This is a reminder that there is NO session on April 10 and it has been moved to May 1, same time, same location!

If you haven’t already, please be sure to respond to Dian’s email about the date change.

Thank you!

1.  Session 2 Reflection Post

For the post about the session, please try your best to write about your experience like a story, narrated using words and pictures.  You are welcome to use pictures that I took (http://cloudsheep.smugmug.com/Bridging-Communities/) or to use pictures that are on the facebook group.  If you have any to share, please email them to Dian!

Here are some guide questions to help you out.  For this one, it’s more important that you write your blog posts like a story than that you answer all of the questions.  These are more to help you think about what to write about.  If you are going to answer the questions, please try to answer them on a deeper level, instead of just answering them on the surface level.

• What did you learn from this session overall?
• What did you learn from the Religion exercise?
• What did you learn from the Star Power exercise?  How is charity different from justice?  What are some real-life examples of the situations in Star Power?
• What did you learn from the Great Leap workshops with Nobuko and Carla?

2.  Amric Singh Rathour Reading Blog Post

For the blog post about the reading about Amric Singh Rathour, here is your guide question:

From the founding of the United States, religious freedom has been of concern.  The first item mentioned in the Bill of Rights refers to religion.  The first Amendment states: “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Why do you think Amric Singh Rathour as a Sikh American was willing to fight the dress code policy of the NYPD?  What important lessons can his experience teach all of us?

You can of course also write about your general reaction to the reading in addition to answering the question.

Thanks everyone!  :)

This is an email I sent out earlier, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to also post it on the blog.

Here are a few reminders and announcements for our next session, which is coming up really soon!!

A couple of things related to online communication:

• If you haven’t already, please join the google group!  http://groups.google.com/group/bridging-communities-2010/
• If you were at the last session, please do the TWO blogging assignments by the end of this weekend:  http://bridgingcommunities2010.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/session-one/
• If you WEREN’T at the last session, please write a blog post about (1) why you are doing the program and (2) what you are looking forward to.
• If you have a facebook, the facebook group is here:  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=320651025788&ref=ts

Some things about the next session:

• The date is SUNDAY, March 14
• We will be at the Islamic Institute of Orange County: (http://www.masjidomar.com/)  It is located at 1220 N State College Blvd Anaheim, CA 92806. The session will run from about 9AM-5PM.
• This location is a mosque, so please dress modestly–nothing too short, low-cut, or tight-fitting please!  Long sleeves are preferable.
• Please bring an item that is sacred to you from your culture or your religious tradition.
• We will be getting a workshop from Great Leap, the group who did the performance at Day of Remembrance.
• Please don’t forget to bring your digital camera, if you have one.
  

Please let Dian know if you can or cannot come.  Respond to the reminder email!

Thank you so much!!  See you at the next session.  Let me know if you have any questions!!

Great Leap at Day of Remembrance – they will be leading workshops at the next session!

It was great meeting you all at session one.  I hope you had a good time and learned a lot.  I look forward to getting to know you all more as the program progresses!

Photos from the sessions are available at http://cloudsheep.smugmug.com/Bridging-Communities/ (*please note, this is different from what it says in the blogging tutorial copy you got in your folders.  Please check your email for a digital copy of the blogging tutorial.)

If you have photos that you’d like to share, please email them to me at dsohn[at]jaclpsw[dot]org and I will upload them to that same photo album.

Please remember that if you use photos that you did not take, you should credit them to the photographer, as this is good practice.  For the ones I’ve uploaded, I’ll include the photo credit as the caption for the photo.

Here are the guide questions for this session.  Please write your posts by March 7 (a week before the next session), so that people have time to respond.  If you missed parts of the first session, please feel free to skip the questions about those parts of the session.  If you missed the first session completely, I will be emailing you later, so don’t worry about this for now.

Session One Guide Questions

• What did you learn about others?  What did you learn about yourself?
• What activities stood out to you?
• How do you define “identity”?
• What parts of your identity are important to you?
• Did you find anything surprising about how others identified themselves?
• Does stereotyping have any affect on how you choose to define your identity?
• What stood out to you at Day of Remembrance?
• Why is it important to remember Japanese American internment?

(For the photo blog part, try your best to write your blog posts like a story.  The guide questions are there to help you write the story, but you don’t have to answer them in order.)

Reading Guide Questions

• Most history books that mention the Korematsu case stop at the point where the Supreme Court upheld the original decision, and don’t talk about how it was overturned.  Why is it important to talk about the case being overturned?
• In what ways is the Korematsu case significant to you?
• Is the Korematsu case and its being overturned still important today?  How?

Thank you all!  See you again on March 14 at the Islamic Institute of Orange County!

Dian

PS:  If you’ve sent me the link to your blog, they’re all linked at http://bridgingcommunities2010.wordpress.com/blogs/