Jordan's English Blog

 In class today, we read a poem by Emily Dickinson.  I don’t remember the name of the poem. I think it was “I’m Nobody - Who are you?”.  We did what we usually do with poems which was analyzing it and then discussing it.  I learned that in the poem, by “nobody” Emily was referring to being different. That was kind of confusing to me especially once we got into the conversation of being a somebody and a nobody. It was like my perception of who a “somebody” is was the opposite in the poem. “Somebodies” are considered as normal people. “Nobodies” are people that are different. After we discussed that topic, we went over a disciplinary lesson that we do for school. Lastly, we took a test until the bell rang.

 We didn't do too much in class today.  I was actually pretty tired.  Mr.Rease had us take a vocabulary quiz and I'm pretty sure I passed it.  It was too easy; with that being said, I hope I got a 100. After the test, we had an assignment about unpopular opinions. We got to choose from a bowl what opinions we were gonna write about. A lot of them were actually popular. Mine was a claim that movies are a waste of time.  With that, I had to write a sentence agreeing with the statement, one disagreeing, and another compromising. Once we shared our content with the class, we were assigned home work and then the bell rang.

 I was not in class today. I had to take my ASFAP

 In class today, we didn’t have a bell ringer/opener.  We got straight to the notes we were doing yesterday and kind of piggy backed off of the lesson. Today, we mainly focused on Pathos, Ethos, and Logos.  We reviewed the notes we wrote on those from yesterday.  A little later, Mr.Rease gave us a writing prompt . On it, we had to write an Ethos, Pathos, and Logos solution to it. The prompt was a persuasion to administrators on why schools should increase technology funding.  We shared our answers and solutions under pathos, logos, and ethos.  After that, we didn’t really do much.

 We didn’t do much in class today. Mr.Rease was back. All we did was notes. We discussed some topics pertaining to the notes as well. The rest of the day was up and down for me. I was hypersensitive today but after lunch I felt better. For lunch I made mai fun noodles withe dumplings. Fast forward to the end of the day, I had soccer practice and another girl joined our team so that was good. 

 Mr. Rease wasn’t here today so we had a substitute teacher. All we did was vocabulary words. Our tasks consisted of writing the words; writing whether it was a noun, adj, or verb; write down the definition, and the antonym or synonym. We then wrote our own sentences to the words.  There was another assignment but I didn’t write fast enough to finish. I learned that when I want to be extra neat, I write extremely slow. I also got to sit by my friends in the class and Erika sat in my seat. Maybe i should change my seat *wink*. That’s all we really did in class today.

 In class, Mr.Rease gave us a writing prompt. We had to think of a topic that we thought was overrated. The topic I went with was “wanting to fitting in”.  We then had to come up with five points to go with the main topic. My subtopics were: insecure, dependent, bad clout, superficial, and temporary. Of course, we had to elaborate on those subtopics. We put them in a graph where theres a circle in the middle and the small circles extending from it. Next week we’ll turn them into essays.

 

   Today in class we watched a short film called 'Identity'.  After we typed a blog about what we saw in the film, we went over our responses.  I decided not to go over mine because my response was it was pretty long.  Once we started to go over the video, I realized some other things about the film that I didn't catch while watching.  When we finished going over the film,  we were given a paper with 4 different students' paragraphs on applying for a job.  Mr.Rease went over th efirst student's paragraph with us and had us go over the other 3 by ourselves.  The assignment was to make revisions to their paragraphs.  In the last 15 minutes,  Mr.Rease went over two other strategies to brainstorm when writing. 

    We started off class with watching a short film called 'Identity'.  In the film, everyone was wearing a mask of different colors in a high school.  The masks probably resembled something because there was sign that implied that those with yellow masks were considered beautiful.  The main character of the film had on a white mask with a bunch of elaborate designs on it and she was the only one with white.  Everyone else wore yellow, blue, purple, red, and I think I saw green in there too. Towards the end of the film, the girl seemed to be tired of wearing her mask.  She gets up during lunch and goes to the restroom and takes her mask off.  Then the girl proceeds to go outside and walk in front of everyone without a mask as everyone in the school stared at her.       I think the message behind the film is that everyone around us aren't being our most authentic selves. Theres some aspect of us that we try to cover up or keep a...

  I was absent due to a dentist appointment .

   Today In Mr.Rease’s class, we took a test.  This was a test from last week but we had to take it today because we didn’t get a chance to take it.  After we finished our test, we took notes on the writing process.  As we took the notes, we discussed them.  We continued to take more notes about brainstorming. Mr.Rease had us draw a graph with a main topic and subtopics that would help us to write essays.  That’s what we did the whole time honestly.  Lastly, I think I did well on the test and I'm curious about my grade.

   In class today, we went over ways we can do good on almost any test.  We took notes on that for majority of the class.  Our notes were interrupted because we had to leave class to do something with our chromebooks.  After the notes, Mr.Reese went over the content of a test we had.  We were supposed to take it in class but due to the interruption, we didn't get to. We didn't do much worth talking about in class today.  It was chill today.

