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Humanities Portfolio 2011
The French Revolution was sparked by the failing economy, the unequal distribution of power and wealth, and a large growth in the poverty-stricken population. “The Holocaust was the destruction of around 6 million jews under the Nazi Regime. The Nazi Germans held a belief that they were racially superior while the Jews where the inferior.”1 The Troubles in Northern Ireland was an extended time of violence and hatred between the nationalists and the unionists in Northern Ireland. And more currently, the Egyptian Revolution was a series of uprises by the people of Egypt against the President Mubarak.
“The structure of revolutions repeats itself over time throughout history and in different places across the world.”2 All of these events started over a conflict between two groups of people; an oppressor and the oppressed. What made the oppressed successful in these events were their planing, support, continuous efforts to change the circumstances. The French Third Estate planned and joined together to write their own declaration of rights. Resistance groups and opposers of the Nazi Regime would hide Jews from being prosecuted. Unionists and loyalists would hold marches to get their message across. But when their message did not get across they persisted in getting their way by rioting, revolting, protesting, and joining together to get the support they needed. “We gave lives up, and we expect to receive our freedom.” 3 Time after time the oppressed would fight and fight until they prevailed.
While the French Revolution lasted from 1789 to 1799, and many people were killed, the revolting public succeeded in revolutionizing their government and social structure. Different resistance groups and countries all fought to end the cruel oppression and destruction that was happening in Europe under the Nazi Regime. The Egyptian Revolution has been successful due to the large support by the people of Egypt and the globe. The protests were consistent and through the media globally shared, which put pressure on the crumbling government to step down. While Northern Ireland is still connected to the United Kingdom, both the unionists and nationalists have made progress on equal treatment and a parliament that is bearable for both sides.
Protests and resistances are effective and can be successful, if they have a clear goal and support. The French government and social status was changed completely by the commoners of France. The Holocaust was ended by the many resistance groups and countries that opposed the Nazi Regime. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were eased by the protests that forced the government to change. The people of Egypt were able to broadcast their struggles and protests across the world and end the presidential reign of Mubarak. What ever the conflicts are, whether political or spiritual, the oppressed will fight.Humanties Portfolio 2011
History can teach you the many wonders of the past. English can teach you how to write and create things beyond your imagination. In Mr. Block’s classes this year I have learned many new things. I learned about a lot of different things from the worlds past and about how things work and how cultures affect the world in different ways. The world is full of thousands of different types of cultures and religion accompanies them. The art of writing and poetry is also very fluent in every culture along with music and artwork. All of these things connect and all of them connect the world and make the world what it is today.
I learned throughout the class that power could make a person insane. Power is something that can be highly dangerous. It can make people loose their humanity. People can loose themselves to power and do horrible things. We read the book night and that was a prime example of such things. I wrote a Thesis Paper about this topic. The holocaust was a great example of power overtaking people. The sweatshop trial also shows this. People that ran sweatshops abused their power to make a better profit over their mistreated workers. Another thing I did about power was my Op Ed piece, which was about dead peasant insurance. This was something that had a huge impact on many people, but people still don’t know about it. Industries get drunk with power just like anyone else.
Other stuff that I learned was about how poetry can be a form or art and writing. Poetry is more then just writing on a page and can be interpreted in many different ways by many different people. People can experience poetry in many different ways. We made a Poetry Portfolio in English class that I had very much enjoyed. Although poetry has guidelines the possibilities of how poetry will come out are limitless.
In the final unit in history we learned about colonialism. I learned that something as commonly used as colonialism can have a hugely bad effect on the world and the people right around it. Wars were started and there were huge revolutions because of it. It made for great profit and helped economies, but usually at the price of blood. I did my Museum Exhibit on the Vietnam War, which started because of the colonization of Vietnam by France.
Many people and many ideas surround us. All of these things are unique. We are all our own person, but we share many things with each other. We all have many similarities and the world needs to process how similar people are to each other whether we like it or not we all share common ground. We are all human. We are all people in society and we all owe each other similar things that need to be in our every day life. Everyone in their community, from a small town to a metropolis must learn to respect that community and live among each other as similar and unique human beings. In Mr. Block’s class, both English and history, I have learned this is a very in depth truth.
