The tool I will take from this year is to analyze a situation on a deeper level. Exploring a subject in a broad method is not the same as investigating in a more depth way. Often in high school students tend to read the same books from middle school. It is not a mistake. It is simply an opportunity to reread in a more intense style to make new deeper connections.

  I had very little knowledge about the Cortez trial. I knew the basic information such as Cortez and his army took over the Aztec people. I never questioned why. In the trial we put our differences aside and accepted our role. “A story can be told in a million of different ways. Every story has a unique beginning or ending. Many stories can be hearsay.” That was a quote from my Cortez Trial response; I was referring to the testimonies from each of the groups and what really happen with the Aztec people. “We would have to be there at present moment to verify the honest truth.” History consistently repeats itself.  Also in my response paper talked about how Cortez men let Cortez brainwash them into helping him take over the Aztec people. From then on in class we were exposed to different examples that consist the same criteria. That’s when I came to the assumption that the alpha male can influenced and or alter the way people think or believe. My proof of that statement is of course the Cortez Trial, also Colonization, Prisons, Night, and Persepolis. In my history proposal for the museum exhibit "Till Death do Us Part: Story of the Aboriginal People" I explored the story line of the Aboriginal People and how Britain took over all of Australia. Even though our Prison unit was short but it proved my theory. Most prisoners are in prison because they don’t want to “snitch” on there friends. They rather face the consequences than stand up for themselves.

  I enjoyed reading the graphic novel Persepolis it was something different and new. It showed how one person could turn a group of people against another group by labeling them as degrading.  This also tied into the Holocaust with the book Night. That general understanding really helped me with my Quarter 4 Benchmark. In my thesis paper, Beating to the Breaking Point was to prove that certain people could be a torturer. “To be intimidating, one has to act tough, making sure to set the record straight for anyone who once doubted his or her strength and took it for a weakness. Guilt must be replaced by no remorse.” That quote was from Beating to the Breaking Point and it was referring to the certain qualities a torturer needs to have.

  Over the course of the year my writing skills has improved tremendously. No paper is perfect with out revisions. At first I was not at all thrilled at the fact someone else would peer edit my work. The reason for my actions was because of my low confidence and most importantly I did not want anyone to belittle my writing. I put my differences aside and became more open to feedback. At the very point my writing became to progress because of the helpful tips of peer edit sheets. The proofs of success are my Op-ed "Eating Our Way to the End", Lord of the Flies Thesis paper, Language Autobiography, and Beating to the Breaking Point.

 Everything that was taught this year will be forever remembered. This course really prepares my peers and I for a higher education. From reading more than one back at a time to making connections on a deeper level it is all needed to help us succeed. And I am truly thankful to be exposed to such new and different studies.

By: Mathew Walker

Throughout this school year my thoughts have been changed many times. One thing I remember very vividly is the classes Sweatshop trial. The sweatshop trial was a trial that the class did to figure out who was the most responsible for sweatshops. Every student was put into a group. My group was the U.S consumers. The other groups were sweatshop workers, multi-national co-operations, the system, and the ruling elite. Now of course people were trying to make their group sound the least guilty. When the trial was over we had to do a response to the trial in which we voted on who was the most guilty at the time since I was being a little bias I gave my group very little points. Now after looking back on everything I see that I was wrong and that in that situation you can put blame on any one person. It is like a rotation and everybody fuels everybody. What I started to understand from this is that it is not good to start coming to a conclusion while you are still focused on one group.

Another piece of work that helped me realize that with time everybody can get better at their creativity is my Poetry unit. During the poetry unit we had to write several different types of poems that we were going through in class. The reason why I say it helped me the way it did is because there is a noticeable difference between this and what I did in the beginning of the year for my English B piece. My English B piece was set at the beginning of the year and we had to write a poem based off of Langston Hughes’ English B poem. 

