Henry

Taahir Henry

Reflection: I feel like my portfolio shows how diverse the projects were in my freshmen year. We had essays, podcasts, memoirs, and journal entries. After viewing my portfolio viewers will have learned things about the books we were assigned as a class. It will show how the projects that I did varied. One of my strengths in english is the being able to read things and get a strong understanding of what they mean. I also do well with learning vocabulary. One of my greatest weaknesses is the fact that I usually procrastinate when it comes to doing projects. That is something that I really need to work going into sophomore year because I know that the work assigned next year will be more difficult and more time consuming. This portfolio project was straight forward. I took my work from different quarters in the year and revised them. Then I posted them on my wikispace. The only issues that I faced when doing this portfolio was knowing what to do to improve some of my previous projects. Other than correcting some of my grammar I just tried to make certain things more interesting. The piece that I am most proud of is the one point thesis that I did on Kindred. It was the first time I had ever done a one point thesis and I received one of my highest benchmark grades on it.

The Odyssey After reading Homer's The Odyssey we had to write a 5 paragraph essay using a three point thesis.

There will always be larger, more powerful people interacting with other people for better or worse. In The Odyssey there are many situations like this. The relationships between the gods and the mortals vary. Some gods are there to help the mortals. Others are there just to cause complications and pain. The interactions between the mortals and the gods often negatively affect the mortals. Poseidon pushes Odysseus entirely off course, Calypso holds Odysseus in the cave against his will, and Odysseus is assisted by Ino, the Water Goddess.

The god Poseidon hated Odysseus. Poseidon is responsible for initially driving Odysseus off course from Ithaca. He hates Odysseus for blinding his son Polyphemus. Odysseus believed that Zeus was to blame for his misfortunes. However, It was actually Poseidon, who was acting alone. The other gods have no hatred towards him. Homer writes "No, its the earth-shaker, Poseidon, unappeased forever fuming against him for the cyclops whose eye he blinded." Line 81 page 79. The reason that Odysseus blinded Polyphemus was because he was trapped in the cave and he needed to escape or else Polyphemus would have eaten him.

Odysseus met the lustrous goddess Calypso in her arching caverns. She held him in her cave against his will. “Calypso, the bewitching nymph, and the lustrous goddess, held him back, deep in her arching caverns, craving him for a husband.” Line 17-19 page 78. She held him in her cave for seven years. Eventually she let him leave, but she asked him to stay. He longed to leave for his homeland, but he still decided to stay with her for an extra night. This proves that not all of the interactions between the gods are negative. After being shipwrecked by Poseidon Odysseus finds himself in a critical situation.

He is then approached by the ocean goddess, Ino, who offers him help. The goddess Ino rose out of the sea to give odysseus a tool that would help him along his journey. “ With that, the goddess handed him the scarf and slipped back in the heavy breaking seas like a shearwater once again and a dark heaving billow closed above her”( Line 387-390, page 163.) This is additional proof that the Gods do not wish to only cause hardship and misery for the mortals.

The fact that Odysseus was aided by Ino and hindered by Poseidon and Calypso shows that the Gods like to interfere with the lives of mortals. Poseidon attacked Odysseus, Calypso Odysseus, and Ino helped save his life. The interactions between the gods and the mortals aren’t always bad. They are sometimes positive, but in a lot of cases the mortals end up being killed, hurt, or generally disadvantaged. However ; not all of the gods are out to cause trouble. People who are larger, stronger, faster, or smarter aren’t always out to get other people. The odyssey contains important lessons that can be related to our everyday life.

Memoir Vignette media type="file" key="T-HenryQ4 BM ENGLISH.mp3" width="240" height="20"

After reading Freedom writers we wrote our on memoirs as a class. We learned how to use literary devices and used them for our second quarter benchmark. Three schools in three years Magic 3 Hyperbole Opener Simile Repetition for effect Metaphor Humor/dialogue

__I didn’t always go to public school__. I thought it was normal to have a class with less than 15 people. After all, it was always like that for me and everyone else that I had went to school with. I knew everyone there and I felt completely comfortable with everyone in the school. There were a lot of things that I didn’t know about that happened in other schools. I never really put much thought into what other schools were like. I just assumed that they would be like the schools I saw on TV. __There would be an incredibly boring teacher, a room full of kids, and a giant chalkboard at the front of the room.__ Of course I wouldn’t be able to stay in the same school forever. __I tried not to think about the same way an old person tries not to think about dying.__

The school that I was currently going to at the time stopped at 5th grade. I knew that one day I’d have to start a going somewhere else. __Should I have been scared, sad, or happy that I was going to a new school?__ I guess I had all of these emotions but never realized it until the first day at my new school. I mean it was huge compared to my old school. __The classrooms were big, they had actual lockers, and every class had at least twenty-four students. My first thoughts were what would my class be like, would the teachers be really boring, and most importantly, would I fit in?__ Well I did start to fit in until like the second month of school. Class work wasn’t really that difficult for me, because most of the stuff was just review from things that I had last year. __One thing that I did like is that this school seemed like it fit the general description of an actual school__. __They had lockers, almost all of the teachers were boring, and we got the same government lunch that every other school got__. Even though it was a private school.

