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History journal 19 what is your universe of obligation?

My universe of obligation is my family and I

Then my education.

A job. friends then fun time.

Do you remember that first time you did something outside of your comfort zone? That time when you probably thought, “What am I doing here”? Or that time when you thought, “Hey, that wasn’t that bad’? Ever had those feelings, well if you did than you and I already have something in common.

        At first I never knew stepping out of my comfort zone would make me feel like  a new person. It allows me to have more exposure to the world around me and understand everything much better. It also made me feel really accomplished. This year in Mr. Blocks English and History class I have crossed many comfort zones. Those comfort zones have created originality, which has pushed me beyond my personal boundaries. Also by challenging myself, I am bettering myself.

I remember writing a description of an artwork. I was told to look at a piece of artwork and describe every detail of it. I picked a picture of Radha and Krishna; I had no idea where to start, but I had to start somewhere. Now that I look back at my work I realize that I could have given the artwork a totally different meaning and that I should have been more creative. But I didn’t do that I just described it the way I saw it. That was the first step to writing my descriptive essay, in the essay I described things much better. “I looked as the sweats from his hair slowly moved down his forehead, to his cheeks and then one by one dripped down to the carpet floor,” in this slowed down the action and used more detail.

A while after that we learned about how much language can really affect your everyday life. I wrote a language autobiography describing how different languages, I know, play a key role in who I am. Doing this allowed me to create something original with the way I speak. It allowed me to take three different languages I speak and turn them into one amazing piece of writing. “Language has such a big role in my life, how knowing three different languages has it advantages and disadvantages.” By writing about how language impacts my life it pushed my personal boundaries to make me more comfortable.

We read many books in both English and History from that I created a Prezi about how reading has changed my life. At first Prezi was very complicated for me, it was a new website that I was not familiar with. But I challenged myself to step out of my comfort zone and create something original. In the Prezi I wrote “Reading is an advantage for me. Reading takes me to places I have never been before.” By doing new things it made me realize that I am capable of doing more then things I‘m use to doing in my everyday life.

There are also other assignments that made me take the next step. Creating a museum exhibit gave me a huge change to be really creative. And doing everyday journal entries also helped me step out of my comfortable zone. Two majors one that really connect to me are English Journal 8 and History Journal 4. The last assignment that I believe has really given me the opportunity to push my limits is the the Hidden City assignment. I never thought I would be taking a normal alleyway and create it into an artwork.

In looking for ways to change the world, I became incredibly interested in social justice. Being both a woman and a person of color, I was particularly interested in feminism and anti-racism. My views on both of these things have changed dramatically since the beginning of the year, and this is evident in my work. Take the first thing I ever wrote for English as an example. In this piece, I talk about a classmate telling me that I talk “white”. I go on to say

“Apparently intelligence is a white trait. I was offended, as a black person, because that was one of the most racist things that I had ever heard in my life. She wasn’t the only black person to say something like this to me, I’ve heard it countless times from countless people”

Looking back on this piece, I laugh at how naive I was. My classmate was simply pointing out the cultural differences between me and other black people, and I chose to interpret it as her being racist. The change in my views is evident in my Language Autobiography. In this paper, I write about the same incident:

“This isn’t what she (my classmate) meant. I know that now. She was referring to my language. I don’t speak in Ebonics, Black Vernacular, African American English, or anything of the sort. But, probably due to some internalized racism, I associated speaking in Ebonics with being dumb, and (indirectly) I associated being black with being dumb.”

It’s really interesting to look back on these two pieces because they illustrate my transformation.

I’ve also changed my views on feminism and what it means to me to be a feminist. In January, we did our Lit Lens project. In this project, we had to choose a “lens” through which we would view the novel we were reading (Their Eyes Were Watching God), and re-enact a scene. My partner and I chose the feminist lens, and we decided to take a more parodic approach. In my reflection, I talk about what feminism means to me.

