We worked on the paper due for history tomorrow. Brandon seems to have a good start but is having a lot of trouble figuring out where to go with the paper.
Brandon continues to write his history paper, focusing on the section where he discusses his opinions on "alternative modernities." After reading through the article that discusses these ideas, Brandon and I had a conversation about what the article said and how Brandon could form a set of beliefs based on two of the problems it outlines about varying modernities. Brandon was able to finish his essay during our class, and he had Kevin provide feedback on the product.
Completed - Week #9 Material and began Homework: Piece-wise functions, Local extrema, Graphs of common functions, Even/Odd functions, Increaing/Decreasing intervals
Brandon worked on his homophobia paper, and I think we've come up with some sources for him. We then started working on the history articles. Brandon had a hard time focusing and was a little tough to keep on task for history.
Brandon continues to work on the next few pages of his homophobia paper, moving on to his discussion of stereotypes and their affect on the fear of homosexuals. Afterwards, Brandon brought his point home by discussing how a lack of knowledge of homosexuality during the AIDS epidemic and medical terms like "gay-panic" have led to a literal fear of homosexuals in society. By the end of our session, Brandon had 4 of the 5 essays pages.
Sammie brought in an assignment for American Literature that required him to make an argument about how two of Robert Frosts' poems share the same theme and how they present that theme via different images. Sammie and I argued that both of the poems express certain beliefs about death through nature and work, but their perspectives on death differ greatly. The first text seems to suggest that death is more inviting and welcome than life, while the other expresses death as a force that cannot be defeated but that its defeat should be attempted with optimism and grace. By the end of our session, Sammie wrote a solid introduction and had a decent first paragraph.
Brandon and I conducted research on his homophobia paper, finding some really interesting facts about social roles and their affect on homosexual attitudes, stereotypes about homosexuals, and the Westboro Baptist Church. For his first point, Brandon chose to write about how religion impacts homophobia. To support this idea, he cited several sociologists who claimed that a religion's doctrines on homosexuality dictates its members personal stance on homosexuality. In the end, he cited the Westboro Baptist Church's anti-gay raids to show how misinterpretation of religion doctrines can further hate which in turn perpetuates homophobia.
