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Founders Day The Track Reflection

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On September 15th, one of my first few days at Townsend Harris, I came to English 1 during Band 7 and when I sat down to look at the board, my first reaction was to be confused. “Founders’ Day: The Track Project” wasn’t a phrase I’d heard of from any friends or upperclassmen. After going through a lesson about the Flushing Remonstrance and it’s relations to the rivalry between Townsend Harris and Peter Stuyvesant, I was reluctant to hear about the project. I’d guessed that it would be a bland and was pleasantly surprised to hear that we would have options. Of these four options, I figured I wouldn’t have the resources or the time to complete the film track (which would likely have to be done outside of school with a camera) and figured journalism …show more content…

These group members were Stephanie Seetoo, JasAndra Acros and Bethany Leung. We figured that there would be the most information if we chose to write about diplomat Townsend Harris (as well as Townsend Harris High School) and unanimously decided that this topic would be the best direction for our track to go into. I privately thought that this “creative writing” piece was going to be very uncreative and so I proposed that we could write from the points of view of different people that were affected by Townsend Harris’s actions. They all thankfully agreed that it would be a more interesting approach. Since a lot of the information for our characters was unknown, I was able to make a lot of creative while still realistic backgrounds to my writing piece. From then on, I had a very positive and optimistic view on the assignment and was eager to work on it and complete it with my group members. The only concern I had at that point was worrying about if my group members would do their fair share of the work. It turns out that an advantage to going to a school like Townsend Harris High School is that pretty much everyone is a good and reliable student in a group project. Together, my group and I created deadlines for our parts to be completed and managed to meet these deadlines easily. The creative aspect really helped me to feel motivated to do …show more content…

I found that when there was a set plan for every day, I had motivation to finish what I was doing because I had a point in mind where I would be able to stop and reward myself by knowing that I was on task and on schedule. There were other groups that were finishing their work on Friday and continuing to work on it even on Saturday but we were able to finish a day early due to our detailed plans and deadlines that we set for ourselves. I found that students at Townsend Harris work hard and get schoolwork done. At my old school, group projects were always a real pain because I would always end up doing all of the work. Here, well at least in my group, everyone did their fair share. In the process of this, I also learned a lot about Townsend Harris as a person as well as how Townsend Harris High School was created. Townsend Harris funded the founding of City College and allowed it to become possible. After City College was closed down by LaGuardia, Townsend Harris High School was founded by alumni of the

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