Period 1: Genocide in Rwanda, Day 1 - Class Recap

Good evening students,

I hope you had a great rest of the day today and are in the process of having a fantastic evening. For you Blazer fans, another win should help! Thank you to those who have already come and commented - I'm glad to see you remembered to!

Here's what we did today in class:

Soundtrack: "Changes" by 2Pac ("Changes" Lyrics). The reason I picked this song to begin the class is because we are all adjusting to the new classroom with me as teacher. Also, I find the song to be really powerful and it speaks to the same sorts of themes we will be exploring in the next few weeks.

Essential Question: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? - Remember, this is what we are working on at all times! If anyone, including me, asks you what you are doing in class, it is answering the essential question. I know the one above doesn't sound really intriguing (it's Westview's mandated one) but I have some other questions coming up that will hopefully promote a little more interest in solving.

AGENDA 12/3/08
Introduction
Letter to Class
Create Rules
Pop Quiz
Textbook Hunt
Debrief
PowerPoint

HW: Letter to me, due next class (Friday). Check blog/review Rwanda handout.

Whew! That is a lot, I know. I was really wondering if we were going to be able to get through it all! Let me break down each section.

My letter to the class you all should have signed copies of. Plus, I'm not really sure about putting up a document that explains my life to the whole internet. I'm sure you all got the gist in class. I'll write out the homework assignment again at the end of this blog.

Our class rules: I forgot to actually write down a separate copy of the poster (which actually turned out to be a pretty good set of rules, I think!), so I will post them in the next entry. Again, I should be able to point to any one of those rules and say "hey, everyone agreed that this should happen." So be on the lookout for that if there is something outside those boundaries happening. Also, if you ever feel like any of those rules (or any common sense rules of any sort) are being broken, please tell me. Let's keep this class focused on the task of figuring out the essential questions! Everyone was fantastic today, for the most part. Please try and keep it going! :-)

The pop quiz. I will sit down tomorrow and type up a list of what everyone said in response to the questions. I know there were a lot, so thanks for hanging in there with me. Like I said in class, I took this exact same quiz at Lewis and Clark (as part of the class where I learn how to teach you guys) and was absolutely amazed about what I did and did not know. I'll share both your combined responses and my original one on Friday.

The textbook hunt: I'm not sure if all of you understood what I was saying, so here it is again. In our Modern World History textbook, which was published in 2005 (11 years after the genocide in Rwanda) there are TWO in text mentions (a one sentence recap for each) of the genocide, each citing ethnic violence between the Hutu's and the Tutsi's and 500,000 people dying, while there is ONE other picture, with two small paragraphs beneath it, citing a number of 1,000,000 dead. So again, the textbook barely had anything at all to say about the genocide, and when it did, it couldn't even be consistent with the number of people killed.

So the debrief focused on the question: why is this? Is the genocide not as important as other things? How come we don't know more about it? I was looking for any answers at all: those that were given about race were, in my view, probably a huge part of the problem. We will explore other reasons for this ignorance in the next few classes.

Finally, the presentation:

"Genocide in Rwanda: The Basics" PowerPoint

A few things about this. One: most of the statistics I used in the first few slides are found here: CIA World Factbook - Rwanda. Now by NO MEANS are those statistics solid hard facts. I know of plenty of other sites that will give different numbers. However, since these are the official US government statistics, I think that it will be useful for your upcoming assignment (which I will reveal on Friday).

Two: I found the picture of the propaganda, "beat the cockroaches" on Wikipedia, here: Rwandan Genocide. Now as most of you know, NEVER use Wikipedia as a source in a paper or for anything else. However, it can be used as a good start to researching something for yourself - just find the sources the article links to at the bottom and go from there. As Michael Scott from The Office once said: "Wikipedia... is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information."

No, you are not. But it is a funny quote nonetheless!

Much less humorous information: The horrific picture of the Hutu man (who did not support the genocide) that lived after being hacked multiple times by machetes can be found here: TIME.com: Inferno

Finally, the Rwanda PowerPoint handout, which is part of your homework to review (look for the key terms at the end and get a good sense of what they mean) can be downloaded here: Rwanda PowerPoint Handout

Okay. That is about it. Remember, your other (top priority) homework is the following:

Who are you outside of the classroom? What are your goals in life? Tell me something quirky or interesting about you. What do you want me to know about you? What kinds of music do you listen to? What movies do you like? Is there anything going on around the world that you know a lot about – do you have an area of expertise? Topics you want to learn more about? Make a list! What do you like about high school and this class so far? What do you not like? What do you think your strengths and weaknesses as a student are? Finally, do you have any concerns, questions, or comments for me about this class?

Typed, 12 point Times New Roman font, at least one page - attempt to answer all questions!

The more you write, the better I will be able to involve things that are interesting to you into the class. I also just want to get to know each of you better, because I think you all are pretty dang cool. :-)

Please e-mail me or comment with any questions you may have. Thank you again for a great first day - I was especially happy to see how involved the class was with the presentation, even up until the end of the period. Please, please keep that up in the future - you will continue to make me a very happy teacher!

Have a great night and day tomorrow! I will be in N116 in Mrs. DeFrance's room for periods 2 and 4, and will be in the Lower North teacher's clusters during First Lunch, before I head home (sorry to those I told today that I would be in during Second Lunch - if you need to talk to me during that time, please just e-mail to set up a time).

Come prepared and excited for class on Friday! See you then! :-)