Humanities Portfolio 2012

“Hello class, My name is Mr. Block and this year I will be your teacher for English and world history” it all started with what I thought was just a simple introduction to what would be my 10th grade English class that turned out to be a long journey of lessons and learning’s. I never expected to learn so many things about myself in others through this journey I called my 10th grade English adventure.  The lessons and learning’s that I gained were all developed from the activities and observations that I participated in. This year I took a lot more time observing other than I expected to.

When you take the time out to observe you create hope to open up doors to new ideas. This was one of the things that I realized by sitting back and observing. In my 10^th grade English class we engaged in an Art In the Open Activity, which is a festival that takes place throughout the city of Philadelphia. During this festival many people perform art throughout the city.  During this art my teacher said “Today were going to starting our Art in the open project and soon you will be creating art in the open piece of your own.” The day that my English teacher introduced this project to us we took a journey to an Armory near our school. While we were at the armory we were instructed to pick a spot and observe everything about this spot and I did as I was told. I observed my surroundings which went from the noise that the hard metal hummer made when I tapped on it to the way that I could use my body as a way to tell the story that this hummer could not tell it self. “I told the story of the trouble some ride that this hummer had taken through the middle of the hotel Rwandan battle. Bodies thrown on the back like potatoes sack. People dying and the driver driving the hummer carelessly because he had seen endless deaths that he could not do anything about.”

Later on we did and activity similar where I had observed another and based the story I wanted to tell a story with my body basing my story off of the story they were telling with their body. This is a snapshot of me (in the orange sweater) and my classmates observing one another to open our minds up so that we could eventually create our Art In the Open pieces.  After we had presented our entire art in the open project I was instructed to do a reflection on what I had learned and observed when I did this reflection I realized that It made me open up to a side off me that I knew was there but I never let anyone else know about. “ I learned throughout this process that is very viable to me is how much I miss dancing this made me think about how I should not forget about doing what I love when I have spare time.”  No only have I learned something me loving to dance I realized how much my self and others enjoyed writing poetry.            

We were given a poetry unit where we were instructed to write a nice amount of poetry and post them on a poetry wiki inspired by the inspiration of my observations I wrote in my I was inspired by poem. “I was inspired by dance emotional dancing. Producing my emotions through the stroke fingers. Dance was something your never take from me.” These lines were produced out of passion that later on told me that I was a good at poetry and I could open up a way to a new type of art.

  I learned things about my self by setting back and observing others and myself. Once I was proud of what I had produced it was time to publicize it. Now that I was confident that I could step outside of my boundaries I was sure that if I was going to make my work public it had to be close to perfect. If your work was going to be public then you had to make it your best and this is what I learned through observing others and myself. Making our work accessible to the public always makes you work at your best. Throughout this process of the year we were asked to post our work on wiki’s, blogs and forums. On piece of work that I made public was my poetry wiki and many of my poems were my best work. “I will raise you confidently. Teach you how to hold you head high.”  This was a line from my poetry wiki I created a poem about my future child it was called My baby angle by putting many emotions into one poem about something that I never experienced but yet it was my best work. No matter If we were writing about something we knew or didn’t to, to an author or a family member we always made sure that it was our best work if it would be public. “I am honored to be reading your book especially at this time in my life. Your book really caught my attention when I began reading it, not only because of the beauty of your writing but also because I recently found out that my grandfather is Haitian.” Something a had written in a letter to an author giving her my best work not only because I could compare to her but because she deserved to see it just like everyone else who would see it when it became public. Making work public not only made us work harder but seeing a final product that we could be proud of made us feel better.

Through the hard work and the lessons and learning’s the best part of this year was being able to be proud of your finish product. That’s what made this year an adventure being able to work as hard as you could on something even though you hated the assignment given to you. We were always able to be proud of our work in the end because of the support of our 10^th grade teacher who provided us with adventures and projects we might never get the opportunity experience ever again. That’s what mad 10thent grade year so special, the ability to experience things and be confident about your work.