Final Blog post

This year in English particularly I have had a positive experience I have read a lot and personally sometimes it was overwhelming to have to read 2 books in one night. Hamlet for me personally was the book that I gravitated towards, it was a positive experience for me reading it all because it was not cut and dry it had substance. The idea of doing blog posts instead of formal essays I think was a huge bonus for me personally. It also allowed me to enjoy what I was reading rather than worry about having to read it just to spew out an essay at the end of the book. It was refreshing for once to have an English teacher change things up in a genuine way; I feel that a lot of English teachers just try to spew out their curriculum and not be genuine in teaching it and that was not the case this year. In recent years I definitely read more in school just because of school assigned books and that I do other things outside of school like listen to music and watch movies. especially senior year because of all the activities that we want to take part in. I did feel that i had a certain level of control senior year English because of the independent reading and things like that. We coukld have watched more movies.

Final Blog Post

Throughout the year, I was delighted about doing the independent reading because it helped me learn about my preferences of books. I was really able to explore and read as I pleased without feeling like I was being forced to actually read one. It was a nice leisure from any actual school work. In school, I have never really been a big fan of English classes because we are forced to read books that we barely understand half of the time. I did not mind writing essays because I like the see different perceptions about the book. Simply not the actual book.

The books I read influenced my experience in a positive way because it helped me find what I enjoy and what I consider a good read. I have always liked reading but never had the time to do so. I’ve been occupied with many difficult tasks this year so having free time was a challenge for me. Doing this once a week helped me actually read a book that made me feel all types of emotions. It was a positive distraction from the stress of school this year.

I have definitely read a lot more this year due to me being able to expand the horizon. I was introduced to many books, in school and out of school by friends. I was shown many lovely poetry books that i really adored. Those books really changed my perspective on the world and opened my mind. My writing experience has felt more real because it is truly coming from my opinion and not a specific topic or book. It was more raw in a way, there was not necessarily any point to hit or a standard to be held to. Most of the time I was able to construct my thoughts out onto paper. Also with editing, because you took the time to talk to us personally and helped me understand what aspects my writing was lacking.

This year i felt like I definitely had more control over what I learned this year. The past years there was a strict curriculum, and I really liked my teachers the past years but it was just very boring. You gave me many options despite there being a set curriculum. This year felt a lot easier than the other years. The work was a lot more manageable. One thing i enjoyed was the book club but not the final project. It was kind of hard to not do a set project on a book that was boring. But overall I enjoyed the book club. I thought you did really well and I would not change anything about your curriculum. It was very simple and easy to handle with the whole year. Thank you for making me enjoy English this year and not making it stressful.

English class 2017

Tamara Raad                                                                                                                            Mrs. Black

English Honors class 2017    

          This year in English class we have done a lot. From new independent reading books, to blog post, and out of the box projects based on our group readings. We've done a lot and its helped me think outside the box. This year what I've taken away from English class will help me when I go off to school in the fall. Although I've become bad with on time work, I still get it done. But I know that I can not do that for college and getting a push from Mrs.Black helps me actually stop being lazy and get my work done. I've taken away many things from our English class that I will continue to use, like my diction and how to focus on the important things and how to use it towards my advantage, like reading The Handmaids Tale, my group took away what the significance of the book. But most importantly we asked ourselves why did the author write this story? Then think about how the main character and her life relates to our present time. That is how we came up with our project.

Throughout our English class this year we've made a lot of decisions and ultimately many of them did make an influence on me. For example with the journals on Friday, I liked them because they allowed me to take a break from everything else and seeing how we have English first period and allowed me to start my Fridays calmly. But most of all I like that we got to pick what we want to read and then we just have the period to read and write. I personally found it relaxing and it made me actually want to read rather than be on my phone. Having to read actually made me read more then what I normally would have to because with all the books we had at once made it a bit confusing at one point because having to remember various main characters at one time and doing group reviews with them and then after a certain period of time going back to our independent reading books, did make it difficult but if it wasn't for this class I personally wouldn't have bothered to pick up a book.

This year I would have to say my writing improved because with all the practices I get in our English class and also having to constantly write essays in Spanish class using our everyday English class outlines it helps me improve my grammar and the way I choose to describe the topic. But thats why I feel yes and no I did get a choice over what I wanted to write about because ultimately I was writing how I felt and my thoughts but there would be somethings like, our blog posts, I felt that sometimes they were just repetitive because it the same book and the same questions we have to answer and it makes it boring to have to rewrite basically the same thing over again. But if it was on various books like our book club books and then our independent reading books then it would have made me want to do more rather than less.

I personally have to say for once in high school,  I actually had an English teacher that made me want to write because if I wasn't thrown essay after essay in my last three years I would bother to like writing but I didn't, so that was something I liked the most about English. But also this year with the independent reading books it gave me that push to want to read. But if I could change anything it would have been me procrastinating and just giving up this year but also the whole focusing more on some people rather than focus on the whole class as a whole would have been better. No it is not favoritism, more so the way the discussion and how the class room's  mood would shift when one person would just start going off because of how they feel. But I feel like if we could have had a better one on one conversation and rather than have a conversation only about an assignment and discuss how the periods going to go I would have liked that better. But overall I wouldn't have changed our English class at all because I have to say this English class has been the most fun class I could have and especially based on writing and literature. No other teacher has made me want to read and write and think outside the box. So, thank you for allowing me to find out I liked writing some things and for allowing me to grow and explore to find the skills I didn't know I had until this year.

Final English Reflection

  Isaiah Quinones
  5/11/17

1:  Having the freedom of choice when it comes to doing various projects in the class gave a great positive impact on my work. The freedom of choice made me more accountable for the quality of my work as it was my executive decision alone on what i was to be doing my project on and not an every day assignment that was forced upon me. I loved the push for giving us many options for our projects as i felt more of a drive to complete them with my best  effort as it was something i became much more passionate about. I felt more creative as well when doing a project that i was able to choose the topic on or the actual project its self when in comparison to the generic projects that were given in the past such as freshmen year.

