Jan. 18.2012. In Class Activity
What
is American Values?
We have the first
class activity that we had to search for American values. Debra who is one of our teachers explained what
American values are via her own word. From her description, we could get
several information and guidelines. Before making a team, our guidelines for
American value was freedom, equality, hard work/opportunity, informality,
independence/self-reliance, individualism, time, and direct communication. My
team members were three of us, Eric, Ben and me. With our guidelines and
Erick’s camera, we went to cafeteria in Golisano ground floor to look for American
values in real situation especially in collage.
Above all, our
team discussed how we would make our plan for this activity. We made a list
what could represent American values following the guidelines and what we
should get a photo for it’s representation.
I want to show our result of a
discussion blow.
*. Equality
The feature of
equality in the U.S. could see in the gender that is, between female and male.
Specially, they are considered equally everywhere such as an opportunity of
education, employment, and political empowerment. In addition, after the
American Civil War, they don’t have race discrimination. So we could see all
races in school, workplace and even political area.
*. Freedom and informality
Freedom is the
symbol of the U.S. for long times, it might have been since the independence
from British. We would freely come up with the
freedom when we see the U.S. flag. Also we figured out such freedom in our
discussion. In terms of our thoughts the student who are sitting on the floor
to waiting for their next class could represent the freedom because they don’t
mind any others’ view. It may relate to informality either. In classroom, we
could realize the freedom and informality from American teacher and students.
They are usually wearing casual clothes for their classes. As blow the picture, they are in the academic
conference but they are wearing free styled clothes each person.
*. Hard work/opportunity
According to our
searching, we saw a lot of students who were studying hard even the cafeteria.
Eating some food they studied very hard. Form these students we felt that could
be real American’s hard working in school.
*. Individualism (time/space
constructs)
We saw a number of
students were seating alone for eating or studying for whole table in the
cafeteria. In our thoughts, they mind seating together or they don’t want to
interrupt from others during their working. Our team asked several students and
took the picture of them. But I didn’t get those pictures unfortunately.
*. Independence/self-reliance
We met one female
student and asked interview. With her allowance, we could ask several questions.
She is Laurin Murray, junior in Nazareth Collage. She is working in two
restaurants after school for her life expenses because she live with her friend,
no parents, so she have to make money by herself. I was surprised her sounds and I asked her how
she got her tuition for collage. She has gotten a government funding that could
fully cover her tuition. Also, after working these restaurants she has studied
for her academic grade and her future careers. She is a real American college
student. She is a truly independent person from her parents and others and she
is very hard worker for her career.
I was very
interested in her interview because it would be different with my culture. In
my country, South Korea, most of us are getting support from parents before
marriage or getting a job. Most parents
tell us if we have a time for making money we have to concentrate on studying
for our future. In addition, parents say, we have to make money for our
children in the future so we don’t need to make money even in collage hood. It would be one of big differences between two
cultures.
*. Time
In the U.S., we can
easily see the sign of an available time in front of office or store’s door. So
if we go to there out of that time we could not use their services. We got a
couple of pictures and a time schedule of cafeteria.
*. Direct communication
We didn’t get any
information related to direct communication but I have believed that we could
experience during these classes and living in the U.S.