“The dictionary defines feminism as “the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” I couldn’t have said this better myself (which is why I used the dictionary)”

This is something I don’t agree with anymore. I believe that feminism is about the women , and only her. If we continue to look at women in relation to men, then we will continue to be oppressed. I wrote about this a lot on my journals, which can be found here and here

Throughout the year I did many projects in both my history and English class that went over very diverse topics. From making plays history to making monologues in english, I can say that this experience was worth the work. It gave me many opportunities that most people in regular high schools might not get because they have a regular curriculum. I learned many interesting things that will most likely give me an upper edge in the future.

I was never really a fan of english nor history. I always thought they both were boring and still today I find myself losing interest from time to time. However there were a few things that caught my attention throughout the year. For example one of topics that we went over that helped me stay focused was language evolves in a person. To me this means that over time your writing develops into a style of your own.

One of the many lessons that I did that is a good example of this general understanding was when we had to make our own poems. The process helped us all develop our own type of poems with their own “flow” or style. My best poem I did during that lesson was a rift poem about music.

We've fallen into a place where there is only music

A place where music arouses all of the 5 senses

You see the rhythm flow in and out of each beat

The notes crawl on your skin for your body is the measure

Each lyric has its own scent that guides you through the song

Each genre has its own taste

The spicy sensation of salsa

or the beefy taste of a bass in funk

and what you hear is a mere product of all the senses combined

Here everyone's heart beats on its own time signature

Here no one is the same only a part of the same thing

its said god made us in his own image

but in this place music is the only image

After I wrote this poem we had to analyze a famous poets poems. My poet was Allen Ginsberg and one of the poems I went over was “An Asphodel”. While I didn’t understand all of the poem I understood the important parts and was able to tell what the poem was about. The poem is in the link here.

There are different ways that language evolves in a person, especially when that person has an accent. I was able to show this when I wrote a language autobiography about the differences between west coast and east coast accents. I could relate to this well because I lived on the west coast for 7 years and developed a slight accent myself. The essay was mostly about how different accents have very different first impressions.

“Even if I had an accent I wouldn’t know what it would be useful for. In the video we watched about American accents the woman had to change her southern accent because where she lived it made her seem uneducated in the business world. However, on the contrary there was a man with a heavy Boston accent that helped him woo the ladies and intimidate other people that seemed to be a threat. This shows that just by talking people have already judged what type of person you are, how smart you are and what your capabilities are.”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oqkoEgeEPBDBJA-_qpjXCeXaSGNjTsoqb6V61NW6ZIg/edit?usp=sharing

However, making your own style of writing isn’t the only way to show that you’re evolving. Another way you can do this is by making a style for another person or an inanimate object. We did this when we made monologues for the Keystone pipeline. The project required us to become a person or thing that was a part of the Keystone pipeline debate. I wrote from the perspective of the tar sands talking to a worker digging the sands.

“What do i give off? Are you seriously asking me that? I mean I knew you humans were dumb, but I didn’t know you were that dumb jeez. It’s like talking to a plank of wood. Why are you working here if you don’t know what I'm going to give off, but if you haven’t heard, I am dirtier than any oil you humans have dug up. I’m guessing tar didn’t stick out to you?”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17eyz141RrG51rqkP2sjZX75V7IdL1ajxezQFSLud7nA/edit?usp=sharing

One year can seem like ten years. One deep discussion in class can seem like an ice breaker for people to speak up. One journal to write a poem can be one journal to write out everything that’s killing you inside. One year of this class changes lives. One year of this class changed my life. There are two things that really stuck with me this year. First is that when challenging yourself you’re bettering yourself. Second is that everyone sees through their own lens.

We all react differently in certain situations. That’s depending on what side we’re standing on and what lens we’re looking through. If you see a man/woman begging for change on the street you quickly slide into a lens. You either give him/her change or shrug him/her off thinking he/she doesn’t need your money. If you are the man/woman begging for change you are wearing a lens. You either say thank you to everyone even if they give you the cold shoulder or you act mean to those who don’t give.