2: I was surprised at the ability for me to genuinely enjoy reading this year. Through both the books we read in class and our Friday personal reading books, i found great pleasure in reading books this year. The most time i found to enjoy reading came with our personal reading book for Fridays as the work that went along with it was not very taxing and actually helped me to comprehend the book as i was forced to comprehend my reading furthering my understanding of the novels in which i read. I did not however enjoy the blog posts as they did feel slightly repetitive when i did not finish my book and ended up with two blog posts for one book.

3: I have read more this year then any time in years past. From the Friday reading books to the multitude of books we had read in class and even at some points simultaneously, I was able to find a lot of time to get to read this year. This year gave me a new found love to literature even going as far as my self reading at home on my own.

4:  I felt that my writing experiences this year were very authentic as i wrote to prompts that i have never really experienced in the past. The creative writing piece where i continued the story for Laughter in the Dark which was very adventurous and tested my writing skills. I felt that every writing piece this year challenged my skill to write in a different way which kept it fresh. The re visionary period also gave me sufficient time to understand where i could improve and reflect. The feedback was also very detailed allowing me to truly improve my work from one essay to the next.

5:  I felt very in control of my learning experience this year by really getting out what i put in this year. The projects that gave great variation along with many options to choose from gave each student in the class the ability to choose how they would experience senior English. Examples of this would include this project right now, the poetry projects, the final Laughter in the Dark projects, and the final Oedipus and Antigone projects we had. If i had to choose one class project i felt went very well i would have to go with the final Laughter in the Dark assessment. I have never experienced this form of creative writing before in my life and you had encouraged my to try new things and test it out which resulted in what i felt was a very well crafted piece of work derived from trying new things. I never would have choose this own my own given the 5 other options, but this resulted in further developing my artistic creative writing ability which i was very happy with.

6: Most of the negative experiences this year came from most of the curriculum that you are forced to teach with some of the books being very slow and hard to get into like Hamlet. One major thing i would work to change is focusing on one thing at a time as reading multiple books at once and doing simultaneous projects senior year can become very overwhelming especially during the start of the year when we had scholarship essays to write and college applications and such. Overall i had a great experience this year and I loved having you as a teacher this year! keep being awesome.

  Love,

Isaiah Quinones

2016 English Reflection

Joey Dalicandro
Mrs.Black/ English
A-block



                 My senior English experience has been one of mixed emotion and feelings to say the least. Well for starters, this class was the first honors class I have taken in all my four years here. So simply put I was nervous. I was intimidated from the start of the very first class. I didn't know what to think or what to expect. All I knew was it would be different from what I was used to, and I was right.

               Choice. That was the major theme of this year. This is an idea that's new to me, and one that I had trouble adjusting to at first. Being a student that's been going through the Waltham Public school system for my whole life,  and I can honestly say I've never had this much freedom to make my own choices. Be that as it may I found myself struggling with this. I was so use to be being told what to write and how to write that It took awhile to break me out of this so called "spell" that I was in. We were taught ever since a young age to write in a particular formulaic way , this is what made it hard for me to write  once choice was presented to us. After a few months of class I still found myself still having issues with this, but by the time the year began to end ( like the past month or two ) I found myself getting more and more used to it. Though choice projects were getting to me, I found myself liking the whole idea of us choosing our own reading books. This I think, was a good way to get us more engaged in reading. Personally I am not much of a reader I must admit, but simply having a choice on what book to read actually made reading a much better experience for me. And believe it or not I actually found myself reading at home, which if you knew me , is pretty hard to believe. It's not like I hate reading or anything it's just I hate reading what teachers tell me to read. I enjoy biographies, I'm not one for sci-fi or fantasy. This why reading became more enjoyable, cause we got to read books that actually interest us. This is a pivotal reason for why I found myself reading more than the years in the past. Though not much, I did indeed read outside of school. Mostly when a blog was due but that's beside the point. Oh and speaking of reading, I actually liked reading every Friday. It was a nice and relaxing way to begin our Fridays, I used it as my time to unwind. I believe it would be a great thing to do next year with the class of '18. It is in my personal opinion that all Friday classes should begin with something like this.

           When it comes to writing, I think that everything went well this year. Most of our essays were a choice that we ourselves had to make, an aspect of this year I liked.  I believe writing is more authentic when we get to chose the topic. As students we tend to not follow directions well so us having a choice of either writing an essay or doing a creative work of our own. I also think that our advising experience was as close to authentic as possible. Be that as it may there were more than a few times we peer edited that didn't end up working in my favor. But the experience, though not entirely helpful, did feel very close to authentic. Why? Because we had close to all the control over our own writing and projects. And it doesn't get more real and authentic than that!!
        Though we did have control over what we learned in class, I don't believe I had a favorite project or topic. On contrary to that I didn't really have a favorite book either. In matter of fact, and to answer this honestly , I didn't really like any of the books at all. For starters I highly dislike Shakespeare. And I wasn't necessarily a fan of Laughter in the Dark either. Oh and I forget the first Story we read but I didn't really enjoy that either. Also I wasn't necessarily into my reading group book either. I picked it only cause It seemed less worse than the other options. In my opinion, for next year, you should let students bring in their own book. Like our independent reading! Oh and while I'm on the topic of suggestions I may have a few. Well to start I think you should cut back on the public speaking aspect of your lesson plan. I'm not alone when I say I hate presenting infront of the class. And I think its only fear that those few students out there like me should be aloud to opt out of that. Throughout the year I got many points taken away from me  simply cause I didn't present in front of my fellow peers. I don't believe that is fair at all. Also another suggestion I'll make for next year is that we shouldn't read as many books at once, like we did this year. I found myself overwhelmed at many points this year. Too much confusion stems from that. Well at least for me.
 



