1st Quarter Reflections

In the first quarter of this school year I have made a solid foundation for the rest of the year.  I learned how to properly summarize, quote, and paraphrase.  And when we wrote about Glory and 12 Years a Slave we had to find quality sources which was helpful in both history and english class.  When we studied the the Civil War and Reconstruction I learned how to empathize with historical figures to get a better understanding of history.  I saw how reliant the Southern states were on slavery and saw that it still affected the South today.  I found this hard to believe, but the South was behind in the industrialization of America which put them years behind the North economically.  Then we moved onto the expansion in the West.  I learned that the American travelers received a lot of government and military aid to take land from the previous settlers.

I am more confident in myself when I paraphrase, summarize, and quote sources.  I am not 100% confident but I will get better at it as the year goes along.  Most of what I have learned this year was very surprising and shocking to me.  I didn't think that slave conditions were as extreme as they were depicted in 12 Years a Slave.  After the Civil War I knew that the South gave little job opportunities to former slaves, but it was worse than I had imagined.  The Black Codes of the South gave former slaves very little rights.  The former slaves had to turn back to their masters because they had nowhere else to go.

I didn't know about the economic advantages that the government gave whites over the other races in the West.  The government basically bossed the original settlers around and took their land with either economic power or by force.  They blatantly denied the Chinese's right of citizenship, which was outrageous.  And because the government did this, it created a very cheap labor force to build the railroads across the country.

My main goal for the second quarter is to be absolutely confident with myself when I am quoting, summarizing, paraphrasing and citing sources.  I would like to study the Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights era, the Vietnam War, and the wars in the Middle East.