Humanties Portfolio 2011
History can teach you the many wonders of the past. English can teach you how to write and create things beyond your imagination. In Mr. Block’s classes this year I have learned many new things. I learned about a lot of different things from the worlds past and about how things work and how cultures affect the world in different ways. The world is full of thousands of different types of cultures and religion accompanies them. The art of writing and poetry is also very fluent in every culture along with music and artwork. All of these things connect and all of them connect the world and make the world what it is today.
I learned throughout the class that power could make a person insane. Power is something that can be highly dangerous. It can make people loose their humanity. People can loose themselves to power and do horrible things. We read the book night and that was a prime example of such things. I wrote a Thesis Paper about this topic. The holocaust was a great example of power overtaking people. The sweatshop trial also shows this. People that ran sweatshops abused their power to make a better profit over their mistreated workers. Another thing I did about power was my Op Ed piece, which was about dead peasant insurance. This was something that had a huge impact on many people, but people still don’t know about it. Industries get drunk with power just like anyone else.
Other stuff that I learned was about how poetry can be a form or art and writing. Poetry is more then just writing on a page and can be interpreted in many different ways by many different people. People can experience poetry in many different ways. We made a Poetry Portfolio in English class that I had very much enjoyed. Although poetry has guidelines the possibilities of how poetry will come out are limitless.
In the final unit in history we learned about colonialism. I learned that something as commonly used as colonialism can have a hugely bad effect on the world and the people right around it. Wars were started and there were huge revolutions because of it. It made for great profit and helped economies, but usually at the price of blood. I did my Museum Exhibit on the Vietnam War, which started because of the colonization of Vietnam by France.
Many people and many ideas surround us. All of these things are unique. We are all our own person, but we share many things with each other. We all have many similarities and the world needs to process how similar people are to each other whether we like it or not we all share common ground. We are all human. We are all people in society and we all owe each other similar things that need to be in our every day life. Everyone in their community, from a small town to a metropolis must learn to respect that community and live among each other as similar and unique human beings. In Mr. Block’s class, both English and history, I have learned this is a very in depth truth.
Humanities Portfolio, 2011
In my opinion, I hope that every single student does not hold the same beliefs, opinions, and learning techniques and skills that they had in September. Hopefully, we all have grown in our educational journey and process.
In English, I feel that we have been encouraged to use our opinions more to decipher the text we read and to find "deeper meanings" within. One of the key examples of this is the very first Q1 Benchmark about The Lord of the Flies. In this paper, I expressed an idea through my opinion, and then I took the readers through my journey to reach my conclusion. This is a prime example of allowing one to understand multiple perspectives of the same topic in order to receive a well-rounded education.
Throughout the English course, I was also encouraged to immerse myself into the world of various people, from prisoners to world leaders. This was the goal of the Jarvis Jay Masters' readings. In my response to the readings, the observations of the powerful effects of desperation is evident.
In World History, the focus has changed slightly. Instead of exclusive opinion-forming, we are also required to learn non-biased facts about the past and present them to people. A prime example of the was the Museum Exhibition Benchmark we created to education patrons about colonialism. In the presentation, we had to state the facts to our classmates and allow them to form their own opinions.
Also, History encouraged us to explore different fields, such as traditional art during the Renaissance. In the Exploration of a Renaissance Artist assignment, I had to highlight the work of a great artist of the day and try to find the meaning of their work.
However, one of my favorite assignments in History is by far the trials. In the Aztec trial, we had to learn facts about the topic, just had he had in the Museum Presentations, but then, we had to use those facts to alter the opinion of everyone else. This taught us a new skill of using facts to sway the opinions of a majority.
English and World History has merged and separated in order to teach us things about the the world, ourselves, and each other. The lessons we have learned here are invaluable.
Humanities Portfolio 2011. Rburenstein
Over this year in English and History I learned a lot about the nature of people. I learned that it is easy for people to stray off of human nature for various reasons. While writing my Op-ed I talked about how violent video games are blamed for many school shootings, when it really has to do with home problems or mental disabilities. This showed me how people are aware of things being able to change people, but might not have the best judgment to know what is changing them. For my first quarter English benchmark I talked about how the kids become more savage when exposed to less technology. Throughout Lord of the Flies the kids start to revert back to having animal like behavior while on the Island. This showed me how people are willing to go back to savage behavior very quickly, instead of work together and act civilized, or can make sure that they do not become savages. The way to not become savages would be to make the island like their life and not change anything, but this is very hard to do; that is why it is so easy for people to revert back to being savages.
