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Greetings and welcome to Humanities 12! Our first day will be spent getting to know each other both personally and academically. Here’s a outline of what’s in store.
Goal: For us to get to know each other as a learning community
Outcomes: Students will increase their…
…understanding of my expectations for us as a learning community
…understanding of their own hopes and expectations for the class
…familiarity with the themes and questions for the course
1. Introductions
We’ll start with names and I’ll explain a bit of my background and approach to education.
2. Lego Exercise
I have designed an experiential introduction to how I think about the core competencies in the humanities. You’ll work in small groups to practice analysis, synthesis, and presentation. This should take us to break.
3. What is the Humanities?
We’ll process the exercise once we get back to break and consider the following quote, which has come to me via the brilliant Jessica McCallum:
“Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason.”
- From: The Humanities in American Life, a 1980 report from the United States Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities
I’ll also discuss the expectations for your Learning Journal, which will be a significant part of your grade. This is important to understand.
4. Journaling
You’ll get your journal started in class by answering the following questions and sharing them with me as a Google doc.
· One thing you’re looking forward to senior year
· One thing that will be a challenge
· Interests and their relation to college
· How do the humanities fit in to the first three bullets?
5. Review of the syllabus
We’ll end the class with a review and annotation of the syllabus.
Assignment for Friday:
1. Review and sign the syllabus
2. Have a parent or guardian review and sign the syllabus
3. Read and watch the videos on the PBS News Hour’s Timeline of Events in Ferguson:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/timeline-events-ferguson/
Note: You do not have to watch the entire press conference about the autopsy but it’s good to realize what they’re talking about. Feel free to follow the links throughout this page to get more detailed information.
Also watch this video in which they gathered comments from community members:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/ferguson-residents-speak-towns-tragedy/
4. Post a response in our Edmodo account and be ready to discuss to the following question:
“What Constitutional issues are raised by the events in Ferguson?”
Post your response on this Google Doc.
https://docs.google.com/a/animashighschool.com/document/d/12HVi44AQPejqlfzpiXfnm5CI41TokE4FWJRypHu12EA/edit?usp=sharing