It is easy to judge someone else when you’re viewing a situation from a different lens. “I don’t listen. You don’t listen. We don’t understand each other.” (2nd Language Scene: English) When you hear of a woman letting her husband beat her up everyday you start judging. You think she’s stupid or weak or just downright incompetent of standing on her own two feet. But once you slide into her shoes and you yourself become the female getting bruises day in and day out you’ll think different. Once you see the hidden issues and insecurities the woman has you’ll think different. From a girl who grew up saying that would never happen to me I know; once you’re put in those shoes it makes you want to take back all those things you said before. But all we can do is move on and live life the best we can. “Accept your failures and move on.” (Creating Chapter 26 of TFA)

We need to take a step back. Lay out all the lenses in the world and put one on depending on our situations. If there’s a boy on his way to prison step back. Pick up a lens so you see what he sees and figure out what made a fine boy become a broken man. We have to use these lenses to help one another. “Don’t get involved and mind your own business!” - “But momma Humanity is my business.” (Philip Zimbardo: The Torturer’s Mind) Everyone has a problem and we need to help fix them. You can’t always see someones problems at first and we can’t judge everyone by their covers. People sometimes wear covers to hide the problems they have inside which relates a journal that we wrote in class.

To get through life and make ourselves better we need to challenge ourselves. That’s something I learned this year from my classes. I was constantly having to challenge myself so that I could give my best towards projects and discussions. To be able to express all that I could during our poetry unit I had to push my limits and go personal. I had to challenge myself with trying different types of poetry and then giving each one my all.

As the person I am I am always trying to change and better myself. Like back when I wrote a journal about what I wish I could do. Or back when I did a monologue project about the keystone pipelines. It’s hard sometimes to try new things and to put yourself out there for everyone to see you. It’s something that I’m getting better at doing every day that I’m in this class. I have to stop letting people hold me back and better myself. “Don’t let any man, woman, child, animal, or thing kill you inside.” (Letter Of Advice: English Post)

Part 1

La trama trata sobre la lucha de paga mal a los trabajadores de limpieza en Los Angeles y su lucha por mejores condiciones de trabajo y el derecho a afiliarse a sindicatos. Y por supuesto, cada película tiene su carácter único. Cuando nos encontramos con Sam Shapiro, nos damos cuenta de que él es un activista que goza de sacudir a la América corporativa. Aunque muchos de sus compañeros de trabajo de Maya tienen miedos de perder sus puestos de trabajo y ser deportado, ella está motivada para trabajar por un cambio. Basado en una justicia reales para la campaña de limpieza en Los Angeles en 1990, Bread and Roses muestra la justicia horrible entre quienes trabajan en las oficinas de la ciudad y aquellos que limpiarlos.

Part 2

Bread and Roses era una mujer joven (Maya) viene a los Estados Unidos sin documentos legales. Ella viajó de México e hizo su camino a Los Ángeles para vivir con su hermana Rosa. Maya un trabajo como portero que no conoce sus derechos y están dispuestos a hacer cualquier cosa para el trabajo. Esto nos lleva a conocer el nombre de un personaje Sam Shapiro que lucha por la justicia del conserje. ¿Pero este rally puede marcar la diferencia?

Part 3

Derechos Humanos

1. Derecho a la libertad de expresión

La escena que elegí para este los derechos humanos es el escenario donde los trabajadores de limpieza estaban haciendo una manifestación en las calles. La razón por qué elegí esta escena es porque sentí que fueron violados sus derechos humanos. Este artículo explica cómo usted tiene el derecho a la libertad de expresión, pero en la película no muestra. Ellos fueron violados porque los agentes de policía fueron paliza y personas fueron detenidas. Usted tiene el derecho a hablar y luchar por algo que crees en. No creo que era lo correcto y los policías estaban equivocados en su parte. Y debido a la violencia, las personas son violadas.