During the fourth quarter we learned about freedom and prisons. We had several assignments talking about torture. During these lessons we discussed how almost anyone could become a torturer. We watched and reflected on a video called The Milgram Obedience Experiments where “scientists” would bring in someone from the street, and ask them to question another person in a different room. Every time the person in the other room got a question wrong the person brought in from the street would press a button that they were told gave an electric charge to the other person. The person who was answering questions was not actually getting shocked, but was just acting and pretending to be in pain. The questioner was told to turn up the intensity of the shock until it got to a certain point, and keep it at that level. There were several circumstances, and the results varied from where the answerer was, where the person telling the questioner to do their job was, and if there was any other people in the room. In the end most people would go somewhat far, even though they could hear or see the other person that they thought they were torturing.
One of the units in History dealt with sweatshops, and child labor. We talked about why it happens, what the benefits are, what the downsides are, and how it can affect consumers or other people. We had a group activity where everyone was split up into several teams for a Transnational Capital Auction. These teams were the Ruling Elite for countries. The object of the game was to try to please the Multinational Companies, so they would give work to our citizens, but to make sure that our citizens were not going to rebel against the government. We had to decide our standpoint on key issues like ability to form unions, child labor, laws on keeping a clean environment, and several others. There were five rounds to change the bids, and depending on what you did, the Multinational Companies would want to go to your country. The team that ended up winning didn’t put everything good for the Multinational Companies, because that would mean their citizens would be very unhappy with the government. The teams that did good put things somewhat in the middle of good and bad in the choices, even though they all seemed to be very bad from our standpoint in the United States.
While learning about freedom had a section on prisons, and penitentiaries. I got to read about prisons, and prisoners that I had no idea about before. Much of this was very interesting, and cool. We got to read facts about prisons and prisoners and write our responses. The thing that I thought was the most interesting because I had never thought about it before was about the family of the prisoners. The person who goes to jail might be the only family member with a job, and has to support their whole family, but when they are sent to prison the government does nothing to help that family. This could be a very big problem to the family, and would make them change their whole lifestyle. The government might say that it would be the fault of the family member for doing a crime that put them in jail, but I don't think that the whole family should be punished for the actions of this one person.The main things that I learned about this year almost all centered around human behavior. Human behavior contributed to all of these topics very much, like how a torturer can be made, when people are civilized or savages, and how people view certain things. Human behavior is something very unique, that would not be what you expect until seeing real life examples of what can be some of strange parts of human behavior.
Humanities portfolio 2011
Art, creativity, imagination, are the cornerstones of life. With out imagination where would we be? Everything we have is the spawn of imagination and creativity. Things that we use everyday are works of art. Think about it! Our clothes, for example, why else would there be fashion industries if this were not a form of art?
When most people think of an English course they suspect boring books, long essays, and tedious hours of reading. This was not true for this year’s English class, we were encouraged to dig deeply into our minds and tap into a corner of our psyche that is not used in many classes.
With in our English class we were inspired to make art constantly. When we had to make scenes out of our past, like artist, we used our five senses to make people imagine what we saw, with out being there. This is recurring in book all the time. Or when we had our poetry section, poetry is one of the most famous forms of written art. All of the students realized their individuality when they started to type of put pens to paper. There were so many different forms and styles of poetry we were free to pick. This gave life to our creativity.
Now many people would debate that when they think of English classes, there is an amount of creativity needed to absorb the messages of certain writers, for instance the hidden meaning writing of Shakespeare. But would there necessarily be a reason to have art in a history class? No- that is what most would say. Yet there was in our class. We had a chance to stretch our writing skill by creating monologues and scenes to be made into plays. Since when is play-writing criteria of a history class? The main reason for that was to get into the main idea of a historical event of our choosing.
Mr. Block brought us out of comfort zones by involving us in the ‘Art In The Open’ festival. Most of the students in his class were reluctant to ‘make a fool out of there selves’, I being one of them, but in the end many were left with pride from breaking down a barrier and viewing the world through a different light. I found myself asking ‘what did dancing have to do with English or History?’ But in the end I realized that Mr. Block wanted us to make history instead of read about it. How many teenage kids got to be in a festival and get a grade for it?
I believe, though many of my classmates where reluctant to use such types of creativity, that if more schools were to use this form of teaching, more students would enjoy learning. This was an experience that was unexpected, but greatly benefited from. Art is necessary, without art where would the world go? There would be no change, nor a future. I believe that what we learned in these two classes will help us make decisions for the future. I am grateful that Mr. Block made our grades based on the art we had to make, or else many people wouldn’t had learn that they were artist from the start. Art is in everyone, you just need to dig a little deeper.
