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            When it came to history we learned a lot of different view points and where different people stand through out the world. It was interesting to see what other people think and why they think that because of how they were brought up in life.This was one thing we really focused on during the religion unit. "Is religion real?" This was a question we looked at during this unit as well. We studied what other believed in and what made them believe it. We did a benchmark, and I have to say it was one of my favorite benchmarks. We had to compare three or more religions in some way. So for my project, I compared the idea of God and what it is and why God is so important. Other people looked at issues of gay rights or heaven. This project forced you to learn about religions that you don’t practice and compare them and really study them in-depth. It helped open my views and it was a great learning experience.

            To start off the year on the first day and the first page of our brand new crispy journals we wrote about a song we listened to. The song was sung by a woman and was about the travel process of clothing. The song kept bringing up the question of weather or not a person’s hands were clean and asked each listener if they thought their hands were clean. This was the start of the year and Mr. Block already had us thinking deeper into such common everyday things, our hands and the new back to school clothes everyone had on. It broadened my perspective and got me ready to understand how basic things were not really all that basic.

            Towards the mid-end of the year we started a poetry unit and was able to write and create a wiki-space that was filled with our own poetry and writing pieces about how we understand poetry by different famous writers. From one of my pieces I said "I start for you, the flash of your hair, pushes me back, makes my heart whirl, fall to ground, your power is so overwhelming." It was really cool to see everyone write and perform their written pieces and to read over everyone’s personal wiki-spaces.

One of the biggest projects I have ever done in my whole life I can say I did this year. During this year we had to write monologues that turned into a story. These stories were about something about change and hope in other parts of the world and it involved them overcoming something. We started the project lost and confused but through the exercises and activities we did with Kate, a lady from the young play writers company, everyone was able to complete this project. There is no way I would have been able to do this without the help of my peers. They helped give great feedback and ideas to add to make the plot more interesting. It really gave peer editing a whole new meaning. This project included two Google documents, one with all the facts and information about our topic and country and the other was just strictly the monologues and the feedback to help us improve.

            In English we read a book called Passing. This book was all about how to make you look or act one way to fit in with certain people, this was called passing. This book was based in the past and focused a lot on blacks trying to pass as whites because of shame or for their safety. With groups we were assigned parts of the book to reread and analyze closer. My group wrote a found poem, meaning we took quotes from the book and put it together to help explain and tell the story and themes of the book in a different way and then we presented it to the class. To do this project we all both it on a Google document and edited and wrote in together. 

During our poetry unit I could say that I expressed a lot of things that I don’t like to talk about with my friends and family. It wasn’t very known because I never told the meaning behind them of why I wrote them. I have token poetry units before in pervious English classes. It was either you passed or failed, and good or bad. Here your poetry was posted on a site that they class could see, and anyone that had the link to search our class poems. I remember our poetry stand–up we had in class. If you ask I think it took a lot of courage for me and my classmates to go up and read one of their poems. I also gained more confidence on reading my own artwork. I have no problem public speaking even though I have a sweet low voice.

One of my favorite projects was the monologue. I have been writing short stories since the 8^th grade so that really help me a lot on this project. I have never written a play before. The play that I have created was based on things that I noticed that would happen in average teenage life. I also got ideas from books I have read before. During this time, we was able to get outside resources from people besides our teacher. Some other classmates and I was able to get the chance to go on a retreat that was strictly on just helping students with their plays. When I was at this retreat I was shocked to find out that our school project was a lot more unique then the rest. I was able to take all of the good advice and create a piece of art that was able to get submitted to the Philadelphia Young Play Writes.

Lastly, the audio project was so surprising to me. This was a benchmark that had to be done in a group. The project was based on subjects that affect our national and people around us. My part of the project was to ask people how society stereotype and judge people. My interviews went better then I thought it would. I learned a lot about the world and how different people see it. It gave me the chance to learn through their eyes of their opinion. 

Every picture was different. 

Even if the pose was the same. " (poetry wiki ode).

