I’m very interested in history and history events like Holocaust. Therefore, I want to study more and deeply about that. I decide to take this course when I came to this school in junior year. But I could not make time for this course. So I waited until the senior year and chose this class right away when I chose classed for senior year. I was so excited to take this course. First time of this course I just feel excited to take this course finally. However, Mr. Gallagher said about this course seriously and I decided to take this course really seriously and concentrate on the goal of this course.
By taking this course, I watched, heard, and read lots of things. And these affected me a lot. That changed my mind and attitude of my life. This course taught me a right way how, to study and to know myself. Also taught me what I should do for letting people know right history and truth of history. This course definitely became the most meaningful course to me.
This course, Facing History and Ourselves gave and a lot of benefits to me. By doing discussion and sharing the news or information, I learned how to communicate well with friends and teachers as a student, and as a person, I learned how to talk well, express my opinion and communicate with people in the society for now and for future. Also I learned that respecting people is the most important thing. By studying the Holocaust, I learned all of Holocaust and others related with Holocaust as detail and I could study world history and history events deeply. I could get much new information from that as a student. As a person, I learned that everything is important and precious whatever is going to be, human, animal, plant or everything in the world. The course Facing History and Ourselves gave these amazing benefits to me in many ways as a student and as a person.
There are many facets of the course that were the most meaningful to me. One is movie “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. The reason why that movie is meaningful to me, this movie is the most favorite movie to me. Actually I watched that movie when I was middle school in Korea as first time. Actually that time, I have not watch Holocaust movies frequently. So this movie was unfamiliar to me. However, the story of this movie made concentrate. The story was very interesting and unique. This movie expresses the Holocaust by using a point of view of young boy who is SS officer’s son. The ending was very shocking and emotional. Fortunately, I could watch this movie again. Of course, this movie was good and it was happy to post my opinion about this movie on Mr. Gallagher’s blog. I’ll never forget this movie.
The class discussions were so amazing facet to me. Many discussions were going on during the class, about the news that happening today, about the morality, and about the movie or documents that we had. The most meaningful discussion to me is “A football coach Sandusky’s sexual abuse in Penn State University”. It was hot issue at that time in all over the United States, of course in our class. I knew that event but not exactly. My classmates discussed their opinions about that issue really hard. It was very impressing to me. Also it was good to get more information by involving the discussion.
For the reading, the most meaningful reading was the packet that I made. It was about relations between Holocaust and the comfort women forced by Japanese army during World War II. Actually I interested in sad history time of my country, which is Japan’s occupying the Korean peninsula for 35 years. For 35 years, many Koreans killed and forced to be slave workers and force to be soldier and fight for Japanese government and they stole Korean national treasure and lots of resources which were people, natural and even the necessaries of life. The most horrible thing was forced to be the comfort women for Japanese army during World War II. They treated Korean women as sexual tools and even they brought comfort women from Europe and the most of country in Asia. However, Japanese government refuses to apology and insists that they do not have any fault for that. Japanese government is doing so rude attitude for the victims.
Therefore, I wanted to show and letting my classmates know about this. I made a packet with my full information of comfort women and researched hard to explain well the comfort women for my classmates. I worked really hard as much as I could. During making this reading packet I learned lots of things that I did not know and I knew that most of Americans do not know about Comfort women during World War II and Japanese war crimes. When I was sharing my reading packet with Mr. Gallagher was so happy that I could let people know about that. Actually this processing of reading packet gave me a confidence. That confidence made me explain the truth of history to my friends and others well. This process gave me a goal. The goal is researching and letting people know the right history and true history. For this goal my role model is Mr. Gallagher. I will try hard and work hard, what I am going to share the right history and true history to many people. I am really thanks for Mr. Gallagher allowed me can share my reading packet. So this was truly meaningful to me during taking this course.
Everything in this course is very meaningful to me. The course Facing History and Ourselves is the most amazing course. And the class is the most favorite class entire the school year that I ever had in the United States. This course taught me many great lessons, which were respecting people and respect each other, all of things in this planet are important, not to be treat as indiscriminately. It was very pleasure to take this course and earning lots of important life lessons.