Everything was going well until I started getting into trouble. I’d say sixth grade would be the worst year for me behavior wise. Yea I was socializing and meeting new people, but it came at an expense. I constantly got in trouble for talking or being somewhat distractive to the people around me. I got into two fights and almost got into a third. I had hit a kid in the face because he was bothering me, but it was mainly out of reflex. I remember pushing someone on the floor while they were still in their desk because they had made me angry and it escalated into a fight. Another time I was thrown out of class for hitting someone with a paper ball.

I didn’t think I was bad, but my mom wasn’t use to hearing about me misbehaving in school. The more I got in trouble the worse the punishments would be. __I was probably on punishment from the time I first spoke in class all the way up until the end of the school year.__ After a while I didn’t really care about getting in trouble. I didn’t want to get in trouble but I wasn’t as surprised when I did. I told my mom that I hated the school and I asked if I could change schools. She actually listened and I went to Renaissance charter for the seventh grade.

I was once again going to be the new kid, but at least I knew one person that went there. It was my old friend that I first met in kindergarten. The government funded this school completely so my mom paid nothing, which made her happy. I took an interview to get in and it went pretty well. __The principal was pretty cool; the school was a giant castle, and there was a gigantic campus to run around on.__ When September rolled around I was not ready to go back. I was really sick, but I wasn’t sure what I had. My mom thought that I was making my self-sick on purpose, which made her extremely angry.

In September the school was nothing like I had previously imagined it to be. __The classrooms smelled like a pair of sweaty socks__. On the first day we were lead to a huge gym/auditorium. We were told about the things that were going to happen that year like important class trips and events that will be taking place at the school. After the 30-minute lecture we were introduced to our teachers. I guess the teachers tried to inspire us with the same talk in every class. I still remember my math teacher saying “ If you don’t study, do your work and hand it in on time your going to fail, you don’t want to tank your grade.” she meant fail. In every class failure, detention, and suspension were all repeatedly mentioned. When I heard this I automatically believed that the classes would be difficult and that I didn’t have a chance. I can still remember begging my mom for a transfer. __She said stop being a baby, before you know it the school year will be almost over__

I instantly knew that I hated this school. __The hours were long, the teachers were mean, and the building sucked__. I wasn’t worried about getting in trouble because I was always trying to go to sleep at the beginning of the year. There was a lot of moving around, because we had at least one class on each floor. I hated the constant moving, every time one class ended it felt like __I had to walk up or down what seemed like hundreds of stairs.__

Every class pretty much looked the same except for the weird paint job. __The ground floor was blue, the first floor was green, the second floor was purple, and the third floor was orange.__ After a while I started to like the school. The only thing that I never really got used to was the schedule. 8:15 to 3:45 every day five days a week. We got out really late compared to the other schools in the area, and this usually just caused problems for us. The school’s reading and math PSSA was well below average. The teachers weren’t certified and the kids didn’t really get much of an education.

I started to develop bad habits and my grades also started to drop. This convinced my mom that I was in the wrong school so once again I had to go to a new school the following year. __Renaissance eventually lost it’s a charter and had to be closed, so I would’ve had to leave anyway. What a surprise!__ The school that my mom chose for my eighth grade year was Henry H. Houston.

It was a neighborhood public school. It was one of the schools that caused problems at Renaissance. I figured that if I told the school that I came from then it would just cause problems. I knew that eventually someone was going to find out that I went to a rival school, but I wasn’t scared. I figured that if I stayed quiet then nothing would happen but it didn’t really work. __ On the first day of school I stuck out like sheep in a room full of wolves. No one knew who I was and I felt like I was sentenced to life without parole. __ The teacher told everyone my name and where I was from and instantly I became an enemy. I figured that I was going to get into a fight sooner or later, so I didn’t back down when told to shut up by a classmate. That was a huge mistake! We got into an argument that I thought was going to end in a fight. For some reason he decided to just drop the argument and that was it. I later found out that he had planned on jumping me with some friends. The only reason they didn’t was because I was I big. Its actually pretty funny to me because I thought that they decided there was no point in fighting me. I guess that I can look back at my 6th through 8th grade years and say that I learned two really important lessons. One being you should always stand up for yourself and the other thing is that I am completely responsible for my actions. You should remain who you are regardless of the environment, in this case the environment was the schools that I attended.

Kindred After reading Kindred we learned how to design and use a one point thesis in our writings. I used a one point thesis to describe the characteristics of Dana. It is normal for humans to be a little selfish when it comes to certain things. When people decide to do things it’s usually because it will benefit them in one way or another. On the other hand occasionally people just like to do things out of the kindness of their hearts. In the book __Kindred__ there are several different types of characters that range from being selfish and evil to almost completely selfless. Although on a surface level, Dana seems caring, she can be both selfless and selfish at times because she’s driven by a need to save herself and her family.