 " Change can be slow because there is a process that must start, everything doesn't  just get up and change on it's own" (journal # 10 history).

"The word Nigger/Nigga will never be forgotten during the hard ships of when blacks were treated horribly in the old times"(journal #4 english).

"I know something about being myself"(journal #5 english).

"How does it feel to not existence anymore?"

"oxygen should be free for all." (Globalization) 

"Charity is an illness that people are falling on poverty, and dealing with erosion."(Pathologies of Power).

"Woman are mostly in charge"(Learning From Ladakh).

            First of all, I want to start off with my favorite unit from history class, which was the religion project. Well, not my favorite but the project that I worked the hardest on. It required a lot, A LOT of research. In the end, I felt pretty good about my final piece because I went with the topic, which was “Interfaith Marriages and Religions” with a focus point on Hinduism and Islam. I learned heaps of things that I never thought I’d learn. I got bits of a taste of how it’d feel being a victim in an interfaith marriage with a Hindu other or an Islamic other. When I was researching about Islam, I passed by this quote “Girls far below the age of puberty are forcibly married to older persons (sometimes in their 50s and later)...” This was how a Muslim girl lived, working for their husband. For this project, I had to create a pamphlet and I told why interfaith marriages should be allowed in these kinds of religions.

            In addition, I wrote poems that related to me this year! In my poetry project, I wrote about my memories, the memories that I long to repeat itself, and about myself with different styles of poetry. Take an example of the poem “I was raised by…” I wrote about how I was raised, where I was raised, what I was raised for etc. In the ending of my poem, I wrote, “I was raised by the world filled with love.” Because I know there are unfortunate kids out there, and I am fortunate enough to have everything that I have now. Poetry made me realize how fortunate I am.

            Next thing would definitely be the monologue project; I’d say it was the longest period of time we’ve ever worked on on a unit. It was worth it though because I got to work with something, I’ve never worked on before. First of all, I’d never heard the term ‘monologue’. I was confused with the whole idea. Then working with Mr. Block, I started writing them and then started talking with my colleagues; they really helped me understand the whole process. In addition, we had to choose a historic event and I chose Chinese invasion in Tibet. I got to learn new things and got more involved with my own culture.

            In the beginning of the year, we read the book called “Lord of the Flies” and we had to write a thesis paper. I chose my theme as Judgment. I’m specifically proud of my thesis of the paper because it proves a very important matter where it states; “By looking at Lord of the Flies and modern political leader, we can see that public usually judge the leader by their voice and looks, which most people do not see; this is important because you are letting someone lead you not knowing how well he/she can handle the crowd in situations.” I used sources from both the book and I researched. Researching is the tip when it comes to writing paper.

            Last thing I want to reflect on is my colonialism project, where I researched about post-colonial and pre-colonial effects on India.  Our project was to pick a country and create an exhibit based on colonial times. I focused my presentation on colonial beneficiaries in India. I brought different artifacts and went in detail about how it related to the topic and how it will look like in the exhibit.  I am very proud of this work because I worked a whole week researching about colonialism in India. I got to learn the history of India before colonialism.

And here's a few examples of my work relating to the topics previously mentioned throughout the course of the year:

Through out this school year, I have learned many things to do and not to do. Toward the beginning of the year, I had no idea what I was in for and I did not have the writing skills that I do now. When I look at what I wrote and how I wrote at the beginning of the year, I cringe a little, because I know what I would write now. Another thing at the beginning of the year is that I had the stupid idea of not paying attention or completing homework just because I didn’t feel like it. As the year progressed, I realized that I was flushing my college opportunities down the drain. I had to change, and I started to give my full attention and not goof around nearly as much. When I compare my writing from the beginning of the year to now, I see how much better it has gotten due to simply paying attention and taking the extra time to revise what I wrote.

My first example is from the beginning of the year, the Language Auto-Biography. This is an example of when I did not go back and look at my what I had written. In this Language Auto-Biography, I did not revise. Another thing about this Auto-Biography is that I did not have the writing skills that I do now. When I look over it I read things that are grammatically correct, but could be worded much more maturely and more descriptive. This particular Auto Biography could have had fewer but much longer, more in depth paragraphs.