   

Final Reflection

Lindsey Johnson   

Final Post

Looking back at this years I would say I gained a positive experience from having a variety of choices within the classroom structure.  Having an option when it came to picking what book we wanted to read for book club or how we wanted to present a our literature whether it was in an essay or a project there was a lot of flexibility and it made it a little easier to have a role of control over what we were doing,  I do feel that with having choices it left room for a lot of interpretation, and at first it was difficult but I took a lot away from it and learned to work in a more advanced way.  

    Overall my favorite book this year was Laughter in the Dark, which we read in class.  I found that this was the most enjoyable book I read which took me a little bit by surprise because I feel that I never get excited over books chosen in school. (No offense!).  With independent reading at home I expected to enjoy it the most because that came with full freedom in choosing a book and when/how much I was reading at a time.  However, I learned that I work better with having an expected structure and I ended up not “ independent” reading as much as I hoped to because I didn’t make the time for it.  Also, as much as I find it difficult to get into a book that is chosen by a teacher, it is also very hard for me to find a book that I want to read by choice and follow-through with it.  But I hope to figure out what genre interests me most and expand my reading, that has become a real goal of mine.

    With that being said about independent reading combined with books assigned through school I can definitely say that I read more this year than any other year all together and my reading at home increased.  I specifically told myself that I really wanted to complete one book this year, no skipping chapters or skimming and I successfully did that with Laughter in the Dark, majority of this was done at home I believe.  I would say that aiming for this goal did for sure increase my reading at home and pushed me to do so.  

    Throughout the many pieces of writing that we were given I do feel that the reflection of my writing has improved from last year.  I noticed that my writing took a more personal perspective and it wasn’t so formal and structured.  I was able to share my opinion and explain my thoughts thoroughly so a lot of my writing felt more like my words rather than being given a prompt and only being able to answer the question based with evidence.  

    With being able to revise our writing, have independent reading, and choose what type of projects we wanted to present I definitely felt that I had a lot of control over my learning this year and perspective on English.  I will admit that I took advantage of such flexibility in the schedule sometimes and thought that I had time to spread out my work or not “ stay on top of it” and that poorly affected my grade.  So with being given such control I learned that I need to manage my time better and also with such independency I felt expected to work harder.  I think this was the perfect time to have this amount of control in learning because it taught me that not everything is always detailed and written out and that my individual responsibility has now increased as if I want to have a successful education.  

    The book club projects was a very independent and student based presentations, we chose our book, came up with what we wanted to present to our class and how we wanted to present it.   I learned a lot in working with other people on a project that didn’t quite have specific expectations or criteria to follow.  It identified who clearly did the work that was expected from the beginning and leadership while it also highlighted different ideas for what was important to share and present.  We all have different learning methods and how we interpret readings and often when we read in class we have discussions so we sometimes all tend to eventually view the same perspective even if at first we don't. With the small reading clubs it was easier to share all our opinions and learn from others or I feel gave us the confidence to explain how we interpreted something and then share that with our group, almost trying to prove a point with evidence.   

    Looking back at how you chose to structure or curriculum with what you already had to follow according to guidelines, I truly don’t know what more you could have changed.  If you choose to continue the book club and the individual projects whether it be throughout the year or just at the end, I think a syllabus at the beginning of the “unit” or term would be helpful because it adds more structure and that way you have a hard copy of all the dates in advance and it would allow students who need to plan and manage their time better and insight of what the should expect.  I would 100% say that I took a lot from English class this year and it has by far been my favorite year. This subject has always been tough for me and that led me to feeling it was my least favorite but after this year I can say that my writing and reading has most certainly improved.  My analysis and use of evidence has strengthened as well.  Focusing on utilizing independency in this subject is a very useful way of learning and I would continue to use this structure and method of learning.  

English class Reflection

Cameron Egan

5/8/2017

1. For almost any significant project or other style assignment, our class had multiple options of how to take on the task. These options provided a very positive experience for myself and other classmates because we were able to do assignments on a more personalized basis. It felt that we had a little more control over what we had to do in the classroom in terms of work because if a student really liked writing essays for projects, then they could write their essay, but if a student preferred to make a Prezi, slide show, or poster about a topic, then that was okay as well. These options let to a lot more potential creativity and less “cookie cutter” style projects where everyone’s product was exactly the same.

2.  I was able to enjoy reading throughout the year because I had chosen books to read independently and with my book group that sincerely interested me. Those books consisted of the topics of modern war, World War II, and the holocaust. I love learning about war and history and these books fit me perfectly. I was also able to draw a lot of similarities between two different books that i read about the holocaust because the books followed such similar guidelines of how their stories played out.

3. I felt that I read a lot more this year than past years because we were constantly reading  books either in or out of school. At times we were reading 1-3 books all in one day as a class, in our groups, and personally. It was a little crazy reading all the books at once because I was reading stories with so many similarities between them.

4. I do feel that my writing experiences were authentic because I noticed I personally tried to make my work better when it was going to be put on a public forum. By only passing work into my teacher in the past, I would sometimes put less work into proof-reading into essays and blog posts, but because they were going to be made available to everyone on the internet I made sure to take an extra bit of time to make my work better.

5. I felt that my fellow students and I had some control in learning in English class this year. Most of that control that we had was in the assignments we were given based on the books we were reading. A good experience I had was when we had book groups that met on a bi-weekly basis. At the end of our books were were given several choices for a project, including creating our own style of a project to make and present in class. My fellow classmate Shervin and I elected to create a rap song about the story we had read in our groups. Not only was this a good way for us to make a deeper look into the novel’s story, but it was also a very fun way to gain a better overall understand of the story as well.

6. At some points i found it almost a bit stressful to be reading three books all at the same time for one class. Although it was very doable, I just found it confusing at times, but that may have been because that two out of the three books that I had been reading at the time were both about the Holocaust.

Reflection for Senior English

 The choices we had in the classroom did influence me in a positive way that it allowed me learn of authors I’ve never heard of and want to read more of that author’s work. It also got to think deeper about the literature such as Oedipus. I had to think if we are in charge of our faiths or that no matter what we do can’t change our faiths like how Oedipus’ parents tried doing. They knew that their son would kill the father and marry the mother so in order to avoid that they gave him away to another family but Oedipus still ended up killing his father and marry his mother as well as having children with her.

