Over the course of the year, the amount of work that i received was consistent and always flowing through.Even though at times it was hard to do work not because of the difficulty of the work but just the amount of the work itself.So I say I am not a poet I am not saying I can not write poetry per say but in all actuality Im saying that i can't ever compare to the great writers of the past that made work so powerful that it is still used today.I had the inspiration to do my love poems after looking after all of the poems that reminded me of a person that heavily influenced me in my younger years.It was very rough at first but then towards the end of the poem I learned that not every line of  poem has to rhyme like in the books in elementary school.

The studies that we did during the year were very vast and hot handed.One of the ones that I recall the most was the one we did during the assignment we did about but buddha.It was a very emanational in a way because it had to a lot with predominantly religion and I looked into it and I in a way found a lot of peace by just meditating.Some quotes are

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind. Thiese are just some eye openers of witch i was in triggered by.

When we hit the french revolution I was moved by the hardships that were faced by the lower class people. The had to change all of the opinions that they had because they were not able to express them because if they did express them they would be "shot down" and not listen to.One day when the people that were treated harshly got tired they rebelledd and fought back. even thought they know they were going to die they still went for it because they knew this was necessary to have a better and more well rounded life.It payed off! Lives were lost hearts were broken and in the end they now have their freedom because of what they did.

These  were just some of the many example pieces of work that I did this year.

http://copperpoetry2012.wikispaces.com/Franlin+Mancebo

Throughout the year I feel that I have grown, not only as a student but also as a person. Most of my pieces of work have been about family and friends, and through these I learned many different things about them. One example of this was in the beginning of the year we wrote about a piece of art that we observed. We got to choose which piece to look at and I chose one that sister did. It was of a circus elephant standing on top of a ball, and all around it was a rainbow shooting out from every side. I talked about how this was the perfect embodiment of my sister as a person. That she always liked the odd thing, like an elephant standing on a ball, but she also liked to make surreal images that are left in your mind.

Later in the year I compared that very same image of an elephant to a memory that I had of my friend and I playing paintball. I said “In those six seconds I had enough cover to stand up and sprint across the field firing blindly with my left hand (probably not hitting anything but scaring the opponents). I looked over and I was reminded of a picture that my sister once painted. It was a picture of an elephant standing on top of a ball, with colors shooting out of it. I felt kind of like that elephant, precariously perched with colors flying at me from all directions.” This story always bring a smile to my face because it makes me think of how lucky I am to have such a great family, and such great friends. 

About two months later we wrote a paper about our different linguistic backgrounds. As an Irish/German/American I had a lot to say about the many different languages that go on with my family. I said in my language autobiography that “It’s really confusing when people speak all of their languages at the same time (In my family). I am the only one who can understand all of the languages. I can’t speak them back, but I act as an interpreter.”

One thing that I can say that I truly understand is you have to go through a struggle in order to succeed. In March, we were assigned to read a book by a Haitian author named Edwidge Danticat. The book was called Create Dangerously. This book was a collection of essays about her life and Haitian issues. There was one essay in particular that really grasped my opinion. This essay was called “I Speak Out.” It was about another Haitian lady named Alérte Bélance that was mutilated by the Macout (the Haitian army), but surprisingly survived. People found her story so interesting that they flew her to the United States so she was able to share her story to other people. In my forum post responding to this I wrote “While reading “Speak Out” I was appalled by the actual reality of the things that were taking place in Haiti.” You can view my forum at this link.

In Mr. Block’s class we also did a very interesting project with garage band. We had to do a podcast interviewing someone about the boundaries they had crossed in their life. I interviewed my uncle who is a recovering addict. He has had a rough past with crack cocaine. He was on crack cocaine for about 22 years of his whole life and miraculously is clean today and has been clean for more that four years. During the podcast I expressed that this addiction has had negatively and positively affected his life. In the podcast I said, “Using crack cocaine was definitely his valley. Laughter family, and crossing the boundary of not using drugs was his peak.” You can view my podcast at this link.