The next example of my work growing through out the school year is my Poems wiki Assignment. This assignment was in the middle of the year and my writing skills were not at where they are now, but they were much better than the beginning of the year. I had never been that great at making poetry, and I was extremely nervous about writing these poems. I feel the best poem of the ones I created is the Memory Poem. It encompasses deep though, heavy emotion, imagery, and descriptive language. “About to collapse under my impatience, about to explode from building up with anxiety.” This line, I believe, is the best line from the memory poem. I never thought that I could make a poem like this. But with paying attention and asking many questions, I have gotten much better at writing poetry. Another thing I learned about poetry is, it is like writing anything else, you have to go back and revise. When I look at a poem from where I first wrote it based off the top of my head, to what it has become after many revisions, it is so gratifying to see how much better it reads.

One of the later writing assignments, writing chapter 26 of Things Fall Apart, shows how my writing skills have grown. This new chapter is based off the previous chapters and ties into what was going through his head. The chapter is one of the better pieces of writing that I wrote throughout the year. It is very descriptive and well thought out to deal with the plot line already started.

Through out this long year, I have realized that I really need to keep up with my school work and always pay attention and ask questions, even though those may be obvious things, sometimes the obvious is over looked. To develop any skills in writing, like anything else, you must first learn what the teacher has to say by listening to him/her and asking many questions. Toward the beginning I had many things to learn and many habits to pick up. I have successfully learned and picked up most of them. I just need to improve the skills that I have learned and put them into use.

The French Revolution was sparked by the failing economy, the unequal distribution of power and wealth, and a large growth in the poverty-stricken population. “The Holocaust was the destruction of around 6 million jews under the Nazi Regime. The Nazi Germans held a belief that they were racially superior while the Jews where the inferior.”¹ The Troubles in Northern Ireland was an extended time of violence and hatred between the nationalists and the unionists in Northern Ireland. And more currently, the Egyptian Revolution was a series of uprises by the people of Egypt against the President Mubarak. 

“The structure of revolutions repeats itself over time throughout history and in different places across the world.^”2 All of these events started over a conflict between two groups of people; an oppressor and the oppressed. What made the oppressed successful in these events were their planing, support, continuous efforts to change the circumstances. The French Third Estate planned and joined together to write their own declaration of rights. Resistance groups and opposers of the Nazi Regime would hide Jews from being prosecuted. Unionists and loyalists would hold marches to get their message across. But when their message did not get across they persisted in getting their way by rioting, revolting, protesting, and joining together to get the support they needed. “We gave lives up, and we expect to receive our freedom.” ³ Time after time the oppressed would fight and fight until they prevailed. 

While the French Revolution lasted from 1789 to 1799, and many people were killed, the revolting public succeeded in revolutionizing their government and social structure. Different resistance groups and countries all fought to end the cruel oppression and destruction that was happening in Europe under the Nazi Regime. The Egyptian Revolution has been successful due to the large support by the people of Egypt and the globe. The protests were consistent and through the media globally shared, which put pressure on the crumbling government to step down. While Northern Ireland is still connected to the United Kingdom, both the unionists and nationalists have made progress on equal treatment and a parliament that is bearable for both sides.

¹ Auschwitz Brochure

² Revolution Reflection

³ Monologue Project

    History can teach you the many wonders of the past. English can teach you how to write and create things beyond your imagination. In Mr. Block’s classes this year I have learned many new things. I learned about a lot of different things from the worlds past and about how things work and how cultures affect the world in different ways. The world is full of thousands of different types of cultures and religion accompanies them. The art of writing and poetry is also very fluent in every culture along with music and artwork. All of these things connect and all of them connect the world and make the world what it is today.

