Humanities
Poetry Project
Poetry Reflection
In the beginning of this project I had a lot of different ideas for a perspective. My ideas were scattered and unrefined; once I did start focusing my perspective it became clear that my poem didn't reflect it back to me. I finally figured out that my poem was fine, but my perspective still wasn't as solid as I wanted it to be. It was actually a historical show that I watched about Rome that made me realize what I needed my perspective to be. However, my perspective no longer went with the entirety of my poem no matter what lines I tried changing. I was struggling so much with trying to make my perspective show that I finally, basically ripped my poem apart and put it back together with little parts of my new, refined perspective. Once I was able to integrate my perspective I needed to get a lot of peer critiques to get rid of parts of my poem that were not benefiting the message. After the peer critiques, I started writing a brand new poem, while taking all of the things my friends said into account. My final poem definitely showed my message off in an intelligent and emotional way.
The biggest edit and challenge that I faced while writing my poem was letting go of lines that I liked but made my perspective confusing. An example of a line that I enjoyed but had to get rid of was, “No saving the cynical.” Taking this line out of my poem gave me more freedom because I was so focused on that line and trying to make it work with my message. Those four words made my perspective into something that didn't make any sense to me, as the writer. After I got rid of lines like that one, I was able to narrow my poem down to the lines that enhanced my perspective and made it stand out.
Another problem that I had was my perspective on the length of my poem. I kept on putting whole stanzas into my poem so that it would get longer and longer. One of the stanzas that I put in and took back out once I started cleaning my poem up was,
“Tell me you fight for peace and I’ll tell you that my dreams are alive.
Tell me a war for no war is dignified and I’ll tell you a dance without movement is beautiful.
My dreams are beautiful because they are not sorrowful.
A child who’s seen peace sweep past their home
Their dreams are held in their mind alone.”
I had this stanza in poem because it was another stanza. I read my poem over and over trying to figure out what was wrong and a figured out that it was all repetitive. Poems can have repetition, but my poem wasn't supposed to have the kind of repetition that just says the same thing in different ways. I was getting feedback on the fact that my poem was too wordy. It definitely improved my poem by making it clear and punctual.
The biggest change I made was going from dance to spoken word. While I was rehearsing my dance, I kept over thinking the dance I had created. Adding dance moves in that I hadn't choreographed and forgetting some of the most meaningful ones made me rethink what my performance would look like to my audience. After I made my choice and practiced the spoken word I started becoming more and more proud of what I had written, which made my performance all the better. Changing to a spoken word made me more confident in my ability to write and I feel like that really showed when I performed it.
In the beginning of this project I had a lot of different ideas for a perspective. My ideas were scattered and unrefined; once I did start focusing my perspective it became clear that my poem didn't reflect it back to me. I finally figured out that my poem was fine, but my perspective still wasn't as solid as I wanted it to be. It was actually a historical show that I watched about Rome that made me realize what I needed my perspective to be. However, my perspective no longer went with the entirety of my poem no matter what lines I tried changing. I was struggling so much with trying to make my perspective show that I finally, basically ripped my poem apart and put it back together with little parts of my new, refined perspective. Once I was able to integrate my perspective I needed to get a lot of peer critiques to get rid of parts of my poem that were not benefiting the message. After the peer critiques, I started writing a brand new poem, while taking all of the things my friends said into account. My final poem definitely showed my message off in an intelligent and emotional way.
The biggest edit and challenge that I faced while writing my poem was letting go of lines that I liked but made my perspective confusing. An example of a line that I enjoyed but had to get rid of was, “No saving the cynical.” Taking this line out of my poem gave me more freedom because I was so focused on that line and trying to make it work with my message. Those four words made my perspective into something that didn't make any sense to me, as the writer. After I got rid of lines like that one, I was able to narrow my poem down to the lines that enhanced my perspective and made it stand out.
Another problem that I had was my perspective on the length of my poem. I kept on putting whole stanzas into my poem so that it would get longer and longer. One of the stanzas that I put in and took back out once I started cleaning my poem up was,
“Tell me you fight for peace and I’ll tell you that my dreams are alive.
Tell me a war for no war is dignified and I’ll tell you a dance without movement is beautiful.
My dreams are beautiful because they are not sorrowful.
