Hello. For this week’s blog post, I want to talk about the upcoming role-playing project we have about the Haitian revolution. As I’ve mentioned in earlier blog posts, these role-playing/ acting projects, such as the Athens vs. Melos war, are always very fun and engaging, so I am pretty excited for this one on the Haitian war. My only concern is that I won’t be prepared enough for it, which kind of happened in our French revolution trial. I thought I had a grasp on what I was talking about, but it turned out I had just prepared a script, and when it was time to stray from that script, I was lost. This time, though, I am going to make sure I appropriately prepare. The reading assigned will help with that I hope. Over spring break, I was coincidentally talking to my mom about the Haitian revolution as well as what life on the island is like. She did the peace corps program in the Dominican Republic for two years in her twenties, and I’ve grown up hearing stories about what it was like to live there, and it’s pretty cool for it to come full circle and be relevant to what we are learning now. As we learned, I recognize how different the two countries are even though they share an Island. My mom spoke about trips she would take to Haiti while there and what that was like, and it has really stuck with her even some 20 years later. I think the contrast between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is shocking, and it is even more shocking if you know that the Dominican Republic really is a pretty poor country itself. For example, when my mom was there, the host family’s home that she also stayed in had no window panes, so when it rained, you would just get wet. That is not to say that all of the Dominican Republic is like that, but some definitely is. So, to compare this to Haiti, which is a very poor country, you really get a bigger sense of the state that Haiti is really in. In order to fill my word quota, I’ll talk a little bit about my Crane Brinton circular revolutions project that I am doing with Maia. We are creating a marble run that will feed the marble back to the start ofter finishing the run through a motor, which you probably know because of our proposal. I think we chose a somewhat ambitious project because of the coding and the actual assembly, but I think in the end it will be worth it when we have our cool project done. I think that this is a pretty cool project and I especially like being in the maker space and getting to use the cool equipment there. And with that, I think I’ll end my post for the week. Thanks for reading.

Hello!. For this week’s blog, I am going to talk about the estates, how they compare to the caste system, and possibly a few other things. To start, something I find very interesting was the bourgeoisie. I found this particular group of people interesting because of their placement in the estates. After doing some googling,  found out that the bourgeoisie made up around 8% of the people in France back then. Now this 8%, around 2.3 million people, may seem small compared to the other members of the estate, around 30 million people, but if you compare it to what percentage of people were clergy (o.5%) and nobility (2%), it makes you think, maybe the bourgeoisie deserve their own estate. From what I’ve gathered, there seemed to be pretty concrete divides between the different estates. Like you couldn’t be sort of nobility and also sort of everybodyelse. If you had noble blood, you were noble. If you did your training and became a priest, you could be a clergy. If you weren’t these things, you were a part of everybodyelse. So, if there are such rigid fine lines between the estates, why is it that there were members of the bourgeoisie far richer than nobility and clergy, and then also people who spent their life as servants and beggars? This kind of seems like it is becoming an argumentative essay as to why there should be a separate estate between the 3rd and 2nd just for the bourgeoisie, so I’ll reel it in here, but my point stands. To look on the other side, the whole third estate paid taxes where the 1st and 2nd didn’t, so that could be a reason as to why they are all grouped together. I believe you can honestly argue both sides. Now, to switch gears, I want to talk about the similarities and differences between the caste system in India and the estates in France. One major difference is that the caste system still exists today, whereas the estates in France do not. Maybe the reason the caste system still exists is because to my knowledge, India has not had a major revolution and a shift in government. A similarity between the two is the way that people rank themselves and treat others how they believe they should be treated due to their social status. Finally, one last difference is the moving between social statuses. In the caste system, there really is zero moving. You are born into a family, and live your life in your caste. In the estates, there was plenty of moving. You could start out as a peasant and slowly work your way up to priest, or you could start as a member of the bourgeoisie and marry into a noble family looking for money. That, in my eyes, is the biggest difference between these two socially constructed rankings. With that, I will end my post. Thanks!

