Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Today we finished watching "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" - we hope you enjoyed it! Here is a clip of the final speeches from the film. Have a wonderful spring break!


 

Stormy Weather Homework

Your homework for Wednesday, 3/25 is to finish The Century: Stormy Weather.  You should watch from 28:50-through the end of the film (about 15 minutes). Finish taking notes on the study guide and answer the questions at the bottom when you are finished.

The Depression Contd.

Today we are going to begin by analyzing FDR's First Inaugural Address. With a partner, students will answer the questions on this WORKSHEET and submit their responses.
Here are your partners for this assignment:

Joely/George;  Danielle B./Lucy;  Justin/Ian;  Tommy/Britney W.;  Mary Catherine/Oriana;  Ryan/Leah;  Claude/Danielle S.;  Carin/Ben;  Brittany D./Jayden;  Ethan/Jamie;  Jeremy/Alex; Andrew/Elizabeth;  Jacob/Miles;  Phoebe/Laura/Callie;  Lizzie/Kevin;  Jesse/Deena;  Enya/Charlie; Amanda/Marlee;  Jason/Gabbi;  Isaac/Lauren;  Rachel/Marnie;  Will/Lily;

During the 2nd part of class, we will look at clips from the film The Grapes of Wrath in order to further understand the hardships and issues faced by Americans in the Dust Bowl during the 1930's.

1920's - 1930's - The Great Depression

Today we started by sharing the letters you wrote to President Obama. We asked each of you to name your view of America's role in the world, the specific "ask" you had for the president, and the historical / literary reasoning that lead you to this conclusion.

Then we returned to the 1920's by watching parts of this section of The Century:



For homework tonight, you are reading FDR's 1st inaugural address and writing a journal response. You'll find it in your American Reader, which you need to bring to class tomorrow.

Rebooting the 1920's

Today in class we returned to the 1920's.  We started by reviewing what we knew about the era from our work with the Great Gatsby.  We brainstormed what we remembered about the time, setting, and overall context of the novel. We then took a look at the list of events at the start of the article, 1927. As we read the events, we tried to determine which symbolized the "glory" of America and which symbolized its "warts". We then tried to categorize and make some generalizations about the types of events that went into each category. In order to review additional information about the 1920's, we rewatched scenes from The Century: Boom to Bust.
Following the break, we returned to the 1927 article where each student was assigned one of the sections of the article. After reading and annotating our assigned sections, students chose groups made up of people who read the different sections and created posters depicting their version of the 1920's American.
Homework for the week is to continue to work on the Foreign Policy Letter.

Working Through America's Foreign Policy

The primary focus of your work today should be to formulate the overall foreign policy for the United States' role in the world that you will advocate for in your letter to President Obama. You should work with the materials from class over the last two weeks to help you establish your argument.  Remember however that the final component to your letter is to ask the President to use that policy in addressing specific actions in regard to one specific current foreign policy concern. In order to help you to identify what current U.S. policy choices are in regard to a few of those issues, we've given you some helpful links below:

Fact Sheet: First Step Understandings Regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Nuclear Program (A detailed description of the current status of negotiations with Iran)

President Obama: “We Will Degrade and Ultimately Destroy ISIL” (A step by step listing of the President's proposed policies towards ISIS).

New York Times - Times Topics - ISIL overview

New York Times - "Obama Seeks Extensive War Authorization..." editorial

New York Times - "Retroactively Authorizing War" editorial

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Ukraine: Current Issues (Just read the one page summary at the beginning of the document).

End of the war; Your voice

Today we finished our brief look at World War I with several video segments.  Following that, we read Mark Twain's "The War Prayer."  He raises several questions in this powerful piece, representing yet another perspective on questions we've asked about war and the role of the US in the world.

We then transitioned to our assignment for this unit: a letter you will be writing to President Obama about a current event and the ways in which the US should / shouldn't play a role, and why.

We will have a work day in the computer lab on Tuesday.

Here is the specific format for the letter.

