Not a Stereotypical Speaker

     On Wednesday, the whole school got to listen to an amazing speaker, Dr. Michael Fowlin. Not only did he discuss stereotypes, just as we were talking about in class this week, but he made almost every student in the audience think a little differently about these stereotypes.

     Throughout the past couple years, there have been multiple speakers who have come to our school to talk to us about diversity and accepting one another, but I don't think any had as great of an effect as Dr. Michael Fowlin did. He had such a great impact on many students partly because of his humor that students our age could relate to and laugh at. Although his humor helped, a huge part of the success of his presentation was his ability to make the audience understand what goes on behind a stereotype. Throughout the presentation, Dr. Fowlin enacted four different stereotypical characters, such as a hyper, chatty little boy and an asian girl who is a straight A student. Even though almost everyone has a stereotype put upon them, most people don't understand what happens in the mind of someone who is stereotyped at a higher degree. By enacting these characters, with voices and costumes, Dr. Fowlin helped the audience better understand how students who might be bullied or stereotyped feel underneath their masks.

     Right after the presentation, we went to English class and happened to have a very similar discussion regarding Native American stereotypes. We watched video clips from "Stagecoach," "The Lone Ranger," and "Smoke Signals." Some stereotypes that were portrayed in these clips were that Native Americans are the "bad guys", stern, without personalities, and awkward communicators. In "Smoke Signals", which was written by Native Americans, Victor tells Thomas that they have to act mean to gain respect from whites. This same idea of changing how you act to be accepted by others is, unfortunately, prevalent in today's world. Many people who don't know much about current Native Americans would believe the stereotypes and maybe judge them based on the stereotypes. These exact judgements and the changing of oneself in order to be accpeted happen everywhere today, including our high school. In order to prevent this from happening,  Dr. Michael Fowlin came to speak to us, and, hopefully, improve the community of our school, which I believe he succeeded in doing.

The Effect of Literary Devices, Tone, and Author's Purpose

My first post

This is my first post. I can officially blog!