Category: Homework Prompts

Research Question Proposal

Category: Unit 2

WRITE: Write a blog post (at least 350 words) in which you introduce your research question. You may find your topic anywhere– from Unit One to the blog posts we wrote last week, to your peers’ blog posts! (It’s really okay if two people write about the same topic– I promise you.) 

What is important here– and I can’t stress this enough– is that you research something you want to know more about, not something you think you already know the answer to.  You may be curious to know why there are so few African American ballerinas in major companies, or you may want to know how much “housing projects” have changed in New York since James Baldwin wrote “A Talk to Teachers” in 1963, or you may want to know what we really learn from playing computer games.  Just be curious. REMEMBER YOU MUST GET YOUR TOPIC APPROVED BY ME! 

Write it in question form (it can’t be a yes-or-no question, though) You must cover all of the questions in bold:

  • Why are you interested in this question?  (Feel free to talk about your own personal experience with the topic, or to tell an anecdote about your experience with this subject matter) 
  • What do you expect to find in your research? (Why do you expect to find this?) Remember that it’s okay to be wrong– you might find a completely different answer than the one you intended to find. You won’t get marked down for that! 

Spend some time on this– because this will serve as the first draft of the introduction for your annotated bibliography!

Category: Unit 2

HW 2.1

lesly lucero sosa

What James Baldwin is trying to say in that passage is that they are allowed to question society and the education system and not just stick to it. In the passage, the author gives examples of how society expects us to be. He describes an African American who was born in america. He went along with his society thinking that he and his family were happy and his ancestors were happy too. But unfortunately society doesn’t want us to have questions or opinions. They want us to obey the rules and deal with it. The value he has as a black person is proven by his devotion to white people. This showed how people didn’t know their back history and simply went with it because society does not want us to question it. They are allowed to freely express their opinion on any topic and want to have answers. When he says the world is larger he means that the world is full of new experiences, new events occur throughout the day making history larger. I have the necessity to examine the world around me. I am allowed to question the society I live in. I am allowed to learn things I want to learn. I am allowed to agree and disagree with conventional topic.Something I wish that school would teach but doesnt is events that occur currently and are going to occur. I feel like that is more important than past history because we are living it and need to know how our world is changing at the moment. Us knowing what is going on now allows us to want to take action and make a change. I think it’s important to know what is going on at the moment because it can affect the future if people are aware and don’t do anything about it.

 

Homework 2.1

READ AND ANNOTATE: “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin. 

 WRITE:  Blog Post (at least 300 words) In “A Talk to Teachers,” James Baldwin writes:  

“I would try to make [the student] know that just as American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more beautiful and more terrible, but principally larger – and that it belongs to him. I would teach him that he doesn’t have to be bound by the expediencies of any given administration, any given policy, any given morality; that he has the right and the necessity to examine everything. “

First of all, what do you think of what James Baldwin was saying? What do you think he means when he says “the world is larger?”

Secondly, what do you think you have the “necessity” to examine, or the obligation to learn more about? To put it another way: what do you wish had been taught to you in school that wasn’t? Why do you want to know about these topics?



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