For this week’s blog post, I am going to further expand upon the paragraph I wrote for homework talking about my thoughts about the four philosophers we have been learning about. Since writing the paragraph, I would say I understand the philosophers a bit more and I would actually like to tweak my answer somewhat. In my paragraph, I talked about how I mostly agree with Jean Rousseau, but after re-reading the info, I would say that I only agree with a few of his points, and I also only like him in comparison to the other philosophers. Let me explain. Of the four philosophers, he was the one I most agreed with I would say, but I think that it is all relative. I agree with him in that a King or single person should not have all of the power to make decisions, especially if they were not elected, but Rousseau’s ideas part ways here because I do believe that there should be an elected official governing a country, which Rousseau does not believe in. I’m not going to say whether or not I agree with this point, but I found it very interesting how Jean Rousseau believed that religion weakened government. I completely believe that anyone should be free to practice and worship however they want and whatever they want, but it is intriguing to think about what our society and societies around the world would look like without religion and religious divides. Religion often causes conflict, and in the past and even now makes people have a negative outlook on people who don’t necessarily believe the same things as them, so I believe that our world would look extremely different in its structure without religion. Like I said, I think I mostly agree with Rousseau out of the four, but there are little bits from each of them that I agree with. For example, I also agree with Locke that an individual should never have to give up their rights to a king, which was a shared view between Rousseau and Locke. I agree with Montesquieu in that there should be three branches, the legislative, the judicial, and the executive, in the government all keeping one another in line and making sure the power is equally divided. I do believe that I am somewhat biased because this is the system I grew up with. As you mentioned in class, the way one grows up can definitely impact one’s views, especially about government. All in all, if I had to give one of the four philosophers that I disagreed the most with, I would have to say, Hobbes. I credit this partly to his negative outlook on life, I like to think I am a pretty positive person, so it makes sense that we would not agree on much. That is all I have to write for this post, so thanks for reading!

For this week’s blog post, I want to reflect and talk about the Ukraine – Russia conflict and our conversation about it In class. Before class, I had definitely heard about the threat of war between Russia and Ukraine, but I didn’t really understand it and the severity of it. It is very disheartening to hear that there could be a big war and large loss of life in the next few months, especially when it seems semi preventable. Obviously, I’m no expert on this subject, and I somewhat just learned about it, but to me, I think referring to this as a big identity crisis is spot on. Really, Vladimir Putin seems like a paranoid dictator with way too much power for his and his country’s own good. Something that I had never heard about and find really interesting is how Russia’s history or at least a big part of it Is invasion because of their lack of natural borders. I am certainly not justifying Russia invading its surrounding countries, but I could see how at some point they had to do something. I think they should have tried negotiating first, and coming to some sort of an agreement or treaty with their surrounding countries. If Russia was able to invade 11 countries, I’m sure they could have worked something out instead. Now, I am going to ask some questions that I’ve thought of during and after our class. My first question is what does it look like to live in Ukraine right now? Is there mass panic or hysteria? I am trying to imagine the US in this situation and I can’t even imagine feeling the fear they must feel right now. Also, what does it look like to live in Russia right now as well? Because of the global pandemic, supply chain issues are already bad, and on top of that being cut off from trade with the rest of the world? It is hard and getting harder to get the necessary resources to live? To me, it sounds unpleasant to live in both places right now. Another question I have is around how long will it take for Russia to recover from the Ruble collapse? Could this be a multi-year struggle? Finally, my last question is what will Ukraine look like 10-15 years from now? I have no sense of the damage that could be done, so what is the worst-case scenario for Ukraine now? I think that’s all my questions for this post, so I’m going to end here. Sorry for the shorter post!

