Monday, June 9, 2014

Kite Ruuner Socratic Seminar #2 Reflection

     The socratic seminar influenced my thinking about the innocence of Amir. At first I had the mind set that Amir was using Baba's illness as a supplement to help be able to be able to get married with Soraya. But after having the discussion with the group, I realized that instead it was also a way to make his father happy before his father passed away. I realized that Baba actually wanted to see Amir grow up, and by getting married to a women shows how a male has improved and grown as a man. Because the group I was in wasn't as talkative, there wasn't really anything that was said or brought up that I hadn't thought of before. Except for the various ways that Amir was considered innocent, that I hadn't thought of before.
     The statement that was made by Connor where he stated that adjustment and adaptation really depends on the person themselves and the past experiences they've been through. You can't possibly just say that an adjustment to a specific area is going to be the same for all individuals. Because Baba and Amir were so used to the lifestyle of an upperclassmen, the way they were able to adjust to America was definitely much harder, than an average person whose moved from a place like Canada. If I had the chance the say anything else in the socratic seminar, it would be for me to ask the rest of my peers what they think would happen next and why? I would also ask, if Hassan's mother had never came back, how do you think the plot of the story would've changed?
     Something that worked really well in the seminar is the appeals we were able to establish. I feel as though we were able to accomplish alot of emotional appeals especially towards the end of the seminar where more people started to contribute to the discussion and were able to put out their thoughts and opinions on the topics that were brought up. Although we had a few dominators (emphasis on a few) we were able to give everyone who wanted to speak, a chance to speak.
     Something that definitely needs improvement is more people contributing to the discussion and answering more questions or even posting more questions. So many people were either shy or didn't feel like talking which made the discussion 10x less interesting than the potential that we had for it to be. I also feel as though we did alot of on-surface talking and didn't quite go into too much depth into any of the good ideas that were brought up.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Kite Runner Socratic Seminar #1 Reflection

     The seminar influenced my thinking about Amir and why he does what he does. At first my view of him was very negative, I almost hated him. My anger towards Amir was so strong due to the fact that he never stood up for Hassan. But after people brought up the fact that its not completely his fault, it was just 1. he was still a kid, a very non-confident one 2.the way he was raised and taught from his society about Hazaras greatly impacts the way he treats Hassan. 
     When Sasha said that the only reason she'd understand Amir or feel sympathetic for him is the fact that Amir himself can barely stand up for himself and with people around him saying negative things about Hazara's, it pretty much made him become hesitant to jump in for his friend. That is one statement that I agreed with the most. I agree, because that pretty much opened my eyes and almost convinced me that maybe it isn't completely Amir's fault for walking away when Hasan was getting raped. Yet, i still find it petty that he wouldn't stand up for a friend of his that he'd grown up with and had gotten breast fed from the same breast. If there was anything else I could say in the seminar is, i would of posted a question asking, "how do you think that the story so far has depicted the title, the Kite Runner". I feel like i would really like to get the insight of what people think and how they've interpreted the story so far.
     Something that worked really well is that i feel like we definitely were able to establish our logical appeals much more clearly now without having to actually say which appeal we were trying to use. I feel as though, the appeals are getting much more obvious but not to the point where you'd have to state what appeal you were trying to get at. I also believe that something that went well was how when there was an awkward silence, someone was always there to jump in to continue on the conversation, which is something I was really pleased with.
     Something that needs improvement is probably just being able to establish more emotional appeals. I feel like we aren't really emphasizing the emotional vibe as much as we are capable of. I feel as though we are more so just evenly answering and establish each appeal equally rather than raising the emotional appeal. And not only that, I feel like once there is an emotional appeal posted, we didn't go in much depth into it as much as we could have.