To give you an understanding, or example of the projects that have been given to us that incorporate art, I have posted a link with four to five projects. All four of my links are on one site that has them listed, wiki)
Rburenstein Milgram experiment
During the video the man protests shocking the other person, or asking a new question many times, and seems adamant on his decision. Almost every time the “scientists” are able to get him to go back and “shock” the other person by just talking to him and telling him what to do. I was surprised that the man would go back so many times, because he seemed ready to stop asking questions very early on, but continued because he was told to. The thing that surprised me the most was that after the person on the other side of the wall stopped yelling or making noise, the man didn’t show as much resistance until he finally decided to stop.
Musical Intrument Blog #1
Final Portfolio(:
In middle school we are taught strictly into the essence of American History and grammar for English. No class discussions about opinions and no ideas of expression. What the teacher taught you was the way life was. &As we grew up, we took upon the role models of our parents. In my case, parents don’t show creativity or expression of opinion, so I was raised to reply on nothing being out of the ordinary. As our knowledge of World History and the fights for revolutionary change have developed, so have our minds to the ability that we can fight for something we strongly believe in. Then our brains intertwine around mazes of creativity through English that taught us that you could go beyond the normal term of an “essay” and possibly create works of art. Thus leading us to express what we have learned in new and creative formations, like the poetry unit we used in order to learned forms of writing.
If you enter the classroom of English and History you are entering a room full of doors. Doors that are all locked and wish for you too find the keys in which to open what they have held for your imagination. An imagination is a form of creativity that helps you show the person you really are and the thoughts that beg to be spoken. A door that many kids have opened was the door of play writing. As students we took topics that touched our hearts and expressed through Monologues what we feel these problems would be told in a story. It was an amazing way to let out how we truly feel in such a story after story break through.
It’s always easy to understand yourself and the reasons for things you do or make, but it’s not always easy for other people to understand the beauty of the masterpiece inside your mind. Whenever we’ve debated on Trials for who is the killer of human civilization or when we try to inform people on the customs and diversity of Religion, people might not always understand how strongly or right our points of views and sides are. In order to help them understand the best, we must give as much as detail as we can possibly give. The more details the more of a vision we can give to the people. An example of this detail would be in the descriptive essays we have created in class.
English and History both come together as partners on the road of education for us. For the past year we have learned a lot about our selves and the world. We have been taught to express and to teach. We can only hope that next year holds the same opportunity.
Sophia Henninger Q4 Work
Photo Edit 1
Before:
After:
Photo Edit 2
Before:
After:
Photo Edit 3
Before:
After:
All photos were edited on picnik.com
Sculpture/Craft:
Handmade Sketchbook
I got the idea from my brother who had recently made his own book. He took me through the steps. We used cardboard, blank paper, string, fancy ribbon, scissors, a needle, and green and black paint.
Bike - Negative Space
Bike - Contour Line
Bike - Normal
Artist Copy:
Eclipse By Alma Thomas
My Version (done with watercolors)
Humanities Portfolio 2011
When I read Lord of the Flies, I had to create a thesis paper surrounding an argument of my choice. The possibilities were endless for such a book, from barbarism to changing morals for survival, many issues arouse. What stroke me about this book was the different Political powers arising. From a Democratic party arising, to a "Let him have the conch! Let him have it!" -Piggy. (39) plead for a voice, I went over the transition in power, to a quote from Hitler relating to how Jack took on his enemy, Jack. “Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.” -Hitler. When I evaluated the quote, I pointed out how Jack and Hitler had the same sort of tactics. Surprise and sabotage. Breaking the enemy down. "Jack uses many of the same tactics. His enemy inside would be Ralph. He became a part of Jack’s government, but then from within started to destroy, terrorize and create his own Government. He learned the weaknesses of others and their needs to create his own system of government that would be strong and deadly enough to take out Ralph’s. He started a war with Ralph from slowly starting it within and creating tactics against him." From writing this piece, I feel that my understanding of politics grew quite a bit. I was able to create juxtapose between a fictional story and real world politics, tying them both together, and pointing out their differences.
