Introduction
Hello! My name is Jessica Whall and I'm a senior at Mansfield High School. Ever since I was little history has always been my favorite subject in school. I don't just love learning about history, but I see such value in history being taught. I think it's very important for everyone to be well informed on the history of their country because if we do not learn from the mistakes of the past then we are bound to repeat them. However, it's not only important to learn from the bad events of the past, but it's also important to learn from the good events of the past. The good events and people from history can inspire us and teach us what should be done in present events. I believe history is always applicable to modern day events. Since I love history so much it was obvious to me that I would take AP U.S History when I was a junior. In my AP U.S History class at the end of the year I participated in a class project called the "U.S History Hall of Fame". It is a project that Mr.Deasy and Mr.Hocking, the two AP U.S History teachers at Mansfield High School, have been doing for 11 years. Each year students propose figures from American history whom they believe made accomplishments that provide enduring value to the United States. We then have class discussions on each person to debate whether or not we believe their accomplishments provided enduring value and if they deserve to be voted into the official Mansfield High School U.S History Hall of Fame. After the class discussions the figure from history requires a 2/3 majority vote from all the AP U.S History students in order to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Currently there are 16 members in the Hall of Fame. I absolutely loved this project, and thought that it was a great way to exercise our critical thinking skills and to pull out what the important pieces from our history are. The Hall of Fame only existed as a list of names on a piece of paper and I immediately thought that there should be a physical version of the Hall of Fame in the school. Right from that moment I had a million ideas running through my head of how it could look and where it could go. Since then I have spent the past 9 months dedicated to creating a physical U.S History Hall of Fame in a hallway at Mansfield High School for my Applied Learning Project.
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