 For some of the books i enjoyed reading them because they weren’t the usual type of books i would read such as Laughter in the Dark. This book had a certain element to it where it’s twisted but funny at the same time. As well as having karma come after a certain character betrayed his wife and daughter. It was nice reading book that I wouldn’t typically decide to read on my own time.

  I believe that I’ve read more both in and outside of school than I have had in the past.  In the past I would rarely read any books outside of school unless I had to but this year I read my independent book outside of school. The independent books that I’d chosen were captivating to me that I would be reading them before I go to bed or before I go to school. My writings and revising were authentic because I wrote how I felt about the books I’ve read and my point of view.

 I do feel like I did have some control over my own learning since we were able to decide how we wanted to present our books whether it was a poster,song,activity, alternative version/ending,and videos. The project where we were able to come up with a way to show the other groups what our book was about for the book clubs. This was a fun activity because we were able to do anything,there really wasn’t any limits. We got the chance to decide how we wanted to represent our books which showed our creative ways and personality.

 What could have been differently to enhance my experience would probably be instead of writing blog posts about our independent books we talk about our books like how we did with the book club books.

Reflection On Choices and Experiences

Julie Leal

Having choices rather than assigned a specific thing to do or book to read helped my experience in English class. It was something positive for the class. Usually, we are given assigned books/ projects in our English classes which made reading for me more difficult. Choosing something to do on my own allowed me to be more creative, something that I'm usually not.

I enjoyed reading in English on two occasions. The first is when we read "Laughter In The Dark" and the second is when I read "Still Alice" as my independent reading book. "Laughter In The Dark" was an interesting book that made me want to keep reading. "Still Alice" was a book that I have been wanting to read in a long time but never got the chance due to not having enough time. I enjoyed reading these books and that made classes more enjoyable.

This year I think I read a lot more than in the past years. This is because we had many books being read at the same time. We had the in class books, our Friday book journal books, and our book club book. As stressful as it was to be able to juggle all these books in our brains it was very helpful with multitasking skills and to prepare us for all the books we will be reading at once in college. Having so many books to read in class and being mostly interested in all of them motivated me to read more at home. 


I feel that none of my writing was truly authentic. I didn't put my full potential into my work and this made it so it wasn't authentic because it wasn't a true representation of my potential in writing. Personally, I feel that I could've done a lot better.

I feel that I was able to have some control over my own learning in class this year. I feel this way because we were given the freedom to choose our own books and projects. You also took feedback from us with everything we did with discussions and surveys which helped enhance our learning experience. An activity that I think went really well was the independent reading books. This is because it gave students like me a chance to read a book that they might have been interested in or have been wanting to read but never got around to it. It also gave us the chance to discover what type/genre of literature we like because we could change our book anytime if we didn't like them.


With everything we did this year, I feel that there was nothing you could have done to enhance my experience in English. You did things no other teachers have done like give us the freedom to choose books and projects and also be able to read a good amount of books in just one school year. I feel as if you helped prepare us for college more than any of my English teachers have before. Thank you for making English enjoyable this year!

English Reflection

Kayla Hernandez

English Reflection

As my senior year, I do feel that the choices we've had, have influenced my experience in the English classroom in a positive way. We were able to have more choices then in previous years. I really liked it because I got to read books that I was into and of my choosing. It influenced me in a positive way, because I was able to reflect back on my work, depending on the choices I picked.

I was able to enjoy reading most times throughout the year, although at some points it felt overwhelming. I enjoyed the works we did by Shakespeare and being able to discuss questions about the work as a class, instead of writing a paper. I also enjoyed when we read Hamlet and as we went along we got to see the scenes from the play in the movie. I've always liked reading Shakespearean plays, because they have deeper meaning then what the literature says. And while watching the movie as we read Hamlet, it gave me a better picture and I liked following along with it.

In school, I do feel like I read more then I normally have in the previous years. This was because we had our independent reading books that we got to read each Friday for the class period. Also, we had our book that we read in the classroom, as a class. Outside of school, it didn't change for me, I didn't really read unless it was a really good book. For I also read, our "book club" book and that was done outside of school. Other then that, the amount of reading outside of school didn't increase or decrease for me.

Personally, I do not feel that any of my writing assessments or revising were "authentic". I could have worked better on them and put more effort. I feel like the writing assessments were my weakness throughout the year. They will continue to need more work to be done on them.

In our English class this year, I do believe that I had some control over my own learning. As a class, we did have more freedom as to what what we read and what we could do for projects. For example, after we finished our "book club" book, we had a choice of what to do for a project to represent the big idea and theme in our books. This way students got to do different projects, based on what they felt comfortable doing but met the standards. I would say that the activity that worked best as a class, but in groups, was the projects for our "book club". This way students were able to show their creative side and also present to the class what they're book of their choosing was about. Overall it was very successful.

Gathering everything we've been able to accomplish this year in our English class, I wouldn't have changed anything. It might have seem dreadful at points when projects were mentioned, but it turned out to be fine. I liked the limited freedom we got, because it did show us a little bit of what our next year at college will be like. We were still able to get all assignments done and all that the curriculum needed to meet. Overall, the year in English has been fun.