Throughout the school year, I have learned that art can be interpreted in many ways; you just have to be creative enough to understand it. As the end of the school year was approaching, Mr. Block introduced us to a new unit in English class. He introduced us to the poetry unit. As soon as I heard poetry I started to have a sissy fit because I always thought that my mind was not physically able to think like a poet. My exact words in one of my English journal entries were, “I am not no Maya Angelou.”  I was definitely not looking forward to the couple of weeks we were going to be in this unit. However, when I started to write my first poem “My Baby Love” I was surprised that I could be as creative as I appeared to be. When I wrote my introduction to my wiki space account, I wrote something that reflected my whole experience in the beginning. I said, “I stepped into this whole poetry unit blinded by the complexity I thought poetry had.” You can view my poetry page at this link.

 I was assigned a book to read in about February called Passing by Nella Larsen. This book was about an African American woman named Clare Kendry who is passing for a white woman back in the 1960s. She is living a dangerous life because her husband who she has many ties to doesn’t know she is African American. By the end of the book, Clare ends up falling out of a window and there was a mystery to how she fell out. Mr. Block assigned us to create an artistic project about the book. My friend and I decided to work together on this project and decided to do an iMovie. In my forum post about the project described my entire process while doing the project. I said in my forum post, “We did two skits on our interpretation of how it would look on the news when Clare died.” This is the link to see my video

 This year has definitely been a great one. I don’t regret anything I have done this school year because all of the mistakes I have made I have learned from them. I am so very grateful to have had a teacher like Mr. Block for History and English class. This school year would not have been the same without him. I hope the rest of my years in high school will be as self learning as this year was.

This year we have worked on papers, telling stories, and working in rolls. Through this my headphones have become great tools to create work. For almost every paper or piece of artwork they have helped. And in this class there is always a project going on. The idea of perspective is something that we worked with all year. Perspective is something that we all have. We all see things differently and come at things from different points of view. 

In English one of the first things that we had to do to show our perspective was to write a poem called Theme for English 2. We where told to go home and write a page tonight and let that page form out of you- Then it will be true. When we started that I didn’t know what to do. What did a poem have to do with anything? But now looking back I see that that’s all we where looking for, the truth in the worlds that we see and use everyday. 

As we moved through the year we where made to look at other people points of view and then work through them. Like when we read How To Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie by Junot Diaz. A lot of people where upset but what was written but like I wrote in my reply I thought it was funny. I mean this is the way he thinks and sees the world of girl. But you have to keep your mind open to it.

Another thing we had to do that was about perspective was our Passing art work. We had to make something that showed how a character saw things.  I picked Claire. A light skinned black woman that was posing as a white girl. So was in-between black and white but she saw how both worlds where and wanted to be able to express both. That something that everyone goes through.  Seeing two different things and wanted to have a little bit of both. It was a lot like me being a native of West Philly going to school in Center City. Being thought to be better then others just because of the school I want to was and is a hard thing to go through. Wanting to fit in with this year proving that I was born to stand out. 

But along with the way we seeing this we also had to look at how we change as these things happen around us. Like in my Chapter 26 for Things Fall Apart. In the story of Things Fall Apart Okonkwo, who is a father and a strong leader in this village, kills his self after this village is taken over by white missionaries. He saw these changes are more then he could take. In my chapter 26 his beloved daughter Ezinma lets the death of her father make her stronger. When she is at the market with her mother she stands up to a cowed of me “Who among you know anything of this man?” Ezinma mocked back at the man. “Who know his name? His motherland? Who?” She ran through the crowed. Pushing man and woman out of the way. Her mother watched unknowingly knowing what her miracle child was about to do. The translated looked on at Ezinma in shock. The side of this face was hot with the red mark of Ezinma’s hand.” Even in a place where a woman is worth less then a man she changes her perceptive to see that these man are not any better then her. And that she has every right to fight back.

