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globalitportfolio-olivia-blog · 5 years

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My Letter to you

Dear Dr. Shea,

My reading goals this semester were to increase my reading rate by three pages/hour, read a war book or ⅔ of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and to read 15-20 minutes before I went to bed, after my homework. I did increase my reading rate by three pages and I did read every night whether it be my Ap World History textbook or an a actual book. What I did not accomplish was my goal to read most of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I read one of the books but I wanted to focus more on the African style books as this was our theme for the third quarter. I have been very interested in learning more about the World Wars and so one book I read about World War II was The Hiding Place written by Corrie ten Boom, about her own war story and how she helped many Jews. The main thing that helped me actually achieve my goals was the passion I have for this subject and this pushed me to read things like the Hiding Place and watch things like Schindler's List. My writing goals this semester were to use more emotion which was the same as what I was going to do as a risk, write three pages in my notebook on the weekend, and to improve my grammar and sentence structure. I accomplished writing with more emotion and using better grammar and sentence structure, however most of the times I did not write in my notebook as often as I said I would. Even though I did not write as much, I wrote more reflections on the things I read and watched as I said previously. I also began to add small illustrations to many of the things I printed out or the pages I felt just needed more to them. Something that helped me achieve my goals was to write or print out things that actually had meaning to them or that I was interested in, such as my reflections on things I was learning in Biology, my movie reflections, or printing out things like song lyrics. The same thing that helped me achieve my reading goals also motivated me as a writer because if I was reading or watching something I was invested in I would be able to encourage myself to use my emotions in writing. I feel like in order to grow as both a reader and a writer I need to look at is as a cycle maybe, if I read or watch something intriguing or confusing then I will be more compelled to write in more depth and start questioning things more.

Often after I watched something I would use my writer's notebook as a way to reflect on what I had just watched and doing that helped me to actually think about the things I had been watching instead of just binge watching things with no purpose. I also used my notebook to have a place where I could put the lyrics of a song I was listening to at the time or to draw/doodle when I wanted to have my notebook be more creative. The reflections played a big part in my growth as a writer because it forced me to go more in depth than I normally do with my writing, and as I briefly mentioned earlier, to think about what I was watching and reading but also to read and watch pieces that made me think.

My Pop Culture Analysis was done on the movie The Help which I titled You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important. Through this analysis I discussed the theme of racism with the thesis being that; This movie shows the struggles black people went through even 100 years after emancipation from slavery. The main theme of this movie is the pro-racism that still existed after slavery in the southern parts of America but it also connects to family and community. I would say that I excelled in my thesis and the way I put my ideas onto paper. Although I had to revise my thesis, my final thesis developed a good argument for the rest of my paper. I could have done better with my cinematic analysis. In this essay I just analyzed the story line and did not really go into depth with the kinds of shots, angles, or lighting that was used in the movie.

In my Cry the Beloved Country in-class essay I sought to discuss the ways racism is treated in this novel, and answer how the different characters address it and/or try to eradicate it. My main argument in this book was to show the portrayal of the apartheid of racial struggles and crime that was going on in Johannesburg in 1948. Black vs. white crime was very common and this book shows just one case of it happening. Often when reading this book the question “If roles were reversed and Arthur had been the one to shoot Absalom, under the same circumstance, would the consequence be the same?” The characters in this book go through many changes but they all still have their thoughts and own experiences on racism. In this essay I excelled at using resources from the book to support my argument, specifically quotes and character relationships. This can be seen when I used a quote in this section of my essay: James Jarvis never really understood what his son was doing but after he died and found the book he was writing I think he began to understand or at least try to. "But I wish now that I'd known more of him. You see, the things that he did, I've never had much to do with that sort of thing," book two, page 20. I could have done much better with developing my conclusion. My original conclusion “Now to answer the question I asked earlier, I think that if Absalom had been shot instead there would not have been much attention brought to the case because as a white man Arthur was given the benefit of the doubt and people wouldn’t want to cause a scandal. With the death of Arthur we get to see the changes that Jarvis goes through, that most likely wouldn’t have happened if his son was still alive. The vast differences between Arthur and James help us understand the apartheid better and the efforts people made to eradicate it.” In order to make this better I needed to refer back to my thesis and I deleted unnecessary sentences and created stronger sentence structures.