    I learned throughout the class that power could make a person insane. Power is something that can be highly dangerous. It can make people loose their humanity. People can loose themselves to power and do horrible things. We read the book night and that was a prime example of such things. I wrote a Thesis Paper about this topic. The holocaust was a great example of power overtaking people. The sweatshop trial also shows this. People that ran sweatshops abused their power to make a better profit over their mistreated workers.  Another thing I did about power was my Op Ed piece, which was about dead peasant insurance. This was something that had a huge impact on many people, but people still don’t know about it. Industries get drunk with power just like anyone else.

    Other stuff that I learned was about how poetry can be a form or art and writing. Poetry is more then just writing on a page and can be interpreted in many different ways by many different people. People can experience poetry in many different ways. We made a Poetry Portfolio in English class that I had very much enjoyed. Although poetry has guidelines the possibilities of how poetry will come out are limitless.

    In the final unit in history we learned about colonialism. I learned that something as commonly used as colonialism can have a hugely bad effect on the world and the people right around it. Wars were started and there were huge revolutions because of it. It made for great profit and helped economies, but usually at the price of blood. I did my Museum Exhibit on the Vietnam War, which started because of the colonization of Vietnam by France.

    Many people and many ideas surround us. All of these things are unique. We are all our own person, but we share many things with each other. We all have many similarities and the world needs to process how similar people are to each other whether we like it or not we all share common ground. We are all human. We are all people in society and we all owe each other similar things that need to be in our every day life. Everyone in their community, from a small town to a metropolis must learn to respect that community and live among each other as similar and unique human beings. In Mr. Block’s class, both English and history, I have learned this is a very in depth truth.

    History can teach you the many wonders of the past. English can teach you how to write and create things beyond your imagination. In Mr. Block’s classes this year I have learned many new things. I learned about a lot of different things from the worlds past and about how things work and how cultures affect the world in different ways. The world is full of thousands of different types of cultures and religion accompanies them. The art of writing and poetry is also very fluent in every culture along with music and artwork. All of these things connect and all of them connect the world and make the world what it is today.

    I learned throughout the class that power could make a person insane. Power is something that can be highly dangerous. It can make people loose their humanity. People can loose themselves to power and do horrible things. We read the book night and that was a prime example of such things. I wrote a Thesis Paper about this topic. The holocaust was a great example of power overtaking people. The sweatshop trial also shows this. People that ran sweatshops abused their power to make a better profit over their mistreated workers.  Another thing I did about power was my Op Ed piece, which was about dead peasant insurance. This was something that had a huge impact on many people, but people still don’t know about it. Industries get drunk with power just like anyone else.

    Other stuff that I learned was about how poetry can be a form or art and writing. Poetry is more then just writing on a page and can be interpreted in many different ways by many different people. People can experience poetry in many different ways. We made a Poetry Portfolio in English class that I had very much enjoyed. Although poetry has guidelines the possibilities of how poetry will come out are limitless.

    In the final unit in history we learned about colonialism. I learned that something as commonly used as colonialism can have a hugely bad effect on the world and the people right around it. Wars were started and there were huge revolutions because of it. It made for great profit and helped economies, but usually at the price of blood. I did my Museum Exhibit on the Vietnam War, which started because of the colonization of Vietnam by France.

    Many people and many ideas surround us. All of these things are unique. We are all our own person, but we share many things with each other. We all have many similarities and the world needs to process how similar people are to each other whether we like it or not we all share common ground. We are all human. We are all people in society and we all owe each other similar things that need to be in our every day life. Everyone in their community, from a small town to a metropolis must learn to respect that community and live among each other as similar and unique human beings. In Mr. Block’s class, both English and history, I have learned this is a very in depth truth.

Over this year in English and History I learned a lot about the nature of people. I learned that it is easy for people to stray off of human nature for various reasons. While writing my Op-ed I talked about how violent video games are blamed for many school shootings, when it really has to do with home problems or mental disabilities. This showed me how people are aware of things being able to change people, but might not have the best judgment to know what is changing them. For my first quarter English benchmark I talked about how the kids become more savage when exposed to less technology. Throughout Lord of the Flies the kids start to revert back to having animal like behavior while on the Island. This showed me how people are willing to go back to savage behavior very quickly, instead of work together and act civilized, or can make sure that they do not become savages. The way to not become savages would be to make the island like their life and not change anything, but this is very hard to do; that is why it is so easy for people to revert back to being savages.