Hello, Mr. McDonnell. For this week’s blog post, I am going to talk a bit about our short renaissance unit and talk about my Harlem Renaissance project that I completed yesterday. The renaissance period and ancient Rome are very interesting topics to me. As I may have mentioned, I have always loved ancient Greek and Roman mythology and history, so our renaissance unit has been one that I have very much enjoyed. It was also really cool to learn about the development of art and artist’s technique throughout this time period and others, and that even crosses over into the art class I took in the first semester. We as a class all learned how to draw in one-point perspective and two-point perspective, and although it seems easy, it’s really not. I think it was Maia who said something along the lines of “why couldn’t these skilled famous artists just draw what they see?” and now I understand that there is a little more to it than simply just drawing what you see. Something else I enjoyed was the project we did where we had to investigate the mysterious murder of one of the Brothers (Lorenzo was his name, I think).  I wish I could have been there for the very end of it because being virtual definitely makes you feel disconnected from the group. Now, I think I’m gonna switch gears and talk about my Harlem Renaissance project a little bit. As you will soon find out, I chose to do my project on Louis Armstrong. The writing part of this assignment was not very hard for me because all I had to do was just explain my process and drawing, but I did have a bit of artist’s block while trying to create the drawing. I knew from the start that I wanted to include Louis Armstrong’s Cornet somehow because really that was what he was most famous for, and eventually, after doing some brainstorming, I decided to have all of the life accomplishments of his spewing out. I hope it is alright that I traced the photo of Louis Armstrong and touched it up here and there. I really didn’t trust myself freehanding such a realistic person, and I wanted to try my best to have it look exactly as I imagined it so everyone who sees it can understand my vision. I think I was in eighth grade, maybe seventh, when I did a project on him, so I had some existing knowledge on him and knew how interesting and accomplished he was. Another crossover between classes is that we are reading a book in English class right now that talks about the Harlem Renaissance, so it’s pretty funny and cool to see everything sort of connecting and relating in a way. I think I’ve said everything I have to say for this week’s blog, so I’ll end it right here. Thanks!

For my first blog post of the second semester, I am going to start off strong and talk about my workable peace framework essay that I recently completed. My stance on the thesis, “would the workable peace framework be useful in the Athens Melos conflict” was that it would be useful in that conflict, but not necessarily all other conflicts. I’m not going to summarize my essay here, because there is not really any point in doing that, but I will talk about the assignment itself, what I liked and disliked, and any feedback I have. If I am being honest, it wasn’t my favorite project we’ve done so far this year. I didn’t dislike it, and we did do a simulation that took up a week of class before writing this, so I understand that an essay had to happen. I think the reason I didn’t love it was because it was just writing, but that’s just how school is. I was and am actually pretty interested in the Athens vs. Melos conflict, and I would even look into it more outside of class. I think the workable peace framework was also an interesting topic to write about because of the many positions you can take on it. You can believe that it will never work for any conflicts, work for some conflicts but not others, and work for all conflicts. When applied to the Athens vs. Melos war, there are even more positions that you can take. To segway to talking about the simulation itself, I want to express how much fun it was. I have always liked doing mock things in school, whether it being a mock trial in 7th grade, or this. I feel like I learned a lot from this simulation, and it didn;t really feel like work. It felt like a fun debate. So far this year, I would say that this has definitely been my favorite assignment. If I had to change one thing, I would say that maybe you as a facilitator should be more strict about the no talking except the four that is up a speaking rule. I think this would force everyone to think about what they were going to say a bit more. Another suggestion could be giving a certain amount of “time-outs” of sorts. This could mean that each team has maybe one or two times when they can choose to have a meeting during the debate, so that way theres more structure to the team meetings instead f us just begging you to have a meeting whenever we have something to discuss. This would force us to prepare better notes so that nayone in the group would be have the resources and kniowledge to debate, instead of a few people feeding them information. These are just some suggestions I have, and hyoyu don’t have to feel any obligation to use them. I think thats all I have to say about these two topics, so I’ll end there.