2. Derecho a vivir en un mundo justo y libre

Me gusta mucho la escena que elegí para este artículo en particular porque representa mucho. Elegí la escena donde los trabajadores de limpieza dieron George Lopez un libro documentado que explica cómo pueden salir y tener roturas. Y es más inspirador porque George Lopez no creía que estas personas eran lo suficientemente inteligentes como para hacer algo así. Pero resulta aún mejor ver que ni siquiera sabía acerca de este documento. Al principio, carácter de George Lopez violado su libertad y la justicia, pero cuando Maya le dio este documento, hubo un giro en la película. Carácter de George Lopez no permitirles hacer nada. Fue siempre por su comando. Y tenía mucho poder sobre ellos desde sus vidas futuras dependían de él. Estaban demasiado asustados para rebelarse contra él porque tenían miedos de perder su trabajo. Pero cuando ocurrió esta escena, me mostró que ahora tienen el poder.

3. Derecho a la educación

Este artículo sobre los derechos humanos explica cómo todo el mundo es capaz de tener la oportunidad de una educación mejor. En la película, había una escena donde Ruben está sentado en la mesa con Maya y Juan. En la mesa, es copiar todo lo del libro y tratando de enseñar a sí mismo. Mientras que él está haciendo eso, Juan hace una declaración que creo que era ofensivo. Básicamente decía que Rubén está perdiendo su tiempo.Tengo entendido que Ruben no tenía la oportunidad de tener una mejor educación, pero él está trabajando duro para llegar lejos en la vida. También eligió a la escena donde dijo Maya que iba a la Universidad y pensé que era realmente importante. La razón de por qué es porque demuestra a la audiencia que cualquier persona puede hacer cualquier cosa se esfuerzan para hacer.

Explanations:4-6 sentences long and clearly state the human rights articles and explain how that right is either defended or violated.

Part 4

As I sat at the Country Ruling Elite table, defending a cause I would otherwise totally oppose, I created defenses that were valid in my eyes. I heard the arguments of each other group, and I could not believe it. To my amazement, everyone was somewhat innocent, yet hugely responsible. It was the perfect example that we are all products of our environment.

https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/10RaFC1SquQqNKKlDqPg6XjLFbsIxp5WhDTOkGGxjCrY/edit

And this was the point I leaned on - If you are in a position of power and there is no one opposing your wrongdoings, what would be the motivation to change? In History, we had a unit on Revolutions. We focused on the Arab Spring and how people mercilessly fought for their rights. Some were successful, but other countries were not and were defeated. I studied the revolution of Yemen:

“Because of political instability in Yemen since getting rid of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, this country suffers from insecurity of food supplies, impoverishment and the threat of violence from Al-Qaeda and other Islamist militias due to extremism. Many of Yemen’s historical sites have been abandoned and destroyed due to the low maintenance of the country. The country faced a series of attacks from Southern Yemen, which advocates separatism and independence from Northern Yemen.”

https://vimeo.com/59340019

Back to the trial, my team was hit with questions similar to “If you are supposed to lead the country, why are you not providing for your citizens?” Because the world has taught us that money is more important than people. Some leaders are more cold blooded than others. A perfect example is making a comparison of America’s and Haiti’s government, in which we studied.

For 29 years, Haiti was under the dictatorship of  Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, or "Baby Doc". Ten of thousands were killed during this period. The country thought they would see a brighter day once former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected, but he was quickly overthrown by militia. This sort of brutality is not directly seen in the United States, where our society is built off of “democracy”, giving more rights to citizens.

Economic disparities has placed strain on countries with these brutal governments. In the “Global Inequality” unit, we analyzed our personal responsibility for the advancement of multinational corporations and manipulation of third world countries. The introduction to this unit was the reading of the poem “Are My Hands Clean?”

“I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world

35% cotton, 65% polyester,the journey begins in Central America

In the cotton fields of El Salvador

In a province soaked in blood,

Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun

Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.”

In the trial, American consumers pleaded that they will buy what is readily available to them and if it produced by laborers with terrible conditions, that is not their fault. Our environment can make us torturers without even trying. We once did an assignment where we watched the video where a man believed that he was shocking a man with direly high voltages, but because he was pressured by a man and told that he was not responsible, he continued on with the experiment. We continue on doing villainous things when we convince ourselves we are not to blame.

