Final Blog: Did I Meet My Goals?

After looking back on the goals that I had set for myself at the beginning of the semester I think that I have met those goals. I wanted to be able to better understand the cultures that make up me. With the final project that I have done and our culture day project I learned more about to of the countries that some of my family originated from. The second goal that I had set was to be able to speak up in class and not be so quiet and shy. I can not say that I fully met this goal completely. I will always be shy I'm afraid because it is harder for me to speak up in class.

Freedom Writers

The Freedom Writers movie touched on a lot of things that we talked about this semester. In the movie it shows the amount of hate that people had towards one another because of the color of their skin. The students segregated themselves into their own little groups of the people of their “own” kind. These kids only trusted who was like them in fear of losing their lives. In class we talked about racism and that is exactly what the movie showed. If you were of a different culture, they didn’t like you. Not only didn’t they like you, they hated you. They hated people that they didn’t even know all because their skin color was different. Another thing we learned about this semester was different cultures and how they differ from each other. The culture here was the gang culture. The thing that I noticed from the movie was that all the groups were pretty much identical. They all stood up for their own kind and “protected their own”. At the beginning they didn’t realize that they were all the same and had the same interests but their skin color prevented them from getting to know one another and realizing just how alike that they really were. The last topic that I want to talk about is how they came together and made a change. I know that we didn’t exactly talk about this subject in class but we did a project this semester where we had to choose a country and inform people about that country and how they differ from ours and I consider that as us coming together to better inform people of the unknown. Ms. Gruwell took this class of kids and gave them the chance to be something extraordinary.  She was selfless and knew that if she accomplished the goal of bringing these kids together that the world is one step closer to being a better place.