Assessment Assignment
1)
Throughout this course constantly writing for assignments, like the Pen-Pal email
exchanges and weekly Discussion Board short essays, has strengthened my
communication skills by improving my vocabulary, improved my structuring, and
forcing me to think. While writing my discussion short essays, I would have to look
up synonyms of words to better capture what I was trying to give voice to.
Likewise, while reading other discussion board posts or even the reading
materials, I would stop at words I did not use in my day to day live and search for
their meaning, expanding my vocabulary in the process. Every week with our
discussion short essay assignment, our professor would give us bold letter that we
were encouraged to use forcing me to think about ways to implement them into
my short essay. These bold words would help me increase my knowledge on that
week’s subject and allowed me to better respond to my classmate’s discussion
board. Throughout this course we were also assigned a pen pal from Maryland
University who we had to write back and forth about our different cultural
experience and discuss what we each were learning about in class. During these
pen pal exchanges writing about that week’s literature piece was easier because
of the discussion short essay and vice versa. These exchanges with my pen pal
helped me better structure the way I communicate especially through writing.
Responding to my pen pal could sometimes be nervous because I wanted to be
able to properly communicate with them while making sure my letter made
sense, so I would often write a paragraph and then read it out loud to make sure
my writing was clear and easy to follow. We were also given a project to do, the
Voces of a Pandemic Oral History Project, in which we interview someone
affected by the Covid-19 pandemic improving our oral communication skills.
Although I was not able to participate in this project, constantly writing and
responding to either my classmates or my pen pal has helped me better my oral
communications in my day to day live. Throughout this course I have had to read
and properly communicate either in written form or orally, and because of this I
have been able to properly increase my vocabulary, the way in which I structure
my writing and speech ,and has forced me to think outside the box.
2)
Throughout this course I have had to question many things such as society,
history and even race through the pieces of literature we were given and the
short essay discussions we had to write. Most of the readings assigned to us have
forced me to take a step back and think twice about the way society treats
Mexican Americans. For example, while reading Gloria Anzaldua’s “To live in the
borderlands means to” poem I could relate to the way she described living with
multiple cultural backgrounds. Being raised with Mexican culture and tradition in
an American environment felt like I would always have to leave part of me behind
every door I walked through and try hard to conform to what the people on the
other side of the door were expecting. Another example was the video “Chicano!
Taking Back the Schools”, which talks about the Chicano student movement
during the 1960s. The disconnect between teachers and Chicano students was so
large that it led to the organizing of walkouts from several high schools in the East
Los Angeles area. They were able to see what their own circumstances were and
how they were being oppressed, how they were being denied an opportunity for
an education, an opportunity to fulfill their lives. From that political and social
climate, this small collection of young college and high school students would
come together under the leadership of their teacher, Sal Castro, to organize a
series of walkouts elevating the needs of their community. They walked out
despite school administrators barring doors and despite helmeted police officers
wielding night sticks. These were high school kids who were peacefully protesting
for their rights. They were children and they were brutalized. There are blows that
were recorded on film that were like death blows. It was hard to watch this video
and see kids go through this kind of oppression and racism simply because of their
race and circumstance they were being put down. It would take about 40 years
for the students in Los Angeles to gain their right to proper education. Reading
and watching people just like me suffer through problems that I have and have
not experienced really made me question society and had me asking more
questions of how people are being treated in today’s society, not just Mexican
Americans.