English Reflection

Setting aside designated time for an allotted length of meaningful reading has provided this class, along with myself with a sense of flexibility in the curriculum. Coming into class knowing that the class period would be dedicated to something that I decided to read, and something that wouldn't lose my attention or curiosity. The days I enjoyed most were the silent Friday mornings where I could immerse myself into the book of my own choosing, with the full one hour of dedicated time that would be invested in myself was split between a half an hour of reading followed by a journal entry. I noticed that by having these consistent reading intervals on Friday's that it kept me on task, to stay focused on the task at hand. I have a tendency to jump around from author to author when it comes to my reading habits at home when the act is mere leisure. But when I come in on those Friday morning's where I know I have to devote my attention to several pages of The One Thing by Malcolm Gladwell, which by my standards was by far my favorite piece of literature I chose to read on our class reading assignments. I believe that by having at least one day out of the week where I was totally and completely immersed between the pages of a book of my liking that it reinforced my joy and passion for reading, on a daily basis that transcended from Friday's and onto the weekend and through the week. As for my writing experiences in this class, I felt as though there were times where I was completely focused on my work which would produce a piece of work in which I was satisfactory towards, but there were times I felt I didn't put that same level of satisfactorily approval rating that I initially gave myself following a finished product. Revisiting a class experience where I felt that I had complete control over my learning, at the same time felt satisfied with the level of output I put forth was with the Shakespeare soliloquy projects. It was with this project that I had the ability to be creative, with little to no restrictions on where that creativity could take me. With the preexisting curriculum I don't have any complaints with the amount of material or independence among creativity and individual work, but I do have a suggestion in that I feel as though I don't know all of my classmates on a comfortable level, possible group switches of students may have been helpful, to counter a lot of the work that was completed on a individual basis.

Reflection on Senior English

I feel like these choices did influence my experience in the English classroom in a positive way. Throughout my other English classes, it was always mandatory reading, essays, research, and tests. In this class specifically, the students were given the chance to be independent and have fun fun with the books and topics  that were focused on. I felt like I was being treated more of an adult than a child for once.

I first enjoyed reading when we were able to pick out own books for the independent reading. I was able to choose a book that intrigued me and if I didn't like it as I read it, I could choose a new one. I also enjoyed reading when we read the book Laughter in the Dark. That was definitely the only book, mandatory to read, that I truly enjoyed reading throughout high school.

I think I read more both in school as well as outside of school than I did in the past. Part of the reason was because it was mandatory. The independent reading that I had to read in class, I started to read at home as well. That helped me with using my free time to do something productive such as read.

With the essays and my other writing, I can definitely say my writing was "authentic." For one, I could never stay on topic in my writing. I would always steer into a different direction. Overtime I was able to work on that flaw and fix it. I think everyone's writing is "authentic" in their own way, their style of writing to be specific.

I think I was able to have some control over my own learning in English but I feel like it didn't do me much justice. It helped positively when I had the decision in choosing what book I wanted to read for independent reading. I also liked how we had options in topics and ideas for projects. It helped negatively with the blog posts. I'm used to following a rubric on what needs to be included in something when it comes to writing so I had a tough time with that. I think our projects on poems went well. At first, I didn't like the idea of it. As I started my project I became more interested in it. I had new insights in some ideas and I enjoyed reading the poems by my poet as well.

Personally, I don't think you could have done anything differently to enhance my experience in the English classroom this year. I enjoyed the class and you did everything you could to make things fair for everyone as well as comfortable.

English Class Review

Senior Honors English Class review

These choices influenced my experience positively, as being given the choice to do a project the way i would like it to be done, whether it be a powerpoint, or a cool song, I was granted the freedom to think outside of the box and do it as I please.

I was able to enjoy reading on Fridays, where we given free read time. I was able to finish an interesting and informing book on Grit, and this gave me a great idea of what it means to persevere and show great work ethic as it will always lead to success in everything I do.

I read a little bit more in and out of school than in past years, as we were forced to read on fridays. Although i enjoyed reading on fridays, I’ve never read that much in class in past years.

Yes, I feel that some of my writing and revisions were authentic. Some of them were just done as I simply went through the motions, not really putting forth my best efforts, however a lot of them I feel like I put in authentic effort into them.

Yes, I feel like we had a lot of choice in controlling our learning experience throughout this year. One specifically that I loved, was the project at the end of the year for our book club books, where we could do whatever we would like for a project. We chose to make a song, a very good song at that. We were able to create a beautiful rhyme scheme over a captivating beat, and produce one of the best musical pieces of 2017.

To enhance the experience of students in the future in terms of the curriculum, you could try to do more engaging projects and fun activities having to do with Hamlet, as I often found myself dozing off at Shakespeare’s old english. More engaging activities could get more people involved in the curriculum and have them to actually enjoy it.

Final Blog Post

Val Mamish
5/5/17
English 12H

Review on Independent Reading 

In my opinion, I feel these choices influenced me in a positive way because each book was a little different. I learned a new skill from each project or assessment. Also which each book I learned something new with the discussions we had or the presentations that other students did. I liked choosing better because having more options made it easier to understand the assessment also.

I enjoyed reading while we read "Laughter in the Dark". I enjoyed reading that book because I understood the text and the plot never got boring. I also enjoyed having discussions about the book which made me like the novel even more because everyone was engaged in the conversation. I also liked the book club books because my book was very interesting and since I had the chance to choose from many options, it made me enjoy reading also. During "Hamlet", however, I did not enjoy reading the play only because I never really understood the text. But when it comes to Shakespeare I never really enjoyed his writing.

I think I read more inside and outside of school this year really because I enjoyed the majority of the books we read. Especially since there was a handful of books that we read only inside of the school. In the past years we would only read outside of school, so the in school reading was little to none.

Yes, I did feel like I had a choice in English. For example, the book club books we had up to 11 different books with different themes and genres. This gave me a choice in the type of book that I wanted to read. I think "Laughter in the Dark" went well because I really understood the text, which made it easier when doing the final assessment, and when we had discussions I was more interested in the conversation because it was a novel that I really enjoyed.

I think my blogs for independent reading was "authentic" because each post was my opinion and my opinion only. But other than that I felt that the rest of my writing was not really authentic because I needed to follow an outline. Even though there was an outline for the blog post, I felt as if I had more freedom to move it around with a way I pleased.

Something that you could have done differently in class would be maybe not to do so many things at once. At one point in could really confusing. It wasn't necessarily stressful, but it maybe would have been easier to understand if we weren't doing more than one assessment at once. Other than that I thought I had a good time in English this year.

