English Journal #44

How would you define freedom?

  • Doing/ being what you want.
  • to make any choice.
  • Ability to do, have, be with out consequences.
  • A right that everyone should have.
  • Pursuing goals.
  • expressing yourself with out being judged.
  • Form of rebellion.
  • A type in Liberation.

English Journal # 49

1) Why do people create art?
 People create art to express themselves, wen ever someone doesn't want to express themselves to anyone verbally. they put it in to art. Advertisement, express motion, getting things off their chest.
2) When is art powerful?

  To release, let go. Say things that you can't say with words. Speaks to you in a way that words can't. Descriptive, when expressing something powerful. When you have a strong enough meaning behind it.  When it inspires you.

English Journal # 40

"Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of" Edwidge Danticat
 
I think this quote is saying that your misery will always  leave a mark as a thumbprint/mak for others to see. I also think its saying when people have misery or drama, it stays with them and sometimes they it in and don't tell anyone and sometimes that thumbprint it for others to see.

Humanities Portfolio 2012


This final portfolio is about my general understandings from this school year about History assignments and mainly English.
In the beginning of the school year, I wasn't aware of the different writing techniques and the different poetry techniques. In English, my writing techniques got better and I learned different general understandings about different topics. During English I had a lot of experiences with interesting and helpful people (Leah Stein Dance Company, Philadelphia Young Playwrights etc.)   For example the poetry wiki, we had to write different styles of poetry, which made me think out side of the box. I also never knew that their was so many different poetry styles to do, for example The Ode to Teachers, that I wrote, I got to express myself about the type of teachers that I like and dislike. As for Persepolis and the book Night, I began to understand the general understandings about how teenage kids coped with living while the Iranian war/ Concentration camps and war, happening in their own backyard. This English year made me more open to different writing tecniques. The beginning of the year, I was expecting English class to be a regular English class, but as the year progressed, it became a unique English class, with hands on assignments.
 
 
Hope is what makes you want to survive through the hard times…
 
Hope is what keep people going through hard times because it is stronger then fear. People rely on hope to get them through their darkest moments. For example, in the book Things Fall Apart.   I wrote a chapter 26. The previous chapter was when the main character Okonkwo hung himself, mainly because his life was turning upside down and he couldn't handle it anymore. One of the lines of chapter 26 says” I’ve been through a lot, these past eight years. When I returned back from exile, I was determined to be the same, powerful person I was 7 years ago. When I came back I was striving to be powerful, but when I was sent to jail, and beat. I knew that my time was up and if I kept on striving for something that would take so long to get, that throughout those years the Commissioners would become stronger and take over."  The reason why I wrote that for chapter 26, because that's what Okonkwo would've said, Okonkwo always had hope to be the person he was before, while in exile. When Okonkwo left the exile, The Commissioners took over and everyone was following them. The rules changed and Okonkwo tried to go against them but it made everything even worse. Okonkwo was the kind of person who had hope and a plan, but if his plan didn't start to work, he would eventually give up and that's what he did.
 In the book Persepolis, Marjane, was growing up during the Iran war, she had to live in another country because of all the harm and damage the Iranian war was doing.  During the book, Marjane would always end up giving hope, until one day she got her act together and she had hope that she could get through hard times. Although she went through depression, and the Iranian was still going on, she never gave up hope and that one-day she would be happy with out a husband. In the book Night, the war was going on and all Jews had to be sent to Concentration Camps, Elie, who is the main character went through a lot during the past years he was in the concentration camp with his dad. He was separated form his mother and sister. Him and his dad always had hope, that hope didn't get them killed for years. Elie still kept hope even when his father was slowly dying. "Elie never stopped fighting for him and his father. Also during the book Elie was powerless, for example when the Germans were beating him, he couldn't do anything but take the beating, and keep on being fearless."  When you don't have hope in yourself, you let yourself go and things fall apart. Hope is what makes you want strive for what you want.
 
 
Art is the doorway to express yourself. Art- the expression of creative skill and imagination.
 
Art is something you can do with out speaking, for example the interpretive dances called Art In the Open, when we had to interact with each other with out any music and just using the area around us, to make noises etc.  Art in the Open, made a doorway to another way to express you, and just go with the flow, with out thinking, which is what Leah Stein and her dance company taught us, to not think when doing the interpretive dancing, just do. "Not all art has to have a story, which is what I learned through-out this experience. For example the interpretive dancing, we weren't supposed to make a story but to just use our surroundings and interact with each other. What makes art powerful is that you don't think about what you're doing you just do it."  When being apart of Art in The Open, we were split up and groups, and had to perform our interpretive dancing at a location that we got to pick. It was a great experience and taught me a lot about using your surroundings to make art.
When writing the play, I got to express myself, because I wanted to make my Play just a little bit romantic and I got to make the characters any way I wanted them to be. When writing most plays it's like a dream that you put on to paper, or a situation that you make in to a story.  When reading the book Passing, we had to make artwork about insight in to some of the issues related to the book. In the book passing the main characters are Irene and Clare. Clare is passing, because even though she is black, she can pass for white, and back in that time, people judged you based off of your skin color. Irene on the other hand wasn't exactly passing.
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Screen Shot 2012-06-05 at 8.24.44 PM

