Alternative Training & Enrichment
2012-2013 Reflection Guide
Book or Movie Reflection
Attendance at regular Bonner meetings is a key part of communication, enrichment, and
training (student development) for Bonner Scholars; however, we understand that a number of
Bonner Scholars may find themselves in a situation where their class schedules conflict with
scheduled Class and/or All-Bonner Meetings. Rather than missing a semester of training and
enrichment activities, which seek to encourage knowledge, professional, and/or skill-set
development, you will have the opportunity to participate in an alternative training and
enrichment reflection assignment.
Reflection is a critical process of learning derived from questioning, examining, and analyzing
events and experiences. It is the time we spend thinking, evaluating, and assessing the work
that we do, what it means, and how it affects not only us, but also our world. By practicing
critical reflection, we begin to deepen our understanding of the issues, make connections gain
new skills and become more effective in our work. An opportunity for reflection gives you time
to learn from your experiences and make meaningful connections from all aspects of life.
The alternative training and enrichment reflection activity requires each student to choose one
book or two movies to read/watch and complete a reflection paper. The specifications for the
paper are described in detail below.
Remember that this reflection should not just be recalling the events that occurred in the book
or movie. Instead, you should demonstrate the connections between the book or movies and
your understanding of social issues, the community, and yourself (i.e., your values & goals, etc.).
Questions and prompts are listed below to help guide your writing and thought process.
Directions:
Choose one book or two movies to read/watch and reflect on. Provide an essay of 750 words or
more on topics that relate to personal development (the 5 E’s), service work, the six Bonner
common commitments, academic connections, and/or vocational discernment, etc. related to
the book or movie.
Paper Specifications:
All reflections should be in paragraph form. Care should be given to ensure that your reflection
demonstrates high standards of comprehension, grammar, spelling, and professionalism, just as
if they were academic papers and projects. Please use 12-point, Times New Roman font, with 1inch margins. The Director and Coordinator reserve the right to deem any submitted reflection
unsatisfactory and request that a new reflection be resubmitted.
You may submit your reflection as a hard copy to the Bonner House, or email an electronic copy
to shardy@concord.edu. Please include your name, date, and the title of the book or movie you
are reflecting on.
Possible Questions to Discuss:
1. How did the book/movie relate to one or more of the six common commitments? (Spiritual
Exploration, Diversity, Community Building, Social Justice, International Perspective, Civic
Engagement)
2. Reflect on your service site this semester. Are any of the issues that occur in the book/movie
similar to the ones faced by your service site? If so, how?
3. How would you personally deal with the issues discussed in the book/movie? Would it be
different from the main characters reactions? If so, how? What morals or beliefs do you have
that support why you would react in this way?
4. How does something that you learned in class or experienced while doing service, relate to the
situation portrayed in the book/movie?
5. Who was your favorite character(s) in the book/movie? What qualities do they have that you
wish you could have? How can you obtain these qualities and how would you implement them at
your service site, professionally, or academically?
6. Select your favorite line or event in the book/movie (be sure to include an excerpt or quote). Tell
how it speaks to the community servant in you and why.
7. Did any of the characters lose their dignity throughout the book/movie? Was their dignity
restored at any point? If so, how? If not, how would you have helped? After reviewing the
book/movie can you relate more to what it feels like to have lost dignity?
8. Were there any critical needs or sources of pain and suffering throughout the book/movie? What
did the characters do to improve the situation? Compare and contrast the issue to a similar issue
in our community or our nation. What will/can you and others do to improve the situation?
9. Were there instances in the book/movie where generosity, charity, justice, and social change
occurred? Explain how. What do you personally feel is the difference in these four words?
10. Did any of the characters have reasons for wanting to serve others or have a mission in life? How
did their involvement affect their emotional well-being? Their spirituality? Their relationships?
Etc. What are your reasons for wanting to serve others? How has it affected these aspects in your
life?
Books
The Working Poor
By: David K. Shipler
Invisible in America
A powerful, humane study of American families struggling against insurmountable odds to escape
poverty and take part in the American Dream.
Unbowed
By: Wangari Maathai
A Memoir
The winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recounts her life as a political activist, feminist, and
environmentalist in Kenya. Maathai’s Green Belt Movement has shown the world that good governance
and the wise use of resources can bring peace and create sustainable surroundings free from fear,
famine, and drought. Maathai tells her remarkable story with characteristic simplicity, generosity, and
strength of spirit.
A.D.
By: Josh Neufeld
New Orleans after the Deluge
A masterful portrait of a city under siege. Cartoonist Josh Neufeld depicts seven extraordinary true
stories of survival in the days leading up to and following Hurricane Katrina. As beautiful as it is poignant,
A.D. presents a city in chaos and shines a bright, profoundly human light on the tragedies and triumphs
that took place within it.
How Can I Help?
By: Ram Dass and Paul Gorman
Stories and Reflections on Service
In this practical helper’s companion, the authors provide support and inspiration for members of the
helping professions, as volunteers, as community activists, or simply as friends and family trying to meet
each other’s needs. Here too are deeply moving personal accounts: A housewife brings zoo animals to
lift the spirits of nursing home residents; a police officer talks a desperate father out of leaping from a
roof with his child; a nurse allows an infant to spend its last moments of life in her arms rather than on a
hospital machine. From many such stories and the author’s reflections, students can find strength,
clarity, and wisdom for those times when they are called on to care for one another.