(Picture)

Sometimes we are taught, by the environment around us, that who we are is not good enough. In my Language Autobiography, I wrote on how I was bullied in elementary school because of my dialect. My father was a businessman, who spoke with, what is believe to be, perfect English diction. Being that I was in his presence majority of the time, I picked up on the way of speaking. But, go to an Afrocentric school meant that Ebonics were heavily used. I did not speak like majority of the people I encountered. Thus, I was asked slurs like “Why do you talk so white?” and even questioned on my ethnicity frequently.

https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1_rHZLP1Cdro_YTyYmxhASRxgMKBXmiyo31SSszhUs_Q/edit

In english, we had a unit where we analyzed the dialect of different groups in America. While watching a video interviewing people across America, they thought that people from other areas talked weird compared to the way they speak. Our environment forms normalcy in our mind and anything foreign comes across as bizarre. This could be seen in the book our World History class read, Things Fall Apart. When Europeans entered the Ibo tribe’s habitat and learned that they worshiped many Gods, they found this ridiculous because they were taught that there was only one. They proceeded to mock the culture and attempt to convert its people. This actually changed the society because people began following their ideas. If ideas are planted, they are bound to manifest.

Whenever a person is faced with tribulations, they carry it around with them, learning from it and trying to find a solution. One morning in English, I was presented with the question, “What do you wish for?”

"I wish I could do so many things, I don't even know here to start. I wish I could spend time with my dad. And I mean a good time. No complaining, no worry, just having fun or relaxing. I wish drugs weren't misused. I wish they couldn't kill you. I wish I could help everyone who has any time of problem. I wish I could fly and go anywhere for free, just to see what it's like there." (English Journal #10)

The death of my father to this day takes a huge toll on me. I promised myself that I would never use drugs and alcohol to try to solve my problems. I don’t want to continue the cycle of negativity in my family by carrying around bitterness from what I’ve had to endure. My environment has made me who I am by showing me how to not to deal with my problems and it has made me a stronger person.

Through it all, I’ve learned that who you are is a tug-of-war between taking what are you are taught, assessing it, and deciding what is personally right for you. No matter how much everything around you pushes you to be a certain type of person, if it does not sit right with you, you will not choose to continue on that path. The most accurate depiction of the message I am trying to portray can be interpreted through a quote by Buddha:

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." (History Journal #13)

Your environment makes you the person you are. You either choose to follow the path you are given, or oppose. Either way, it has an impact.

Throughout this school year, Mr. Block had introduced us with various assignments and projects from both English and History. At the beginning of the English course, we began with descriptive writing. It was one of the first assignment that was started right after summer break. From all the assignments and projects that was given, my personal favorite is the poetry writing unit. We wrote poems on a website called WikiSpace that is shared with the entire class so that we can read each others. Here is a link to my WikiSpace poem. My WikiSpace tells various stories from the many different poems. This is one of my personal favorite project of the year because I enjoy writing poems and expressing my ideas. It expresses my emotions and how I feel towards certain things that can be interpret through poems. One of the poems that I wrote is called an ode poem. “Private speakers,/ Small and high quality/ moving me into a different state of mind./ A nice one/ A calm one.” That was a stanza from my ode poem. My ode poem expresses my emotions towards my headphones because I use it everyday.