            I can also see change in the way I write. From the language autobiography where I was just looking at the way I write. In this paper my first paragraph “In the world we live in there are only a few ways of expressing yourself. You can talk, sing, dance, or be a writer. I can’t sing, or dance. And even though I like writing, expressing myself verbally is the best thing for me to do. The English language is like a damn to me. It blocks off all the beautiful and elegant words I want to say and twist them into a word search,” was now as a look back at it simple compared to what I am writing how.   To the poetry unit where I was made to take steps to change the way the poem sounded and flowed.

 This change carried all the way to the end of the year when I was writing my final thesis paper, my favorite paper of the year. Where I am writing more complex papers that really make me thing and want to write. For example my firs paragraph of that “As human beings we are made to look for other human interaction. Humans are made to look for touch, sound, emotions, and feeling that only others can provide. Thus even when we are places somewhere where these things are hard to find we will find ways to make these connections. Every day people are making new technology to get to know other people. People will always look for humanity even if the most inhuman places.”

This means a lot to me. And I think that that that’s something that you can find in writing too. You find a person who is just truing to reach out and find a way to become a part of someone else. They just want there writing to resonate with others. and that’s what the goal of all of this work really is a way to make our work in this class resonate with other in and out of the class. This class has made me a better writer, person, and listener.  

M Saunders English/History Portfolio 2012

            There has been a lot done this year.  Everyday my mind has been expanding in different ways and learning new things.  There are some interesting ideas that I have for the end of the year.  These are the general statements I have learned throughout the year.

            We have look at a lot of different books and points in time.  Something stands out to me is that when someone is in power they tend to lose the power or lose their minds.  Most times power leads to insanity.  One of the books we have read is Lord Of the Flies.  This is about a group of kids that get into a plane crash and end up on an island.  Some of the kids start to lose their minds while going through being on the island. “In Lord of the Flies it shows that insanity is like gravity all you need is a little push” This is a statement I used to describe the book.  It was the right place and the right situations to easily make a person go crazy.  One of the boys ended up being a leader of the group. At first he mad all the right decisions on how to get of the island but soon after he started to lose his mind.  This shows how easily you can lose your mind.

            Also another thing we looked at was the French Revolution.  What we did was we chose people to research and we had to act like that person.  The person that I chose was Maximilien Robespierre.  He was one of the main people in the revolution.  Through out the revolution he started to get worse and worse in what he does.  At first he really helped the people. Right after the king died he took control.  It wasn’t that bad then but latter on is when it started going down hill.  A major part of the revolution was when Robespierre passed a law that said if he thought that some one was against him then he could just kill them with no trial.  From Robespierre paranoia he ended up killing a lot of people.  Soon after Robespierre was overthrown and killed.

            Another role playing activity we did was the Cortez trial.  This was about when Cortez and his men when to see the Aztecs but ended up taking over there land.  There were different roles that we had to act as.  It was Cortez, Cortez men, System, King, and Aztec people.  What we had to do in this activity was prove that a certain group was guiltier in the takeover of the Aztecs.  It was run like an actual courtroom with opening statements and cross-examinations.  At the end of the trial each group would give there closing statements and we had to assign points of guilt to the most guilty person we thought was.  Something that I thought was interesting was that in the research done Cortez didn’t listen to orders and did what he wanted.  He was the leader of the men who were just supposed to explore this land but instead he took it over.  The king sent notes and people to go after Cortez. Cortez just ended up killing them.  Having the power to just control a group of people to do what you want is too much for people.  Cortez got greedy and tried to take all of the Aztecs gold and land. Maybe if another person were in charge then the Aztec wouldn’t have been taken over.

            Throughout the year we have done a lot of interesting and creative things.  For most of these you really had to think about how to use your skills in different ways to make your project that much better.  Creative thinking can make a project better.