            During the fourth quarter we learned about freedom and prisons. We had several assignments talking about torture. During these lessons we discussed how almost anyone could become a torturer. We watched and reflected on a video called The Milgram Obedience Experiments where “scientists” would bring in someone from the street, and ask them to question another person in a different room. Every time the person in the other room got a question wrong the person brought in from the street would press a button that they were told gave an electric charge to the other person. The person who was answering questions was not actually getting shocked, but was just acting and pretending to be in pain. The questioner was told to turn up the intensity of the shock until it got to a certain point, and keep it at that level. There were several circumstances, and the results varied from where the answerer was, where the person telling the questioner to do their job was, and if there was any other people in the room. In the end most people would go somewhat far, even though they could hear or see the other person that they thought they were torturing.

            One of the units in History dealt with sweatshops, and child labor. We talked about why it happens, what the benefits are, what the downsides are, and how it can affect consumers or other people. We had a group activity where everyone was split up into several teams for a Transnational Capital Auction. These teams were the Ruling Elite for countries. The object of the game was to try to please the Multinational Companies, so they would give work to our citizens, but to make sure that our citizens were not going to rebel against the government. We had to decide our standpoint on key issues like ability to form unions, child labor, laws on keeping a clean environment, and several others. There were five rounds to change the bids, and depending on what you did, the Multinational Companies would want to go to your country. The team that ended up winning didn’t put everything good for the Multinational Companies, because that would mean their citizens would be very unhappy with the government. The teams that did good put things somewhat in the middle of good and bad in the choices, even though they all seemed to be very bad from our standpoint in the United States.

Art, creativity, imagination, are the cornerstones of life. With out imagination where would we be? Everything we have is the spawn of imagination and creativity. Things that we use everyday are works of art. Think about it! Our clothes, for example, why else would there be fashion industries if this were not a form of art?

When most people think of an English course they suspect boring books, long essays, and tedious hours of reading. This was not true for this year’s English class, we were encouraged to dig deeply into our minds and tap into a corner of our psyche that is not used in many classes.

With in our English class we were inspired to make art constantly. When we had to make scenes out of our past, like artist, we used our five senses to make people imagine what we saw, with out being there. This is recurring in book all the time. Or when we had our poetry section, poetry is one of the most famous forms of written art. All of the students realized their individuality when they started to type of put pens to paper. There were so many different forms and styles of poetry we were free to pick. This gave life to our creativity.

Now many people would debate that when they think of English classes, there is an amount of creativity needed to absorb the messages of certain writers, for instance the hidden meaning writing of Shakespeare. But would there necessarily be a reason to have art in a history class? No- that is what most would say. Yet there was in our class. We had a chance to stretch our writing skill by creating monologues and scenes to be made into plays. Since when is play-writing criteria of a history class? The main reason for that was to get into the main idea of a historical event of our choosing.

Mr. Block brought us out of comfort zones by involving us in the ‘Art In The Open’ festival. Most of the students in his class were reluctant to ‘make a fool out of there selves’, I being one of them, but in the end many were left with pride from breaking down a barrier and viewing the world through a different light. I found myself asking ‘what did dancing have to do with English or History?’ But in the end I realized that Mr. Block wanted us to make history instead of read about it. How many teenage kids got to be in a festival and get a grade for it?

I believe, though many of my classmates where reluctant to use such types of creativity, that if more schools were to use this form of teaching, more students would enjoy learning. This was an experience that was unexpected, but greatly benefited from. Art is necessary, without art where would the world go? There would be no change, nor a future. I believe that what we learned in these two classes will help us make decisions for the future. I am grateful that Mr. Block made our grades based on the art we had to make, or else many people wouldn’t had learn that they were artist from the start. Art is in everyone, you just need to dig a little deeper. 