A child who’s seen peace sweep past their home
Their dreams are held in their mind alone.”
I had this stanza in poem because it was another stanza. I read my poem over and over trying to figure out what was wrong and a figured out that it was all repetitive. Poems can have repetition, but my poem wasn't supposed to have the kind of repetition that just says the same thing in different ways. I was getting feedback on the fact that my poem was too wordy. It definitely improved my poem by making it clear and punctual.
The biggest change I made was going from dance to spoken word. While I was rehearsing my dance, I kept over thinking the dance I had created. Adding dance moves in that I hadn't choreographed and forgetting some of the most meaningful ones made me rethink what my performance would look like to my audience. After I made my choice and practiced the spoken word I started becoming more and more proud of what I had written, which made my performance all the better. Changing to a spoken word made me more confident in my ability to write and I feel like that really showed when I performed it.
Globalization Op-Ed Project
Project Reflection
In this project, students learned about what globalization was by reading articles like Jihad vs. McWorld by Benjamin R. Barber and a section of the book Lexus and The Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman. Globalization is the spread of American culture through the world. Students also learned about topics such as NAFTA and The Race to the Bottom. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was made to create free trade with very little regulation and restrictions (employee benefits, wages, environmental laws) between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The Race to the Bottom is a term used to describe what countries do in order to get companies to put a factory in their country. Countries will lower wages, restrict unions, ask for a very small percentage of money that the company gets, and lower environmental laws. After learning this, students chose their own topics that had to do with globalization and researched that topic in order to write an Op-Ed and draw a political cartoon about their perspective.
After doing this project, my perspective on Americanization has become stronger, and my new knowledge has made it so that I understand what I think much more than I used to. I am against globalization because it takes culture away from peoples, makes people live less than a dollar a day in third world countries, and pollutes the Earth. There are free trade agreements all around the world that makes this possible, and because of these agreements companies want to find the country that is willing to do what ever they want, and I think that is wrong. Companies shouldn't be looking for countries who will neglect their people, but who will treat them right. However, companies don't want to do this because they lose money paying the employees and their products create such bad waste that they need to go somewhere that will not care about toxins being dumped onto their land.
The first draft of the cartoon I did was very rough. I had my own personal notes on it and when people were critiquing it they had no idea what was going on. I learned how to put irony in my cartoon by making a rich person represent Mexico and making "thugs" represent the United States. My perspective was very clear in my final draft where in my first draft it wasn't even there.
This writing was different than other pieces of writing I have done because it had to be short. I had to learn how to get to the point in the beginning of the Op-Ed and I had to think more about who my audience was. An Op-Ed is like an article that would go into a magazine, or a newspaper. I had to focus my writing in a way that anyone of any age that can read would understand. This type of writing will help me because it is factual and I am used to writing in a more artistic style.
My challenge extension was more of a challenge than I expected it to be. I created my own and once I started I realized that I took on too much work. I advocated to my teacher and told him that I was struggling with it and we changed it to something that would be much easier for me. In doing this I over estimated the amount of time that I would have to complete it. I did not finish in time and asked for an extension. However, I am proud of the work that I did.
In this project, students learned about what globalization was by reading articles like Jihad vs. McWorld by Benjamin R. Barber and a section of the book Lexus and The Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman. Globalization is the spread of American culture through the world. Students also learned about topics such as NAFTA and The Race to the Bottom. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was made to create free trade with very little regulation and restrictions (employee benefits, wages, environmental laws) between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The Race to the Bottom is a term used to describe what countries do in order to get companies to put a factory in their country. Countries will lower wages, restrict unions, ask for a very small percentage of money that the company gets, and lower environmental laws. After learning this, students chose their own topics that had to do with globalization and researched that topic in order to write an Op-Ed and draw a political cartoon about their perspective.
After doing this project, my perspective on Americanization has become stronger, and my new knowledge has made it so that I understand what I think much more than I used to. I am against globalization because it takes culture away from peoples, makes people live less than a dollar a day in third world countries, and pollutes the Earth. There are free trade agreements all around the world that makes this possible, and because of these agreements companies want to find the country that is willing to do what ever they want, and I think that is wrong. Companies shouldn't be looking for countries who will neglect their people, but who will treat them right. However, companies don't want to do this because they lose money paying the employees and their products create such bad waste that they need to go somewhere that will not care about toxins being dumped onto their land.
