This year when I walked into my English class I didn’t know what to expect. I thought that I would be reading lots of books, taking quizzes and writing essays. As the year went by my expectation were proven wrong who would of thought that part of my English/history grade would have anything to do with dancing, or visiting a prison. Throughout the year we have been through quite a journey. Not only did my English teacher Mr. Block teach us grammar and had us read books, but he got us physically and emotionally involved with our lessons. We had many projects to do in which we were allowed to put a lot of creativity into. For example our final "Passing" Project This project was based on the book “Passing” we were given many choices on how we could complete this project. My group and I decided to draw a picture that told a story. There were no real restrictions on what we could or could not do for our project and that really pushed creativity. “Creativity helps you to accomplish something from your heart and that you have strong feelings about.” (Ananda Knight) This project helped me to look into a story pass the words but look for deeper meanings that not everyone will catch. Another project that I really liked was when we got into our poetry unit we wrote many different poems. One of my favorite poems was my “I was raised by poem.” I felt like I could use that poetry topic to express myself in many different ways. “I was taught by
other peoples mistakes, I was taught by my own mistakes.” That is on of the quotes in my I was raised by poem. My poem reflected of lessons, and things I was brought up on. When Mr. Block told us to write poems I didn’t really think I could do it. I guess I just had to believe in myself. Mr. Block helped me to realize that I was a good writer and that if I put my mind and heart into it I could complete a polished poetry Wiki.

About a week ago we were all surprised as a class when our teacher introduced us to Leah Stein from the Leah Stein Dance Company. We were shown some of her work and were told that we were going to be going out into the streets and perform dance pieces in front of a bunch of people. When I first heard about this I thought What does this have to do with English or History. I am already a dancer so I thought this would be really easy. As the days went by I realized that this was not the kind of dance that I was used to. What I didn’t know is that I was actually learning a lesson through movement I even became closer to my peers you can see more about my experience through my Art in the open reflection. As I write this portfolio I think of many different assignments that I could include. We did so much work that has helped us all to grow. The final two projects I wanted to talk about were for one my play. The play put my through my biggest struggle, but “Challenges push you to try harder.” This was very hard for me because never before had I tried to write a play. I started over three times until I finally came up with a great idea. Our play had to have an connection to the world and it was a really cool experience. Finally my language autobiography this was my first time writing something like this. It was not that hard of an assignment because it was basically about yourself. When writing we always went through the same process of having friends and our teachers read over our work and give us lots of feedback. Mr. Block encouraged us to do so as well. When I finally finished my Language autobiography It was really amazing when I read it out loud I was really proud of my work and that is what matters the most.

Overall this year has affected me in many way. From confusion, understanding, and shed tears I feel like I have learned a lot from my time being in class with Mr. Block and my classmates. Everyday I walked into class Mr. Block always had a new way to challenge our minds and help us accomplish something new. I will never forget my experience and how it has helped me to become a great writer and thinker.

Jessica Maiorano

Final Portfolio

  Before I came into his class I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. When I first walked into Mr. Block’s class I wasn’t a good writer and I didn’t like history class but Mr. Block made his projects different and creative. Every project was unique in its on way and that’s what I liked about it. We had the freedom to write our thoughts in our papers.

“I am me and that’s who I want to be

 I am fifteen cool, fun and free

 I see and hear just like you

 But very different I am to you”

About a month ago Mr. Block told us to make poetry wiki of all different poems we are going to write in class during our poetry unit. One of poems I was most proud of was my riff poem.

“The feeling you get when you realized you can run all those miles
Every step we take were getting closer
Is that want we want?”  

That quote was only part of my poem but you do not even need to see the rest of it to know that my writing has changed. I have grown as a writer and as a student in Mr. Blocks English and history class.

  There were projects that I found hard and there was projects that I thought were easy but I made sure I turned in my best work. Hard work leads to a lifetime accomplishments. My language autobiography was a writing that I worked hard on. In my Language autobiography I wrote, “Yes, it may take a lot of work and you may struggle and at times it might not make sense but language helps you accomplish greater things.” That is true with language but also with everything else if you work hard enough.