The poem I did was using the Sijo format which is typically three lines in english and three lines repeated just in another language. The title of my poem is Day By Day, and it is about the beauty of sunsets. I chose the topic of sunsets/sunrises because they’re such a beautiful portrayal of God’s work and it’s something I’ve come to greatly appreciate over the last couple of years. My first draft felt very plain and empty to me and so I decided to add the other part of the Sijo style, writing the poem in two languages, which in my case I used French. I feel like this is my strongest part of the poem because it adds more depth to it, and especially because it’s so short it makes the poem look more interesting. The biggest part of my poem I had to work on was adding more detail. From my rough draft my peers suggested that I added more detail or use better, more descriptive words. In my Persepolis In-Class essay I began with … Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself” (Marji’s grandmother on page 150, panel 6.) In the graphic novel, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, the author portrays the theme of family through the graphic novel feature of captions which shows a relationship with her grandmother and her uncle. This introduction was my biggest strength of the essay as it began with a hook that related to the theme I was discussing and it included a strong thesis. I wanted to explore how Marjane Satrapi uses captions to develop relationships between Marji and her family. Throughout this essay I used many quotes and passages from the book that would best help me develop my argument but one thing I needed to fix/ add was one more example to the end of one of my main arguments and create a better conclusion. Doing this would have created a more solid argument and adding more to my conclusion would have wrapped up my essay well.

I did my book talk on The Dream Keeper and other Poems by Langston Hughes. In order to hook my audience I started off with a quote then talked about the artist. This is the first part of my book talk; Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die, Life is a broken-winged bird, That cannot fly. This was one of the first poems that this author wrote while he was just bored in class. The author of this collection of poetry was an a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and a great poet, activist, novelist and playwright. One of the earliest innovators of the art form called Jazz poetry. I chose this book because I wanted to explore the African-American genre of poetry because of the rich cultural history it has. I think that I was most strong in talking about the author and the background of this book as I explained some of the historical context behind it. I could work on hooking my audience better because the way I did it wasn't too captivating. If I were to do this project again I would probably pick a book with an actual plot and main character because although I enjoyed discussing this book and the poems that I liked the most, it was hard to discuss what happens in the book when it has no plot.

I did my One-Pager on the The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta. This book shows traditional Nigerian customs in a small Igbo village and the influence the colonizers had on their land, as seen through the eyes of a young teenage girl encircled with the tribal customs. On my One-Pager I think I portrayed the setting, themes, and summary in a creative yet neat way with color to add creativity to the project. I could have made this project better by organizing my thoughts better and maybe adding more detail. If I were to do this again I would keep the same book because really enjoyed reading it but I would try to add more quotes and detail to the project because I would want my audience to get a better review of the book.

For my quarter three B project, the cultural artifact, I created a collage of African proverbs and placed them on top of a selection of African cloth. Cloth is a very symbolic thing of Africa for me because I have done sewing and cloth markets were seen daily in Nigeria. Proverbs are a big part of African culture and history as they are a portrayal of wisdom. My strengths of this project were that the African culture was portrayed well through the cloth and proverbs. My weaknesses were that I did not spend enough time putting the things together so some of the proverbs and cloth were coming apart. If I were to do this again I would describe some of the proverbs meanings and spend more time on putting the items together, because that was one of my weaknesses. Something rewarding about completing this was the overall look of it because the fusion of multiple African clothes looked nice with the added culture of the proverbs.

For my quarter four B project I put together a collection of poems. I used two of my own poems, one about sunsets, one about goodbyes, two French poems and one American poem. One of the French poems was the song “Do You Hear the People Sing,” from Les Miserables, and I also used a picture portraying the French Revolution, and two poetry analysis from the poems we did in class. My strengths with this project are that I used many pictures to help the visuals of the poems, and that I used more poems than necessary from around the world. I would change the analysis to different poems from the ones I did in class to the ones I used from around the world so that I would better learn how to analyze a poem. Something rewarding of this project was the visual effects on the project because you could see that the whole thing wasn’t just words, but something that frustrated me was that I didn’t have a picture for some of the pieces I did which would have assisted the look of the poem.

