Senior college application process
SENIORS: SCHEDULE FOR COLLEGE APPLICATIONS
Sample College Application Essays That Work!
how to do grammar corrections a) using your essay as a file
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San Mateo Middle College High School
JUNIORS: NATIVE SON
As you know, the last section of Native Son is a kind of platform for author Richard Wright to indirectly comment on the atrocious state of race relations in the United States in the late Thirties.
Several years ago, the New York Times ran a series of entitled, “HOW RACE IS LIVED IN AMERICA.” The preface to their online compilation of these articles is as follows:
Two generations after the end of legal discrimination, race still ignites political debates -- over Civil War flags, for example, or police profiling. But the wider public discussion of race relations seems muted by a full-employment economy and by a sense, particularly among many whites, that the time of large social remedies is past. Race relations are being defined less by political action than by daily experience, in schools, in sports arenas, in pop culture and at worship, and especially in the workplace. These encounters -- race relations in the most literal, everyday sense -- make up this series of reports, created by a team of Times journalists, interviewers, and photojournalists.
STEP ONE: TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY
HOW RACE IS LIVED IN AMERICA
This assignment gives us the chance to see what has changed since Wright `s novel - and where work remains to be done.
Directions:
1. Choose one of the articles below to read.
2. Write a precis of the article. (Remember that the precis starts with the title of the article, the author, and a one sentence summary of the entire article's message. Then, the precis continues with all the major points of the article, omitting examples and quotations.)
3. Then write your reaction to the article. Be specific about points you found interesting, thought-provoking, or which you personally relate to.
ARTICLES:
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...................BEST OF FRIENDS. WORLDS APART Ruis is white, Valdez is black. In America, they discovered it matters.
...................GROWING UP, GROWING APART Fast friends try to resist the pressure to divide by race
photographer, Suzanne DeChillo
..................GETTING UNDER MY SKIN: A White
Mother and a Black Father Left Him This Legacy:
..................The Struggle to Be an Integrated Man in a
Segregated World.
photographer, Michelle Agins
...................WHICH MAN'S ARMY: IS THE ARMY REALLY COLORBLIND? The military says it's colorblinsd. Tell that to the drill ....................sargeants.
...................GUARDING THE BORDERS OF THE HIP-HOP NATION; White money feeds rap. True believers fear selling out.
4. Click on the link to the comments of the photographer (under the article above)for your article.
Read his/her particular perspective on the subject he/she was researching. Write down three quotations that you think captured his feelings about his photographic assignment. Explain whether his or her perspective seems to be the same as that of the journalist for that article.
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STEP TWO: (This is not included in this week's assignment.)
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| Two-time heavyweight world champion boxer George Foreman and his mom. | As a young member of the Job Corps, 17-year-old George Foreman met Charles "Doc" Broadus (right), who taught him how to box. At left is Foreman's old friend Barney Oldfield.
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The popular "George Foreman Grill" $19.99 |
One of the goals of this unit is to give you a chance to see the world through the eyes of someone who is not of the "mainstream" culture. The following exercise may well do this. You will need headphones to hear the audio tape link.
First, write down what you know about the George Foreman Grill: do you have one? What would you use it for? Why do you think they have been so successful?
Second, listen to the audio produced by National Public Radio's program "Hidden Kitchens: The George Foreman Grill."
Third, write a short paragraph in which you reflect on the experiences of the speakers in this tape. Did it open your eyes in any way? Did it provide you with a perspective you did not have before? Explain.
Extra
credit: Multiculturalism and the Media
Scroll down the article: "Who Gets to Write a Black Story" (which deals with the controversy about white writers creating black mini-series) to the link CHART: Race and TelevisionWho is watching it? And who is creating it?
Click this link to look at a study of who watches television and who writes the programs they watch. Draw some conclusions. Is this good or bad?