Honors Humanities
Welcome to my honors humanities page! I decided at the beginning of the year that I wanted to get the most out of my schooling experience as I possibly could and therefore took the honors Humanities course. This page will be dedicated to the projects that I complete each semester.
Second Semester Honors Book Club
The honors program ran rather differently during our second semester. This semester was run as a book club. In the beginning, our class chose three different books to read: The Great Gatsby, Half the Sky, and Fahrenheit 451. The two books which I completed projects on were The Great Gatsby and Fahrenheit 451. I chose them mostly by what inspired me the most in each book. The vivid images which The Great Gatsby painted for me inspired an artistic piece (which will be uploaded shortly), and the ideas and parallels in Fahrenheit 451 caused me to write an literary analysis essay on the question: Is ignorance really bliss? That can be read if you click here.
That being said, I felt that Half the Sky, a book written to advocate the empowerment of women worldwide, was the book which had the most profound effect upon me overall. The authors, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have visited many places and gained the personal stories of women in developing countries around the world. These women spoke about the myriads of troubles that faced them, lack of education and various forms of abuse topping the list easily. I feel like I gained more knowledge about our world than I did in the other two books. Half the Sky was inspiring, calling out the need for aid while simultaneously telling the stories of many women who had managed to overcome their hardships. I feel like every person in our class gained a far deeper knowledge and awareness about the situations of those around us, which made this a very valuable book and an indispensible piece from the list of books we read.
This class has often been a struggle for me, but it was well worth it in the end. During the first project, especially, I had difficulties managing my time. However, I feel like I have grown stronger because of those difficulties. I have also gained valuable insight from various books which have challenged and expanded my world views, especially over the course of this second semester. I am glad that I took on this challenge when it was offered and would gladly do it again, because this class has really challenged my ability to persevere, and to look at the world from many different prospectives. This is a vital part of our curriculum at Animas which is why the class was so worthwhile to me.
That being said, I felt that Half the Sky, a book written to advocate the empowerment of women worldwide, was the book which had the most profound effect upon me overall. The authors, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have visited many places and gained the personal stories of women in developing countries around the world. These women spoke about the myriads of troubles that faced them, lack of education and various forms of abuse topping the list easily. I feel like I gained more knowledge about our world than I did in the other two books. Half the Sky was inspiring, calling out the need for aid while simultaneously telling the stories of many women who had managed to overcome their hardships. I feel like every person in our class gained a far deeper knowledge and awareness about the situations of those around us, which made this a very valuable book and an indispensible piece from the list of books we read.
This class has often been a struggle for me, but it was well worth it in the end. During the first project, especially, I had difficulties managing my time. However, I feel like I have grown stronger because of those difficulties. I have also gained valuable insight from various books which have challenged and expanded my world views, especially over the course of this second semester. I am glad that I took on this challenge when it was offered and would gladly do it again, because this class has really challenged my ability to persevere, and to look at the world from many different prospectives. This is a vital part of our curriculum at Animas which is why the class was so worthwhile to me.
Seminar Preparation: Half the Sky and Fahrenheit 451
At the end of each book (and usually before the projects) we would gather together and complete seminars on what we had just read. This helped us to understand the books better as well as expand upon the views we had initially after reading. If you would like to read my seminar preparation for Half the Sky, please click here. If you would like to read my seminar preparation for Fahrenheit 451, please click here.
Honors Independent Study
Ruby Bridges may have been the bravest person throughout the entire civil rights movement. She was only in first grade when she joined an all-white school in a movement to start desegregation. Through this she faced riots, experienced emotional trauma, and watched as every parent on that first day of school drew their child out of the school. Yet she persevered. Because of her, school desegregation really began, and books and paintings were created about her and her bravery. One such painting, created by artist Norman Rockwell, caught my attention and inspired my research on this subject. For this project we completed research and then created documentation binders from that research in addition to an artistic piece representing what we took from the project. These can be found below.
Documentation Binder and Artist Statement
To the left is the painting that I created as an artistic piece for this project. Below is the documentation binder and the artist statement about my project and the resources I used throughout the course of my research
Documentation Binder
Artist Statement
Documentation Binder
Artist Statement
Project Reflection
For this project we were assigned the task of covering an event or period of time that was relevant to US history. When I heard this I knew immediately that I would be researching Ruby Bridges. My interest had been piqued by the poster behind Ashley's desk and I wanted to learn more about the brave little girl being portrayed there. I had heard about Ruby once or twice before but I didn't really know all that much about her. That was all the more reason to research her for my project. My initial research questions were designed specifically around Ruby's transfer to William Frantz Public School. What caused William Frantz to end the segregation of its students? What decision or thought process lead Ruby and her parents to have her attend this school?