Diamond Blenman

Introduction
In my 10th grade English and History class we learned about many things that go on in the world. Many problems and many situation past and present. Both of out English and History classes interlaced with each other. Specifically in class we were taught different things about revolution and how they start. We also were taught about how money effects people’s status around in the world. Also we learned about Power in different ways. Clear examples of this were our Haiti unit with Jean Dominique , Papa and Baby Doc, and Jean Bertrand Aristide. That unit showed us a lot of what we’ve been learning about all year. What we have mostly been learning about is Power, money and how many situations in the world are solved that involve those things. 

1st General understanding 

                One of the topics of study that stood out to me the most were talking about a world renowned author named “Edwidge Danticat”. She wrote a book called Create Dangerously that is a collection of essays. The essays were essays she wrote in the past and incorporated in her book. She talks mostly about her life in haiti and in the united states that involves lots of personal struggle. One thing that i noticed from reading this book is that When there is personal Struggle, successful people seek outside help to change their reality. In the first chapter of create dangerously she writes, “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.” When i first read this quote it had me thinking, and that’s exactly what our year had in it, topics that had our brains thinking wildly. I wrote about this quote in one of my journal entries. I said “how about you think deeper than face value, when it first says. “Create dangerously is for people who read dangerously” and before reading anything else in that quote to me it said that the book create dangerously is for people who are willing to risk something and be in danger to read that book, because that’s what it was about. Then later on in that unit the class wrote a letter to Ms. Danticat and in my letter i made an honest statement and said “I have told my grandpa about you and some essays in the book and he seems a little less interested. But then I told him to give reading it a try and he honestly fell in love with it. I barely have time to read it my self, it’s always in his hands.”  Now looking back on it i was interested in the book a lot. 

2ndGeneral understanding

In my English class we started off the year with an intro mini unit. We had to write a poem about just about anything. I first thought that it would be dumb and boring but when i did it it was wonderful. My feeling along with that tied in with the feeling of the class at first. I thought that everything would be dumb boring and pointless. Even the starting thing off in the class was interesting. That started me off with a new idea of what the class would be like. After that i knew everything would be interesting and a new approach to learning. In my poem i called it the prisoner of love. It was deep and i was new to things in the class. One thing that stands out to me now that i look back on the poem i wrote is a line that says “But love can be thrown out, To express your feeling And rampage can be due to anger, Anger that drives a whole in your heart, And kills love Then there is no show of that feeling, So now there is just hatred and sorrow, And since there is no love, You hold in that anger as if it’s a prisoner, Not just as an angry prisoner, But now A prisoner of love…”. That was how i ended the poem off and it is amazing to know i was capable of something like that in the beginning of the school year. I have learned a lot through the year which is in retrospect  a short amount of time but i was capable to get it in and learn and try my best. I had my bad moments in class but in the end i learned a lot and i know it’s going to be helpful in the future, all thanks to my English/History teacher, Mr.Block.

Thesis Paper 
Edwidge Danticat Letter
English B poem

Throughout the year in English/History I have learned and experienced through many different and disputable topics. On the very first day as I entered through Mr. Block’s classroom and as several weeks gone by, I was still uncertain about the expectations in his classroom. Later in the year, at some point there were times when things had came to mind on many controversial lessons that was taught in class, and I have always questioned myself because of these classes. How are these units that we are covering in class going to have an impact on me? In many substantial ways, it did had an impact on me and I was struck by it, especially through written essays, the poem studies unit, as well as The Art in the Open Festival, and all of these controversial topics has lead me to the general understandings of struggles, challenges, and hard work.