Blog Three- Red English

This blog three is a post for change i am trying to bring awareness to a topic that affects about 12% of the female population in the united states of america,

To bring awareness to my breast cancer I made a PSA informing people where they can go to get a monogram and that you're never to young to get a mammogram. this is positive because less women will get diagnosed when its at a serous stage and less people will have to worry about such a bad thing like breast cancer.

If you would like to see some information and statistics on breast cancer you can look at my first and second blog.

I think that it's a great idea for women to get mammograms at a younger age and more often because then there won't be as many serious cases and less people will die from it.

so far I have tried to show people the importance of getting a mammogram and how devastating breast cancer is, in some cases the breast has to be removed because the cancer has spread so far

I would like to acknowledge ms dunn for helping me with my blog and brainstorm what to do for my creative piece.

Here is my Bibliography

Humanities Portfolio 2012

I could say my 10th grade year experience in World History and English class has definitely been a rollercoaster. The things I have learned in this classroom have been really interesting and different. Being that Science Leadership Academy a project based school, the way we learn is very unique. Instead of my teacher giving us a worksheet for the class, we have discussions and do hand on activities. The work that I have completed in my World History and English class I am very proud of. 

 

One thing that I can say that I truly understand is you have to go through a struggle in order to succeed. In March, we were assigned to read a book by a Haitian author named Edwidge Danticat. The book was called Create Dangerously. This book was a collection of essays about her life and Haitian issues. There was one essay in particular that really grasped my opinion. This essay was called “I Speak Out.” It was about another Haitian lady named Alérte Bélance that was mutilated by the Macout (the Haitian army), but surprisingly survived. People found her story so interesting that they flew her to the United States so she was able to share her story to other people. In my forum post responding to this I wrote “While reading “Speak Out” I was appalled by the actual reality of the things that were taking place in Haiti.” You can view my forum at this link.

In Mr. Block’s class we also did a very interesting project with garage band. We had to do a podcast interviewing someone about the boundaries they had crossed in their life. I interviewed my uncle who is a recovering addict. He has had a rough past with crack cocaine. He was on crack cocaine for about 22 years of his whole life and miraculously is clean today and has been clean for more that four years. During the podcast I expressed that this addiction has had negatively and positively affected his life. In the podcast I said, “Using crack cocaine was definitely his valley. Laughter family, and crossing the boundary of not using drugs was his peak.” You can view my podcast at this link.

 

Throughout the school year, I have learned that art can be interpreted in many ways; you just have to be creative enough to understand it. As the end of the school year was approaching, Mr. Block introduced us to a new unit in English class. He introduced us to the poetry unit. As soon as I heard poetry I started to have a sissy fit because I always thought that my mind was not physically able to think like a poet. My exact words in one of my English journal entries were, “I am not no Maya Angelou.”  I was definitely not looking forward to the couple of weeks we were going to be in this unit. However, when I started to write my first poem “My Baby Love” I was surprised that I could be as creative as I appeared to be. When I wrote my introduction to my wiki space account, I wrote something that reflected my whole experience in the beginning. I said, “I stepped into this whole poetry unit blinded by the complexity I thought poetry had.” You can view my poetry page at this link.

 I was assigned a book to read in about February called Passing by Nella Larsen. This book was about an African American woman named Clare Kendry who is passing for a white woman back in the 1960s. She is living a dangerous life because her husband who she has many ties to doesn’t know she is African American. By the end of the book, Clare ends up falling out of a window and there was a mystery to how she fell out. Mr. Block assigned us to create an artistic project about the book. My friend and I decided to work together on this project and decided to do an iMovie. In my forum post about the project described my entire process while doing the project. I said in my forum post, We did two skits on our interpretation of how it would look on the news when Clare died.” This is the link to see my video

 This year has definitely been a great one. I don’t regret anything I have done this school year because all of the mistakes I have made I have learned from them. I am so very grateful to have had a teacher like Mr. Block for History and English class. This school year would not have been the same without him. I hope the rest of my years in high school will be as self learning as this year was.

  

Wordle
Wordle

10% Time !!!

