Sa-Shai Daniels' Portfolio

Class and Subject Matter: This year in my world history class we did a unit on genocide. Out of all the things we learned this was the one that really resonated with me. There was a lot that I didn’t know about genocides like how many have happened. Over the course of this unit we learned about genocides that I’d never even heard like the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian, the Bosnian genocide, and more.

 

Claim of Growth: I think that I have grown in my understanding of what a genocide is and what the victims of genocide are forced to live through. Before this year the only genocide I’d ever heard of was the Holocaust and even though I was well aware of how horrible it was for people I still didn’t really understand the big picture.

 

What This Growth Looks Like: One of the genocides that really resonated with me was the Rwandan genocide. I don’t think I’ve ever more upset about something. There was so much that could’ve done to stop that wasn’t done. Just hearing about it makes me feel ashamed that the country that I’m from didn’t do anything to stop it. People died every day and only a handful of people were actually helping. Learning about stuff like this is what helped me grow. The more I learned about genocide the more I understood about the world.

 

Evidence: The learning endeavor that prompted my growth the most was the poster project that we worked on in world history and language arts. For this project we created poster that would highlight the horrors of genocide and make people realize that something needs to be done. This was an important project because not everyone does realize it, I certainly didn’t. Many people in the United States live fairly privileged lives. We go about our day without even thinking about what’s going in other places in the world.

 

Specific Learning Endeavor: This unit woke me up to a lot of problems and that’s basically the point of the poster that we made. My partner and I focused on the Israeli Palestinian conflict for our poster. We showed a Jenga tower that was slowly crumbling to pieces with two hands reaching towards the same block. We chose this because we wanted to show that both Israel and Palestine are fighting for the same thing but all the fighting is only causing more pain to both their enemy and themselves.

 

Artifacts: I think the two artifacts that would do a good job of representing my growth during this project would have to be the final poster and the original drafts for the poster. I think that the final poster will show my point of view on genocide at the end of this unit because this project was the culmination of everything I learned. The reason I chose the first drafts of this project is because I think they will help highlight how far I came in my understanding of genocide over the course of this entire project.

 

How I Will Continue to Grow: I think that my growth is going to help me in the future because now that I understand the magnitude of genocide I can inform others and hopefully the more people who know about genocide the more people there will be to argue against it if another conflict arises. Obviously there is still more that I have to learn about the world and the issues that come with it but at least this was a good start.