An Invisible Thread
By: Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski
When Laura Schroff first met Maurice on a New York City street corner, she had no idea that she was
standing on the brink of an incredible and unlikely friendship that would inevitably change both their
lives. As one lunch at McDonald’s with Maurice turns into two, then into a weekly occurrence that is fast
growing into an inexplicable connection, Laura learns heart-wrenching details about Maurice’s horrific
childhood. It is the heartwarming story of a friendship that has spanned thirty years that brought life to
an over-scheduled professional who had lost sight of family and happiness and hope to a hungry and
desperate boy whose family background in drugs and crime and squalor seemed an inescapable fate.
Movies
Long Night’s Journey into Day (94 Minutes)
Producer/Director: Frances Reid
For over forty years, South Africa was governed by the most notorious form of racial domination since
Nazi Germany. When it finally collapsed, those who had enforced apartheid's rule wanted amnesty for
their crimes. Their victims wanted justice. As a compromise, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
was formed. As it investigated the crimes of apartheid, the Commission brought together victims and
perpetrators to relive South Africa's brutal history. By revealing the past instead of burying it, the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission hoped to pave the way to a peaceful future. Long Night's Journey into
Day follows several Truth and Reconciliation Commission cases over a two-year period. The stories in
the film underscore the universal themes of conflict, forgiveness, and renewal.
Hotel Rwanda (121 Minutes)
Director: Terry George
Based on real life events in Rwanda during the spring of 1994, the film stars Don Cheadle as hotelier Paul
Rusesabagina, who attempts to rescue his fellow citizens from the ravages of the Rwandan Genocide.
Actors Sophie Okonedo, Joaquin Phoenix, Nick Nolte and Jean Reno also appear in principal roles. The
film, which has been called an African Schindler's List, documents Rusesabagina's acts to save the lives of
his family and more than a thousand other refugees, by granting them shelter in the besieged Hotel des
Mille Collines. Hotel Rwanda explores genocide, political corruption, and the repercussions of violence.
The Color Purple (154 Minutes)
Director: Steven Spielburg
It was Spielberg's eighth film as a director, and was a change from the summer blockbusters for which
he had become famous. Filmed in Anson and Union counties in North Carolina, the film tells the story of
a young African American girl named Celie and shows the problems African American women faced
during the early 1900s, including poverty, racism, and sexism. Celie is transformed as she finds her selfworth through the help of two strong female companions.
Race-The Power of an Illusion (PBS Series)
Episode I - “The Difference Between Us” examines how recent scientific discoveries have toppled the
concept of biological race. The program follows a dozen diverse students who sequence and compare
their own DNA. They discover, to their surprise, that their closest genetic matches are as likely to be with
people from other “races” as their own. The episode helps us understand why it doesn’t make scientific
or genetic sense to sort people into biological races, as it dismantles our most basic myths about race,
including natural superiority and inferiority.
Episode II - “The Story We Tell” uncovers the roots of the race concept, including the 19th-century
science that legitimated it and the hold it has gained over our minds. It’s an eye-opening tale of how
America’s need to defend slavery in the face of a radical new belief in freedom and equality led to a fullblown ideology of white supremacy. Noting the experience of Cherokee Indians, the U.S. war against
Mexico and annexation of the Philippines, the film shows how definitions of race excluded from
humanity not only Black people, but anyone who stood in the way of American expansion. The program
traces the transformation of tentative suspicions about difference into a “common-sense” wisdom that
people used to explain everything from individual behavior to the fate of whole societies, an idea of race
that persists to this day.
Episode III - “The House We Live In” focuses not on individual behaviors and attitudes, but on how our
institutions shape and create race, giving different groups vastly unequal life chances. Who defines race?
In the early 20th century, the courts were called upon to determine who was white, employing
contradictory logic to maintain the color line. After World War II, government policies and subsidies
helped create segregated suburbs where Italians, Jews and other not-quite-white European ethnics were
able to reap the full advantages of whiteness. The episode reveals some of the ordinary social
institutions that quietly channel wealth and opportunity, so that white people benefit from a racist
system without personally being racist. It concludes by looking at why we can’t just get rid of race.
The Pursuit of Happyness (145 Minutes)
Director: Gabriele Muccino
The Pursuit of Happyness is about a salesman who undergoes defeats, challenges and hardship (his wife
leaving him, being rendered homeless) to secure a better living for his son. Throughout his journey, he
never once gave up, and stood firm to his goals. The mood of the show is slow and somber, intended for
the audience to experience more fully what the character is going through. Besides determination, selfbelief, persistence and going after our dreams, the story also speaks strongly of a dad’s love for his child.
Pay It Forward (123 Minutes)
Director: Mimi Leder
Young Trevor McKinney, troubled by his mother's alcoholism and fears of his abusive but absent father,
is caught up by an intriguing assignment from his new social studies teacher, Mr. Simonet. The
assignment: think of something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures the notion of
paying a favor not back, but forward--repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds
done to three new people. Trevor's efforts to make good on his idea bring a revolution not only in the
lives of himself, his mother and his physically and emotionally scarred teacher, but in those of an everwidening circle of people completely unknown to him.