Earlier back in March, we were asked to write an Op-Ed on a subject of our choosing. Me, being interested at the time in the recent issue of nuclear energy in Japan, decided to do something around it. I started this assignment with nothing, but very little knowledge about energy. After researching various previous and ongoing issues with nuclear energy, I was felt confident enough to write my paper. I found not only new sources explaining to me the ongoing issues, but also Wikileaks articles stating that they were unable to- "Wikileaks, a website that's controversial for it's amount of leaked Govt. documents has information stating that these Nuclear power plants were incapable of taking hits from an Earthquake." After I talked about some pervious issues, I went into current issues such as France, "In France, they have fifty-eight operating nuclear power plants, and they get OVER SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of their countries power from Nuclear power." After doing this paper, I then realized anyone can write a piece about an issue they feel strongly about.
Earlier in the year, I was asked to write a Monologue. I have never written a monologue before. The only thing I ever wrote even close to that was a play for Philadelphia Young Play Writes. I wrote my monologue partly based off of the idea of Danny Boyle's SlumDog Millionaire. My Monologue was on a poor boy in India living with Malaria, who lost his brother to the disease, due to corruption on a greedy Doctor's part. I decided I would keep my feedback at the bottom, just for you to see in different ways how my paper has changed, thanks to it. Towards the end of this project, it became a bit rushed, so I ended it on a happier note, "Maaran, I have good news! The Supervisor of the Hospital came by, and you’re going to get the treatment! you’ll be alright! The book? Yes, you can get it! Actually, I’ll have 500 rupees in a week, so you can get it! I have 100, see. [Waves money in the air.] Act Eight" than how the rest of the monologue was. If I were to redo this monologue, I'd change how I did the ending, and many smaller parts of the overall piece. From this, I learned anyone can be a play writer. All it takes is initiative, and in my case, some research.
In Mr. Block's class, we had many trials on a variety of issues. One issue that we did a trial on was Sweatshops. In this trial, our class was divided into five different groups, Multinationals, Poor Country Ruling Elite, U.S. Consumers, System of Profit, and Poor Country Workers. My group was the Multinationals, and we created questions for each other group, challenging their motives and asking why they would do certain things. In this, I was a Prosecutor, along with Catherine, and we asked the question this question to the US consumers, "Why do you still choose to buy from brands that use inhumane labor?" The group replied to us with these brands being their only affordable sources. From this, we learned the stories that each of these groups had to tell of why they were innocent. In the end, we had a distribution of 100 points per person to 5 separate groups to see who was the guiltiest. In the end, I believe the Consumers were the guiltiest. I learned from these trials, that we can bring real world issues into the classroom in a fun, but educational manner.
For my Quarter two English Benchmark, I had to create a piece of language. I had to create a piece showing different languages being used. My piece wasn't in the form of different languages as how we commonly expect it to be, such as how English and Spanish are different; My piece was on how sub-languages that come from Languages. Such as how some slang is deprived from English. I did this by talking about my advisory, and how "Conversation was still conducted on both sides of me by my peers. It wasn’t anything interesting, really. On one side of the room I heard more thought out
sentences like, “Haha, you’re absolutely right!” While on the other side I heard sentences like, “Haha, you so right!” This generally is how my advisory is, with some using formal English, and more broken down English. My main idea of this piece was that everyone says things differently, from sound, accent, and dialect, we all speak differently. From this I learned that I was capable of writing on language, which I was unsure of before I wrote this. I also learned that we all have different languages, and it goes well beyond English.
Over the course of this year, I learned a lot. I feel every assignment has shaped and molded by understanding to be more open, understanding, and stronger than it was before I entered the classroom in September. Many assignments made me understanding of things that I had once previously been intolerant of. I have this all to thank to Mr. Block for creating such wonderful assignments, and showing us how to apply ourselves in many ways.
Humanities Portfolio
Sophomore year was a hard year for me emotionally, the one class that
always had me thinking was English, and I felt the class related to me a lot in
a personal way. For example the journal entries, my favorite had to have been
the rant. I remember that day clearly I was in a really bad mood, I had this
rush of anger going through me, and a rant was exactly what I needed. A lot of
the other journals had me thinking too, like the “Remember when” one during the
Night course, I was also very sad that day and writing that poem came easily to
me and for some reason I felt moved after writing it.
MY favorite unit had to be the poetry unit. I really like writing poems and, at that stage of my life all of my poems had a certain theme, and that theme happened to be about my bad decisions. “As much as I hate you I can’t forget you” Looking back on my poetry it’s kind of sad to see how unhappy I was, I know I brought it upon myself but I had no idea what to do, and I think in some weird way writing helped me get through it for that moment for that 65 minute English class the poetry took my mind off of the person that was screwing me up physically and emotionally.