One of the greatest understandings that I have experienced and learned from was Struggles, and all of the struggles that I had gone through was told through written essays that were assigned in class. In English class, we are often given a writing assignment on a topic that addresses to our ability of understandings in the storyline of a book, which can also correlate to our own life, or a written  essay of a reflection from our past experiences that we struggled through in which can be learned from when is expressed through writing. At the beginning of this year, the very first day of school, Mr. Block assigned us a “One page” paper that night where can just write about anything; your intentional thoughts, current situations, life, anything that you want to put down in that one page, and the next day in class, we would have to gather around in a circle to share out a part of out one page story. The start of this assignment started out as, “The instructor said Go home and write A page tonight. And let that page come out of you --- Then, it will be true.”  Before Mr. Block gave us the writing time in class to get a head start on this one page assignment, I thought it was going to be easy since it was only a page of a writing. I though I could write this paper and get it done in less than twenty-minutes, but as writing time as come, I struggled through the writing time we had in class and several hours at home as I tried to think of what I wanted to write down for this one page. I came to an idea after several hours later thinking in mind, “This is my sophomore year, I am in a new stream, I will be in a same classroom with different faces that I have not met nor worked with last year, I am in a new learning environment, and with a different teacher who will be instructing me for the year.” This gave me an idea of wanting people to know a little more about me. I started this paper off as a basic intro, then worked my way through the life in crisis which was such a hassle for me to go through. Sharing was one of my biggest struggles in the beginning of the year. I can confidently say that the struggles had impacted on me from wanting to share my stories, but one of the greatest release from those struggles were having some feedbacks from people in the classroom, and feeling good about expressing what I wrote, which made me had more confidence to have my voice be heard. The only reason that held me back from speaking up was the thought of judging from people’s opinions, but those were the main reasons from how I managed to break out from my own little bubble and had more confidence to share out some my own thoughts. 

Another general understandings that I experienced and learned from was challenges and hard work. As I already said before, the topics that was taught in Mr. Blocks class are controversial, which made some of the assignments difficult and challenging for me. There was one project that I had a very hard time with was the project to The Revolution Guidebook. For the Revolution Guidebook, we had to design and create a guidebook that presents unique perspectives about revolutions in the world, it was more of a project as a creation of “Revolutions For Dummies,” in a slides/presentation format, and in a way to show our project, we would have to present it front of class along with a voting on the best project presenter to present again at a final round. It was one of the most challenging projects I did this year for History class. It took me several days to adjust the point of this project. Although it took me rigorous time to figure out the point and what to do for this project, I managed to put in all my efforts complete this project the way it’s supposed to be done. 

Another example of a challenging process in English/History class was the dancing performance that was coordinated by Leah Stein group.  From the very first day ( when we started our first steps by introducing ourselves using our own movement that matches the syllables of our names, first workshop at the Amorine, and working our way towards to put together this dance performances, there were many expectations that I had in thought, that changed my mind into thinking that there are many other ways where you can possibly expressed yourself through dancing (freestyle) than just dancing in general. Working with many different objects to make sounds, using different techniques to express yourself in a way you want others to see, and many of things which makes your movements seems unique in other people perspectives. Before we started this whole process, I thought dancing was more like a technique where people would danced to or follow by the rhythm of a certain song; more like free-styling in some sort of ways, but it has changed my perspectives in many ways. The most challenging part of our Art in the Open performance was coming up with various techniques that we want to show the audience. I thought I couldn’t do the dance that my group came up with for the performance, but all it takes was practice. During the performance, I gave in and pour out all of the energetic power inside of me to my dances as the audience glides their eyes towards the performance, and it was the greatest success that I was very proud of al wished to go back to the beginning and start over at the very first step. 

This year has been one of the most struggles and challenging for me, but all of these determination to hard work has been the greatest success for me. I would also like to thank Mr. Block for teaching and showing me an open door to my comfort zone in sharing, as well as speaking up, and the experienced from classroom in which I have learned more from. this one one of the greatest learning experiences and I will never doubt any of the works I have done, hard work pays off. 

