Maximilien Marton

When Mr. Block assigned this project, and announced its full details, I didn’t exactly feel that I had learned anything majorly crucial. As I contemplated this further, I realized that in fact, I had learned multiple lessons and essential nuggets of knowledge, just that they were taught in such a subtle way, that I didn’t fully recognize their importance until I actually took the time to realize them. One aspect of this situation that intrigued me was how the knowledge was not completely hidden in my conscience, but only enough so that I could summon it when needed without the need to decipher its apparent existence in my mind. 

In example, during both of the court trials (here and here) I learned to be more sympathetic and to consider multiple points of views, even if my own expressed a strong adversity to one or more of them. For instance, during the Cortes trial, I prosecuted many of the other groups in defense of Cortes, whom I felt quite strongly against before the trial. During the research period of the trial, I found multiple resources that placed a notion of leniency in my conscience. I found that more and more, as I learned Cortes’ point of view, I felt warmer towards him. Of course, I still disagreed with his methods and his logic, but I still considered his ideas. During the Sweatshop trial, The same effect occurred, where I felt more lenient to the group of people I defended.

Looking back upon the monologue project (here), I found that once again the same phenomenon occurred. Because the editing process was so lengthly, I didn’t realize the full extent of my learning experience. During the first few weeks of the project, I had one idea, and as the project progressed, the idea behind my work evolved as well. I switched from studying prostitution to transgendered individuals. As weeks went on, studying transgendered people shifted to studying their childhood, and then to their life experiences. I didn’t realize at first that I was being taught such an interesting and crucial subject, because I was the one who teaching myself along the perimeters that Mr. Block set.

I found that the majority of the lessons learned in class were taught by the students to themselves, with Mr. Block acting as a sort of mediator. Like our monologue project, many of our essays and papers were for the most part, self taught through research. I suppose that the core values of SLA play a major aspect of this. Our history benchmark for this quarter (here) is a great example of self-taught learning. After our unit on colonialism, which gave us a broad knowledge of the subject, we were instructed to inquire upon a culture inflicted by colonialism, research it, present a proposal for a museum exhibit concerning it, collaborate with peers on the best choice for the museum, and then reflect upon our work.

An example of a more structured assignment, would be our poetry project (here). We were taught to observe poetry with new perspectives, by using poetic forms which we wouldn’t usually utilize in poetry, for those of us who actually write poetry. It is almost ironic that the poetry project would become the most structured assignment in our academic portfolio, when the vast majority of poetry is anything but structured. That aside, I learned many aspects of poetry that I had never learned before. For instance, the poet that I studied, Arthur Rimboud, was a poet that I had never heard of before I decided to research him.

So, in conclusion, I have learned many lessons and bits of knowledge that I had previously not recognized. Now that I have realized this crucial realization, I can better prepare myself for further learning that will also be essential to my academic growth. It still intrigues me that all of these crucial subjects were absorbed by my conscience without my own recollection.

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

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. 

​

Sophia Henninger

English - History

Copper

June 10, 2011

Over the course of the year in english and history we’ve analyzed, discussed, and read about many themes. We learned many truths about the government, economy,   and even people in general. One theme that repeated itself in many of our units is revolutions are never painless. This was shown in many units but also within many assignments. Personally, it was shown in my monologue project, poetry wiki, both trials (Cortes and sweatshop trials), and the revolution written response. All of these assignments demonstrate this concept whether is it very concretely or more abstract. 

The monologue project was one of the longest, yet most interesting projects we completed this year. We could truly turn it into anything we wanted. In my monologue project, a college student goes to Pakistan to research Nike’s labor conditions for his final project. In the end he locates a factory and convinces the workers the revolt against management, resulting in his death. This is a very concrete example of the concept that revolutions are never painless. In the end of the project, the boy causes an uprising in an attempt to restore basic human rights in the situation. Even though he and several others lost their lives, they brought light to the issue, allowing it to be address in court. He lost his life so the revolution could be successful. 