Hey, Mr. McDonnell. For my final blog post, I am going to be talking about our simulation between Athens and Melos where we are trying to negotiate peace. As of right now, as you know, we are about two days into the simulation, and so far, I think that it is really fun and engaging. This is a great way for us to learn about this interaction between Melos and Greece while having fun doing it. Going into this with little knowledge about what actually happened in these historic events, I feel like I get to insert my own opinions and ideas in this negotiation without prior knowledge. It is also cool to have a debate like this. As I said, it is a lot more fun than something else such as a paper. I do have some questions about the simulation, though. First of all, is our end goal for both sides to negotiate a peaceful way to defuse the situation or just a way to solve the whole problem with the armada of ships in Melos’s backyard waiting to invade? I think I am just confused about what the goal of the simulation is. I’m also wondering if so far we’ve come to the same conclusions as the ancient Melotians and Athenians did? I assume we haven’t, because so far there have been some questionable agreements, but I am just not sure. I would look it up, but I don’t want to risk ruining the whole thing and getting too much info about the actual events. I think that’s all I have to say about the Melos vs. Athens war, so I’ll switch gears and talk a little bit about my finished This I Believe project. As you know, I turned it in and got feedback on it, and it felt like a weight off my shoulders after I finally got it in if I am being honest. If I had to redo the project, I would probably do my audio recording in multiple parts, not one long-running video so it would sound a little smoother and not have any pauses or stutters. The only reason I didn’t do it this time was that I miscalculated how long it would take me to record the audio, so I ended up not having that much time to actually get it done. I would also probably have some more visuals, like images, to go with the audio. I tried to get some this time, but it was harder than I expected. None of the images I picked out really went with certain parts of the audio if that makes sense, so I decided to play it safe and just not have corresponding images to parts of the audio. I think that’s all I have to say for my final blog post, so to close, If I had to rate the blog post project, I would rate it a 7 or 8. I found it not to be overwhelming if I just stayed on top of it each week. Thats it, thanks!

For my eleventh blog post, second to last, I want to talk a little bit about the Melos vs. Athens project we’re going to be doing, as well as the whole Melos vs. Athens unit we are doing. This unit still feels pretty new to me, as we’ve only done one reading and learned a bit about Socrates, but I’m very excited for the model where everyone becomes an ancient member of one of the societies. I’m excited because growing up, I was a huge mythology and ancient greek and roman nerd. I knew so much about ancient greek society, and although much of that knowledge has since left me, I’m still very interested in the subject. I also learned a lot I didn’t previously know in the reading already. For example, I had never heard of Melos before. I think I have a general outline of an idea of what the big grade-wide project is going to be like, but I don’t know specifics on it, and I’m also not sure when it is. Another thing I enjoyed doing was the Netflix project. I think the Netflix project was a fun way to learn about Socrates, and definitely, a better alternative than, say, just writing a paper on him. Socrates is a name that I’ve always heard, but never really known who he was, so that project was a cool little research project to learn about him. Overall, I think the Melos vs. Athens unit is one of my favorite units so far. Switching gears, I’m going to talk now about my progress in the This I believe project and how that’s going. As of right now, all I have to do is actually record my audio and put it over my slideshow, so I’m pretty close to being finished. That will be my goal, to finish it tonight. I went back and did some editing on my script, and all and all I’m satisfied with what I’ve written and how it came out. I have about 560 words, which is inside the range you recommended, so I’m basically all set and ready to start recording now. I’m not quite sure yet what I’m going to record it with. I may use loom, which I’ve seen teachers use in the past. If not loom, I’ll probably use Vimeo or garage band as you recommended. Finally, to finish off, I’ll end by talking about these blog posts. I feel like I’ve stayed on top of these and consistently done one a week all the way through, which I’m happy with. I don’t feel stressed as the semester comes to an end, and I plan on writing my last one early next week, to complete all twelve of them for full credit. As for the quality, I feel like I’ve been pretty casual in my blog posts, which I think I remember you saying was ok, and because of how casual they were, I guess It’s fair to say that I wasn’t showing my best writing in them, but I still always tried and took them seriously, so I think it’s ok. And with that, I’ll finish up this week’s blog post. Thanks!