In History class, we wrote monologues about the XL Keystone pipeline. This is a first major project of the school year. In this project, I worked with another student and as a result of this project, it came out really well. After the monologues were polished, we asked other students to perform at least 5 of the monologues. This following quote of mine is from an introduction of the monologue project “With this intention, I created several monologues expressing how many people feel about the pipeline, and how I feel personally as well.” When we were first taught about the XL Keystone pipeline, I didn’t understand it very well. or how to react towards it. However, when doing the monologue project, it helped me understand the harsh consequences of the XL Keystone pipeline. Working with another student, helped me even further because we worked and brainstormed together to get the highest quality monologue as possible. To do that, we had to make a lot of researches about the pipeline. For me personally, working with a partner or a small group really helps me understand things a lot better in the classroom. For example, the Sweatshop Trial. The trial consists of students having a role of either the prosecutor or a defender from each group of labor in a trial of a classroom. Working collaboratively with my group members, I came up with a very strong question for the defender during the trial. The question was “How do you plan to use the profit made by your workers? In which their salary is much lower than the cost of the products that they make.” This question was towards the defender of the Multinational Corporations.  I came up with this question from the things that was taught in class and from what my group members said during the trial. Here is a link to the Google Doc that was shared among my group members on the Sweatshop trials. I enjoy working in small groups or with a partner because it takes me further in learning. If I were to work by myself such as the WikiSpace poem, I would try to get the highest quality made and pushing myself beyond personal boundaries.

One of my project that I’m most proud is creating a podcast about the people I know on crossing boundaries. This was an individual project. I interviewed a friend and my two middle school teachers that I had a really good relationship with. The podcast was over 45 minutes long from the 3 people I interviewed. I felt really proud of my interview skills. At first, when I first heard about the assignment, I really thought that I couldn’t do a 45 minute interview because I had never interviewed anyone before and it has to be over 45 minutes. I felt accomplished after the 45 minute interview. I had never done anything like this before and I pushed myself into developing this podcast. As a result of pushing myself, my podcast was successful. For the final draft of the podcast, it had to be cut down to 8-10 minutes. From the 45 minute interview, I removed all the unnecessary points, keeping the important details to become an 8-10 minute interview. The link to my podcast can be found here. The main thing that my interviewees talked about were about violence. The things they said are very similar to what I wrote in my journal entry for history, which can be found here. Based on what I wrote in my journal entry, I was able to go in further details about their experiences with violence in the podcast.

One of my journal entries that stood out the most deals with human inequality. The main question of this journal entry is “Why do humans so often treat each other badly?” This question is really deep because it makes me think about the things that are going on in our world today and even in my neighborhood. My response to this question is stating that because of hatred of race, culture, or it could simply just be the attitude. My full response can be found here.

In conclusion, I have learn and discovered many new things throughout this year. I learned that working in groups can bring out a lot of new things that an individual cannot think of. Working in groups brings out the best in individuals. If I were to work alone, I would push myself to bring out my best effort. Out of all the work that I do, I would try to be original as I can and pushing myself beyond my personal boundaries.

Throughout the year, in both my English and History classes, we did very deep exploring into different topics that may be confusing and taboo in real life. By this I mean that people find them hard to talk about or deal with straightforward. Through this exploring I was able to come up with a few general concepts that I think are very important and have helped me improve my learning throughout the year. These two statements are, “reflection allows you to connect with the thoughts and feelings of others and gives you a better understanding of different perspectives” and “when challenging yourself you are bettering yourself.” My experiences connected with these statements have not only allowed me to grow and challenge myself academically, but they have allowed me to start growing and changing as a human being. These are two lessons that I will carry with me throughout my life and I will fall back on them when I am dealing with a real world situation.

There is a lot of evidence throughout the year of me applying those two statements to my work in both English and History. Those two concepts came into play in almost every lesson and activity that we have done. This year, in English especially, I have challenged myself in multiple ways in order to produce high quality work. I’m not very good at expressing myself in my writing because it’s hard for me to bare my soul on a piece of paper and have it out there for anyone to read. However, this year I have made my best effort to put a piece of me into everything that I have written. By doing this I have not only made my writing something worth reading, but I have bettered myself by learning how to be more open about myself and trustworthy. The first example of me applying this skill to my work would be our first journal entry of the year. It was called “I know something about...” I was very scared of writing this and when I wrote it I was in a very dark place at the time. I had never displayed myself like the way I do in this journal entry before. At the time I wasn’t ready to show anybody or talk about it, so I folded the page down so my teacher couldn’t read it. But now I’m ready for people to see.

