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.