            One of the things that we did was called Art In the Open.  The main thing we did was we had to find a space around our school and create a piece that used different movements and used the space in different ways.  At first I wasn’t used to just moving around the way that we did in this project.  There were people that came to the school that showed us some techniques to help us create these pieces.  This was really getting out of most peoples comfort zones.  If you wanted this to go well you had to really come out of your comfort zone and be really creative with the way your body would move in this new way.  If no ideas were coming out or people weren’t really trying then it would just be a bland piece but with each groups creativity added to the project. That is what made these pieces interesting and enjoyable to watch.  With out the creativity this wouldn’t have worked.

Summary and Analysis of The Year

Sla has a very interesting style that was applied throughout Mr. Block’s class. This way of learning has brought out a lot of inspiration in people. It was always a different experience every day. Our poetry portfolio work has brought everyone into working with a more personal side of themselves. Our poems were very interesting. Everyone wanted to express themselves in different ways and I think we all did so in our poetry class. This class has inspired me to want to write more about anything that I find appealing to me. It has brought us all closer to ourselves.

Humanities Portfolio 

In Mr. Block’s English and History classes we learned a lot. Personally the way the work went wasn’t always appealing to me but some units were very interesting. Everything we did in class was always a process. Every unit when we wrote something we did a draft then a final version. This was beneficial to a lot of people because it gave them time to edit their work. I don’t usually edit most of my work because I try not to make mistakes the first time so I often wasted the time we had in class writing drafts and this sometimes didn’t work out for me. More interesting projects like the Poetry Portfolio sparked a lot of people’s imaginations and that made everyone want to do exemplary work. I think I speak for everyone when I say some units were disappointing. For example the Lord of The Flies unit was boring for the simple fact that I don’t think the book was any good. The project that followed was great though. Even though some things weren’t appealing to me I still learned a lot of things that I can carry over into my personal and school life.

This Final Portfolio is supposed to give 2-3 general understandings that we have learned over the year. I think the most important thing we learned over the year is that someone’s past experiences shape them into who they’ll become in the future. I think this was illustrated perfectly in a lot of work that we did. To use an example from my favorite project, the Poetry Portfolio Allen Ginsberg’s whole career was based off of his childhood. He often mentions drugs which to me is caused by the fact that his mother was a drug abuser. (Poetry Portfolio) “His greatest poem “Howl” referenced “angel-headed hipsters which to me is talking about drug abusers. Also he writes lines later “high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness” which is another reference to drugs.” He became a very popular poet because he had a strange technique, which was formed by his disturbing childhood. He often abused drugs during his lifetime and that would most likely be because people often do what they are used to. He was raised around drugs and started to do them himself.

Another example could be Things Fall Apart. This book illustrates my general understanding perfectly also. Okonkwo’s whole life was based off of his father’s failure to appeal to his fellow villagers. A lot of people looked down upon Okonkwo’s father because he was a failure who owed money to numerous people and never paid them. Okonkwo was raised around this and that made his goal as an adult to be the exact opposite of his father. He knew people’s opinion of his father and that made him strive for success his whole life. His father was also a weak man because he was scared of war and this made Okonkwo’s next goal to become a great warrior, which he was successful at. (Things Fall Apart Assessment) “I set off to find myself in my motherland and it did not go as I planned. I feel as though I am a weak man and I did not deserve this life that was given to me. My main goal in life was for my chi to be better than my fathers and I feel as though I did not reach that goal. Therefore I did not need to live my life.” This is a quote from the chapter we wrote ourselves. I think things would have really played out like this for the simple fact that this part illustrates his feelings. He tried so hard to be a better man than his father and when he disappointed his fellow villagers he became disappointed in himself and that would have caused him to kill himself.

