Journal 5!

September 17th

9:40am

In class today we began by taking a quiz on our previous reading assignment “Lysistrata” and boy was that one harder than the last quiz plus no bonus points. Let’s just say I was sweating by I think I did an alright job on it. After the quiz we reviewed the answer and then jumped right into the topic of class; leadership opportunities. We discussed places in which you can find leadership like in your family, friend groups, job and school organizations. We also extended the discussion further by evaluating what specific opportunities we have all had personally since the school year began. My leadership opportunities I’ve had aren’t very big but they mean a lot to me. A few weeks ago I was moved from intern to leader in my youth group. I currently hold a position of worship leader and have for about two years now but the head of the youth department at my church decided it was time make me a leader within the youth group itself. This means I’ll be able to run events, teach the word to middle and high schoolers and be able to be seen as an equal among my older peers. In addition to this amazing opportunity, I’ve also been able to become my younger brother’s tutor in his classes. He’s never really felt comfortable coming to me with help in school because he was ashamed and felt like I was too smart for him or that he couldn’t live up to the expectations our Mom has since I got good grades in high school however, being home all this time and being able to really spend time with him I’ve learned how he’s been feeling and been able to encourage him in his own abilities. This bond building has established a sense of trust and has made him comfortable with asking for help so now I help him with his homework when he needs it and I put in good words for him with our Mom that way he doesn’t constantly have to go to battle for his way of learning. One last area of leadership I feel like I’ve been given the opportunity to achieve in is being a 1st generation college student in my immediate family. My grandparents on my Mom’s side never went to college, my Dad only got his GED, my Mom graduated high school and took online college courses once she got in her 30’s, my uncle went into the military instead of college and my grandparents on my Dad’s side never went to college in England and once they immigrated to America they didn’t see the point in attempting to try with two kids. I am the first one to even try to go to an on campus, four year university and I’m hoping that this will set an example for my younger siblings and cousins that they’ll be able to do it too.

After doing this self-reflection, we took a couple notes then created a school of Lysistrata! My partners were Naheim and Ollie and together we established how students would develop a shared sense of mission. Together we came up with a homeroom styled class that would educate the students on major conflicts throughout history, both political and social in order to set up a mindset base that can begin their sense of mission. We said that the assignments for the class would be conflicts that the students would have to provide solutions for in groups and try out each solution other groups give on their own conflict to see what solution works best for all.

Once we established our Lysistrata school, we spoke about the importance of accountability partners and thought on who would be a good partner for us. Kayla is a girl I’ve gotten to know in the class and we both decided to be each other’s accountability partners and have thrived in doing our work on time and in advanced with the motivation from each other.

September 20th

8:30pm

Tonight I’m working on the week 5 reading assignment on Kallion. Philoctetes was an interesting read but it was hard for me to focus while reading it. My day had been hectic with my brother’s birthday party, church and work all scrambled into one day so sitting down and reading with a brain going a mile a minute was not easy. After reading, the textbook instructed us to talk about examples of people being dehumanized, what areas those examples fell under according to Philoctetes, how we can change these things and what leadership behaviors need to be used to accomplish this. I chose to talk about the dehumanization of Black people in America. They are discriminated against, fighting against police brutality every day of their lives and constantly begging people to see them as equals. White people stereotypes them as “thugs,” “drug dealers,” “gang bangers,” and ultimately dangerous and unequal. These stereotypes force black people to be seen as less than. According to Philoctetes, they would be seen as outsiders, physically disgusting due to their different skin tone and involuntarily submissive due to white people forcing their own authority over them. Ways we could change this would be to vote into office someone who would fight for the equality of every race and bring to light the struggles that Black people face everyday in America thus forcing people to understand what they are doing is wrong. We also need to teach black history alongside white history in our schools not just during one month per school year. Black history is American history and people need to know that. Going to an HBCU I have already learned so much that I had no idea about within a two month time span about the black experience and their history but it shouldn’t have taken me 12 years of schooling to learn this. The leadership behaviors we would need to have to make these changes would be courage to stand up and speak and reputation amongst people of speaking what is right so they will listen and will want to follow.

Sept. 22nd

9:40am

Today in class we spoke about the reading we did and touched on key passages.

Key terms from class:

• Philoctetes= he who is more dear than a possession
• Soteria= deliverance, salvation

Notes:

• Should we still deceive and lie in order to help the greater good even if it hurts a few? -Many believe that you should never lie but I think that a little bit of manipulation and deceit is okay when helping the greater good. Detectives do it in order to get suspects to confess so sometimes is alright as long as it’s for the right reasons.
• Should we always focus on developing our own leadership even in the hard times or should we put the blame off on other authority figures that helped sculpt us into who we are? -There is only so much blame you can put on those who created you because they don’t make your decisions for you and they aren’t the ones in the situations, you are. Though what they taught you and how they treated you may have altered your own ideas about how things should be done and what a leader looks like, you should always be analyzing your own leadership development in order to improve.
• Dehumanizing: A lot of the time we dehumanize because we are trying to feel better about our own selves. We convince ourselves that someone else’s opinion is invalid or void thus making our own superior and correct even if we know we are wrong. In order to prevent dehumanization we need to stop seeing the world as every man for themselves and start seeing it as we’re all in this together (come through High School Musical reference) because if we don’t we’ll keep dividing and causing conflict amongst each other which doesn’t do any good for the world. We say we want peace so bad but when are we actually going to try to work together and achieve it?