New Leadership Prompt

Write an essay prompt for high school age students getting them to sort through their feeling about the past election and where our country is headed with our new leadership.

     In the past weeks of 2017, America's new head of state, President Donald S. Trump, has signed 12 executive orders; including 2 related to immigration. One orders calls for the commencing and immediate building of a 1,900 mile-long wall along the U.S. and Mexico border.   The order also calls for attacks on the "issue" of undocumented immigrants in the United States.  It calls for more border law enforcement with an additional 10,000 immigration officers. Additionally, President Trump's infamous 120-day ban on the U.S. entry of Muslim-majority for fear of terrorists has caused an uproar. The ban quickly led to a widespread panic and confusion at airports around the world.  The ban also lead to more than hundreds of agencies becoming involved in the fight and protest against Trumps "Muslim Ban".  Amidst the effects of Trumps orders, immigrants and immigrant descendants residing in the U.S. are reaping the consequences of the arising targeted prejudices formed from these demonstrations.

     Consider your subgroups of friends, family and relatives, sports teams, religious friends, and acquaintances throughout the years; consider the impact made on them through these laws, and thoroughly examine the effects of these laws becoming true.  Don't forget to remember the prejudices in common social atmospheres and how someone is to react to negative comments and assumptions based on their immigrant roots.  Reflect thoroughly and write in narratives form, 3 pages, double-spaced, 12 point font in Times New Roman.  

Say my Name

Alondra, Alondra from the novella Alondra

It means lark in Spanish, the yellow free bird

The bird that means day break, or a break from the day

I hope I’m a break and never a delay

Alondra, but I go by Allie

Allie like Sally

People always butcher my name

Disrespectful, and it drives me insane

Alejandra, Alexandra, Allieondra,

My name is Alondra

Like the lark.

Wild Card

Recently, I have worked on deepening my relationship with God and seeing the effects of that.  I think last semester was when I really got fascinated with rebuilding that relationship.  It was mostly because of Dr. Morrissey's class where we always talked about God and religion, as well as God's omniscient powers and how it's just too complex for us to understand sometimes.  So I started going to church and rebuilding something that I've wanted for a long time.  I have seen the beautiful effects of him being in my life all of the time, and it has personally made me a much more positive person.  I've started attending bible studies too and I just really love the way that I feel afterwards.  I pray to God as much as I can, and I've worked on being selfless about my prayers and praying for others instead of myself.  I also see the beauty in everything again, which I think is my favorite thing about my new found spirituality.
I bring this up because I've started noting the many times religion and more specifically, Christianity, comes up in works of literature.  In almost all of my classes, I have talked about scriptures in the bible and the significance of the bible in certain works.  I personally feel like there should be a slight focus on this, or at least a class like "Religion in Literature" that focuses on the many ways the Old and New Testament influenced literature movements and the writings of said literature.  I think it's smart to separate that class from being a "worship" class and more of a knowledgeable class where students who don't study the bible (or care for it) can still learn about it and it's effects on works of literature and how society also takes from the many themes present in the bible.  I personally feel like it would broaden a students understandings of literature instead of constricting them, or also making them feel left out for not understanding biblical references and so forth.

Social Justice

I was thinking about texts that I learned when I was in middle school that taught me injustice and the first was the dairy of Anne Frank, I think now with the state that the political United States is in (including its prejudices and fears targeted toward specific groups of people), I think it would be something I could be completely compassionate about teaching.  I think it's really important to teach students to be empathetic towards others that are unlike them and in ways completely different from them.  There are a ton of books that I've read about social justice and social injustice but I think I would focus on one that centers on the idea of immigration and WHY specifically do immigrants flee their countries.  I think that forcing students to be empathetic and place themselves in someone elses shoes is vastly important and it's a way to observe different perspectives and how they feel for the protagonist in a text who's being targeted.  I really love this book I've been reading in my Post Colonialism class, called "How to Escape from a Leper Colony", I think it really covers the internal struggles that people of different colors and nationalities face in the eyes of society.  I think I would go about subjecting my students to discrimination in group efforts in order to get them to reflect at the end of their lesson and cover how exactly they felt. 

My Favorite Short Story

I've sat here mulling over for minutes and minutes about what could possibly be my favorite short story and I'm honestly drawing a blank... I can't think of a short story that I loved so much that I remembered; I honestly feel as if I love longer books and stories with plot developments and such.  In all honesty, every short story that I've tried to think of is a story that I recall not caring for too much.  I think though, that my favorite story may be the The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, I can also think of some short stories that I love in this novel of stories called "How to Escape From A Leper Colony" by Tiphanie Yanique.  One story that specifically stood out to me was called "Streetman" and it was about the short romance of an Island man on the U.S. Virgin Islands who works for a sun glasses hut so that he can be in contact with tourists in order to sell them marijuana.  I couldn't find any links of the story online, but it's a fascinating story that ends up touching on subjects such as cultural hybridity and the after effects of post colonialism.  I think it's fascinating and I would love to teach it to a class because it's easy to read in some sense (excluding some of the choppy Island Dialect that can get confusing) and it also touches on subjects that most students can relate to, such as cultural hybridity or biological hybridity.  I think it would be great to bring those subjects up in a class. 

My Prompt:  Imagine having your own culture and loving everything about it including the food, music, religion, customs and traditions.  Now imagine if someone different came into your culture.  Someone completely new, with a completely different culture and they wanted you to be like them because they think their culture is superior to yours.  Speed time up about 10 years, and imagine going to the land of the second persons original culture; Would you feel like you fit in? Would you feel hybridized?  What are the effects of this hybridization and how does it effect the way you interact with your original culture, the one you originally loved? Elaborate.