Dana can be compassionate and brave at times, like when she first met Rufus when he was a young boy. “I ran down to the river, waded into the water fully clothed, and swam quickly to the child” (Page 13). She was wiling to save someone she had never met before. She didn’t know what would happen if she swam out there but she still did. “Artificial respiration. I had seen it done, been told about it, but I had never done it” (page 13). This shows that Dana was willing to help this little boy. She had no clue what his name was or what was going to happen when she helped revive him. This was a completely selfless act, unlike some of the other things that she decided to do later on.

After Dana had realized whom she had saved. It gave her an incentive to continuously save him over and over again, until she got what she needed. “Hagar Weylin, born in 1831. Hers was the first name listed. And she had given her parents names as Rufus Weylin and Alice Green-something Weylin”(page 28). She needed Rufus to grow up so that he could have a child with Alice. The child named Hagar would need to be born in order for her family to be complete. Without Rufus to grow up Hagar would have never been born. So she had to watch over Rufus and make sure he didn’t get himself killed, or else Dana might have never been born. Sometimes Dana did have to put herself before Rufus in order to remain safe.“ Weylin went out the front door without another word to me and I followed, trying to remember how important it was to bandage broken ribs-that is, whether it was worth “talking back” to Weylin about (page 129). This is one way that shows how Dana was slightly selfish at times. She might have been risking Rufus’s health, but she decided that not being punished was more important. She was always willing to help but she was only going to go so far whether or not Rufus was going to be injured in some way. Eventually Dana would have to leave Rufus.

Dana really wanted her life back and she wasn’t sure on how to get it back. She no longer wanted to go back and forth between time periods.” All this started with him and, after all. I don’t know whether I need him or not. And I wont know until he’s not around”(page 247). Dana was trying to decide whether or not she would kill Rufus. She knows that if she kills Rufus that the slaves will be separated and sold away from each other. After she said that it seemed as though she was more concerned with her own safety rather than the lives of the slaves on the Weylin plantation. Dana had left Alice alone with Rufus when she felt desperate to go home. After being home for another short period of time she came back and found that Alice and Rufus had both done horrible things. “Where are her children? (page 249). This is what Dana said to Rufus when she saw that Alice had hung herself. Dana really did care about Alice, but at this point in time it seemed as though she was more concerned with what happened to the Alice’s children. She later found out that Rufus sold them. Sarah told her about what he had done to the children. Without Hagar Dana’s existence would be threatened. He had actually just sent them to Baltimore to live with his aunt. She couldn’t help Alice because she was already dead, but she tried to get Rufus to free all of his slaves in a will. Rufus figured that if he set his children and his slaves free that Dana could just kill him. In the end Dana did end up killing Rufus in self-defense after he set the children free.

Although on a surface level, Dana seems caring, her care is driven by a selfish nature to save herself and her family. She was only a little selfish because she actually did care about people other than herself. She tried to help Isaac and Alice escape. When she did this it was a kind act because she wanted Alice to be happy which wasn’t necessary for her to do. Most people would have done the same things that Dana did in her situation. What she did makes a lot of sense, but she might have been able to save more people if she did things a little differently.

Macbeth Creative project

For the Macbeth project I had to chose five quotes from Macbeth the book and analyze them. The quotes that were chosen had to somehow involve either lady Macbeth or Macbeth. For the creative piece I was allowed to chose a way to present what my quotes and analyses were about. I chose to do lady Macbeth. For my creative piece I showed how lady Macbeth changed from the begging of the book to the end of the book.



Four top journal entries

1) How does your environment shape you?

Your environment affects the way you view certain situations. They way you dress. Your environment affects your choice in religion. What your likes and dislikes are. It is up to the individual to make decisions about what they think is right or wrong. Your decisions will be affected by the type of environment your from.

2) How does childhood shape the way you are?

Your child hood can determine the way you are as an adult. Whether or not your have many family members present during your childhood could affect the way you behave socially. Your child hood can affect religious choices you make once you are an adult. Growing up with less family members around might a person to become more independent.

3) Free Write:

Some songs have deep meanings that might not make sense at first but after listening to them you get a better understanding of what the song is about. Other songs don't have much meaning at all. An example of a song that does have a deep meaning is Handlebars by Flobots. At first the song just seems pointless. This is because they were just talking about how the could ride a bike with no handle bars. After a couple of chorus lines they start mentioning more important things. From my understanding the song is about how everything that people do nowadays is a competition.

4) What is the power of writing?

Writing is an important way of communicating because; it can be easily stored, sent, and shared. Many people voice their thoughts and opinions through writing. Problems can be both caused and resolved with the use of writing. Writing is a great way of voicing your opinion.