The A project I completed was the Poetry Slam/Memorization. I memorized a poem by Langston Hughes, the same author I used for my book talk. This poem was titled Harlem and through it the author was trying to portray the dreams he has for life and the struggles with fulfilling them. His work is very inspirational so I chose this poem because although some of the phrasing is different he still shows a strong message. My strengths of this poem were that I was actually able to memorize this poem and recite it, which is a big fear of mine. My weakness would be that I read too fast. If I were to do this again I would take my time reciting it and I would add more emotion so that I could better portray Langston Hughes message.

I think the artifact that best shows excellence this semester would be my peer-reviewed poem, in which I got a distinctive. Through this short three line poem I was able to add depth, with the French section, detail by using descriptive words to make it ‘vivid’. The poem style I used was the Sijo and I followed the format well by making it only three lines and having it repeated in another language.

Day by Day

Sunrise, Sunset

The golden morning and the afterglow of the evening.

One waking us to a new day, the other putting the day to sleep.

Au jour le jour

Lever du soleil, Coucher du soleil

Le matin d'or et la lueur du soir.

L'un se réveillant à une nouvelle journée, l'autre s'endormant.

I demonstrated growth through the Socratic Seminars and TQE group discussions. The first few times of doing the seminars I never really put a lot of thought into what I was saying and I would only provide one or two comments each time. As we did this more though I started becoming more confident in giving comments and more specifically asking questions. A big part of gaining more confidence to participate was taking time to takes notes and me actually wanting to find out something in what we were reading. The smaller TQE discussions were the best for me because it was just a small group of us focused on a certain section and speaking during that time felt like a normal conversation between friends, just with some intelligence. One of my Thoughts: At first it seemed odd to me that the Umuofians were excited for the locusts to come because I was thinking of the harm they would bring to the crops. When they started talking about catching them I realized they were for eating, and because the coming of the locusts was such a rare thing it made the event even more exciting. After it rains you often see those insects with wings all over the ground and in Nigeria we called them ‘Shinge’ and once people collect them the Shinge would be fried and they would just be carried around as snacks. One of my Questions: Why did the village leaders decided to kill Imefuka? And my Epiphanies: One of the questions from last week was about Okonkwo’s character and as I’ve kept reading his character has revealed that he actually does care for his family and he’s not “heartless.” Also there is a very strong belief in witchcraft and spirits in Nigeria and Chielo can be seen as a symbol of the culture in Umuofia.

One of the things I wanted to take a risk in this semester was to use more emotion/ depth in my writing. I think this is portrayed well through the reflections I wrote on Narnia: Prince Caspian, and Downton Abbey. My Narnia reflection: I just watched Narnia because I wanted to procrastinate even more and um...Prince Caspian! The first thing I realized especially this time watching it was how similar the story line is to Jesus coming to Earth. Prince Caspian blows the horn and the four come to “save,” the Narnians. The second thing is how that first battle scene is so devastating! It kills me everytime when the big guy goes under the gate to hold it up for everyone and as if that wasn’t bad enough they start shooting arrows at him! Also wow I didn’t remember that so many Narnians were locked inside...how sad! Oh and we can’t forget about the white witch who’s a metaphor of sorts for satan and we can see Caspian being tempted, but then regrets it. But the best and saddest part of the whole movie, in my opinion, is the song ‘The Call’ at the end. That’s the biggest tearjerker ever! Despite the fact that this reflection was written probably sometime around midnight and it’s very simple writing I feel like this still shows risk taking because it was one of the first reflections I had done in my notebook and I opened up how I felt about the movie.