A Final Reflection of English in the 2016-2017 School Year

While having choices in Mrs. Black’s honors English class made the curriculum more flexible, it was somewhat discouraging toward an English based student more serious and ambitious toward reading and writing. An example of this can be seen in our final project for our book club books, wherein we were discouraged from writing a traditional essay. While project variety was definitely beneficial for a majority of the class, it is oftentimes more beneficial toward a student’s understanding of a novel to write a formal analysis of it -- whether it be in the form of an explication or a thematic paper. Rather, some students spent the week given to make a meaningful project creating a survey and researching meaningless statistics. I found that the project was too flexible, making it difficult to understand the purpose of creating a project at all.

In general, I enjoy reading. Mrs. Black’s English class did not influence this. The demographic of this assignment is clearly not directed at individuals who enjoy reading academically and for fun.

Coming from an AP Literature class, I read less in Mrs. Black’s class. While I could argue that we spent (or, rather, wasted) a lot of time analyzing the plays and novels read (but not analyzing enough for the time spent doing so), it is futile to compare the curriculum of a higher leveled class to one that is standardized. I found that having an assigned independent reading book forced me to pick up a new book after finishing one more quickly than I have done in the past. This was important in maintaining that I was always reading something.

I felt like my writing experiences were pretty genuine. While we didn’t have formal writing assignments frequently, the blog posts were a nice opportunity to reflect on a novel that I chose to read. Deciding which book I wanted to write about was also a good determiner of whether or not I actually took pleasure in reading it. Writing a reflection every Friday was also helpful in letting the novel sink in. While it’s something I do naturally while reading and felt unnecessary at times, it was beneficial.

In our book clubs, we were definitely given more control over what we were assigned to read. While I don’t necessarily regret reading 1984, as I know it was important for me to reading to better understand literary culture and be an active participant in it, there were definitely some book options that trumped others. For example, I read A Handmaid’s Tale outside of school after learning about it in Mrs. Black’s class and read it in two days. It was significantly more enjoyable and interesting than 1984, showing that our ability to choose the books thus impacted our experience.

In conclusion, I feel like any existing dissatisfaction with Mrs. Black’s class is incomparable to all of my other terrible course selection decisions this year. Somehow, it is the best taught class I’m taking (which could be a judgment toward the instructors of those classes or a compliment toward Mrs. Black). My largest moment of gratitude in Mrs. Black’s class was that, unlike some other honors English classes, we did not have to write a paper on All American Boys, a novel I had no intentions of reading. More importantly, any dissatisfaction I do hold toward the class, as mentioned here, was not problematic on Mrs. Black’s behalf, but a flaw in the school system for a failure to provide a more advanced English class. Overall, my A block experience this year has been positive.

English Reflection

I thought that English was pretty fun this year, especially because we didn't have a huge ten page paper to do or something similar to one. Having the options for the essays and projects was great as not only did it allow us as students to better express ourselves, it made it much more interesting when we got around to presenting the projects. The poetry project was sort of boring in this regard as everyone's was pretty much the same thing. The choice reading on Fridays was good and I think most of the students read at least one more book this year than they would have usually read. The book clubs along with the discussions were alright and I liked how we could choose what book we read (but I wish I didn't read Blindness as the book was really weird and the ending was garbage). For the poetry project I wish that we got to pick from all of the names by choice at the start because some kids may have not really liked their poets that much, but that would be problematic as some students might want the same poet. The presentations were pretty boring (mine included) as the rubric for the project really only allowed us to write an original poem (of which I think literally no one read out loud). These problems might be better attributed to the class being first period and no one really being awake yet.

I very much enjoyed reading on Fridays as it was relaxing to come into school and start it with reading something I wanted to read, rather than having a test or something. I also liked reading Hamlet, but I think I might be alone among my classmates on that. I wasn't really that big of a fan of Oedipus or Antigone, I could follow the books fine, but I think that they were just kind of boring reads. Although you did make the projects for them pretty fun so I don't know how you could make reading them not boring.

With the choice reads and the book club meetings (and me having an AP European history class) I think I read more this year than I did last year (I only read two books in English last year, Gatsby and the Crucible). To be fair, we did spend most of last year writing a big research paper on Gatsby and over analyzing something for that long will make almost anything get stale pretty quick. At least last nowhere near as bad as when we had to read the House on Mango Street in middle school and spent more than half the year on a book that is about one hundred pages long. I didn't feel like any of the books we read this year got to much time devoted to them to the point that they got boring so that's good.

I liked the blogs and some of the essays we wrote like the one comparing Oedipus to another tragedy. Which I compared to one of my favorite games that being Warcraft III. I thought that was fun and talking about something you like is authentic in my opinion. This reflection is also authentic as it is practically just one big opinion piece.

I felt like letting us choose our Friday reading book, our book club books, topics for essays and topics for projects made it so everyone's English experience was different this year. The personal choice definitely made it feel like there was more personal control over what we were learning this year and the variety of choices we had made presenting projects more interesting, as they were usually on different topics of were different projects. I certainly think I am probably the only students to have written one of their essays on WarCraft III ever (out of curiosity were there any other years when a student wrote that essay on something that wasn't a book like I did?) Reading Laughter in the Dark went down well with the class and everyone seemed to like the book, the Friday reading sessions also went well as I don't remember a time when people were talking or doing other homework during one of them.

I can think of two things that would have made English better this year. One would be having the period happen later in the day (but you can't really do much about that one) and the other would be to have a better variety of book choices for the book clubs. Three of the book club books were dystopian fiction, and the others just seemed kinda depressing from what I saw from the other group's projects. You could have a survey or just talk to the class about this, but I would recommend having a horror book and a fantasy/science fiction book next year for the sake of variety (and more variety is usually more fun). While reading a book like Blindness was interesting, I was mostly just grossed out by it, which is something I'm not looking for in a book that I'm reading for fun. I would much rather read a more fun book about a less depressing topic for my book club book, but maybe that is just me. I do think that most of the people in the class that read Blindness agree that the ending was terrible, so maybe next year you could try to look for books that have interesting or more thought provoking endings to them.

