The Final Moments of Assassination Classroom: Book 20

The Final Moments of Assassination Classroom: Book 20 by Ana Artz

*Spoiler Warning For Book 20 and Major Parts of the Series*

    Assassination Classroom by Yusei Matsui follows the journey of this yellow octopus-like creature, Koro Sensei, and his students. However, this isn't a regular classroom, it's an assassination classroom where ethe students have to team up and kill their teacher. Why did a yellow octopus become a teacher and why does he have to be killed by his own students? Well, if he isn't killed by the last day of the school year there is a large chance that he will explode and take all of earth with him. The government are all working to kill him but its near impossible as he moves at Mach 20. The only agreement that they have come by is that he will teach, and his students will try and kill him. Throughout the series there have been a number of new challenges, school trips, new assassins being sent in, and many more foes but Koro Sensei always finds a way to make it a teaching opportunity. 

    His teaching approach is one of the many ways you can see how he cares about his students. The class that he teaches are known as the "losers" of the school. This is the group that are left behind, but he makes it his mission to help them achieve greatness and climb to the top of the extremely competitive academic ladder. He understands that each of his students is unique and learns in a different way, so he uses his speed to write individual lessons plans and guidebooks for each student. Koro sensei also makes other versions of himself with his speed which can work as "Speed tutors". He begins to do this in the second book and at first there are maybe two versions, but as the series progresses you can slowly see how much he refines his work. In the end, there are 10-12 versions that can easily communicate and work with the students. So many hours, dedicated to making his class better. 

    Koro Sensei's smaller moments are often lesser known, but still show his kindness and dedication. For example, when he first sees that his students came to save him from a dangerous situation, he prioritizes their safety completely disregarding their own. In the early phase of book 20 a student dies because of an attack the military launched that missed him. He reveals that he has been training in the act of reviving students because he knew that this would happen. For the rest of the students Koro Sensei turns that situation into a lesson so they could learn from this seemingly tragic experience. 

    When Nagisa (A student of Koro Sensei's) is about to make the killing blow Koro Sensei stops him. He can see the anger and sadness on Nagisa's face, he says "You can't kill someone with those feelings. Calm down. Put a smile on your face." because he knows that if Nagisa kills him in this way Nagisa and the rest of the classes final memory with Koro won't be happy. It'll be something that forever haunts them. Koro Sensei's wish, dying and not, was always to make the lives of his students better. 

Koro Sensei -----

Why Aren’t More Girls Choosing to Pursue Careers in Math and Science? Brianna Gibson

 

Why Aren’t More Girls Choosing to Pursue Careers in Math and Science?

Lessons in Chemistry: Bonnie Garmus

   Since the beginning of time, women and girls have been discouraged from all things relating to work and brainpower. Women have steered away from mathematics along with sciences for as long as I can remember. Our society is heavily built on the ways of the past, and those ways were labeling women to stay at home, work, cook, and clean. This was all women knew for hundreds of years. Women continue to be underrepresented or invisible in the world of engineering, math, and science. 

   The hundreds of years without women in the scientific workforce created the thought that "Women aren't smart enough for scientific work, or any work at all". To put down a particular group of people for such a long time will eventually create the mindset that you can't do something, or shouldn't do something. Women have been shunned from the science industry for so long, that they began to believe that they couldn't do anything related to it, or didn't want to at all. The generational repetition of the belittlement of women has caused women today to feel a lack of interest in sciences. Though, I've also noticed that many people want their daughters to grow up around stem, to create a child that breaks boundaries.

   Many parents of children do believe that their daughters can take on the stem world, though they expect it from them too much. Some parents want their daughters to do science work because they think it will make them break stigmas and show a "can do attitude". They want their daughters to prove that they are smart and can do thinks males can do. Until the child is pushed to the point where they want nothing to do with it at all. Being shoved into a field of work that does not interest you will most likely cause you to steer away from it as a whole.

   In conclusion, it's not that women and young girls can't do stem related work, it's that society has made people think this. Instead of causing women to believe that they are dumb or not worthy of harder work, it is better to teach, and encourage. Girls growing up without seeing people like them all around the world is what will lower their excitement or will to do things science related. Women aren't dumb, they've just been told they are, and grown into those behaviors. Representation does matter.

   

Analysis of Crying in H Mart: How Zauner Walks Readers Through Her Story

Photo credit: Omniana

    Crying in H Mart, published in 2021, is a memoir about the author, Michelle Zauner's, own experiences of being biracial with a Korean mother and father who is American with Jewish heritage. The memoir starts with Zauner grieving the absence of her mother in an H Mart, an Asian supermarket chain. She recalls her memories of grocery shopping with her mother and regrets her past selfish interactions as an immature daughter who thought her mother would stay with her forever. She even tries to blame clueless strangers in the market for her mother's passing away, questioning why her mother had to die when they got to live. Zauner then goes through her memories with her mother in chronological order, starting with when she was an infant to after her mother's death. 

    There is something in the way Zauner illustrates her memories and thoughts throughout the memoir that makes readers feel the heartbreak, joy, frustration, and so many other emotions firsthand. And this ability for readers to develop emotional connection to the author sprouts from her outstanding method of describing the significant individuals of her story. Each important figure is so well rounded and described, that the reader feels as if they have lived as Zauner and known these individuals themselves all along. The author's intricate descriptions of physical appearance are so well thought out, that even through short phrasal comments, readers are able to understand and feel connected to the author at the same time. In describing her mother having started to show external symptoms of her illness, she says, "Her hair was patchy, like an unloved doll" (93). She describes her mother's loss of hair in just 5 words, but the way she does it so strongly conveys the sadness of Zauner's watching her mother fall apart.

    Zauner's inclusion of carefully chosen memories in her memoir also play a major part in developing the reader's understanding of what each of the individuals mean to her. After she reveals her knowledge of her father's cheating on her mother to readers, she follows up by semi-attempting to justify him by describing his traumatic childhood and unstable adolescence: growing up with an abusive older brother and relying on drugs for most of his teenage years (87). But when she lies beside her unconscious, dying mother with her father on the other side, she reveals her "ugliest heart," thinking to herself, "It was supposed to be him... He was the former addict... Not my mother, who could do splits and still got carded at the liquor store." She then expresses a sort of frustration about the "unfair" situation, "My mother would have known what to do, and when it was all over, we'd reemerge entwined with each other, closer than ever. But my father was unabashedly panicked, openly scared in a way I wished he would keep from me" (151). She reveals her hidden feelings towards her father to allow readers to understand what she truly thought of him.

    The tinted glasses she hands to readers to view her story are, of course, biased and tend to limit perception. However, these glasses are really Zauner's eyes; they act as a cable connecting readers to Zauner. The deliberate techniques the author uses to write her memoir allow for readers to truly feel her because her writing includes bias and delivers information solely from Zauner's point of view and opinions. The author's careful choice of stories and words allow for the successful rounding out of featured figures, which furthermore allows for readers to truly connect to her and follow her throughout the memoir.