Portfolio

“I feel uncomfortable. Everyone is staring at me. Do I have something on my face? Where are my best friends? I can’t do this without them.” High school is hard, this is a known fact. Teenagers are awkward, confused, scared, and not comfortable in their own skin. This years sophomore, English and History class with Mr. Block helped me and I am sure more students in my class break out of the comfort zone they created, to make amazing projects and hand in fantastic class work.

In English class we had Journals. Journals were a way to write about school and such. We also used our Journals for more personal things. One of my friends, Samantha Zeisloft, went up to read a personal piece aloud. A few sentences through she began to cry. It was powerful she was so close to me and yet I had not known something so personal about her and the fact that she was able to go up and read it to our class showed how comfortable she had become with us all. Mine was not as deep as hers was but here it is; Journal.

In history class we did a project on comparing religions. While this project didn’t get us closer as a class it helped us explore different religions and learn more. I did mine on Scientology and Greek Mythology. As far as I know no one in my class believes in either of those religions but doing a project on them still helped me learn more about those religions. So once again the projects we did this year helped us

We had a poetry unit in class. While most projects are very strict, and have to be a certain way according to the rubric this project was not. With poetry everything is artistic and full of feeling. You have to dig deep to find the soul of your poetry. The whole class had to write five poems each was given to us by our teacher but everyone took their poem a different way. One poem about your childhood could be games you played as a kid or things you believed in. With the poetry unit not only did we get to show off our skills but we also got to learn more about the other kids in class. One of my favorite poets was Justin Pullins his stuff was amazing and I had never even known.

At the end of the year we worked on the Schuykill River with the Leah Stein Dance Company. We worked in groups with people we did not normally work with. Working with new people in our class helped us become closer as a stream. Dancing on the river in public where anyone could see us helped us break out of our shell. My group had to work together to create a dance from al our different personalities and styles. It is hard, and the fact that we all felt like fools didn’t help at first but as time went on we became more relaxed in our dance and more confidant with our production. We suffered through the heat to perform and it was awesome to see performances from other students in our class.

This year was hard and this year was long but because we were able to become closer as a class it made the year just that much easier to handle.