Cuban Missile Crisis
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In my Humanities class, we did a group activity on the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were handed a group of documents, photographs, newspapers, and letters, and were instructed to identify what the threat was to the US through the documents. We quickly came to the conclusion that these documents were about the Cuban Missile Crisis and how the missiles the USSR had placed in Cuba were going to affect us. Afterwards, we were given 5 different solutions to list pros, or benefits, and cons, or risks, for each of them. Each group was told to come to an agreement on one of the solutions, then write a “letter” to the president proposing our solution. In this letter, we had to support our solution with reasons that outweigh the negatives, and explain how our solution is going to be better than the other ones.
Many of our 21st Century Skills were used while doing this assignment. One that stands out the most to me is Interpersonal Skills. Interpersonal Skills is showing that you are being cooperative in a group setting. I was lucky enough to be able to work with my friends which made this project a lot easier. In the beginning, we communicated a lot to thoroughly understand the documents we were handed. Through some struggle, we eventually came to understand the situation, and started to list the pros and cons. Each of us gave our opinions and we all had equal time to speak. We worked as a group to write the letter, having everyone’s opinion be considered when we were writing. I can’t necessarily say that I’m proud of this assignment, but I won’t say that I’m disappointed with it either. I think of it as an assignment that I did just for the grade, but I enjoyed doing it. My group did struggle a little bit. We had some trouble coming up with what the threat on the US was, and again when we had to list. But when it came time to write the essay, I think it was smooth sailing. We took quite long to write it, but we all agreed on the general idea of what to write. The difficult part was wording the sentences in a proper manner. |