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Throughout the year, we've been focusing on a lot of different themes of English and History. There was the past, obviously, and there was the future. All the things that we have taken in have been extremely beneficial to our lives. We've learned lessons and taken in values from other people's mistakes or ideas.

 

In English, though the first part of the year was focused on descriptive stories, we have certainly learned how to decipher the true moral values that could help us later on in life, or at this point in our lives. "Days are not always what they seem." From a short simple paragraph grew a descriptive essay. Of which, I admit, was not my best work, but, looking back... it helped a lot in the end of the year. In our descriptive essays we were to link two different occurrences together by a bigger idea. In my essay, the bigger idea was that days are not always what they seem. I figured this would be a nice topic, because as Hannah Montana says, "everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days, everybody knows what I'm talking about, everybody gets that way." I just feel that everyone can relate to having those days, good or bad. So, that’s the reason I wrote about them.

 

Another project in English, was the last quarter benchmark, which was a three page thesis paper. I feel that this one was the much more refined version of the second benchmark. The Lord of The Flies paper was a thesis paper, but the past quarter, there was a lot of improvement. The outside source was better, and much more on point in getting an exact example that related to the thesis. The thesis was “When you have people who surround you with love, and they do something that may be unkind to you in a way, is it considered 'out of love?”

 

In history the values were a little different. There were always something about the world involved in beliefs and ideas. In my op-ed, it was all about nuclear power. ""It looks like our world leaders 'have it under control' for right now. I wonder where this will take us in about 5 years?" There were many sides to take in this piece. The good, the bad, the smart, the stupid.  Like Mr. Block said, a good topic should be controversial. And, I think this one was a very controversial topic that could have been further debated.

 

A last example for history was the museum proposal. I feel like I poured my heart and soul into this benchmark. I did tons and tons of research, and it felt like I was sitting at my desk for hours. I feel like it was maybe one of my strongest benchmarks. “You could see how the Dutch really monopolized an innocent country that was rich in goods.” Like the op-ed, this one was benchmark was controversial as well. It supported colonialism rather than not supporting it like the other benchmarks were.

 

Overall, I loved my sophomore year. English and history were maybe 2 of my favorite subjects, even though they may not have been my strongest. They were the ones that I had the most fun in everyday, and it would be a complete loss if I missed out on these classes, so I'm glad that I've gotten to experience all of this, this whole year. I've really valued my time here.

To some, English and History are acknowledged as being their "least favorite subjects”. But in my opinion, they are the finest. This is because they both teach you how to become a better person. Personally, I have found every year of English and History to be my favorite as I lived through it, and this year was no exception. I remember walking through the door the first day. My first impression was that the classes were going to be fun and challenging at the same time. As time moved on, this reality continued. I soon found myself looking forward to both of those classes daily.

One memorable experience for me was writing the descriptive essay. To read it, please click here. At first, I thought that it would be quite difficult to do. The reason is because I felt as though the descriptions for my mentioned experiences would not meet expectations. But, as the project rolled along, I learned of my mistakes. I discovered that the key is to simply continue writing everything that you remember about the experience, no matter how big or small. Another thing to remember is to use all five senses in the descriptions, if appropriate. This gives the reader an accurate image of the flashback within their mind.

Another memorable experience for me was doing the Podcast Benchmark. To listen to it, please click here. I remember wondering what was the point of this English project, as it has little to do with reading. I didn’t realize until the end of it’s true meaning. Doing a podcast is just like witnessing the events of a book. As my aunt told me of her experiences, I was able to see the facial expressions as she spoke, and could connect to her in a far more effective way. I had a feeling of understanding that the words on the pages of a book would have never given to me.

One more memorable experience for me was writing the Op Ed. To read it, please click here. At first, I wondered why writing a news article would be required for History class, as it has nothing to do with the world events of the past. However, I eventually learned that although it is about issues of the present, the present is a result of the past. As I was working on it, I found myself writing about the historic events that led to my more modern topic. After finishing it, I learned that the current conditions of the world are effects of the events of the past. I also realized how important our actions of the present must be, as it will affect the future.

My final thoughts about the English and History courses this year are that they were required to help make me a better student and citizen of America. I have learned that the world is far from perfect, and will unfortunately never be. However, compromise will make the conditions of it better for everyone. For example, I remember doing the Language Autobiography. To read it, please click here. Although two populations of humans sound different, a common understanding of English can be had. Anyway, another final thought that I have is that even though an individual’s contribution to the world may seem small, when gathered together, a larger population has the power to change the way we all see the world currently, and beyond.

​During the year in Mr. Block’s classes, both English and History he has really took a different way of teaching the same material other students my age are learning. Being a student of SLA we already don’t often use textbooks and we use Internet and hands on stuff but to expand on that we did a lot of role taking and becoming the past. This often happened more in history during the different trials we did. In the trials you had to become the roll of the side you were placed on. You didn’t pick this side and you had to learn the side of these people and make then look innocent whether or not you agreed. This was a challenge but told great self-control and really pushed the mind to think different. This was often a group project and everyone did a part, here is a link to the Google doc with all the information leading up to the trials.

 

            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.