FINAL

REFLECTION ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

OVERVIEW
This is the final class assignment, an opportunity to reflect on your performance relating to our class outcomes and the semester-long Digital History project. It is due NO LATER THAN Wednesday, December 19th at 9:00AM via Sakai’s “dropbox.” It is worth 10 final grade points.

EXPLANATION
A “reflection essay” can take many forms. The primary goal of this assignment is to provide you reflective space to look at our course outcomes and consider, for yourself, how you have met them. To do this, follow these steps before writing:

1. Read our course outcomes and assessment criteria;
2. Read all the assignments you have turned in this semester;
3. Watch your digital movie; and
4. Ask and answer the following questions:

• In what specific ways do you see your work fulfilling the outcomes?
• How have your historical thinking skills developed over the semester?
• What was your process for completing the semester project? Was it effective?
• What worked? What could have been done better?
• What do you take away from the semester project?

The length of the final reflection piece is subjective, but please do not exceed 8 pages.

ASSESSMENT
Your performance on the Reflection Assignment will be graded based on whether or not it is completed in a timely fashion and whether or not it appropriately fulfills the above. I will use it to help guide my final assessment of your performance throughout the semester.

This assignment is due no later than December 19th at 9:00AM. It must be turned in using Sakai and the “dropbox” function for our class.

WEEK 15

Thank you for your hard work, your dedication, and your perspective this semester. I’ve enjoyed getting to meet each of you (or re-meet you, as the case may be), and hear from so many of you so regularly. It’s been a real privilege for me to get to read your work and learn from and with you.

We’re at the end! Your task between now and Monday night is to finish your digital movie and upload it to YouTube. Once you have a link please email it to me at tfss@pomona.edu. Please remember to make sure the movie is public and that your settings allow it to be embedded in another person’s website.

The deadline for emailing me a working link to your YouTube movie is Monday, December 10th at 8:00PM.

On Tuesday we will have an evening class beginning at 5:30PM in Hahn 101. We will eat dinner together and watch our films. Please remember that if you gave me your meal card number that you will not be able to eat at the dining hall that night.

Good luck!

WEEK 14

Sorry for the delay in posting this week, but you know the drill by now.

On Tuesday we will have our LAST in class discussion of readings (chapters 8, 9, and the epilogue in Racism on Trail). You will also turn in your final “prep sheet.” We’ll follow that up with some discussion on the Young Lords Organization in New York. On Thursday we’ll have our last in-class lecture and conduct some course evaluations.

This is our final regular week of class! Next Tuesday we will meet at 5:30 PM for an “off-line” dinner and a festival to showcase our digital movies.

WEEK 13

Welcome back from the break!

It’s a quick road to the end for us. We have only two weeks left of readings, prep sheets, and discussions. At the same time your Digital History projects will come to a happy conclusion. All you have left for those is to covert your paper into a useable script, record a clean audio file of that script, and assemble it with digital images using iMovie. The FINAL movie must be uploaded to YouTube no later than December 11 at 8:00AM.

This Tuesday we will read chapters 5, 6, and 7 in the book Racism on Trial and use those to write prep sheets. After our collective discussion of the readings we’ll have a chance to discuss Puerto Rican youth movements in the same era. On Thursday we will watch a short documentary and have a lecture on Chicanos and the Vietnam War.

iMovie WORKSHOP

Download this PDF document for today’s workshop in the lab.

WEEK 12: How to make movies

We’ll only meet on Tuesday this week since we have no class on the Thanksgiving holiday.

In honor of the millions of turkeys who have lost their lives, we won’t have any reading for this week. All you have to do is show up! To make that task all the more challenging, we will NOT meet in our normal room, Hahn 101. Instead, we will meet in the classroom lab in the Pomona College ITS Building. When you enter the front door to the building (which is just West of the Chicano Studies Department) you will turn left and go all the way to the end of the hallway to find our class.

We will be having a workshop on “How to make movies using iMovie (and another solution)” taught by me. To prepare, you should bring several digital images and at least one digital audio file. It will be easiest to bring them on a flashdrive, but you can also upload them on your network space to download them in class. We will learn how to assemble a movie using iMovie and how to upload it to YouTube.