I already discussed Persepolis and Cry, the Beloved Country but I would say that both of those books challenged me to look at situations from different viewpoints like Marji vs. soldiers during that time, or in Cry white vs. black men. Persepolis didn’t really disappoint me at all because it was such a new genre to me I was to invested in learning about her culture and how it was portrayed through a graphic novel. In Cry, the Beloved Country I really thought that the son would be set free after so much time that his father, the Reverend, had spent looking for him so I was disappointed when he was hung. Even though that was disappointing it still brought one of the greatest reconciliations in the book which was between Jarvis and the Reverend on the valley hill. The Breadwinner was similar to Persepolis but it really showed the life of women during that time of war, in depth compared to Persepolis.

I read Things Fall Apart which follows the adult like of Okonkwo and his family and tribe in Umuofia. Okonkwo is a young influential leader in the village of Umuofia who always strives to be seen as strong. Through this book we see traditional customs and culture before and during the time that colonizers came to Nigeria. Some of the major themes seen in this book are pride, masculinity, and change and tradition. In this book Chinua Achebe incorporates traditional Nigerian proverbs which help add culture to the book. Some of these proverbs are "Proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten" and "When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for walk," and many more. As we did a TQE session every week I had to take notes and think of questions or things that stood out to me in whatever section of the book we were reading. This was challenging for me because it forced me to read in detail and not just skim to get the basic information. Through doing this I was able to appreciate the beauty of this book even though it talks about some uncomfortable things, one of those being when Okonkwo drank palm wine out a persons head that he had just defeated. *SPOILER ALERT* I was disappointed with the way Chinua Achebe killed off some of the most important people like Ikemefuna and Okonkwo, without giving a very good explanation. Although those were disappointing I really liked the character development of Okonkwo, who we could see started caring more for his family. This is a very rich book with many lessons and traditional beliefs, social/gender norms, and the hardships of being “successful.” I would recommend this book to anyone interested in West African culture and how it changed when the “white men” came to their country.

Persepolis was my favorite book because I was able to explore a new genre. Not only was this a new genre for me, graphic novel, I learned more about the Middle East and the history it has had with all the conflict and religion vs. politics.

My least favorite book was Cry, the Beloved Country because I felt as if I didn’t have enough time to read and think through the book as I was more focused on doing Socratic Seminars and getting a good grade. This year I have explored new genre and grown as a reader because of it. I will read differently from before by reflecting on the things I read because I want to be able to answer questions better and take my time doing things.

In class I participate more through the group activities such as TQE discussions than answering questions. I would say I was strong in my participation though because I prompted others in my groups to think by asking meaningful questions. I could improve by answering more often in class and sharing more of the things I have written and shared the books I have read.

I have improved greatly through my writer's notebook and creativity through my projects, such as the cultural artifact. I have also improved on my book/TV show reviews as I have learned to analyze things in a new, better way. I was challenged this quarter through the analyzation of things because although it was something I improved on I really had difficulties using film terms, etc. to describe things in a movie or book.

My favorite activities were the Socratic Seminars. I enjoyed doing these because I was able to hear my peers thoughts about whatever section of a book we had just read and it is important to get different viewpoints.

I would say the main thing I have learned about myself is that if I have enough confidence in either my writing or participating in class I will do much better. Once I had confidence in my notes for class discussions I was participating and learning much more. Through my writing once I just started writing good ideas would start to flow and sometimes they don’t come write away but this class has encourage me to write more often and more in depth.

My Things Fall Apart group helped me the most because we learned how to work together and make our projects the best they could be. Through working together for Things Fall Apart we also helped each other with other projects and pieces for this class like the peer-reviewed poem and the poetry packet.

I would say I helped my Things Fall Apart group because it was a group effort in trying to help each other as much as possible. The same ways in which they helped me, I also tried helping them. We worked together on the book activities well and we all put in effort in the TQE discussions which made reading the book more interesting.

I think that I earned an A in this class because I have put extra effort into all the work I have done through doing extra credit like turning things early, doing revisions when I need to improve something like on both of my in-class essays, and putting extra work to make my projects look beyond expectations like what I did with my cultural artifact and my poetry packet. I feel like I have met all the expectations to have an A in this class and I hope that it will be demonstrated that way through my Digital Portfolio.

For future classes I would suggest spreading out the due date for projects because although we were often given a long time to complete the projects most things were due around the same time and it created extra stress.

Sincerely,

Olivia Pederson

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