I found comfort in my classes and eventually was able to be more upfront about the way I was feeling and the things I was dealing with and soon applied them in my writing. My english class became a form of release for me. When we started our Descriptive Scenes and Essays unit, the class was asked to write an essay incorporating a descriptive scene we had written earlier. I titled it “Poor Unfortunate Souls” and in it I wrote, “It all spiraled out of control from there. It was like I was stuck in a never ending freefall, and every time I thought it was over I would fall again.” I felt like this was the first thing I had ever contributed to the world. It took a lot of thought and a decent amount of time to write it and when I was finished the class was instructed to post it onto our english class's public blog. I was really proud of being able to say that I wrote this essay.

During our Poetry unit in english, we learned about different types of poems and how to analyze them. Every student in the class was then asked to create a poetry wiki page of their own. On this page we had to create our own poems using the style of poems we had learned about in class. We also had to research a poet and do a report about how we can connect the type of person the poet was to the way they wrote. “To me a poem doesn’t have to be obvious to be meaningful. Your poem must leave something up for the reader to interpret and come to their own conclusions about.” Poetry has never been one of my strong areas of writing, but this project really helped me learn how to express myself in ways that I have never experienced before. Poetry can be anything, mean anything, and be seen in different ways by different people. That’s what’s so great about it. Anyone who reads a poem will be able to connect to it in some way because we all interpret things differently.

Most of the time when I challenged myself it was on an English assignment and I was challenging myself to express how I felt and to show the real me. But most of the thinking I did in both classes was reflecting about different events in history and different experiences of people from a vast amount backgrounds. In english we did some reflecting after reading and analyzing a book or text. Upon finishing the book Night by Elie Wiesel, we were asked to write a reflection on our thoughts about the book and it’s meaning. In my reflection I wrote, “Remembrance keeps people alive in spirit and forgetting them makes them disappear forever. Forgetting about horrible and tragic events helps heal you and puts the past behind you.” When a person is asked to reflect on something, it gives them the opportunity to think long and hard about the thing they have just experienced and whether or not they can relate to it or not. In this case, by reflecting on two quotes by Elie Wiesel, I was able to understand the points he was making and connect with the way he felt about what he was talking about.

As I mentioned before, our class held a lot of thought provoking conversations about taboo topics that one wouldn’t have in a normal conversation or even think very much about. In our sixth english journal we had to respond to the question “Why do humans treat each other badly?” At first I thought it was kind of an odd question. This question only looks on the negative side of things and implies that most humans treat each other badly. But the more I thought about it the more I was able to understand that in fact most humans do treat each other badly. I could see why someone might ask this question because a lot of things that go on in the world today are violent and cruel. One of the problems is a lack of understanding about different cultures. In this journal entry I wrote, ““Things like race, religion, language and all the other barriers...” I referred to these things as barriers because they are one of the main reasons why there is still so much cruelty in the world today. This journal got me really thinking about a topic that is happening globally each and every day and by thinking about it, it opened my mind to solutions and the feelings of those who are treated badly.

During our Revolutions unit in history class this year we learned about different types of revolutions throughout history and discussed how revolution still exists today around the world. Throughout the unit we completed several interactive activities such as a role play of different people/roles from the French Revolution and a video made with a partner about the Arab Spring. Upon the closing of the unit, the class was instructed to write a response about what we had learned about revolutions. In my Revolution Final Thoughts I talked about how different aspects of a revolution were evident in the French Revolution and the Arab Spring. I feel as though by writing this response I was able to fully understand what a revolution was and make connections between events in time based off of the expectations of a revolution.

Although I have created a lot of great work this year in both English and History, I feel like the pieces of work I have explained above are the best and fully relate to the concepts of “reflection allows you to connect with the thoughts and feelings of others and gives you a better understanding of different perspectives”, and “when challenging yourself you are bettering yourself.” Theses two concepts have pulled me through both of my classes and have been the main structure for almost every piece of writing I have written this year.