The first draft of the cartoon I did was very rough. I had my own personal notes on it and when people were critiquing it they had no idea what was going on. I learned how to put irony in my cartoon by making a rich person represent Mexico and making "thugs" represent the United States. My perspective was very clear in my final draft where in my first draft it wasn't even there.
This writing was different than other pieces of writing I have done because it had to be short. I had to learn how to get to the point in the beginning of the Op-Ed and I had to think more about who my audience was. An Op-Ed is like an article that would go into a magazine, or a newspaper. I had to focus my writing in a way that anyone of any age that can read would understand. This type of writing will help me because it is factual and I am used to writing in a more artistic style.
My challenge extension was more of a challenge than I expected it to be. I created my own and once I started I realized that I took on too much work. I advocated to my teacher and told him that I was struggling with it and we changed it to something that would be much easier for me. In doing this I over estimated the amount of time that I would have to complete it. I did not finish in time and asked for an extension. However, I am proud of the work that I did.
Africa Creative Historians Project
Reflection
The African Creative Historians Project was a humanities project where students were asked to write a historical fiction short story on events that happened in the continental Africa. At the beginning of the project we learned about imperialism in Africa and studied imperialism in Nigeria. Once all of the basics were learned students were asked to choose a country to research and write a short story about. In the writing process we researched the country history, imperialism in the country, conduct interviews with people who have been to the country, and learn how to write about Africa.
My strongest literary skill would have to be perspective. I find that I am really good at putting my characters thoughts and feelings into my writing. One part of my story where I feel like this comes out really strong is when my main girl gets angry and starts yelling at her loved one and she thinks to herself, “Please stay. I’ve been alone so long. He's not responding. He's not responding. Why? Why? Why?! No Dayo stay. I need him. Hold me. Talk Dayo. Talk. Talk. Respond to me! Dayo! Respond!” I believe that this really is powerful because it portrays the panic that my character exhibits when she realizes that she is alone.
I think that my weakest skill in writing this particular story was plot. I had a really good grasp on my characters and my setting, it was just really hard for me to put it all together to make a story. I really had to think about what was going to happen next to make the climax stronger instead of just writing which is what I usually do. I still believe that it could have been much better if I had just written the whole story out and didn’t over think what I was writing.
The biggest revision I made was the details that my story was missing because I did not have the information that I needed when I finished my first draft was done. One part of my story where this refinement helped me was when Adanna was brought to the hospital, “When they got to CHU Tokoin Hospital he walked her into the room, there were beds everywhere. Each with different blankets covering the hard thin blue mattresses. Almost all of the beds had people curled up onto them. Some people cried, some were telling stories, some where sleeping, dreaming. The wall was a pale green color with windows lined up, so linearly. White shades were pulled back shining light on patients who covered their eyes from the brightness.”
My strongest literary skill would have to be perspective. I find that I am really good at putting my characters thoughts and feelings into my writing. One part of my story where I feel like this comes out really strong is when my main girl gets angry and starts yelling at her loved one and she thinks to herself, “Please stay. I’ve been alone so long. He's not responding. He's not responding. Why? Why? Why?! No Dayo stay. I need him. Hold me. Talk Dayo. Talk. Talk. Respond to me! Dayo! Respond!” I believe that this really is powerful because it portrays the panic that my character exhibits when she realizes that she is alone.
I think that my weakest skill in writing this particular story was plot. I had a really good grasp on my characters and my setting, it was just really hard for me to put it all together to make a story. I really had to think about what was going to happen next to make the climax stronger instead of just writing which is what I usually do. I still believe that it could have been much better if I had just written the whole story out and didn’t over think what I was writing.
The biggest revision I made was the details that my story was missing because I did not have the information that I needed when I finished my first draft was done. One part of my story where this refinement helped me was when Adanna was brought to the hospital, “When they got to CHU Tokoin Hospital he walked her into the room, there were beds everywhere. Each with different blankets covering the hard thin blue mattresses. Almost all of the beds had people curled up onto them. Some people cried, some were telling stories, some where sleeping, dreaming. The wall was a pale green color with windows lined up, so linearly. White shades were pulled back shining light on patients who covered their eyes from the brightness.”