Everyone has the ability to create something that inspires others, this is another general understanding I have learned in Mr. Block’s class. It is not illustrated as well through the work he had us do but I do have a few great examples. I think Lord of The Flies advertisement was a good example of this. We had to create an advertisement based off of the themes of the book. A lot of these themes are inspiring and to me I think that if some of them were published they would have the ability to inspire others. My advertisement was supposed to promote “Simon The Communicator”. This could inspire people to want to communicate more because everyone else on the island was oblivious to the things Simon knew because they lacked communication skills unlike him.

Another example is the Sweatshop Trial Analysis. "We need to provide for our families, were living day by day." This is a quote pulled from the sweatshop workers. I think this trial could inspire people to learn more about their clothing so they could save the people who have to live under these circumstances. They live on little to no money while some people waste money on nothing. Some people don’t know that they live like this so this could be a way to expose these companies and save the workers.

I think everyone could agree with my general understandings because I personally have been made by my experiences and I think I can inspire others. My father died last year and that put me through a slump at first but then given time to myself to sit and think I sort of had an epiphany. I knew that my father wouldn’t want me to be unsuccessful and that being so would be disappointing to him because he was a successful man himself. Therefore I decided to get my act together but because I was also raised around a lot of people who over think things I myself was caught over thinking. I came to understanding that I have seen so many people’s lives wasted away and I didn’t want to become another one of those people. This was a contradicting idea because I wanted to be successful which would mean I would have to do work but on the other hand I didn’t want to live my life in a box. Overall that experience has made me try to balance work and play more efficiently so I could become successful while making the most out of my life. 

Summary & Analysis of the Year

In tenth grade, students go through many changes as they learn where they stand on certain issues. It gives them a new understanding of themselves to know and understand where we each are coming from, what perspectives we know we can give, and who we are becoming in our current environment. This year, I feel as though I have evolved through means of knowing better who I am, and how I affect and interact with the people around me and with the environment. A few of the most important things I believe I have learned are, for one, the importance of nonviolence used to make change, and for another, how with freedom comes struggles, and with struggles comes an inequality that we have to fight to be rid of. I learned about the Millennium Development Goals set forth by the United Nations, especially the goal that all school-age children should have the right to free education, and have access to it. This lesson especially illuminated the idea of inequality and how we really need to strive for the equal rights of all humans.

500+ Word Blog post

Throughout this year I have had several minor breakthroughs in my academics that have sort of shaped me into becoming a different person than I was in September. One of my understandings that I have come to is the importance of nonviolence. This entire year has spoken of what has come from nonviolence, not just one unit, and I have been able to see what it can accomplish in many different ways around the globe.

First, closer to the beginning of the year in our religion unit, we were given the task of looking up a religious figure for a class role-play in which we would speak as our religious figure in a discussion with the other figures. In this assignment, I chose to research Mohandas Gandhi. This was an interesting experience, because I had not learned before exactly who Gandhi was or what he did. I was able to learn that he was not just a religious, but also a political figure, which led most of the nonviolent protest against the English for India’s independence. He was one of the greatest minds behind nonviolent protest and developed many writings on the subject, starting a revolution of many people who took this tool and used it to change what they believed was wrong. This was my first account of something so passive becoming so powerful, as I had not thought that anything could be really changed without some show of violence.

I also saw such an impact on this when we went into our Revolution unit, and looked at several different revolutions including the French Revolution and several protests that were more current, such as Egypt and the Middle Eastern countries like Iraq. These countries, especially Egypt, was able to get what they wanted sorted out almost in a year, and while they are still in the process of obtaining the goal of what the people want, they have achieved very much in very little time, as opposed to the French revolution for example, where even though they overthrew their rulers, the country was still in the same kind of turmoil that they were in if not worse, thanks to the group of people that led the revolution, the Jacobins. The French revolution was a violent one, and led to more violence, while the nonviolent revolutions we went over were much more successful.

