Project Reflection:
The first thing I can think back to, when we were introduced to this project, was learning about the Cold War and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. This incident was the very start to this long war. Through this assignment, I gained new insight on how this war was started and who was the first to fight. Another part of this project that helped me have another perspective on the war was the book The Things They Carried that we read as a class. The book was written by Tim O’Brien, who had served in Vietnam. This book taught me the most about a soldier's perspective in the war, which was a very important piece to this project and the final product. While we read this book, we also watched many clips from Ken Burns’ documentary that helped me capture an understanding for this war and why it happened, and how important the growth of Communism was. The documentary also showed me the different forms of violence in the Vietnam war. It was difficult to watch, but it is important to know. We also had three veterans come to our school to talk about their experiences and share their thoughts with us so that we could learn more from a veteran interview. These interviews were so helpful and Tom, the veteran that I interviewed, was comfortable with sharing and so I was able to gain a whole new understanding of this war and all of it’s difficulties.
The final product for this project was to exhibit our learning as best as we could. We used almost an entire building at Animas High School to show what we learned about this war. We had many different rooms to show different parts to this war through different perspectives. These rooms included: Soldiers’ Emotions, Soldiers on the Battlefield, Vietnamese Perspectives, The American Homefront, America Divided, and Retrospective. Each room showed a different perspective and it all came together as one big picture, which was the Vietnam War and the challenges with it. As a class, we wanted to display beautiful, refined student work to convey this war and all of its steps. The group I contributed to was the “Soldiers’ Emotions” room. My role in the group was to help in every way that I could to create an amazing end product. I was able to help create an engaging room that would be remembered. In our room, we had many things to try to help people understand. We had an area where people were acting out what it was like to be a soldier that was was sitting around the camp and how they kept themselves busy. We also had an area where we were projecting a video of an interview with a Vietnam War veteran. The video was the main attraction in our room. We also had letters hanging from the ceiling to show what soldiers wrote home. There was another spot in the room that showed some photos from the war that we had from one of the interviewed veterans.
In group work, I have not usually been seen as a leader, but during this project I was seen as a leader through peer evaluation. I found this entire project to be very engaging and I think that’s what caused me to form into a leader, because of how excited I was for the work we were doing. I did a lot of writing throughout this project and I think it caused me to grow in that way, as well. I contributed in my group and I helped come up with ideas and products for our final exhibit. I thought that it would be interesting to have a veteran interview in the exhibition. I shared my idea with my group and they agreed. I also found myself challenged when I discovered that a lot of my group members, including myself, were more on the shy side and not usually leaders. That was when I was challenged myself to step up and help guide the group to success. Through that, I knew that I had grown because the project went very well and I know now that I can always step up to become a leader without fear. Although this project was a success, not everything I did in this project was perfect, there was room for improvement. I think I could have contributed more by managing my time. There were days when I could have stayed after school to help the group work on beautifying our room. There were other days when I was not up for doing certain tasks and I should have ignored my negative thoughts.
This project changed my thinking in many ways. Before The Truth of War project I knew almost nothing about the Vietnam War. Now, at the end of this project I found that I have a very deep understanding of many perspectives from this war. Through veteran interviews and stories from “The Moth” I now understand what the truth of war is. I discovered that true war can be stories that may or may not be true but if they are told by someone who has been there it doesn’t matter if it is true or not because it may as well be. I learned that the only way we can find the truth in war is listening to the ones who have been there and experienced it themselves. Communication is the way to find truths. When there are any conflicting sources about the discovery of war and it’s truths it can only be necessary to find the correct source through human interaction or by knowing if the source is coming from someone who was in the Vietnam war. The most enduring understanding that I will take away from this project is to look and think deeply to uncover the truth in something. Through listening to war veterans I learned most of what I need to know about the Vietnam war.
The final product for this project was to exhibit our learning as best as we could. We used almost an entire building at Animas High School to show what we learned about this war. We had many different rooms to show different parts to this war through different perspectives. These rooms included: Soldiers’ Emotions, Soldiers on the Battlefield, Vietnamese Perspectives, The American Homefront, America Divided, and Retrospective. Each room showed a different perspective and it all came together as one big picture, which was the Vietnam War and the challenges with it. As a class, we wanted to display beautiful, refined student work to convey this war and all of its steps. The group I contributed to was the “Soldiers’ Emotions” room. My role in the group was to help in every way that I could to create an amazing end product. I was able to help create an engaging room that would be remembered. In our room, we had many things to try to help people understand. We had an area where people were acting out what it was like to be a soldier that was was sitting around the camp and how they kept themselves busy. We also had an area where we were projecting a video of an interview with a Vietnam War veteran. The video was the main attraction in our room. We also had letters hanging from the ceiling to show what soldiers wrote home. There was another spot in the room that showed some photos from the war that we had from one of the interviewed veterans.
In group work, I have not usually been seen as a leader, but during this project I was seen as a leader through peer evaluation. I found this entire project to be very engaging and I think that’s what caused me to form into a leader, because of how excited I was for the work we were doing. I did a lot of writing throughout this project and I think it caused me to grow in that way, as well. I contributed in my group and I helped come up with ideas and products for our final exhibit. I thought that it would be interesting to have a veteran interview in the exhibition. I shared my idea with my group and they agreed. I also found myself challenged when I discovered that a lot of my group members, including myself, were more on the shy side and not usually leaders. That was when I was challenged myself to step up and help guide the group to success. Through that, I knew that I had grown because the project went very well and I know now that I can always step up to become a leader without fear. Although this project was a success, not everything I did in this project was perfect, there was room for improvement. I think I could have contributed more by managing my time. There were days when I could have stayed after school to help the group work on beautifying our room. There were other days when I was not up for doing certain tasks and I should have ignored my negative thoughts.
This project changed my thinking in many ways. Before The Truth of War project I knew almost nothing about the Vietnam War. Now, at the end of this project I found that I have a very deep understanding of many perspectives from this war. Through veteran interviews and stories from “The Moth” I now understand what the truth of war is. I discovered that true war can be stories that may or may not be true but if they are told by someone who has been there it doesn’t matter if it is true or not because it may as well be. I learned that the only way we can find the truth in war is listening to the ones who have been there and experienced it themselves. Communication is the way to find truths. When there are any conflicting sources about the discovery of war and it’s truths it can only be necessary to find the correct source through human interaction or by knowing if the source is coming from someone who was in the Vietnam war. The most enduring understanding that I will take away from this project is to look and think deeply to uncover the truth in something. Through listening to war veterans I learned most of what I need to know about the Vietnam war.