1st Hour ManzanarScribe-Friday

In English on Friday Mrs. Moritz was not at school due to her son's ear surgery. We started out the day by showing the sub that we had our sticky note questions from Farewell to Manzanar. Then we jumped right into the day's discussion. We put all of the desks in one big circle and Rachel, Elyse, and Melissa led the discussion. First we talked about how Jeanne's dad goes into a rage and gets into a fight with her mother. Jeanne hides under the bed because she is scared and she wanted them to stop. This was ironic because the next chapter features Jeanne's dad being interrogated. Not only does he forget Jeanne's name during this time but when talking about his countries--Japan and the United States--he uses an analogy. The anology was something to the effect of "When your parents are fighting you don't want one to just kill the other, you want them to stop fighting." This is ironic because just a chapter earlier, he threatens to kill his wife. We discussed whether or not this abuse was recurring and also the parallels between Jeanne's family situation and World War II. Going off of that, we discussed what it would be like to have to choose between what your parents wanted and what you believed, which also seems to bea recurring theme. Woody decided that he would accept going to war to fight for the US even though his dad wouldn't. Mr. Wakatsuki has to choose between his "parents" -Japan and the United States -and what he believes about the war. Next we discussed how hard it must be for the Japanese to forgive America for what we put them through. We disregarded the fact that they were hard-working American citizens simply because they looked like the enemy. We also talked about what it would be like to have nowhere to go. If you left the country of your birth and went to a country with which that country was at war, the people of your first country wouldn't accept you back. If the country you immigrated to wouldn't accept you either, you had no home. That would be a feeling that no person should ever have to deal with and it's within their rights not to. The discussion pretty much took us up to the bell, then we put the deska back.

Homework: Read chapters 10, 11, and 12 plus 3sticky note questions...