A Heartbreaking Account of Sexual Slavery

Divya Arora

Sold
By Patricia McCormick

"Ugh, honestly can't wait for next vacation. Can't wait to graduate and get out of this place!" says every privileged student including myself. But in some parts of the world, there are kids who don't get a chance to complain about what a drag it is to go to school. Even when they really want to, they're not able to. Correspondingly, Lakshmi, the protagonist, is a 13-year-old who lives in a small village in Nepal. After the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all their family's crops, their poverty strikes them even harder. As a result, her father asks her to support her family by getting a job "as a maid in the city". But little does she know, she's been sold into prostitution as she reaches India with a stranger. She's forced to live in a brothel ruled by a woman named Mumtaz, who eventually drugs Lakshmi to make her customers happy. Since then she gets raped multiple times, by poor, rich, white, dark, indian, old, young, nice, and vicious men who pay her after being satisfied. Mumtaz is a cunning, selfish frightener who has instilled fear into all the girls of "Happiness House" (the brothel). But throughout this torturous journey, only one thing keeps Lakshmi alive: courage and determination. She doesn't give up. She decides to educate herself with the help of a boy, and sacrifice her body as much as he can to pay Mumtaz up so she can go back to her beloved mother.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all teenagers and older. It deals with reality and what goes on around the world. I feel like every teenager should read this and familiarize themselves with this account of sexual slavery as it exists now. Sold is not only inspiring but also thought- provoking, as it informs readers particularly teenagers, what other kids, who are the same age as them, are battling against issues they wouldn't even know exist just in different parts of the world. At times, McCormick can get a little too graphic, which I think should not be a bi deal since there are several TV shows, movies, and Netflix series that provide the same amount and even more details and insight into these "sensitive" matters. For example, after Lakshmi was stupefied with a drink, she was forced to sleep with a "Habib" who is "on top of me (Lakshmi) and something hot and insistent is between my (her) legs"(120).  Her stepfather is paid a small amount of money when he trades away Lakshmi's life, dignity, self- respect, and her soul. I feel like readers need to read this book to connect to this on a personal level. This is a true story, and therefore should be more important than fictional TV series which affect young adults more.

In addition, theme of education has been highlighted in the book. Lakshmi has always shared her keen interest in reading and after being sold into this place, she begins stealing books from a boy. She describes " While the other girls are downstairs watching the TV, I take his brightly colored storybook and make it mine...I pretend I'm in school... and I am the number one girl in class again" (154- 5). I express dissatisfaction everyday towards school and then I read about this girl who has been taken everything away from her but she still finds herself in books. Education matters the most to her and kind of reminds us how privileged and fortunate we are. Even though I can't relate to her personally, i can definitely connect to her. I was moved by the way McCormick every detail because I was born in India where there is a fear in every parent to protect their kids from being kidnapped and sold into prostitution. Sold is a tear-jerker at times, especially when she portrays her helplessness and sometimes it can be frustrating. For example, the author focuses on cruel deeds of Mumtaz when she shoves a mixture of chili pepper up a girl's vagina. It's a meaningful read and an unflinching look at  sex slavery.  Again, I would recommend this book to young adults and older and people who are or choose to be a little ignorant of what's going on around them simply because they are not involved.

2016-17 English Class Review

This year in English has been a year that I won’t soon forget. The ability to choose what we make of certain projects, coupled with the atmosphere of discussion and learning how to articulate ideas on the spot, while also learning more about ourselves, has been a great experience for me, and surely for others as well.

What I loved about this class is that it dedicated time to reading, which many people, including myself, don’t have much time for outside of school. It gave me the opportunity to work on my reading speed, which is going to be essential for me next year, and in college. It also helped me learn to enjoy reading. Once I am finished with senior year, with all the concerts, shows and tests, I will finish the book, 1984, and I will likely move on to another Orwell novel, like Animal Farm or Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I think that reading several books at a time has pushed me to try to appreciate the books I choose. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the assigned reading, though, as I really got into the story in Oedipus/Antigone, and I especially enjoyed Laughter in the Dark. However, the experience overall made me see reading in a new light - not just as something I should do, but as something I can do. My experience this year will absolutely get me reading more in the future.

I enjoyed that, aside from reading, the writing/revising experiences made me feel like I was a real author. The way I got to choose my assignments, like the psychoanalysis paper, was really cool in that I got to write what I wanted to write about, not just what is assigned, something a professional author would do.

I do feel like I had control over what I learned from this class. I learned some interesting things from the psychoanalysis paper that I had actually been thinking about before entering the class. I also learned how to defend my point of view when the class disagrees with me (on who the tragic hero was in Antigone). One thing that really went well was the book review project on 1984, as I learned how to make text to world connections, and how to spot signs of a possible semi-totalitarian uprising.

Overall it was a great year, but I think it could have been enhanced by having reading days once a week all year, or if that is not possible, at least once every other week. It is nice, with such a packed school schedule, to be able to just take some of the day to read.

English 12 Review

Ty Campana


 I feel that the choices given to us in this year of English influenced my experience in a positive way. I liked having the choices because I find that I have a lot more motivation to do work when I am genuinely interested in the topic. Throughout the year we got to choose from different types of books which I liked because I got to choose the genre that I was most interested in and could connect to the most. I am the type of student that puts out my best work when I am interested in the topic that I am reading and the choices that were given to me really helped that.

When we were reading Laughter in the Dark I really enjoyed reading because not only was it was somewhat of an easy read but I really liked the plot of the story and it kept my attention throughout the novel. I also really liked that we got to read whatever books that we wanted on Fridays because I had the freedom to choose my story that I wanted to read.

