Humanities Portfolio 2011

By: Mathew Walker

Throughout this school year my thoughts have been changed many times. One thing I remember very vividly is the classes Sweatshop trial. The sweatshop trial was a trial that the class did to figure out who was the most responsible for sweatshops. Every student was put into a group. My group was the U.S consumers. The other groups were sweatshop workers, multi-national co-operations, the system, and the ruling elite. Now of course people were trying to make their group sound the least guilty. When the trial was over we had to do a response to the trial in which we voted on who was the most guilty at the time since I was being a little bias I gave my group very little points. Now after looking back on everything I see that I was wrong and that in that situation you can put blame on any one person. It is like a rotation and everybody fuels everybody. What I started to understand from this is that it is not good to start coming to a conclusion while you are still focused on one group.

Another piece of work that helped me realize that with time everybody can get better at their creativity is my Poetry unit. During the poetry unit we had to write several different types of poems that we were going through in class. The reason why I say it helped me the way it did is because there is a noticeable difference between this and what I did in the beginning of the year for my English B piece. My English B piece was set at the beginning of the year and we had to write a poem based off of Langston Hughes’ English B poem. 

One piece of work that I am most proud of is my English photo essay. The reason why I am most proud of this piece is because it showed that one could produce very good work even if they are talking about themselves. This also helped me learn a lot of things about my Irish side. The assignment was to take a heritage that you were apart of and research that. After you research you have to come up with several pictures and analyses for why you chose each picture. I was able to find out a lot about the Irish heritage through this like the fact that Irish dancers keep their arms by their sides because when the English invaded Ireland the Irish were not allowed to have any fun so the Irish kept their hands at their sides when they danced so the English could not see them. Unfortunately I do not have the photos but I do have my analyses.

            My last piece of work that I would like to share with you is my colonialism museum project. The reason why I would like to share this with you is because I am very proud with my work in this project. In this project we had to make museum based off of colonization in a country of our choosing. My country was Kenya and my exhibit presented only artifacts that made complete sense like money. You can find my explanation for all my artifacts here. This project helped me learn a lot about Kenya and colonization like the fact that sometimes it can be good and sometimes it can be bad.

This is a portion of what I have learned throughout this year. It has been fun for me to share this with you. It has also been fun to take a trip down memory lane. I hoped you enjoyed the journey through my thoughts.