Personal Presentation

What I found most interesting this week is how several students took their personal interests and related them to the letters and ideas we focused on in class. It was so refreshing to see how my classmates took away different things from the past few weeks because we each came from very different backgrounds. An excellent example of this is Adina’s presentation. She chose to speak about hope and how it is such a core value for the Jewish community. Throughout her speech, she talked about her topic while connecting things, like the prayer book and songs of hope, to her childhood. It was very clear as she spoke that she would smile and get more confident the second she began to speak about her topic of choice in a more personal way, which was so sweet and enjoyable as an audience member. Another thing I noticed is when students would talk about parts of the class they resonated with the ability to elaborate on the ideas became so easy to achieve and clear to the other students watching. For example, Gabrielle got to a portion of her presentation where she talked about Harry Kipp and Norma Clinton’s relationship through letters. The second this slide came up she giggled to herself and began to talk louder and elaborated on how surprised Norma was when Harry confessed his undying love to her. The next presentation blew me away due to the personal emotion behind the speaking. Marc spoke about the African American soldiers in World War 2, which we spoke about very minimally in class, but he had so much confidence and deeply researched outside of class for this presentation. While he spoke he had clear understanding, loud vocals, eye contact, and so much power behind his goal in presenting this topic. When reading a section of Taps for a Jim Crow Army, he spoke slowly and elaborated on what the article truly meant before moving on. All of these factors, from confidence to elaboration to smiles, made these classmates’ presentations so exciting to watch and it was all because each student cared to take our class curriculum to heart.