            During the video the man protests shocking the other person, or asking a new question many times, and seems adamant on his decision. Almost every time the “scientists” are able to get him to go back and “shock” the other person by just talking to him and telling him what to do. I was surprised that the man would go back so many times, because he seemed ready to stop asking questions very early on, but continued because he was told to. The thing that surprised me the most was that after the person on the other side of the wall stopped yelling or making noise, the man didn’t show as much resistance until he finally decided to stop. 

            In middle school we are taught strictly into the essence of American History and grammar for English. No class discussions about opinions and no ideas of expression. What the teacher taught you was the way life was. &As we grew up, we took upon the role models of our parents. In my case, parents don’t show creativity or expression of opinion, so I was raised to reply on nothing being out of the ordinary.  As our knowledge of World History and the fights for revolutionary change have developed, so have our minds to the ability that we can fight for something we strongly believe in. Then our brains intertwine around mazes of creativity through English that taught us that you could go beyond the normal term of an “essay” and possibly create works of art. Thus leading us to express what we have learned in new and creative formations, like the poetry unit we used in order to learned forms of writing.

            If you enter the classroom of English and History you are entering a room full of doors. Doors that are all locked and wish for you too find the keys in which to open what they have held for your imagination. An imagination is a form of creativity that helps you show the person you really are and the thoughts that beg to be spoken. A door that many kids have opened was the door of play writing. As students we took topics that touched our hearts and expressed through Monologues what we feel these problems would be told in a story. It was an amazing way to let out how we truly feel in such a story after story break through.

            It’s always easy to understand yourself and the reasons for things you do or make, but it’s not always easy for other people to understand the beauty of the masterpiece inside your mind. Whenever we’ve debated on Trials for who is the killer of human civilization or when we try to inform people on the customs and diversity of Religion, people might not always understand how strongly or right our points of views and sides are. In order to help them understand the best, we must give as much as detail as we can possibly give. The more details the more of a vision we can give to the people. An example of this detail would be in the descriptive essays we have created in class.

            English and History both come together as partners on the road of education for us. For the past year we have learned a lot about our selves and the world. We have been taught to express and to teach. We can only hope that next year holds the same opportunity.

Sophomore year was a hard year for me emotionally, the one class that always had me thinking was English, and I felt the class related to me a lot in a personal way. For example the journal entries, my favorite had to have been the rant. I remember that day clearly I was in a really bad mood, I had this rush of anger going through me, and a rant was exactly what I needed. A lot of the other journals had me thinking too, like the “Remember when” one during the Night course, I was also very sad that day and writing that poem came easily to me and for some reason I felt moved after writing it.

            MY favorite unit had to be the poetry unit. I really like writing poems and, at that stage of my life all of my poems had a certain theme, and that theme happened to be about my bad decisions. “As much as I hate you I can’t forget you” Looking back on my poetry it’s kind of sad to see how unhappy I was, I know I brought it upon myself but I had no idea what to do, and I think in some weird way writing helped me get through it for that moment for that 65 minute English class the poetry took my mind off of the person that was screwing me up physically and emotionally.

Art in the open was amazing. I loved working outside of the classroom, and I couldn’t possibly ask for a better group. During Art in the Open I think I was the happiest I’ve been all year; I started to put my life back in check. With the Leah Stein project I learned to not judge a book by its cover. When I first heard about this I was a little creeped out I thought it was weird. But when we started dancing and actually got to meet Leah I knew that it was going to be an amazing experience. My group Rocky Road came together and as soon as we picked our location we knew exactly what we wanted to do and how we wanted to move, our piece flowed together and in the end we had a great final product.

I think the greatest thing that I learned in this class, was about myself. I didn’t know my limits at the beginning of the school year I thought I was indestructible; I thought I could handle anything that came my way. But after millions of journal entries and Mr. Block saying, “make smart decisions” I think it finally stuck with me, it may have taken 8 monthes but it happened. Mr. Block I’m going to miss you dearly thank you for everything, you may have not realized it but your class helped me so much this year, and I’m truly thankful.

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