Ava's Blog

In what area do you think you made your biggest improvements in English Language Arts?     I believe that my biggest improvement was my participation in the classes’ Socratic Seminars. In previous years I hadn’t drawn many people into the conversation but this time, I continued to engage with others who weren’t talking very often. Socratic Seminars can be very intimidating to some of my classmates and because of this, they often don’t share their thoughts or ideas. It has been a goal of mine to help the frightened students come out of their shell and share with the class. The reason for this is because I really enjoy hearing other people’s feelings or opinions of the text. Oftentimes the conversation is very nondiverse and you hear the same opinions every time. I enjoy giving people the opportunity to share out and speak their minds, which is why this has become my biggest improvement.     What has been the most challenging part of 2nd Quarter for you and what did/can you do

    I am a Star  by Inge Auerbacher is about a young, Jewish girl and her struggle to survive the Holocaust. To begin, Inge talks about the how the discrimination began in her town of Kippenheim when, “Some people began to say that Jews belonged to a different race and that Jews were racially inferior” (10). From this belief, many thing changes for the Jews including who could buy from them, deprivation of their German citizenship, where they could go, and what occupations they could have. Christians were forbidden to associate with the Jews, while some had no problem with this, others disobeyed and left food and saved important items for after the war. Inge then describes her experience as a child at the camp, “We slept on the floor or, if lucky, on straw-filled mattresses... The rooms were smelly and steamy in summer and freezing in winter... The most important words in our vocabulary were bread, potatoes, and soup ” (43). Inge also highlights the other conditions of the camp when s