Art in the open was amazing. I loved working outside of the classroom, and I couldn’t possibly ask for a better group. During Art in the Open I think I was the happiest I’ve been all year; I started to put my life back in check. With the Leah Stein project I learned to not judge a book by its cover. When I first heard about this I was a little creeped out I thought it was weird. But when we started dancing and actually got to meet Leah I knew that it was going to be an amazing experience. My group Rocky Road came together and as soon as we picked our location we knew exactly what we wanted to do and how we wanted to move, our piece flowed together and in the end we had a great final product.
I think the greatest thing that I learned in this class, was about myself. I didn’t know my limits at the beginning of the school year I thought I was indestructible; I thought I could handle anything that came my way. But after millions of journal entries and Mr. Block saying, “make smart decisions” I think it finally stuck with me, it may have taken 8 monthes but it happened. Mr. Block I’m going to miss you dearly thank you for everything, you may have not realized it but your class helped me so much this year, and I’m truly thankful.
Confessions of a Jailbird
Humanities Portfolio 2-11
Change; it’s not something that happens overnight. "Change is an intellectual thing. Change is the epidemic." It happens through time and experience. One simply does not decide to transform and viola, it happens. You need to have motivation and determination."People have the choice to enlighten themselves but they use the crutches of people in power to guide them."
Before I began sophomore year, I didn’t have much of an interest in history and dates. I enjoyed English class very much, but the same wouldn’t be said for History. You know what they say, you have to put your mind into something if you want to get the feel for it. With the learning experience in Mr. Block’s class, I was able to think as those historical figures we were learning their positions. It’s not like a typical History class where you hear, “These are the good guys, and those are the enemies.” We can make our own opinions based on how we feel and listening to each other’s view on someone. We don’t listen to one person explain and persuade us one way. The interaction in our mock trials (Cortes Trial for example) and us being assigned parts as a certain social group in an issue whether or not we believe our issue is a great way to not be biased and learn all sides of something. "It's easy for me to listen to both sides of a story and generally, I hate to admit that I'm wrong." The main lesson through the unit was everyone has their own reason behind their actions. Research is the key to history and if you don’t understand a fact, research. If you need want to prove a point, manipulate your research to follow through with your point. It’ll clarify everything up and after a while, you realize history isn’t all about dates and deceased presidents. It’s all about why and how we all got to where we are and how we’ve all become us.
English, as I stated above was a very interesting class for me because I love reading and writing. Ever since my first assignment in English class, I've grown as a writer. However, English class the way we did it this year was new to me. We’ve even incorporated History into English, which I usually never do. It’s typically lessons in English and facts in History. Meshing the two seems different. That’s exactly what this year was; different. We read many stories and we always found a way to relate to the story no matter how chaotic the character's situation was (Short Story Letter to a friend). As we read stories about people having spiritual beliefs and we had our religion unit in History. We contrasted the two and realized, spirituality and religion are two different things. You can be spiritual, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be religious. You can have hope in something and not praise a ‘God.’
So basically, this year with English and History being taught by the same teacher was a great experience. To have someone being an expert in both subjects make them both simpler in order to complete work. If something you’re reading in English has to do with historical facts and you don’t know the background of the story is, you’re pretty much stuck and will have to resort to Googling for answers the way we created a large issue and mutilated the information to go along with our point in our Op-Ed assignment. Also, if you’re reading Olde English in historical documents and can’t find the word online, how will you figure out the rest of the document? It’s just so much more convenient to have a teacher knowledgable of both subjects if both are going to incorporate a little of each other in each subject.
Whitney W.: What if?
My favorite part about this project was the making of the fake primary source documents. The most challenging part was actually finding a way to display my new spin on history. My most intersing fact that I investigated was the Revolutionary War, there was no way in the world that America should have one that, but we did and thank goodness for that. If Thomas Jefferson would have left the clause which denounced slavery out of the Declaration of Independence, then the Conferderates would not have signed, and we would have certaintly lost the war. One change changes history. Whether it was changing a clause or taking it out all together. History would have changed. I could have improved my project by finding a better way to set it up and display it sooner. If i could re-do everything. I would have picked a new point of divergence. A more creative point of divergence.