The following example is much less concrete but still illustrates the main concept.   The poetry unit allowed us to be creative and truly express ourselves in anyway we wanted. Some of my poems had some subtle themes of revolution though they were more centered on personal revolutions within one’s self. The poems centered on how I, or the reader, would like to change themselves. The one particular poem, When Did I Become a Ghost? speaks of how drugs trap people’s minds. Though it does not actually speak of overcoming the trap, it speaks of the difficulty that would involve and how that would actually make it impossible to overcome it. Even though no concrete revolution takes place within the poems, the difficulty it would take to change the situations in them would be a personal revolution. 

This year in our history class we had several trials, both demonstrating, quite blatantly, how painful and destructive revolutions can be but even though they’re not bloodless, they can still be successful. We had two trials, one was debating who had the most guilt in the slaughter of the Aztec people and this was called the Cortes trial. We had another trial called the sweatshop trial. This trial debated who held the most blame for the mistreatment of workers in the third world. Evidence of both of these wrong-doings involved blood. In both cases many people were murdered needlessly. This is a good example of how just because a revolution does have pain, does not mean it will be successful and this is shown by the Aztecs. The sweatshop workers are still in the midst of the this revolution. This shows that though revolutions are never painless, sadly, they are not always effective. 

In the revolution written response, we had to answer the question, “What separates revolutions from social change?” I argued that they’re not separate but social change is only the effect of revolution. Within it I used the examples of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the recent Egyptian conflict. All of these examples were bloody but all of them were successful. Millions of people died in these wars and, though this is sad, without those deaths they may not have achieved what each of them wanted. All of these revolutions whether concrete or abstract, personal or social, ineffective or triumphant, all had pain and for some of them, that fact is what allowed them to be victorious. 

I have many beautiful memories of this past year. My knowledge of the world has not only expanded, but my views of what goes on in planet Earth have changed as well. During my year in both English 2 and World History, I was introduced to many subjects that I could’ve ignored if it wasn’t for school. One of them was inequality. Inequality is defined by Dictionary.com to be a “Difference in size, degree, circumstances, etc.;”. I find this to be an accurate definition for the world we currently live in. An Op-Ed I wrote earlier in the year has a lot of the points I thought to be very important when pitching ideas to make the world a more equal place. 
    Here’s one quote from that Op-Ed: “We could go for a social-political view like Marxism or such, that can give the people actual power in their government. Many of them are possible solutions to inequality in the world. Too many beliefs and righteousness is in jeopardy for other people for them to agree with this.”
    A year ago I couldn’t see myself writing about things like this. After reading through some of my stuff from this year, I can’t help but think that some of the reason the world is like this is my fault. I try to be the best person I can possibly be. When there are moments in life where I think I did something wrong or unacceptable, I usually try to fix it. But things like this, that affect the world or a society, I want to take the blame for it because I’m not doing anything at all. I could be making a change in the world or have an interest in something. 
    A few more things, the 2010 - 2011 school year has been an excellent one for me. I have not only grown in age, but in experience. Experiences from opportunities given to me from events, work, and especially people. "We have to be simple minded when it comes to changing personalities slightly. Think too much, and we might change the character completely." this quote is from my Literary Lenses Explanation. We took the book: “Their Eyes were Watching God”, and looked at it through different views (Feminism, Marxism, etc.).

The biggest message I took away from this year's classes was that there will always be inequality in the world. Yes, we can try to make it a better place and all that stuff, but there will always be an opposition with it's followers going against the point that both you and I know is right. Then I learned another thing, just because I'm just one person doesn't mean I should stop doing something I know is right. Many people in history have done magnificent things on their own and with the support of people. I'm positive I'll be one of them one day, if something ever comes up in the world that I strongly disagree with, I will make my voice be heard. Not only that but I would've been part of something way bigger, and that's how you fight something bigger. You fight it with support and numbers (amounts of people).