  Sophomore year with Mr. Block was one of the most eventful years, with both classes! From the egg on the floor to Art in the Open, nothing was ever the same each day. There were struggles, and achievements, but overall I learned a lot this year with so many different experiences. Finishing up the year, there were many things I’ve realized looking back at my work. I feel like I’ve accomplished and gained so much knowledge. For a lot for the topics we discussed, it broadened my views on things. The two main ideas I am going to discuss are about struggle and creativity. “Without struggle there will be no learning,” and “Creativity broadens our views on life.”

At one point in the year we had our playwriting unit, I remember first starting it and having no clue what to write. I had a few in my mind, but then thought too much into it, and I felt like it wasn’t going to be good. I then started looking through Mr. Block’s magazines and saw a man working in a mine, and immediately I came up with the idea for my play. My play was about a small family living in a poor part of Brazil. The younger sister eventually had to care for her baby sister because her Mom died in childbirth. Her older brother worked most of the day with the mines. The whole play unit was really great. Although I struggled with writing it and then finally submitting it, we had an amazing teacher come in and help us. Her name was Kate and she was apart of the Philly Young Playwrights. She was great because when she looked at our work, she would really take her time into helping you improve it. “You say the brother has replaced him, which is something I’ll bet happens a lot in mining families.  Keep working, don’t be afraid to use monologue, like Andressa talking out loud to the baby perhaps?  How will they feed themselves now? -K”(One of Kate’s feedbacks for a scene) This project leads to one of my general statements about struggle. I’ve always been told you need to struggle through something to be able to learn. If you just did an assignment and had no trouble with it, you most likely didn’t learn anything. Creating and putting together this play was much harder for me then I thought. I faced many struggles during the process, but in the end when I submitted it. I learned many different strategies in working on assignments productively, but also efficiently.

Creativity played a big role in both of Mr. Block’s classes this year. Almost all the projects had to have a little piece of your own in it. There were small projects that we were able to use our creativity in them, but there were also projects that helped us open up and express our creativity. There was a time in the year where we read the book Passing. At the end we were assigned to do some sort of art piece on a main point in the book. I choose to draw a picture showing different aspects of the main character's personality. This is the drawing I drew with the two faces of Clare. Art in the Open was one of the main events of the year that I saw everyone come out of their comfort zone. It was a great experience, and really fun for everyone to participate in. Here is a picture of my group’s site and our wiki. Another project towards the end of the year was creating a poetry wiki. This was very creative in ways where, although we all were on the same wiki and had the same format on each of our pages, everyone’s work had their own tweak to it. We were able to express ourselves through the writing of poetry by using our own experiences. My wiki page is here with all the assigned poems.

                This year was a really event filled year that I'll always look back on and remember the good times and the bad. We had many experiences where we learned about the world, others and ourselves in the world. My two general statements really helped me look back understand my learning throughout the year. I remember the first day of walking into room 307, and now I’ll be walking out with a lot of new interesting experiences.

       

 

Walking through room 307, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t expect the World History and English classes to be quite what they were; the curriculum was filled with new cultures, places, and experiences that shaped me as a student. My perspective has changed, along with my opinions. I was exposed to a whole different way of teaching. This consisted of interactive trials and scenarios, dancing, and freedom within the classroom. Over this school year, we’ve covered numerous topics. I hope to pull together my entire year and what I’ve learned into two general statements: the ability to express one’s self allows for freedom and culture molds humans into unique beings.

 

When writing my general statements, I thought about the different projects I created. I began to think of my favorite ones and noticed that each of them allowed me to express myself. To sum up how these projects affected me I came up with the general statement: the ability to express one’s self allows for freedom. We took part in a poetry unit, which allowed students to express themselves. I wrote many pieces, but noticed a pattern within my writing. Every one of my poems stayed true to my life and was very raw. By this I mean, I write with feelings not with thoughts. In my ode poem, Ode to the Worn Out Sneakers in the Corner, I compare my sneakers to myself: “we're bent up, and used up. / days have made us weak./ all we have left is to,/ sit in the corner.” (My Poems) This poem allowed me to become free of my past experiences and share them with the reader. I wanted them to be able to feel the words I was saying by comparing them to an everyday object.