For this project I decided to look at the brain in relation to the eye. I have learned a lot about it, the only hard thing was, was deciding how to present the information. There is so much information that I needed a nice way to present that would be interesting. So I decided to make a box, a box that is "like" the brain. I drew a picture of the of top of the box because I wanted people to see what the brain looks like because it is nice to see what is going on. I also decided to make a smaller little black box inside of the larger box because it is said that said "10%" with paper inside it because that is were all the information is "stored" haha. That was just my way of trying to be a bit creative with the presentation. I learned a lot about the brain and what it does, it was nice to understand how the brain works. Most things that goes on in the brain is what people see them to be and how they learn and remember things. Most people remember things better when they relate things to food, smell and taste. I personally relate things to smell because it is always easy for me to remember things by smell because it never changes. I also learned that if someone is trying to problem solve a situation and what ever they did worked the first time, they will do the same thing do solve the problem. 
That was just a quick speedy version of what I have learned because trying to explain everything I have learned about the the mind would have been too long to endure.


Citations
"The Human Brain - Exercise." The Human Brain - Exercise. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2012. <http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html>.
BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 07 June 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/brain/brain.shtml>.
"What Makes the Human Mind?" Harvard Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2012. <http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/11/what-makes-the-human-min-html>.
"The Artificial Prison of the Human Mind." • Damn Interesting. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2012. <http://www.damninteresting.com/the-artificial-prison-of-the-human-mind/>.
"How We See: The First Steps of Human Vision." How We See: The First Steps of Human Vision. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2012. <http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/vision_background.php>.
"The Human Brain." The Human Brain. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2012. <http://www.umich.edu/~cogneuro/jpg/Brodmann.html>.
"FAQ - How Does The Human Eye Work?" FAQ - How Does The Human Eye Work? N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2012. <http://www.pasadenaeye.com/faq/faq15/faq15_text.html>.
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Screen Shot 2012-06-07 at 3.42.18 PM

Marina's Summer Reading Recommendation

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Screen Shot 2012-06-08 at 6.05.23 AM


This phenomenal book is written by the incredible Earl Sewell. It's the story of a young teenaged girl whose life is seriously about to have major changes. This book is filled with drama, passion, and a great message. If I were you I would definitely grab this book and read this book over the summer!

Here is a brief summary:

Maya's summer is shaping up to be unforgettable—in both good and bad ways. First she's sent to stay with her grandmother for a month. Living in the city, Maya is too far from her friend Keysha and her boyfriend, Misalo—and too near her rebellious cousin Viviana. When Maya finally comes home, her parents drop a bombshell—Viviana is moving in with them.Her cousin has barely unpacked before she's creating chaos. Truth is, Maya kind of likes the way life is a whole lot less predictable with Viviana around. But her motives are up for debate—especially when it comes to Misalo. And as Maya's little sister, Anna, grows more fascinated with her cool older cousin, Maya begins to see that following where Viviana leads has its price. And it could cost Maya her reputation, her relationship…and maybe even her future….

Close up 2

Since we couldn't go outside to draw the landscape we drew what we seen. I seen a book bang on the table so I drew it. This book bag was simple nothing to much. I first sketched the bag and made sure it looked like the bag. So then I grabbed some paint, since the bag was blue, black, and yellow writing. I started to paint my outline and things. I did gentle strokes so the painting can look neat and inside of the sketch lines. When I was done I was satisfied.
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IMAG0065

Close Up

Well, I love nature, and how trees look. So I decided to draw a leaf, but be creative. So I drew a leaf that was dead on one side and a live on the other side. I used pastels to draw this picture. I made sure I was extra creative and original. The greens show how live and vibrant the plant is and the brown show death or close to death. This was one of the best picture/ projects i did because it was so original and fun.
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IMAG0067

Abstract emotion

Getting this assignment abstract emotion was challenging, I didn't know how to come at this project. But I started to think of my favorite colors, which is blue. Blue usually symbolize sadness and some type of depressing emotion. So I thought of what you do when you sad or depressed and that's cry. So a eye is where tears come from and Is tarted to paint. I used white, blue, and black. To lighten up the blue or darken the blue. I had fun creating this project, and how I did it.
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IMAG0058

Conjoined Twins :D

I just wanted to do this video because this has always interested me for a long time. I always wanted to know how these kinds of twins where conjoined together. I also thought they where just like that just because . When I seen pictures of this I really didn't believe that this was even real. I noticed that it was real when I first saw it on the news. After, hearing about it and getting an opportunity to do a project on it i took the offer.


I also want to become a neonatal nurse and this good help to get me used to seeing things like this. You don't never know what you will see and have to work on. An neonatal nurse is to help take care of the new born infants and those who are in critical condition. I have a hard time looking at stories like this and this could be something or something similar that I have to work with. 

Alysha

Casi una mujer is a story of a young girl forced to leave her home in pr to live in ny. As she try to "fit in" her culture say she was betraying her. The stories you hear on tv comes to life. Must read for yourself!

