Through out this year our class has explored plentiful amount of topic and themes that come up in our society today. Openly we expressed our understandings to these ideas through numerous ways as a class. We often took parts in role-playing, trials, competitions, advertising, poetry and much more. Since the year is winding down, I’ve come to some generalizations on our amazing year in Mr. Block’s class. Firstly, we are coming into our own, and I realized that expressing one’s self can lead you in the path of finding out whom you are. Second we have done a ton of collaboration and I can see that collaborating can help me tell my story. Overall Mr. block’s class has shown us to think openly to the world around us, and help us to find a deeper meaning in things we know and don’t yet understand.
Over our 10th grade year in History and English, expression of our selves was quite prominent in our assignments. One of the assignments created for our expressions was the evolvement in Art in the Open piece. The piece took place in a personally selected area, where our minds could be open to using everyday structures and objects to create movements that could show a new way of looking at the space. The process for creating this was difficult for my group and I, so I came to the general understanding about how express our selves
“…What helped me the most was letting my self go and not being afraid to make mistakes, but instead learn from them.” (moodle post on the art in the open experience)
The experience Leah Stein Dance Company gave my class and I was really generous. I’m grateful to have worked with such well-polished dancers and will not hesitate to join an opportunity like this again. Expression in the form of poetry was a big influences our year in 10th grade English and History. For example the somebodies poem that we had to write we got to express how we felt about people in power, and what stereotypes we have of people that our in power. As a class we came up with our own version of the poem.
“Who don’t speak dialects, but speak languages
Who don’t have superstitions, but have religions
Who don’t create handicrafts, but create art
Who don’t have folklore, but have culture
We all want to be somebodies
Are the somebodies really anything without you?”
(Moodle post of poem the “Sombodies”)
Through out our 10th grade year we explored other poetry techniques and found way to express our selves as we wrote them. Focusing on objects for the piece, I choose to write of the mirror. In the poem I didn’t just write what I saw, but I found a deeper meaning and then expressed it through out the poem. In one stanza I wrote,
dear to you,
the structure of the cheek,
the roundness of the nose,
the brownness of the eye,
(Mirror Poem poetry wiki)
It is very common to find pieces like this in our Poetry wiki, where we all collaborated in reading and editing each other’s work. So, while thinking back on the whole year the many ways we have decide to collaborate, decide things, and give deeper insight, gave us a way to express ourselves this year.
While 10th grade year had a bunch of individual projects, we did most of the work assigned to us by Mr. Block by collaborating. Not only did we collaboration help us it also gave us ways to express our story. As we moved along in the year we came across an assignment in our language unit of English. This assignment was to list and write out all our “Roles Rules and Responsibilities” that we either hear every day from someone in our lives.
“…this is how you introduce yourself to someone in power, with a firm handshake.”
(Roles Rules and Responsibilities moodle post)As I wrote, I could collaborate with my classmates as they too had similar lives, I would’ve never known that if I hadn’t worked along with them.
Art in the Open