 

The Art in the Open Festival was an amazing and quite interesting experience. After splitting up into groups we were able to come up with our own performances. This self-created performance allowed us to express whatever feeling we wanted to convey. One of my group members, Helen said in her reflection forum, “ I was expressing my opinions on my piece through movement and it came naturally.” My group chose to design a dance showing a prison break and one of the prisoners breaking free. As the freed prisoner, the routine made me really feel free. The site-specific performance was freeing in itself; it was a chance for everyone to let go of their self-conscious mindsets and move around in new and weird ways. We became free of the boundaries that kept us all separate from each other. (Art in the Open Wiki)

 

A creative project we worked on all year was our plays, which we submitted to Philadelphia Young Playwrights. This was not an easy task. It took months to complete and we had to reach a deadline. I struggled with my topic because I branched off into a whole new world, literally. Every other student wrote about realistic problems that spread across the entire world; however, I wanted to take my play to a whole new level. I wrote about a human-like alien, Vara, who is sent to Earth to help humans in need. Writing The Stranger allowed for me to express my love for Science Fiction and for writing stories. I became free of the worry of what others might think. I wrote The Stranger for someone like me to read. (The Stranger)

 

Our classes were very geared to experiencing new cultures; especially in World History. We explored England, Germany, Poland, Haiti, Asia, Nigeria, and many more locations through our units and assignments. After taking this class, I can say that I’ve learned that culture molds humans into beings. To elaborate, culture is an important thing to know and take pride in. We did many activities concerning culture; however two stuck out to me the most: the language autobiography and the body biography of Edwidge Danticat.

 

            The language autobiography was one of the most difficult assignments I’ve ever written. It challenged me to look at what my culture is and the language that I speak. Yes, along with everyone I speak English; however, I thought about my culture and everyday vocabulary that reflects who I am today. In my language autobiography I mentioned the power of words on human beings, I said, “It’s language like this that puts guns to heads, ties ropes around necks, pops pills in throats, and slices a pure wrist.” This was my favorite line because I believed so strongly in the power that negative words have on people. The reason this paper was so difficult is because I never really thought about my ancestry, traditions, or culture. It gave me a chance for self-reflection. It was important that I wrote this paper to better understand myself, and the person I’ve molded into over the years.

 

            The second culture project we created was a body biography of Edwidge Danticat. Danticat is a famous Haitian author. We created a body and included words that remind us of her and quotes from her stories. Drawing the body biography helped me to look deeper into Danticat’s culture. It helped me to understand her life and words better by reflecting what meant the most to her. My body biography can be found here.

 

            My year with Mr. Block in World History and English was unforgettable. We were pushed into a corner of the room to understand what it felt like to be a holocaust victim, put into groups to see the lack of justice within the French Revolution, and became one of Hernando Cortes’ men to understand their point of view. It was a year full of understanding myself and understanding lives of people I could never know. Being in touch with my culture has made me comfortable with who I am. Expressing myself has helped me to gain freedom in sharing things about myself. 

    In my 10th grade Iron English and History classes I have accomplished so much. From writing daily journals to completing quality benchmark projects. After finishing a entire year’s worth of work and assignments it is time for me to wrap it up with a final portfolio. In this blog post I will be focusing on two-three general understandings that will help me reflect on some of my selected assignments that I have compiled this past year.