Bmx

​I talked about the techniques  that allow riders to perform bunny hops and manuals.  The techniques that went into lifting and maintain maximum height, and how momentum, and energy change affects height as well.  Being able to perform bunny hops is important to more than just bmx, because using it mountain biking can serve a more practical purpose.  I showed how a change in one of the several factors that go into performing one of the hops successfully.
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Screen Shot 2012-06-07 at 5.44.13 AM

Reading

Enjoy this book, you really love it. If you live in West and North Philly you could really relate to the book. It had drama, it was realistic, and told a love story

By:Teri Woods
Title: True To The Game 
Summary:


Gena is a nineteen year old girl living in the projects of Philly. Streetwise and beautiful, Gena has learned at a young age to use her natural born talents to acquire the things she needs in life. Gena has learned that money and power are hot commodities in the rough and tumble streets of Philly. Although Gena doesn't work she is able to wear the finest clothes, spend money like its water and party all the time 
through the men that she dates. 

When Gena meets Quadir, a charismatic drug lord, she is immediately attracted to his status and wealth. Gena loves the fact that Quadir owns the streets of Philly. As Gena and Quadir begin to fall in love, Quadir shares his deepest desires with Gena. Someday, he tells her, he wants to be a dentist and live a legit life. He explains that he got into the drug business in order to support his desitute family. Quadir proposes to Gena (who happily accepts) and tells her that due to all the money he has stashed he is already a millionaire many times over. He has decided to go legit and leave the drug business. As Gena and Quadir prepare to make a life together tragedy strikes, forcing Gena to reevaluate her life and her future. 
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Screen shot 2012-06-07 at 1.52.47 PM

Humanities Portfolio 2012 (Ananda Knight)

This year when I walked into my English class I didn’t know what to expect. I thought that I would be reading lots of books, taking quizzes and writing essays. As the year went by my expectation were proven wrong who would of thought that part of my English/history grade would have anything to do with dancing, or visiting a prison. Throughout the year we have been through quite a journey. Not only did my English teacher Mr. Block teach us grammar and had us read books, but he got us physically and emotionally involved with our lessons. We had many projects to do in which we were allowed to put a lot of creativity into. For example our final "Passing" Project This project was based on the book “Passing” we were given many choices on how we could complete this project. My group and I decided to draw a picture that told a story. There were no real restrictions on what we could or could not do for our project and that really pushed creativity. “Creativity helps you to accomplish something from your heart and that you have strong feelings about.” (Ananda Knight) This project helped me to look into a story pass the words but look for deeper meanings that not everyone will catch. Another project that I really liked was when we got into our poetry unit we wrote many different poems. One of my favorite poems was my “I was raised by poem.” I felt like I could use that poetry topic to express myself in many different ways. “I was taught by
other peoples mistakes, I was taught by my own mistakes.” That is on of the quotes in my I was raised by poem. My poem reflected of lessons, and things I was brought up on. When Mr. Block told us to write poems I didn’t really think I could do it. I guess I just had to believe in myself. Mr. Block helped me to realize that I was a good writer and that if I put my mind and heart into it I could complete a polished poetry Wiki.

About a week ago we were all surprised as a class when our teacher introduced us to Leah Stein from the Leah Stein Dance Company. We were shown some of her work and were told that we were going to be going out into the streets and perform dance pieces in front of a bunch of people. When I first heard about this I thought What does this have to do with English or History. I am already a dancer so I thought this would be really easy. As the days went by I realized that this was not the kind of dance that I was used to. What I didn’t know is that I was actually learning a lesson through movement I even became closer to my peers you can see more about my experience through my Art in the open reflection. As I write this portfolio I think of many different assignments that I could include. We did so much work that has helped us all to grow. The final two projects I wanted to talk about were for one my play. The play put my through my biggest struggle, but “Challenges push you to try harder.” This was very hard for me because never before had I tried to write a play. I started over three times until I finally came up with a great idea. Our play had to have an connection to the world and it was a really cool experience. Finally my language autobiography this was my first time writing something like this. It was not that hard of an assignment because it was basically about yourself. When writing we always went through the same process of having friends and our teachers read over our work and give us lots of feedback. Mr. Block encouraged us to do so as well. When I finally finished my Language autobiography It was really amazing when I read it out loud I was really proud of my work and that is what matters the most.

Overall this year has affected me in many way. From confusion, understanding, and shed tears I feel like I have learned a lot from my time being in class with Mr. Block and my classmates. Everyday I walked into class Mr. Block always had a new way to challenge our minds and help us accomplish something new. I will never forget my experience and how it has helped me to become a great writer and thinker.

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Screen Shot 2012-06-04 at 10.20.22 AM