Humanities Final Portfolio 2013_Rabbi Awsan

Posted by Rabbi Awsan in English 2 - Block on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at 11:35 am

I went through a lot of struggles and some of the work were challenging for me throughout the year. Although that has happened, I still managed to work very hard in class and I tried my best I could possibly do to complete my work on time. I can confidently say I have learned a lot and experienced through many obstacles this year, but 10th grade was a great year for me.

I have learned and experienced a lot in both English and History classes. We have learned a lot inside and outside of school, but the two major things I think I really enjoyed most from each of these two classes are the researched on prisoners from history class and the Hidden City Project from english class. The prisoners researched has taught me that the government spend more money on prisons than they put money for education expenses. One of the things I learned and see as an inspiration is from the Art in the Open dance because it has taught me more about acting, what goes through an actor mind, and how it is in their way of seeing and using the space in different perspective than a normal person. When someone examine something closely new information and perspectives emerge.

The things I notice while I was researching about prisoners is that the government spent more than $33000 for one prisoners and only $11000 for one student. That is a huge differences and that is one of the main reasons why there are more prisoners than students in this country. The government spent the same amount of money in a prisoner's in 4 years and 12 years for students. The U.S. taxpayers spend 32 billion every year on Prisons. The cost for each prisoner is $22,000. The United States spent 45 percent more on prisons than universities and there is no way to proceed into the future. It also says that the government focused more on prison uniforms than than they do on caps and gowns for graduation ceremonies. We need more education and less war because if you are educated there is less chance for you to commit a crime. I think that’s how we can decrease the crime rate of this nation.

For the Hidden City Project, the first day my english class went is to the Armory place, which is a few blocks away from our school. It is a huge empty place where the army used to have their camp. The first thing Leah Stein dance group told us to do once we get there was to play and test out objects and to discover ourselves in a place where we are comfortable. They also told us to play in our space and put us in a group of 4-5 and told us to make a play within 30 minutes and most of the group did really well on the first day. From that week we had the same group to work with and we transition to a short five-minutes play in one and a half week. My group and I went through a lot of difficulties because we had a lot of ideas and we were confused on which story we should use for our final product. Then we came up with an idea and decided to put all of our story together and the people from the Leah Stein group helped us a lot with our five-minutes play. I don't think our act would have been this much better without their help. From now every time I am going pass by the playground where I performed, I am going to visualized that place more than just a playground itself.