One piece of work that I am most proud of is my English photo essay. The reason why I am most proud of this piece is because it showed that one could produce very good work even if they are talking about themselves. This also helped me learn a lot of things about my Irish side. The assignment was to take a heritage that you were apart of and research that. After you research you have to come up with several pictures and analyses for why you chose each picture. I was able to find out a lot about the Irish heritage through this like the fact that Irish dancers keep their arms by their sides because when the English invaded Ireland the Irish were not allowed to have any fun so the Irish kept their hands at their sides when they danced so the English could not see them. Unfortunately I do not have the photos but I do have my analyses.

            My last piece of work that I would like to share with you is my colonialism museum project. The reason why I would like to share this with you is because I am very proud with my work in this project. In this project we had to make museum based off of colonization in a country of our choosing. My country was Kenya and my exhibit presented only artifacts that made complete sense like money. You can find my explanation for all my artifacts here. This project helped me learn a lot about Kenya and colonization like the fact that sometimes it can be good and sometimes it can be bad.

This is a portion of what I have learned throughout this year. It has been fun for me to share this with you. It has also been fun to take a trip down memory lane. I hoped you enjoyed the journey through my thoughts.

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

    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.

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. 

This school year has been a wonderful experience for me I have learned a lot of things. I've also begun to better understand different morals or saying people live by. One thing I started to understand is even though we have our freedom to do as we please. If people tried to do what they are suppose to do, when others aren't watching then it would help make their lives easier. I came to that realization during an interview with my father.

            Although sometimes society gives people so much leeway to do as they please. Re-guarding what is right. They began to over use the right of freedom. Which causes the higher power to step into doing as they please no matter what the affect is on those around. Just like in the book Night we read in class the young boy Eliezer Wiesel who was deeply affect by the Holocaust due to the recognized higher authority of Hitler an his men. I wrote an academic paper demonstrating how is has affected him and the way he became.

            That also reminds me about the monologue assignment we had. Taken history and bringing it back to life. Trying to show that even thought history tends to heavily repeat its self that are some aspects of it that people just might not know or fully understand. In my story I was telling how the higher authority has affect a community.

            My favorite unit was the poetry. Just like any other form of writing it is a way to express the mind. I made a poem portfolio an in it I have five poems. I started to understand that you do not have to be an expert in a certain field to be able to accomplish the work. I love poetry and I like to write it, but when some people who feel the same way encounter another who might have a stronger way of expressing than they do. The thought of not being an expert really became a heavy thought.

            Besides my liking of the poetry unit I was also fond of was the Op-Ed on child abuse. What was so interesting about this assignment was what ever we chose to write about, we had to have a strong point and sort of give the story. The topic of child abuse crossed my mind because it is something that is often no touched. While I wrote it I felt like I was giving an article a voice and a purpose. In my mind it was not only a piece a writing that was needed for class it became a possible end to the problem for the younger generation.

            When I started this year it seemed as if it would be hard and the things the class were going to learned would be overwhelming.

            Some of the assignments and assignment reading over this year had make me have the general understand that every piece of writing made will not always make sense or come together.  But it will always have a meaning and purpose.

            I took a lot from the year I also took more understanding from in English class with our poetry unit. We wrote about whatever we wanted, but we had a certain form of poem we had to write. I wrote a poem about my dad it said, "Ever since that day I wished you were the father I thought you would be." ­From writing this poem I learned that peoples expressions or words can really tell who they are.

            The last and final thing I took from this year was the ability to be able to write and express how I felt. This all came from the journals we wrote and creative pieces and descriptive pieces we worked on throughout the year. The understanding is that the expression of writings actually brings out the best in you. I took this understanding from a descriptive writing piece I wrote about several scenes put into one to create a story. "He popped the question,” will you marry me?" This was the night when my stepdad proposed to my mom, this part in time of my life brought out the best of me and by writing about it made it show whom I was and how I reacted to the fact of everything going on.

            Now that you have seen some of the work I have done throughout the year I hope you got an understanding of the things I did during the year. This year went by so fast and we did so many things in both English and History. From all the work I have done I got the biggest understanding of all. From the beginning of year to the end you receive more then you think you can handle, and you become a brand new person in the end of it all.