HERO Week 1

Hello Hero Generation!

This is a repost...I just posted this on Sword but needed to get it onto the right blog. Thank you Webmaster Lisa! 

HEROES - please make sure to subscribe to this Hero blog! THANKS!

I hope you enjoyed class today. I certainly did!

We went over the format of the class, the requirements, etc. For those of you who have not ordered your binder/books, please do so ASAP!

We did a simulation where you played the part of the British parliament facing total economic decimation of England. It was really exciting watching you argue over policy, plan, and legislation that would/would not help the breakdown of the island nation. You really got into it, very heated, and very strong in your opinions! We had a little insight into what Congress might be like in this great nation. Partisan gridlock makes a little more sense now, right?

We had a lecture on Heroes and your generation. Remember the cycles of history...the fourth turning is here, and you heroes play a critical role!!

We identified you all as heroes, and we analyzed what your role will look like in the upcoming crisis. You have ways in which you can prepare yourself, and hopefully you took notes on that, because yes....they may be a quiz with candy in your future.   ��

We talked about to whom heroes have allegiance. You all asserted that was to themselves, God, their families and their country. GREAT ANSWERS!

We finished up with a portrait of a hero: Mother Teresa. Her example of pure charity and boundless love is truly an inspiration to me, and hopefully to you as well!

YOUR HOMEWORK for this week:

**Write your definition of a Hero (you can put this in your Hero journal if you like)

**Finish Flags of Our Fathers

Remember next week, Teacher Genne will sit in for the Generals Kellie(y) - so please help her get the tv/dvd player ready...wherever she will want to use it, as our classroom is not too accessible (two pesky stairs!).

Pay close attention. She may quiz you when it is over!

Take care and see you soon-

Gen. Walk

Almost Done

Wow!  Time has flown by.  I didn't realize that it's been this long since I last updated the blog.

Last week we held our Nuremberg Trial simulation.  Everyone did a great job keeping cool under pressure and presenting what you had prepared.  We also had five wonderful judges making up our tribunal and we are most grateful for their donation of time to come and help us out.  I think everyone learned much and had a great time.

This last week of class, everyone will be doing a presentation on their WWII interviews.  We'd like the presentations to be 10-15 minutes long.   We love visual aids as well.  I will bring my projector and speakers with the various connection options that I have.  I do not have a VGA cord, so if you need that to connect your laptop/device, you'll have to bring the cord.  I do have HDMI.

As a quick recap of prior weeks that were not blogged, we've covered the following:

• The Pacific Theater
• The Americans in the War
• From D-Day to the Liberation of Europe
• The Atom Bomb and the book Hiroshima by Hersey
• The End of the War
• The Occupation
• The War Crimes Trials

Don't forget to email me if you're going to have all of the class requirements completed in time.  I need to order your awards.  Remember that we removed the Biography requirement and the number of papers required was reduced to how many are actually found in the blog posts.  (As the semester progressed, we realized that we needed to adjust/prioritize some of the requirements.)

See you all on Thursday!
~General Lisa & General Paige

Week 8: The Allied Leaders

General Paige taught the first part of class today.  She shared a little bit about the hairstyles of the 40's.

She also presented "The Big Three" of the Allied leaders -- Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt.  The lesson ended with a guessing game of who said which quote.  Here's some links to the quotes:

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/franklin_d_roosevelt.html

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/winston_churchill.html

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/joseph_stalin.html

 

Then we did a document study of a speech that Winston Churchill gave at Harrow School in 1941.  There were several great points of discussion in the speech, but I think the class favorite was:

"Never give in.  Never give in.  Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.  Never yield to force.  Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Another favorite was: 

"You cannot tell from appearances how things will go.  Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done."

HOMEWORK:

• Keep working on your interviews.
• Keep working on your personal Hero Project
• We're discussing the book Hiroshima by John Hersey in two weeks.
• We're discussing Flags of our Fathers next week if you didn't already finish that one.
• Get started on your biography book.

Next Week:  The Pacific Theater

Week 7: The Holocaust

We opended class with a video of the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940.  The collapse happened in our own backyard while America was still at peace but Europe was already involved in WWII.  Even though it had nothing to do with the war, it was relevant to the time period and caused America's engineers to make some significant strides in their designs and ideas that probably had some impact on the structures built for WWII when America joined in 1941.

http://youtu.be/j-zczJXSxnw

Near the end of the video, our class simulation began.  A German authority banged into our classroom and demanded everyone's name, birth date, religion, and ethnicity.  Then gave everyone a gold star they were required to wear pinned onto their clothes.

After the German left, we learned a bit more about the Holocaust.  It was a "systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators."

We learned a little about the concentration camps and the death camps.  Children under 12 were sent to the gas chambers upon arriving at Auschwitz unless they were a twin.  They kept the twins for medical experimentation.  The Nazis used the people in the camps as forced/slave labor in the factories for the German war effort.  Those that were too old, young, or sick to work were sent to the gas chambers and replaced with new arrivals to the camps.  

Then we started our book discussion of The Hiding Place.  As we were discusing, the German came back and scared us enough that we decided we should find a place to hide.  We found our hiding spot and practiced getting to it quickly.  Then we set up General Paige as our lookout in case the German came back.  Then we went back to our book discussion...sort of.  We were all a little nervous and rattled so it was hard to do anything that resembled normal.  When the German came back, we had enough warning that everyone was able to hide and the German found nothing.  That was the end of our simulation and we had a debrief of the simulation mixed with the rest of the discussion of our book.  

