English/History Portfolio Helen Kilmartin

Helen Kilmartin

One of the first classes I walked into, on September 6, 2011 were Mr. Block’s History and English classes. When everybody walked in the room and got settled down, Mr. Block threw an egg on the floor. We were all astounded on how our new teacher introduced us. He welcomed us with splattered eggshells and egg all over. Over the crazy days that we’ve spent learning in class, I’ve realized two things. One of the things I’ve realized is that working hard pays off. Over the months I have done many projects, and I must say that I’m proud of all of them. I love all of my projects, but the ones I have worked harder on are the ones I like the most. I like my lit lens project that Danielle, Brent, and I worked on together. We made a puppet show about the book “Their eyes are watching God”. That was a great project, and we all worked so hard on it together.

The other thing I realized when in Mr. Block’s class was that going through struggles is the only way you can become successful. I have been through so many struggles over the past few years. My first big struggle was probably coming to high school. At first I was really scared to be in a room with a bunch of strangers, but then I realized that it isn’t so bad to meet new people. I realized that either way I will have to met new people and be socially interactive. So I went for it and now, in my second year of high school, I have so many friends. I went through a week of being scared for nothing! Another example for how I went through struggles to be successful was when we had to write in our journals. I never really liked writing and when I walked into class everyday, for English and history, we had to write a journal entry.

Over the course of a year I have questioned so many things because of these classes. In one of my journals I wrote “Religion = myth”. Before I never would have questioned religion. I wasn’t saying that all religion was a myth, but I had opened my eyes to multiple possibilities. I also questioned other people’s personal beliefs. For instance, another statement I wrote in my journal is "Why do we ask people if they are gay, but we don’t ask people if they are straight?” I always believed in one side of the story, but then I realized that isn’t true. I have always believed that working hard pays off, but something this class has made me have different opinion on were struggles. We go through history classes year through year and learn about struggles, but this year we went in depth on both sides. So another thing I have learned is that going through struggles is the only way you can become successful. I have learned a lot from these classes, but those are two things that I will always remember.

Links to work I have done:

I am really interested in prisoners and phsycological so here is my prison research response. 
https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1OdeHC99oSsdi1Z9s9uMjH4Q_ZZAFRrG9HtT6aYVu3O8/edit

This is the link to the last project we had. I did my project on crime and jail systems. 
https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1sAB7ancDz-FwSZe-rCPmh9tUg7ZFU2knh6XOBz4444o/edit

This is an image of the lit lens project that I mentioned earlier. 
file://localhost/Users/helenkilmartin/Desktop/untitled%20folder/IMAG0072.jpg

This is a link to (one of my favorite projects) my poetry portfolio.
http://ironpoetry2012.wikispaces.com/Helen+Kilmartin

This is a link to my descriptive essay, it is the first project I did for Mr. Block.
https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1uLuF_dcwvCcP73Tw7heMjIVRIEs-fK2F1T68qimFnew/edit?hl=en_US

Below you will see my wordle that was made from my first draft of this!