Project Reflection

Immigration Project Reflection
By: Trent Smith

Literature Circle Books/ Blogs:
The book that I chose is A Long Way Gone by Ishamel Beah. My experiences of this book were surprising and shocking. I was surprised on how much killing and violence Ishamel Beah saw in this book. Not only did he had to see his family disappear and be taken away he also had to feel the pain of others suffering and also see the tragedies that others have lost. I thought this book was very shocking because the rebels did many bad and scary things to innocent people. They shot people for no apparent reason and they would laugh at them when they were either suffering from death or being tortured by them. It was like a second Holocaust that Ishamel Beah went through. I am glad that I picked this book. This book was not boring at all. It was very descriptive and detailed and this book really got the emotions out of you. He explained everyones feelings so well and so descriptive.
What I learned in this book, A Long Way Gone was about war. Sometimes you have to take risks to survive that you wont normally do in ordinary life. There was not many options that you really had if your stuck in war. You are strictly in or going to be in survival mode.
I would not want to change anything in this project. This project was pretty well done and is a good amount of work to do for an 8th grader. I wouldn’t want to add anything else. I thought it was great idea that we got to make a painting about our work because it was a great way to learn more about our work.
I actually liked the blogging part about the lit circle projects. It makes people make sure that they are doing all of their work and to make sure that your group is seeing your blog by commenting. I thought that blogging was great, it was easy and you got to read what people wrote, instead of people just reading it to you. I think that responding was a good idea because as I said before it makes sure that people are looking and reading your blog posts. It also shows other peoples agreements or disagreements when they comment on the quote and question you put on your blog. It is also a great way to read about what other people had to say.
I had no problem with blogging. It was an easy way for doing lit circles and was less stressful. We had tons of time at home to do our literature circle meeting posts and responses. A problem that I had was commenting though. Sometimes I commented and I clicked “comment” button, but when I commented it took a long time to refresh the page to show my comment and it said,“page error.” Then I tried pressing the “back” button and all my work was erased and I had to comment again. This happened a couple of times to me. I thought that my group members did a great job on commenting and also posting their lit circles. They gave me good feed back and answered the my questions with detailed information. They did fantastic.

Art & Literature:
I chose to make a book cover because I thought that would be the most fun and easiest thing for me to make. I thought that I could make a book cover because I thought the front cover makes people not only want to read the book, but it also has a story behind it and to find out why the book cover is like that you have to read the book. The original painting I wanted to do was a cultural component about the war, Africa and the situations he was in. I decided not to do this because I thought the viewer or the person that was looking at my painting would not get it at all. I thought it would be a little random to put different things that are not all related to one thing. I was also going to a famous painting. The famous painting that I chose was “The Scream.” I decided not to do that because many people did that painting already. Plus someone in my group was doing the same famous painting as me. So I was left with the book cover and I am very glad that I stuck with that choice.
I feel that there was a connection that was easily made between the art piece that I created and the book that I read. In the book it mainly talked about a kid going to war and the hardships and challenges he had to go through. This related to my painting because I painted a young boy in black holding a rifle gun. In the background I used camouflage warfare background, telling the reader or viewer that the little boy was in a war. So I thought that I made a really well resemblance to my book. My main goal was to try to make the reader understand that this book is about a little boy going to war and to make the reader say that the book cover basically tells the story and the book cover relates to the book a lot. I also wanted the reader to read the book to find out who really is the painted person in black.
I am absolutely surprised the way my painting turned out. It was amazing. I didn’t think that it was going to turn out this well because I would always mess up on tracing my sketch on the canvas board. I also had second guesses because at first I had no idea on how to make a book over. I am very glad that I stook with this idea and I am very proud of my art piece. I have been hearing many compliments from teachers and students too.
Something that would enhance my art piece is probably going back and putting multiple layers of paint on my canvas board.. My painting had some white spots, which I sadly forgot to paint over. Luckily there was not many spots on my canvas board that I had to fix. I would also want to put the “Gone” of my book title on the right side instead of the left side. Some people got confused because the “Gone” part was on the left side. I thought it looked good like that, but others got confused. I wouldn’t want to enhance or fix anything else. This part of the project is really fun. I thought that my painting turned out neat, organized and wonderful, I am very proud of my art piece.
I did not really learn much from my LC novel with art. I mostly learned about war and how cruel and harsh they were to others. They killed many innocent people. Maybe one thing that I learned was trying to make the book cover relate to the book. You want to make sure that the book cover related to the book because when someone reads it, and looks at the cover, the person that is reading it is going to be confused and thrown off. But I did not really learn much on my literature circle book with art.

Interview Process with Participant & Gift:
I thought that the interview process was kind of difficult. I had to ask questions that were really straight forward because my immigrant did not know how to speak English well. He did not answer most of my question because they weren’t really straight forward questions that he could answer. But he did a great job answering his questions in English. This also made it difficult for write questions because they had to be straight forward and also made it hard for me to write down the answers to question because he had a very heavy accent.
I went to the IRC so I didn’t have to interview him in 3 different ways, but I had to have a inperson interview twice. The first time I went to the IRC they were very friendly and treated me with tons of respect. I was very excited to meet my immigrant. When I started asking my immigrant some questions he was confused with several of them. He probably only answered 10 of my 25 questions I gave him. So it was kind of hard communicating. When he did answer my questions he had a very thick accent and a very soft voice, so it was hard to hear him. The second time I interviewed him, it was a lot better. He learned a lot of English and he translated better to me. I also made ure that most of my questions were very straight forward. It turned out to be difficult in the beginning but more smoother in the end.
Something that I learned that was unique about him was the clothes that he was wearing on the first day I met him. It looked like he was wearing a homemade shirt with a cultural looking vest over it. It looked very interesting and unique. Our clothes in America look so much different in Burma and Thailand. Something that we had in common is that he had 1 brother and 2 sisters, just like me. We both had a family a 6 and the same amount of brothers and sisters. A fact that I thought was interesting was they had no education in Burma/ Thailand. Most of the time they had to work. He worked on a farm. He worked with many animals like goats, pigs, horses, cows and chickens.
Learning about an immigrant that we interviewed and the things we learned in class really understood the life of an immigrant. They have to leave many of their cultures and traditions behind. They also have to remember many things like how to speak English, which is the hardest language to speak. Interviewing an immigrant really taught me the life of immigrant and the challenges they have to overcome. It isn’t easy as it looks.
I thought that making a gift was a nice and respectful idea to do for them because they took their time to help us on our project. My experience on making a gift for my immigrant was a fun thing to do. I made a scrap book for my immigrant because he talked a lot about himself. If you are making a scrap book you have to really go deep in your answers and pull out facts about his or her experiences come to America. Making a scrap book is difficult if you don’t plan out what is going to be on every sigle page of the scrap book. When I did my scrap book it was simply and quite fun to do. I already planned out what is going to be on every single page. I thought this was a fun experience because this is probably my first scrap book that I have completely finished and filled every single page of my scrap book with facts and pictures about him.