We finished up with our journals.  The prompts were:  How were you changed by today's simulation?  What did you learn about yourself?  What are you going to do differently from now on?

HOMEWORK:

• Write a short paper on a "Righteous Gentile."   http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Among_the_Nations
• Keep working on your personal Hero Projects
• Start reading Hiroshima
• How are those movies coming??
• Interviews??

Next Week:  The Allied Leaders

Week 6: The Japanese Invasions & Pearl Harbor

This week we watched several fun videos from the WWII era while we were preparing for our Pearl Harbor simulation.

Charlie Chaplin -- The Lion's Cage   http://youtu.be/79i84xYelZI

Charlie Chaplin -- Factory Work  http://youtu.be/DfGs2Y5WJ14

Abbott & Costello -- 7 X 13 = 28  http://youtu.be/MS2aEfbEi7s

Bugs Bunny's Debut -- A Wild Hare   http://youtu.be/Hcl2QZWHatA

After we finished making paper airplanes and paper boats, we headed outside to the parking lot where Pearl Harbor was located.  We placed our boats and planes and then walked thru the morning of December 7th, 1941 in Pearl Harbor.  We got a little wet as the weather was misty, but we were at the harbor so that made sense.  :-)

We finished up with FDR's speech asking Congress for a Declaration of War on December 8th.  America wasn't the only country the Japanese attacked on the 7th.  They also attacked Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, and Wake Island.  They attacked Midway Island the morning of the 8th.

It was interesting to note that the Japanese had initiated formal negotiations for the maintenance of peace in the pacific and there ambassadors were still in Washington DC for that purpose when they attacked Pearl Harbor.

HOMEWORK:

• Make a simple timeline of the important events in WWII
• FINISH READING:  The Hiding Place  by Corrie Ten Boom
• Keep working on the interviews.  You can interview anyone that lived during WWII.
• Keep working on you personal hero projects.  You should have 4-6 of them done by now.

NEXT WEEK:  The Holocaust

Week 4: The Germans' Invasions

General Paige taught our lecture on the German invasions leading up to and including the early part of WWII.

Noah and Josh each shared one of the heroes they've studied for their individual hero projects. 

As part of our culture of the era, we shared a video of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" comedy sketch:  http://youtu.be/J_gSWTQKE-0

Another video we shared was a more general video about the heroes and heroism of Americans:  http://youtu.be/eVecpn3DUHc

We went more in depth on how to do the interviews of folks who lived during WWII.  Please help your scholar to find at least two people to interview.  I'll try to send out a help sheet later when I get home.

We ran out of time for our journal prompt this week so it would be great if students could spend 3-5 minutes answering this question in their journals at home this week:  Make a list of kinds of bondage and their causes.

Writing Assignment:  "What choices do you still have when you are in bondage?"

Keep working on your individual hero reports.  You should have 3-4 heroes now.

Biography Presentations:  (find a biography to read on someone during the depression or WWII era)

March 12 -- Alison

March 19 -- Haley

March 26 -- John

April 9 -- Joshua

April 16 -- Carson

April 23 -- Katie

April 30 -- Noah

Week 3: The Rise of the Demagogues

Hi Everyone!

This week we covered the Axis leaders, especially the big three -- Germany, Italy, & Japan.  We were all surprised by how many other countries were on the side of the Axis powers:  Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Thailand, Iraq, Iran, San Marino, and numerous puppet states.

We discussed the difference between a demagogue and a true leader.  I had to look up the definition of demagogue, so here's the definition in case you needed to look it up too.  :-)

demagogue -- a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument.

In learning about the rise of these demagogues before WWII, we learned some interesting facts and trivia about Hitler, Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito.

HITLER:

• Born in AUSTRIA, not even a German citizen until after WWI
• High School drop out
• He spent a year in prison for trying to overthrow the German government in 1923.
• He was an artist.  He supported himself for a time in Munich by painting and selling his artwork.  Below is a watercolor he painted in 1914 called "The Alter Hof in Munich."

MUSSOLINI:

• Founder of Fascism
• Expelled from the socialist party for supporting WWI
• Was a journalist and writer.  He even published a novel in 1910.
• Was imitated BY Hitler in several things -- staging a coup (Mussolini was successful, Hitler was not).  Hitler copied Mussolini's Fascism and gave it his own flavor. Mussolini had "blackshirts",  Hitler had "brownshirts."  Both the blackshirts and the brownshirts performed the same functions for their respective leaders.  The color came from the color of their uniforms.

EMPEROR HIROHITO:

• 3rd largest navy in the world before WWII
• Personally authorized the use of chemical weapons during WWII
• Was not indicted of war crimes and allowed to keep his position as Emperor of Japan
• Has published several scientific papers in the field of Marine Biology

Our Journal Prompt this week was:  Make a short list of leaders that you admire.  Choose one and make a list of his/her most defining character traits.

HOMEWORK:

• Writing Assignment:  What makes a true leader?
• Reading:  Keep working on Flags of our Fathers -- due on 2/19
• Personal Hero Project:  You should have 2-3 heroes done by class on Thursday.
• Come prepared to sign up for your presentation dates:  One date for your oral presentation on the biography you chose to read.  The other two dates to share one of the heroes you're doing in your personal hero project.  (these second two dates are just short little presentations to help keep you on track. 1-3 minutes)
• Keep spreading the word and/or find a couple of people you can interview for your requirements.  We're practicing interviews on Thursday and you'll want to get started ASAP after that.

NEXT WEEK:  The Germans' Invasions

~General Lisa & General Paige