Jus Post Bellum - The end of WWI and the aftermath

During the first part of class today we discussed Hemingway's short story, "Soldier's Home."  We used "Rules of Notice" to guide our initial observations, and these questions in our conversation:

1. What does the story tell us about how Krebs’s return home after the war was different from what other soldiers experienced?
2. What are some of the ways Krebs spends his time?  What symbolic meanings might these activities have?
3. What are Krebs’s attitudes towards his different family members?  Why?
4. What does Krebs feel about religion?  Why?
5. Describe Krebs’s experiences in war.  What do we hear about them?  What do his experiences mean to him?
6. Discuss the potential meanings of this passage:
1. He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences.
7. Discuss the role of Krebs’s mother – what does she want of him?  Why?
8. What does the end of the story suggest about Krebs?

For the second part of class we watched a video about the end of the war. Following that we worked in groups to explore Wilson's "14 Points" speech, and make links back to the "jus post bellum" section of the "Just War Theory" we've been reading. We used THIS PACKET for our analysis. It is due in class on Monday.

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In addition, for homework this weekend you will also begin to think about how these questions apply to the role of the U.S. in the world today. You'll look through newspapers and websites to identify a specific issue of focus. Find two articles about your selected event.

Here are some websites you might find helpful:

• http://www.nytimes.com/
• http://www.cnn.com/
• http://abcnews.go.com/
• http://www.msnbc.com/

Also, you need to finish the End of War Analysis packet.

Jus in Bello - Justice during wartime

Today in class we considered notions of jus in bello-justice during wartime.  We began by reviewing this idea in the Just War Theory packet. We then did some work in our notebooks, reflecting on how the stories we saw yesterday about Sgt. York, African-Americans in WWI, and Harry Truman, impact our thinking about WWI as a "just war".  For each story we looked at different perspectives that each brought up and wrote responses that asked us to choose which one we were left with.
For Sgt. York: Was it the perspective of receiving medals OR loss of life OR his having to revisit his personal values.
For African American Soldiers: Was it W.E.B. Dubois' perspective of fighting for democracy abroad would lead to democracy at home OR the largest murder trial in history as a result of the Houston race riots.
For Harry Truman: Was it a "Great Adventure" or something other than that?
In each of the responses, it was important to consider what evidence led to your conclusion.
We then listened to a dramatic reading of Chapter 10 from the novel Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. We responded to the reading in our notebooks, considering our reactions to the excerpt, places that we agreed or disagreed with what Trumbo wrote as well as how it may have changed our opinion about when to go to war.
During the 2nd half of class, we completed this web activity.  We turned it in at the end of class.

Here is the Metallica video for their song One that includes clips from Johnny Got His Gun.

University of Oklahoma - Fraternity Racist Chant - Update

Here is a link to the latest from CNN. If you click around you can see the original video, as well as footage of protests and marches in response.

Origins of American Involvement in WWI

Today we explored the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and analyzed the shifts that took place in American Foreign Policy as a result. We selected the five key quotes from the document that exhibited those shifts.  We then began to study the origins of World War One as well as America's road to engaging in that conflict by watching the first 25 minutes of the video below.
We finished by beginning a discussion about when (or if) the United States' should have engaged militarily in the conflict.

Friday - March 6th

Today our focus was on Just War Theory.  We watched this video:

Following that, we worked in small groups to discuss the ways in which the events of the Spanish-American War and the War in the Philippines fit into the "jus ad bellum" sections of Just War Theory. We finished the period by discussing the handout, "Lessons from the Age of Imperialism." We moved around the room to physically take a stand agreeing or disagreeing with some of the statements we read, as we continued to raise and answer questions about the role of the U.S. in world affairs.  Each of those activities can be found in this DOCUMENT

Imperialism?

On Monday you sat in groups to read through the newspaper articles you created in class last week. We asked you to come up with titles for the different collections of articles, and to explore the ways in which those articles addressed the "promises" or "problems" in the USA at the time.  We then turned our attention to four documents you read over the weekend:

• The Monroe Doctrine
• Social Darwinism
• Manifest Destiny
• The Open Door Policy

We finished class by asking you to work with your groups to identify on of the events / people from the newspaper articles back to one of these four documents.

For today you read a packet: "The Question of Annexation." In class today you were each assigned a position in regards to potential courses of action to be taken by the US in the Philippines in 1898. You finished class by writing a paragraph linking your assigned position to one of the four documents above (see a pattern?).

For Friday you are reading and annotating the "Epilogue" in the packet you've been working with and "Just War Theory"  in the packet we gave out at the end of class today: - see the calendar for the focus of your journal response.