General Understanding #1 and #2: Hard Work and Challenges/Struggles
    One of my very first project’s in Mr. Block’s history class was the XL Pipeline monologue assignment. The assignment being our very first big project alone was a huge challenge to surpass. My partner Jessica and I had to do a lot of research and back up our thoughts with many different sources and facts. Something that was a struggle was choosing the five different characters, who’s point of view we had to write the five different monologues from. After a lot of thinking and discussions we decided we would write from the point of view of a police officer, construction worker, an Exxon representative, a jobless person, and President Obama. After choosing the five people, we had to build up their character and make the monologues realistic. Jessica and I had to talk to our peers and teachers and go through revisions of our monologues to make sure that they connected well with the XL Pipeline debate.
    Along with writing monologues, Mr. Block also wanted us to choose 2-3 of our monologue’s and record them as a video. Going into character of the person in whose perspective the monologue was written in was difficult. Even after many mess-ups we continued to try our best and make the videos as best as possible. We worked really hard to make sure that we were in character and that we weren’t making any mistakes.
    From all of my projects this year I think my favorite benchmark is my Language Auto Biography essay. The reason why I like this essay so much is because of all the hard work I put into it and the challenges I overcame in the process of completing the assignment. When Mr. Block first assigned this project he told us to to start off by writing a scene on a google doc that relate it to language in our own personal lives. As a class we discussed many the different ways language is weaved into our lives. Whether it’s code switching or speaking multiple languages. For me language was speaking two languages; Bengali at home and English outside. After righting out few scenes it was time to piece together the entire essay with quotes and analysis’s. This is where I started to struggle. Transitioning from writing small scenes to putting together an entire language auto biography was a challenge. I was confused on whether I should include the scenes or just start from scratch and write something new/ I talked to my peers, teachers and SAT’s (student assistant teacher) and I finally decided on using the scenes I wrote about my experiences with language, quotes by Amy Tan, dialogue and analysis to sew together the different parts of my essay into a whole. I worked really hard and make sure that my paragraphs/quotes made sense with my main theme. I also made sure to get my peers to look over the essay and revise it so that everything would turn out perfect, which it did.

General Understanding #3: Deeper Analysis
    Through deeper analysis I was able to understand the different aspects of a larger idea by engaging in in-depth group conversations. An example of this is in our poetry unit. During most the third quarter of Iron English, Mr. Block would start of class by giving us abstract and hard to understand poems. We were told to analyze the poems with our groups by highlighting and marking up the poems with different colored markers, symbols and thoughts. One of the poems that we were given was “Dream Variations” by Langston Hughes. In this poem my group and I realized that Langston Hughes repeats the same ideas in both of the stanzas, but he uses different words and switches up order of the sentences in both stanza’s to make them different. We also used colors and letters to match up the sentences that are similar in both stanza’s so that we can visually see the connections in the poem.
    Another poem that we analyzed in class was the poem “Praise Song” by Lucille Clifton. In this poem we analyzed each sentence separately because reading the poem as a whole didn’t make a lot of sense. we noticed that the poem didn’t have any capital words accept for the words “Praise, Praise, Praise God” After talking about the poem as a class we all came to the conclusion that the main person who the poem was about was trying to kill herself because of her family, but was saved and was accepted back into her family.

    Overall I can say that I have done a a lot of work this year, and that all of my hard work and effort has paid off. I have completed many quality projects that I am really proud of. Some thing else that shows all the different things I’ve learned in Mr. Block’s English and History classes are shown in the wordle below.

(Click on image to enlarge)

English

Journal 35

I wish I could live in NYC.

I wish I could get a scholarship to Stone brook College in Long Island, NY.

I wish I could get all A’s and B’s this quarter.           

I wish I could get more college letters.           

I wish I could win the mega millions jackpot for my family.           

I wish I could be a nurse of some sort when I grow older.

I wish I could get done benchmarks.

I wish I wish I could have what I want in life.           

 

English

Journal 36

Things that would be unique to an immigrant would be normal things to us. Like freedom, American food, different religions. There are also things that we might not have done, for example, going to a new place or seeing new people. Anything could be exciting to an immigrant, because it’s all-new.

 

History

Journal 3

BLOCK THROWS ANOTHER EGG ON THE FLOOR!

I’ve been the janitor at SLA for 3 years now, and every year he throws an egg on the floor. Then has the nerve to complain I left some. Does he know how hard it is to clean egg yolk out of a tile crack? It’s extremely hard. I have to wipe it up, pre-soak, mop, and then bleach. These teachers don’t understand what they are doing, they are abusing janitors. He throws an egg on the floor at his leisure but does he see the stress it causes me? I have to take 30 minutes of my time to clean up his experiment.