Primary Source Documents:
Cecelia's Spanish Quarter 4BM (:
Telling the past present and future of Cecelia Catalina Baez :)
I love the fact that I placed it in a sense where I speak, show the words, and give detail to all of the moments in my life that meant so much to me. & Are soon to come for the better :)
In the future... I would maybe try to ... Speak in each set rather then just the first and make the sentence break ups a lot easier to understand.
Q4 Artwork
- Take 200 photos and edit them using a computerized program
- Create a sculpture
- Redraw a piece by a famous artwork
- Draw the bike placed in the classroom and redraw it three times.
The project I found to be the most interesting was the editing pictures that we took. i thought this was very difficult because I had to reiterate the skills I learned last year and research on my own in order learn the program. I have a few examples on the same pictures edited in different textures, and contrast
.
We also had to created a sculpture, I made mines out of cotton, ribbon, and old curtains. My sculpture was sew together as child holding a banquet of flowers. This was a great project for me to do because my aunt helped me with the cutting and sewing I learned a lot of techniques and shortcuts in order to still have enough time to do the project and have a finishing product I could be proud of. I think the skills learned with this project will be utilized later on in my life for multiple things.
The most challenging project was drawing the bike still life. I think it was challenging because drawing isn't my strong paint and details was a necessity in order to portray what I was drawing. I lost my pictures but I did my negative drawing in yellow, I used the technique of coloring the entire paper then sketch bike with a pencil then using an eraser to create the lines that weren't negative. I found that to be the most difficult. But Mabintu and I worked on our projects very hard and researched in order to complete the task because we did a lot of it independently.
I also did pointillism for my artwork I recreated, I did not pick a specific artist but I picked a genre which I feel as though shaped the way texture using paint and art was looked at. Using this technique it creates many different sizes, color combinations, and texture on paper making the art pop out more and have more character. It tells a story that only the observer knows once it is looked at. For that I appreciate the art technique. I decided to use the colors that represent the elements of life and put them all together to show that regardless of how opposite they are all four of them is needed to create a balance and understanding of life. This year has been a privilege I was able to express my art and love of poetry and gain an abundance of skills in illustration part of art. I gained the perspective of knowing art just isn't limited to one thing.
Humanities - Final Portfolio
We
were asked to write Descriptive Essay about something that happened in our life.
I chose to write about the summer earlier that year. “Out in the 90-degree
weather and a storm we were up on the roof trying to prevent the resistant
leaks”. As I realize now this
first assignment in English was really the backing of the whole year. I had to
learn to be more descriptive and creative at the same time. It was a bit
challenging at first because I did not write like this before. As time went on
and the projects called for more and more I
started writing better and better.
Oddly
enough the project that I surpassed my standard for writing was the Monologue
Project for History. For this
project we had to pick a human rights struggle. I had to do a lot of research
to understand and convey the topic clearly. I had chosen drug trafficking because of the different
reasons to do it and how some people don’t really have a choice. “I know she
needs the money but its drug money!”(Scene-1).
The daughter had kidney disease and the family needed fast money to pay for her
medical bills. This project forced
me to be very original, descriptive and creative. Though, we had a little help from Kate from Young
Playwrights. She helped most of the class and I our plays. Even still it really pushed my ability and raised the bar for
realistic fiction writing that will come in the future.
The
Sweatshop trial that we as a class did in middle of the year was probably the most
enjoyable activity for history.
The class split up into groups to take positions on the real world
problem sweatshops. Each group was
questioned on the amount of control that they had on the situation and why it
was still going on. “U.S.
Consumers - If you wanted these “sweat
shops” to end, you would have to stop buying into these companies”. As well as,
each group had to present opening and closing statements on their
position. Finally, as a class we
voted to see which group we thought had the most guilt. My group was the Poor
Country Ruling Elite. We had to
research a ton of statistics, information and articles to fathom our position
and perspective on the issue. This
assignment taught me about perspective because we had to really see from a
group of people’s point of view on a hard issue.
Overall this year has been very enjoyable and memorable. I learned many new things and polished others that we rough. I hopefully will remember the experiences or the hard earned skills. English and History class in sophomore year was a wonderful opportunity.
Rugeiatu's Book !
I like my book, it's simple and it just facts about me that has pictures of some things I like and it go alone with my story.
If I could change one thing, I'd probably write a little neat and put my picture in color ink and use my time wisely.
It's A Book !
Print Making
This is one of the pictures from the element I did. I had the element Titanium, which was the element # 22.
3 papers
Can one hold it in the palm of their hand?
