Humanities Portfolio 2012
Main
Understanding: Hard work and struggle can lead to creativity
Throughout the year I have learned about many
different and controversial topics. Some of which I believe aren't part of the
normal curriculum. Many things that we did included our own original play that
was part of a controversial topic and many other things that are interesting,
In the beginning of the year I walked into Mr. Block's History and English
class thinking it would be a regular boring class and we would do what I did in
a regular high school class. Instead of that I had a different experience. It
was regular assignments and research but it was a hands-on experience to
different things, like being a part of the Art in the Open festival.
Some of the topics that struck me as interesting
were the lesson that we learned about the different rights to education, and
the boy that refused to say the pledge of allegiance. We asked different
essential questions about each of the topics that we were discussing in class.
When we started the process out making our own play, I struggled because I had never done a thing, in actuality I
never wrote much until this year. The first thing we did before we wrote plays
were that we were to read plays written by the classes from before. After we
had read plays and talked about different controversial topic that our play had
to include. Throughout the process of writing it, we had much help by doing
several activities that would immerse us into the characters that could be in
our play. I had some trouble thinking about what topic I wanted to pick during
the period that we were choosing. During that time, Kim Jong il died so I
decided to do something with the country of North Korea. I strived to create a
play following a couple with mixed feelings about the Leader of North Korea
dying. I tried creating a story that could’ve been possibly be happening at
that very moment.
Second
Understanding: Change can only
occur when there is support
Throughout
the year we’ve had many different assignments and most of those assignments
required us to as another student to peer-edit each other’s work. Most of what
I am proud of writing wouldn’t be what it is. This year we wrote a language autobiography on how language
affects us. Seeing that I am Vietnamese, I know two languages. The difference
from knowing an Asian language and English in my eyes is a big leap from
knowing Spanish and English, or English alone. It’s a big leap because of the
structure of the Asian language and the difference it makes. In my language
autobiography I talk about how when I was younger I felt like an adult. I felt
like any adult because of the responsibility that I had as the best English
speaking person in the house. Another thing that we did that I help finishing
up was the Poetry Unit. Inside this
Unit we wrote different poems, with each poem having a different requirement,
and constantly had our peers editing posting feedback about the specific poems
we wanted. We asked our peers to support us we wrote poetry and made a specific
page where we stored our different poems that we wrote at that time.
Third
Understanding: Listening can help immensely
Although
I have listened for most of the school year, there are some bits and pieces
here and there where I started to space out momentarily. One moment was when
Mr. Block was talking about the Final portfolio, which is what you’re reading,
I spaced out because I was reading different vignettes from the book “Finding
Freedom” Another instance where I wasn’t in the zone was when we were introduced
our podcast interview which was part
of our Crossing Boundaries unit. This project was a group one where we all
interviewed people outside of our school.
This
year has been very interesting, it has been weird but in a good way. I feel satisfied
with what I produced this year
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