As an FYI, from here on out your entire semester project will entail doing the following:

1. Convert your paper into a script (3 minutes, clear and easy to understand)
2. Find images (should be large with high resolution)
3. Record your script (clear, well spoken, loud, no mumbling)
4. Assemble your iMovie production using your audio recording, images, etc.
5. Upload it to YouTube

SEE YOU TUESDAY!!

WEEK 11

It’s a big week for us!

We’ll spend the week discussing the Chicano Student Movement, both by using our reading (chapters 3 and 4 in the book Racism on Trial) and an in-class movie. On Tuesday we’ll discuss the reading assignment using our “prep sheets” and our boundless energy to carve out new understanding. We’ll follow that up with a lecture. On Thursday we’ll watch an episode of the four-part 1996 documentary Chicano! A History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement.

Of course, the most important thing happening this week is the major progress each of you will be making on their research projects! On THURSDAY you will turn in your “Research Reports,” the 8-10 page papers based on your primary and secondary sources.

Please check your email!! I sent you an email with a PDF attachment (titled Citations.pdf) which is a two-page document explaining the format of historical footnotes.

WEEK 10

Our RESEARCH REPORTS are due in less than two weeks! Stay focused on developing the story from the sources you have already identified. To make your movie-making process easier, you can also spend a few minutes here and there collecting possible images to help tell that story.

This week we begin reading our final book of the semester, Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice. Written by Ian Haney-López, the book tells the story of two notable court cases during the 1960s which provide an illuminating look into the larger youth movement of which they were a part.  We begin this week with the introduction and chapters 1 and 2.  As usual, we will discuss the book on Tuesday, beginning the class with a few oral presentations from our class.

On Thursday we will have our second (and final) in-class Document-Based Analysis quiz. If you have completed the reading for the week and been part of our recent lectures you will have all you need to navigate the source.

Be healthy and happy and I’ll see you soon!

WEEK 09

If you didn’t get a chance to watch “The Longoria Affair” be sure and watch it before this week. It is a documentary film on the political controversy surrounding the burial of a Chicano WWII veteran and (in case you weren’t checking) it was your only assignment during last week’s fall break. Instructions on how to access and watch the film can be found in last week’s blog post.

This week your reading assignment is chapters 7, 8, and 9 in ¡Migra! by Kelly Lytle Hernández, finishing off the book (at least for our purposes). As usual, we will discuss the book on Tuesday, beginning the class with a few oral presentations from our class. I’ll look forward to reading your final “prep sheets” on the book.

In class we will get a chance to discuss the struggles of “becoming American” in the post-WWII era, paying special attention to intra-ethnic conflicts and discrimination. On Thursday we will watch and discuss a documentary on the infamous “Bracero Program,” which we began discussing in class last week.

And as we discussed in class, your Research Narrative assignment is due soon, on November 15th. This is a 8-page research paper, complete with proper citation. You main task is to compose a story from the primary source you selected.  Using your skills of historical analysis, determine what story this piece of evidence is equipped to tell.  Using scholarly secondary sources, tell that story in a way that teaches us about the past.  Citation guidelines will be distributed in class soon.

WEEK 08

EDITED MESSAGE BELOW

I hope you had a relaxing fall break! It’s important for us to focus now on the road ahead. Between now and the Thanksgiving break you will have written a research paper and begun to transform it into a short digital movie. Along the way we will be learning about Latinas/os and World War II, the postwar efforts to improve life for all, and the youth movements for change known as the “Chicano Movement.”

This Thursday we return from the break and have a regular class lecture and discussion on WWII. You don’t have any reading for our next class, but you do have a movie to watch: THE LONGORIA AFFAIR..

TO WATCH THE FILM, you must log in to your Sakai account. Once you do, click on the tab for our class (“CH HIST 17.1 FA12″). On the left menu sidebar click on “Video Playlist” where you will find our one and only film.

ENJOY!