Humanities Portfolio 2012

One thing that I can say that I truly understand is you have to go through a struggle in order to succeed. In March, we were assigned to read a book by a Haitian author named Edwidge Danticat. The book was called Create Dangerously. This book was a collection of essays about her life and Haitian issues. There was one essay in particular that really grasped my opinion. This essay was called “I Speak Out.” It was about another Haitian lady named Alérte Bélance that was mutilated by the Macout (the Haitian army), but surprisingly survived. People found her story so interesting that they flew her to the United States so she was able to share her story to other people. In my forum post responding to this I wrote “While reading “Speak Out” I was appalled by the actual reality of the things that were taking place in Haiti.” You can view my forum at this link.

In Mr. Block’s class we also did a very interesting project with garage band. We had to do a podcast interviewing someone about the boundaries they had crossed in their life. I interviewed my uncle who is a recovering addict. He has had a rough past with crack cocaine. He was on crack cocaine for about 22 years of his whole life and miraculously is clean today and has been clean for more that four years. During the podcast I expressed that this addiction has had negatively and positively affected his life. In the podcast I said, “Using crack cocaine was definitely his valley. Laughter family, and crossing the boundary of not using drugs was his peak.” You can view my podcast at this link.

Throughout the school year, I have learned that art can be interpreted in many ways; you just have to be creative enough to understand it. As the end of the school year was approaching, Mr. Block introduced us to a new unit in English class. He introduced us to the poetry unit. As soon as I heard poetry I started to have a sissy fit because I always thought that my mind was not physically able to think like a poet. My exact words in one of my English journal entries were, “I am not no Maya Angelou.”  I was definitely not looking forward to the couple of weeks we were going to be in this unit. However, when I started to write my first poem “My Baby Love” I was surprised that I could be as creative as I appeared to be. When I wrote my introduction to my wiki space account, I wrote something that reflected my whole experience in the beginning. I said, “I stepped into this whole poetry unit blinded by the complexity I thought poetry had.” You can view my poetry page at this link.

 I was assigned a book to read in about February called Passing by Nella Larsen. This book was about an African American woman named Clare Kendry who is passing for a white woman back in the 1960s. She is living a dangerous life because her husband who she has many ties to doesn’t know she is African American. By the end of the book, Clare ends up falling out of a window and there was a mystery to how she fell out. Mr. Block assigned us to create an artistic project about the book. My friend and I decided to work together on this project and decided to do an iMovie. In my forum post about the project described my entire process while doing the project. I said in my forum post, “We did two skits on our interpretation of how it would look on the news when Clare died.” This is the link to see my video

 This year has definitely been a great one. I don’t regret anything I have done this school year because all of the mistakes I have made I have learned from them. I am so very grateful to have had a teacher like Mr. Block for History and English class. This school year would not have been the same without him. I hope the rest of my years in high school will be as self learning as this year was.