sad and we were surprised that something like this actually happened in the world.
The next part of the project was creating a painting that somehow symbolized your book. We had choices on how we wanted to portray the book in our painting. I decided to paint a scene from the book because there were many powerful scenes in this book that I thought I could portray well in a painting. We could also do a picture of the theme, a recreation of a famous painting, a scene, and a few others. I decided to do a scene where Ishmael, the main character is standing on a hill watching his parent’s village being burned down. I think that there was a connection between the painting and the book because the feeling that I get from looking at the painting is the same feeling that I got when reading this part of the book. Also I did the painting from what I pictured the scene would actually look like, so to me it really looks they way it should. In my painting Ishmael is standing on a hill that is to the side and he is looking down on a burning village that his parent’s are in. I was happy with the emotion in the painting, but I think I could have made the actual painting look a little better. I tried to make Ishmael look like a real person but it didn’t work out to well. Also it was hard to paint Ishmael because he was so small. I think if I had slowed down a little bit and made the small details a little bigger then it would have turned out a lot better. I learned that if I slow down everything will turn out a lot better.
The final part of the project was interviewing someone who had actually immigrated to America. Most people had adults to interview but there were not enough adults to interview so some of us got to go to the IRC. IRC stands for International Rescue committee. They rescue kids that are refugees. So we went to their high school to interview them. I was a little nervous about interviewing people from the IRC because I had never met them before and I didn’t know how much English they spoke. I didn’t know if I would understand them or not. When we got there we sat with the person we were going to interview and some of them gave presentations on their home counties. Most of the teenagers there had moved pretty recently. I got to interview a 15 year old girl named Aye Aye, from Burma. At first it was a little awkward because she didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to just start my interview. Then we started asking questions about each other and it got easier. It was a little hard to understand her some of the time but by the second interview I was used to it. The people that didn’t get to go to the IRC had to do 3 interviews, one by e-mail, one on the phone, and one in person. I didn’t have to. I only had to do two interviews and both of them were in person. I think that I would have liked doing the three different methods because it would be different each time, but I am glad that I did them both in person because I felt like I got to know Aye Aye even better. Both of the interviews were so interesting. I learned so much about what her life was like, and what made it interesting was that it was so different from mine. Talking to her also made me a little sad because she had been through so many terrible things. Some things that I found interesting from the first interview was that she immigrated from Burma in 2007 with both of her parents and her two brothers. Also that she had to leave her grandparents and her aunts and uncles in Burma. I also learned about why she moved and we talked about all the different reasons in both interviews. One of the biggest reasons that she moved was that people were killing people where she lived. There was war going on and many people were being killed. Also her family didn’t have very much money, so they couldn’t afford food. She was also telling me that she could not go to school because they would kick you out if you didn’t have supplies and her family could not afford the supplies. One more thing that I found interesting was that one of the things she liked about America was school. This interested me because I always here kids complaining about going to school, but she doesn’t because she is just so grateful that she can go at all. Having this opportunity was great because I learned so much and it really opened my eyes to what is going on in the world. It also gave me a better understanding of the unit on immigration we learned about in class. After doing the interview we had to make a gift for our person. We had a choice of what we wanted to make. I decided to make a calendar. For my calendar I used pictures of Burma, like celebrations and landmarks. I also used the pictures we took at there school. I wanted to make the calendar because I thought I could make something that reminded her of her home country and also had pictures of America and the friends she has made here.
During this unit we had to learn about immigration during the immigration boom. Like Ellis and Angel Island. This was interesting because I had never learned about it before. Also this unit cam at a good time because I am going to Ellis Island on the 8th grade trip, so now I know what it was used for. After learning about it I have seen and heard so much about it. I really enjoyed this project because we really got to get out and hear really stories about what it was like to immigrate. Also I learned about things that I didn’t know about. One thing that I would have changed about this project was I would have tried to think about some more questions for my immigrant because I ran out of questions and there were a couple of awkward silences. Also I would have tried harder to improve upon my gift after each check-in because I got points off for not have more of it done on the 2nd check-in. But all in all I like this project, it was a lot of fun and I really liked meeting Aye Aye and all of the other kids in the class.