Hello, Mr. McDonnell. For this week’s blog post, I want to talk about my “This I Believe” project, my planning process so far, and what I’m going to do. The project I chose out of the three options was the “This I believe”, as you probably could have guessed and I chose this because it feels more interesting to me to talk about what I believe, rather than interview people and see what they believe or creating some sort of world in Minecraft. This one was appealing to me, and I commend Siena, but it just seemed a little bit too hard, and it feels a little too late to switch now, but I am happy to do the “This I believe option” just as much. As of now, I only have the beginning of a script for it. Hopefully, with the class time we’re given, I can get almost all of my script down. I can do the editing at home no problem, and also finish whatever bit of my script I have left to do at home as well. I intend on using some visuals for my “this I believe” video, and a voice-over. I don’t think my face will be shown, just like the example video. I don’t want to give too much away about what I actually believe in here, because that kind of ruins the assignment, but I will say that I’m going to talk about what parts of Judaism, Christianity, and atheism or agnosticism (is that a word?) appeal to me. I am going to stay away from saying what I do not believe in, just like what you said, but I feel like talking about atheism sort of requires me to talk about what I don’t believe in because atheism is in a way the lack of belief If I’m not wrong. If you’d prefer, I can fully stay away from the atheism position if you’d rather me solely focus on what I do believe in, but I think me saying a little bit about what I don’t believe in is alright. Again without revealing too much about my project, I’ll say that I’m also going to talk about what I believe in that is not religion, such as family, although many family gatherings a year for me are religion-based, so in a way that part also ties into religion. There are other things I believe in that I would say have no connection to religion, such as friendship or love. It is pretty hard to not sound corny or cringy in this project, talking about love and friendship and family, but I’m gonna try my best. To end off, I would also say that I believe in some quaker spices. Having gone to a quaker school since 4th grade, those spices have rubbed off on me, and I wouldn’t identify as a quaker, but I certainly believe in some of the things that Quakers believe in. These are some of the topics that I am going to include in my project. Thanks!

Hello, Mr. McDonnell. For my 9th blog post, I want to talk about the what-if project. My what-if prompt for this assignment was what if Hitler had been successful during the Holocaust. Some would say that he was successful, and I would honestly agree with that, but for the sake of this, let’s say fully successful. To start off, the Jewish population all around the world would probably not exist. If Adolf Hitler had been able to do that, who knows what else he could have done. If he had had the power to kill off an entire population of people, he probably could have taken over the world. Who knows, maybe that would have been his next step. If he hadn’t been stopped during the war and all of his captives hadn’t been liberated, he may not have committed suicide and went on to do much, much more. On his road to racial “purity”, any grouping of people deemed unpure could have been his next focus, so the world today would be a lot less diverse. Adolf Hitler could have also left a legacy for himself that carried on over generations. Maybe one of his ancestors or firm believers/followers would have carried on his mission after he died, meaning that even today our world could have been very different. If Adolf Hitler hadn’t been stopped (stopped after mass destruction, but stopped nonetheless), the war would have probably been a lot different. The war also shaped our world today, so there really is no telling what our world would be like today. That is outside the scope of this hypothetical guess because of the sheer size of the event that could have been altered. Another thing that Hitler being successful would cause is no Jewish people in our community or the world. The area that many of us live in today is heavily populated by Jews, so all of those people probably wouldn’t exist, including me. Sorry, I know that got dark, but I think it is ok to say because this is all hypothetical. All the inventions, movies, general media, anything created by a Jewish person since the Holocaust would not exist because the inventors would not exist either. To end off my what-if question, I think all of History would be rewritten if Adolf Hitler had been successful in his plans because of the time period in which the Holocaust took place. The world was in such a vulnerable state during the world wars that a powerful person such as Hitler could have easily taken over and wreaked havoc given a set of slightly different circumstances, such as his purification. I guess this isn’t really a slightly different set of circumstances, but a very vast change, but you know what I mean. As you can see, our world as we know it today would be very different had Hitler finished his plans and left a hateful legacy for someone just like him to pick up. That’s it, thanks.