Another great example that we went through was a movie we watched on Apartheid, and how colonized countries like South Africa were segregating everything to the point where different colored races could not live, eat, drink, play sports, or do anything in the same place to keep the bloodline strong. In this movie, South Africa was not allowed to participate in the Olympics due to the fact that most countries would bail out of the Olympics if a segregated country participated. Eventually, it got so that South Africa could only participate in international sports if it was rugby. And so when South Africa’s all-white rugby team toured, all of the countries they toured to gave protests and made it more difficult for them to compete. People stayed on the field to stop them, kicked them out of hotels, and did anything that wasn’t violent in order to keep them from competing. Today, South Africa’s sports teams are integrated, just like normal life. All of these experiences have taught me about the importance of nonviolence in trying to change something, because now I understand how you can get further with words and expressions than you can with an expensive and sad war.

Some Works that I am proud of:

M Saunders English/History Portfolio 2012

            There has been a lot done this year.  Everyday my mind has been expanding in different ways and learning new things.  There are some interesting ideas that I have for the end of the year.  These are the general statements I have learned throughout the year.

            We have look at a lot of different books and points in time.  Something stands out to me is that when someone is in power they tend to lose the power or lose their minds.  Most times power leads to insanity.  One of the books we have read is Lord Of the Flies.  This is about a group of kids that get into a plane crash and end up on an island.  Some of the kids start to lose their minds while going through being on the island. “In Lord of the Flies it shows that insanity is like gravity all you need is a little push” This is a statement I used to describe the book.  It was the right place and the right situations to easily make a person go crazy.  One of the boys ended up being a leader of the group. At first he mad all the right decisions on how to get of the island but soon after he started to lose his mind.  This shows how easily you can lose your mind.

            Also another thing we looked at was the French Revolution.  What we did was we chose people to research and we had to act like that person.  The person that I chose was Maximilien Robespierre.  He was one of the main people in the revolution.  Through out the revolution he started to get worse and worse in what he does.  At first he really helped the people. Right after the king died he took control.  It wasn’t that bad then but latter on is when it started going down hill.  A major part of the revolution was when Robespierre passed a law that said if he thought that some one was against him then he could just kill them with no trial.  From Robespierre paranoia he ended up killing a lot of people.  Soon after Robespierre was overthrown and killed.

            Another role playing activity we did was the Cortez trial.  This was about when Cortez and his men when to see the Aztecs but ended up taking over there land.  There were different roles that we had to act as.  It was Cortez, Cortez men, System, King, and Aztec people.  What we had to do in this activity was prove that a certain group was guiltier in the takeover of the Aztecs.  It was run like an actual courtroom with opening statements and cross-examinations.  At the end of the trial each group would give there closing statements and we had to assign points of guilt to the most guilty person we thought was.  Something that I thought was interesting was that in the research done Cortez didn’t listen to orders and did what he wanted.  He was the leader of the men who were just supposed to explore this land but instead he took it over.  The king sent notes and people to go after Cortez.  Cortez just ended up killing them.  Having the power to just control a group of people to do what you want is too much for people.  Cortez got greedy and tried to take all of the Aztecs gold and land.  Maybe if another person were in charge then the Aztec wouldn’t have been taken over.

            Throughout the year we have done a lot of interesting and creative things.  For most of these you really had to think about how to use your skills in different ways to make your project that much better.  Creative thinking can make a project better.

            One of the things that we did was called Art In the Open.  The main thing we did was we had to find a space around our school and create a piece that used different movements and used the space in different ways.  At first I wasn’t used to just moving around the way that we did in this project.  There were people that came to the school that showed us some techniques to help us create these pieces.  This was really getting out of most peoples comfort zones.  If you wanted this to go well you had to really come out of your comfort zone and be really creative with the way your body would move in this new way.  If no ideas were coming out or people weren’t really trying then it would just be a bland piece but with each groups creativity added to the project. That is what made these pieces interesting and enjoyable to watch.  With out the creativity this wouldn’t have worked.