This year I defiantly feel like I read a lot more both in and outside of school this year. We were reading multiple books at a time which I did find a little bit difficult. I usually don't really read outside of school but this year since not only was I reading a book that interested me at all times, I also had to write a blog post about it which really encouraged me to read more.

I think that the blogs that I posted were authentic because it was a book that I was submerged in and all you really told us to do was say our opinion on it which really gave me the freedom to say my true feelings about the book.

I do feel that I had some control over my learning experience in the classroom this year because in past years teachers assign us a book and a project and make us follow very detailed instructions. This year not only did we get to choose our books most of the time but we also got to choose our projects. Even when we had to do a project on an assigned book we got too have the freedom to choose what kind of project we wanted to do which I really liked. If I had to choose one thing that went well in the classroom this year I would choose the whole Laughter in the Dark unit again because I really enjoyed the book and loved doing projects on the characters in the book. I also really liked how we were a very close class and I feel like that is partly due to how you always make everyone comfortable to share their thoughts, I felt like nobody was afraid to say anything at any times which I really liked.

If there was one thing that I would have done differently I would say that the participation grade was really heavy and I felt like I was obligated to share a thought because I didn't want my grade to go down even if I didn't necessarily have anything to say on the topic. Overall I really enjoyed English this year and I feel like I have learned a lot of valuable things.

Reflection

Melissa Nicolas

        I feel that any class that encourages individualism and independence through guidance and teaching is a classroom that will positively impact any student in some way. Being that I am generally a student that likes to work alone and likes complete control of what I am doing it was relieving a number of opportunities given to me to choose the direction I was going to take my work. For past years I always believed English was my worst subject because I am a very concrete thinker and in the past, I would have trouble thinking abstractly when it comes to finding symbolism and alternative meanings in literature. I found myself having a more positive experience in English through the discussion based activities and independent reading on Fridays'.

       At the very least I enjoyed reading one time a week. I say this because I greatly appreciated the opportunities Fridays gave me to explore various books that I enjoyed. There were multiple times a year when we would be reading several books at once but if I was ever discontent with any of them I knew ob Fridays I could always fall back on a book that I did like because I was given the chance to read what I wanted. Fridays were my break from any stressing assignments or difficult books I was previously paying attention to.

       I definitely read more books this year than I have in previous English classes. I think at most, we would have to read three to four books throughout the entire year. I think in English this year we used our time wisely and were able to read a multitude of books while reading any independent reading book on the side. Often I would find my independent reading books so interesting I would read them before bed sometimes if I was truly curious to see how it ended.

       I can't imagine describing my writing and revisions in this class labeled as anything less than authentic. Most of the time we would be given an assignment and most of the time it was up to us which direction we wanted to take it. We were allowed to develop our own opinions and defend them in our writing, Our rubrics were meant to give direction on stylistics of our writing. When asked to write a blog post of our independent reading books, we didn't have to follow the guidelines of a traditional essay following a 5 paragraph format. It could be as long or as short as we wanted as long as it encompassed our true feelings and opinions towards the book.

       A prime example of when I had some control over my own learning in English was through our book club projects. It was left completely up to us to convey our knowledge and comprehension of the book in a creative and organized project. It could be anything we wanted, and as you looked around the class not one group had the same project as another. Our book was Their Eyes Were Watching God, we chose to set up a video presentation of a cooking show describing a primary character in the book as ingredients to a pastry, followed by a brief discussion of the book.

    There isn't much that could be done differently with this class. I personally didn't find it incredibly challenging, my favorite parts of the class were anything that had to do with group discussions and debates. I think participation and discussion were highly encouraged in this class and those can be some of my strong suits at times.

Final Blog Post

Maxwell Waters

The choices made throughout the year in English class influenced me in a positive way. Never have I ever had an English class so innovative. Typically my classes have always been so teacher centric, but this year the focus was more on the students. I was able to choose my own books.

I enjoyed reading my group independent reading book Marcelo in the Real world by Francisco X Stork. The novel was so interesting, and between my partner and I we were able to have quality discussions based on what we read during the book club meetings.

This year opened my eyes to reading more outside of school, on my own time. Before reading always seemed as a homework assignment where there were specific pages, and homework due dates, but these independent readings allowed me to choose.

Editing my work I felt like it was authentic because I felt like anything that I revised was not effecting my content, however the style of how I wrote something had changed. My writing this year was more about how I should write a piece, rather than fixing ideas.

Yea there were a lot of moments I had control of my own learning.When I was reading Hamlet my group and I made a fake instagram poster, which I enjoyed very much because we got to relate Shakespeare to a modern day form of social media.

The past poetry project was completely on my own, I researched a topic and was able to research about my poet Thomas Hardy. In my opinion I really enjoyed English this year, if there was to be anything I would like to change it would be managing all the projects and books we were reading. There was a point where I was reading Hamlet, and two independent reading books at the same time which I thought was stressful.      

2017 English Class Review

Hallie Melville

I appreciate the choices that we had available in English class this year because I was able to focus on subjects and genres that I found interesting. I was able to enjoy reading most of the time, especially with the books Laughter in the Dark and Marcelo in the Real World. I enjoyed Oedipus and other plays when we read aloud in groups, but not so much when we had to independent read because I found it difficult to follow what each character was saying in my head.

I definitely did a lot more reading than I normally did in any other English class because we were usually reading multiple books at once, which was overwhelming at some points. I would not have it any other way though, because I always had a book to fall back on if I did not like one of the ones we were reading. One of my proudest moments in this class was my Reviving Ophelia essay, I felt that it was well organized and true to my feelings.

Throughout the year, most of my learning was set but I definitely had some wiggle room to choose topics that I found interesting, with the Friday independent reading in particular. I do not mind having what I learn chosen by the teacher because that is what I am used to. For me, I will find anything exciting and interesting if the teachers excitement shows through their teaching. A classroom activity that I enjoyed would have to be the "agree" and "disagree" survey before we read Hamlet. I liked giving my opinion and seeing how it compared to others. Overall, I found this class fun, interesting, and fairly easy as long as I did my work.