Can life be as calm as the sea?
Can life be in the swaying flowers we see?
Life - Beautiful and Bold!
Can life have any stories untold?
Can the young be more wise than the old?
Can life be more valuable than gold?
Life is Careless and Mean!
Can there really be a superior being?
Can beauty under the skin be seen?
Can world peace only be a dream?
Life is Meaningless and Blue!
Is is possible to walk a mile in someone's shoe?
Under the sun can anything be new?
Can any love really be true?
Life is Loving and Free!
Can the joys of life flow through you and me?
My cousins dropped out of skool cuz its hard to study and their attention span was way too short.. Its flabbergasting as i see their attention span expanding…. As they study the every movement of women with the fat a** are walkingggg by ….. Not accomplishing anything and barley passing at life …. they say life is to hard and they pass thats why they take a puff puff and pass …. Inhaling the vapors and swallowing the gas thats kill their a**… This is believed to be true of all black society …. So sometimes i wish a spell would come and render me unconscious and peal back my skin so you can see inside me … Swim around in my thoughts and drown in my dreams… So look and see im different from what people depict of society … Now I say people are the down fall of this society … snorting powders , popping pills, and inhaling vapors that takes away our sanity… Madness made us believe slavery was abolished and is history. Like a man with a stutter history has a way of repeating itself. Every-time our fingers cramp on that trigger or take a puff of that weed we are enslaved but we are beating ourselves.
Rick physic bm
Spanish Q4 Benchmark
La Guerra Civil en España era una lástima terrible. Mucha gente, ambos rebeldes y soldados, mueren o eran heridos. Todo el país sufrían, porque la guerra le afectaba a todos. El sol "ganador" era Francisco Franco, el hombre quien era el dictador de España por veinte y ocho años, creando un estado de miedo y odio en España. Franco uso este para controlar y oprimir a la gente de España. El tema de my proyecto era la opresión. Yo encontré muchos ejemplos de opresión en la obra "La Casa de Bernarda Alba." Entonces, usé dos personajes de este obra, Angustias y Adela. Usé ellas porque son hermanas muy diferentes, pero ambos son oprimidas por su madre, Bernarda Alba. Bernarda le oprimía a sus hijas en una manera similar a lo que Franco usaba a España. También, Bernarda celebra los mismos valores que Franco celebra, como honor, clase, y la inferioridad de las mujeres.
Me gusté este proyecto, porque me gusto escribir la poesía. Fue interesante escribir de la perspectiva de otro personajes inventadas por otro escribidor. También, no escribo mucha poesía en Español. Después de escribiendo mis cinco poesías, pregunté a Yadi Angeles-Figueroa a chequear mis poesías para errores gramáticas. Ella encontró algunos errores, y me ayudó para corregirlos. Después de este, yo puse los poesías en Pages con algunos dibujos. Seleccioné los dibujos que creé eran relacionados a las poesías, y a Franco y la Guerra Civil de España.
Soy feliz con mi producto terminado. En particular, me gusta la poesía "La Vestida," porque es corta, pero tiene un mensaje grande. También, es la única poesía que rima. Si pudiera, cambiaría el diseño de las páginas. Creo que debería haber usado fuentes más interesantes.
History of Firearms
By Sean Moss and Uyen Nguyen
Espanol BM
2)
El razón porque escogimos estos imágenes es porque en el imagen de guarra solo hay hombres y no mujeres. Hay mujeres que querían pelear por los dos lados pero no podían porque fueron mujeres. El imagen de la cocina es muy estereotípica. Durante la regimen de Franco las mujeres quedaron en la cocina casi por todo el día.
3) Primero hicimos las lineas para la actuación. Segundo ponemos los disfraces y filmamos la película. Tercero editamos y ponemos en forma de flv. El proceso fue difícil y fácil en algunos partes. Un parte difícil para los hombres es ponerse maquillaje porque nunca han puesto y fue raro ponerse. Crear y editar el video fue mas o menos difícil. El parte mas fácil fue la actuación y creando las lineas para la película.
4) Una cosa que me gusta es que el video tiene humor pero la historia también es seria y muestra que mujeres fueron inferiores en es tiempo de la historia de España. Lo que cambiare es añadir una escena con un hombre y mujer mostrando que las mujeres no podían hacer nada afuera de la casa sin que un hombre la compagina. También las mujeres solo cocinaron, crearon las niños, y hicieron cosas por la casa.