How did other the students react in comparison to how their parents reacted? How did this event affect other public schools in the area? Private schools? Did she continue in a non-segregated environment during high school? These were all questions that I was very interested in learning the answers to and through my research, I was able to answer them.
This was a difficult project not because of the content or even the requirements, but simply because of the amount of personal direction that was involved in this project. Junior year has been a particularly taxing year in terms of requirements and homework that have been given to us, and so honors was often pushed to the back burner because the due dates for each portion was significantly later than more those of more immediate projects. However I believe that this year has also been the year in which I have grown the most in my time management skills and a huge part of that growth is due to this project. I learned to set dates for myself and picked out the materials I would need ahead of time so if there was any chance that I could get to it earlier, I would be able to do so. This will help me very much as we approach the end of the year and head into our senior years of high school, so I am very grateful for the experience even if it was stressful at times. Furthermore, reading To Kill a Mockingbird and Through my Eyes was both very informative and very interesting. I found myself drawn in by Ruby's story and excited to learn more about her and the civil rights movement in general as I got deeper into the project, which I believe is essential to any successful project.
If I had the chance to do this project over I would start by creating a more structure schedule right at the beginning and following it through to the very end of my project. That would have allowed me to meet all of the due dates and would have allowed me to cover a broader range of materials which could largely influence the outcome of my project. Furthermore, I would start my artistic piece earlier so that I could create drafts and make revisions to those drafts. I was pleased with the overall outcome of my piece but it really felt like it could have been made stronger had I more time to revise it and more time to work through the process in stages. Overall though I am content with the way it has turned out.
The tricky part about this honors course is the fact that it was a sort of trial period for both students and teacher. Already our plan for the second semester is drastically different from that of first semester due to the difficulties this course presented. If I could speak with the incoming juniors about this particular course, I would tell them to create solid deadlines for yourself because that is one of the hardest parts of the project. It's a difficult task for anyone but especially for people my age. Learning this through the experience of the project though is important because this has been a massive lesson in time management that I will carry with me into the future. If I were to recreate the project I would start with concrete deadlines, asking the students to share their research with others and then slowly drop the constant supervision and allow them to use their momentum to finish up the semester. In that way they would have an idea for how they could manage things and if that particular style wasn't working for them, then they could make their own self-governing revisions and finish the project up. In that way they could still gain essential experience for the future and perhaps have the change to create stronger pieces in the end.
How did other the students react in comparison to how their parents reacted? How did this event affect other public schools in the area? Private schools? Did she continue in a non-segregated environment during high school? These were all questions that I was very interested in learning the answers to and through my research, I was able to answer them.
This was a difficult project not because of the content or even the requirements, but simply because of the amount of personal direction that was involved in this project. Junior year has been a particularly taxing year in terms of requirements and homework that have been given to us, and so honors was often pushed to the back burner because the due dates for each portion was significantly later than more those of more immediate projects. However I believe that this year has also been the year in which I have grown the most in my time management skills and a huge part of that growth is due to this project. I learned to set dates for myself and picked out the materials I would need ahead of time so if there was any chance that I could get to it earlier, I would be able to do so. This will help me very much as we approach the end of the year and head into our senior years of high school, so I am very grateful for the experience even if it was stressful at times. Furthermore, reading To Kill a Mockingbird and Through my Eyes was both very informative and very interesting. I found myself drawn in by Ruby's story and excited to learn more about her and the civil rights movement in general as I got deeper into the project, which I believe is essential to any successful project.
If I had the chance to do this project over I would start by creating a more structure schedule right at the beginning and following it through to the very end of my project. That would have allowed me to meet all of the due dates and would have allowed me to cover a broader range of materials which could largely influence the outcome of my project. Furthermore, I would start my artistic piece earlier so that I could create drafts and make revisions to those drafts. I was pleased with the overall outcome of my piece but it really felt like it could have been made stronger had I more time to revise it and more time to work through the process in stages. Overall though I am content with the way it has turned out.
The tricky part about this honors course is the fact that it was a sort of trial period for both students and teacher. Already our plan for the second semester is drastically different from that of first semester due to the difficulties this course presented. If I could speak with the incoming juniors about this particular course, I would tell them to create solid deadlines for yourself because that is one of the hardest parts of the project. It's a difficult task for anyone but especially for people my age. Learning this through the experience of the project though is important because this has been a massive lesson in time management that I will carry with me into the future. If I were to recreate the project I would start with concrete deadlines, asking the students to share their research with others and then slowly drop the constant supervision and allow them to use their momentum to finish up the semester. In that way they would have an idea for how they could manage things and if that particular style wasn't working for them, then they could make their own self-governing revisions and finish the project up. In that way they could still gain essential experience for the future and perhaps have the change to create stronger pieces in the end.