   My name is Jordan Jackson. I have a few ideas of what I want to do after I graduate high school.  Those ideas consist of fashion photography, cinematic photography/videography, print modeling, creative directing, aesthetics, journalism, song writer and possibly a you tuber.  I have large interests surrounding music, film, and poetry.  My top three music artists are Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, and Sade.  They influence my taste in not only music but fashion and visual aesthetics. Three interesting facts about me are that I can sing, I used to act, and I'm the only girl as well as the youngest of six brothers.  My favorite foods are french fries; brown stew chicken or curry goat with white rice or rice and peas with plantain, fried dumpling, and cabbage; jerk chicken patty; and Asian foods. I would like to travel all over the world to experience the culture, the climate, the food, fashion, and the music.

  Today, we watched a film called "The Elevator".  In the film, there was a man who chose to ride a elevator in which he noticed that there were some overweight people in it.  The elevator would come to a constant stop that would result in more overweight people joining.  The man noticed this and became more skeptical and paranoid to the point where he started to predict and calculate everyone's weight and compare it to the mass limit of the elevator.  The elevator started to act weird which only made the man more paranoid. There was one very overweight man getting ready to enter the elevator and the man decided to finally exit the elevator. After he got off, he decided to enter another elevator which had people who looked to be normal and average weight. The man had a look of relief as he walked into the elevator but once he got on, the people started to cough indicating that they were sick.  When the video ended, we talked about what we thought the theme ...

   In class, Mr.Reese played a film called "The Last 3 Minutes". In the film, we watched a man die.  When he died, we saw his life flash before his eyes.  We got to see his good memories and his bad memories from when he was a baby to an adult.  After the film, we had to write about what we thought the purpose of life was. I stated that I thought the purpose of life was to live, experience, learn, and die.  Once we finished our writing on what the purpose of life was, we shared our responses.  Next, we read another poem by Langston Hughes called "I, Too".  This poem talked about how equality wasn't a thing at one point in time but in the future, equality will be a thing.  It also talked about how we're all American despite our differences.

      Today, we finished our discussion questions on the first poem we read by famous American Poet Langston Hughes.  The title of that poem was "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". After that, we moved on to another one of his pieces called "Mother to Son".  We anotated that poem the same way we did with the first one.  "Mother to Son" was about a mom who was telling her son that even though life is rough and has ups and downs that he has to keep going.  From this, we came to the conclusion that the son had complained to his mother about how hard life was.  As part of her response, the mother said that she's still pushing forward and that he can do the same. 

   The best advice I can remember my mother giving is that not everyone is your friend.  I always have to learn that the hard way because I'm a friendly person.  She tells me that I have to differentiate friends from associates all the time and not to be so quick to call somebody a friend.  A lot of the times my mom tells me this in situations when either she's been wronged by a long time friend or when I tell her about how I've been wronged by people I've been good to.  This trait of taking people and treating them as good friends when they dont deserve this is something passed down because I can see it in me, my mom, my grandma, and my great grandma.  Like myself, they all have gone out of the way for people in the name of friendship when those people didn't deserve those titles. 

   I think that the ultimate purpose of life is to experience.  You're supposed go through the ups and downs in life and know what happy and not so happy moments are.  Apart of that purpose is to learn.  In the good and the bad times, theres a lesson that you're supposed to get from those experiences.  I don't think there's much more to it.  No matter what stand point you look at it from and no matter what you believe, you're here to learn and experience what life has to offer you.  The film that we watched in class named "The Last 3 Minutes" was a visual representation of that.  We watched a man's life flash before his eyes before he died and we saw everything he went through.  The last thing I think is apart of the purpose of life is to live and die.  Dying, is one of the greatest purposes of life.  Knowing that it ends but not when it ends is what is supposed to teach us to live and experience it to the fullest. 

    Today in class, we read a poem that was written by a famous author and poet.  The poem is called "The Negro speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes. I learned that he was just graduating from high school when he wrote this so, he wasn't much older than my current age.  We deciphered the poem and annotated it.  We looked up the definition of key words or words that we felt we needed to know the actual meaning of to further understand what the writer was trying to say. In the end, Mr.Reese asked us what we thought our roots were. This question was related to the poem because it mentioned how the writer has a deep history and/or ancestry like how rivers have flown for years before civilization. Thats what I got from it. As far as I know, my immediate roots are from Jamaica but before that, I would guess Ghana or Nigeria. That's only on my mom's side as I'm not sure about my dad's.

    I think that the film has to be a lesson about how sometimes, trying to get away from one struggle might lead you to another. I feel ase though the guy who was struggling with being comfortable in the elevators could've avoided the problem by taking the stairs. In the first conflict, he was uncomfortable with being in the elevator with a bunch of overweight people because the elevator soon became overcompasitated. I can understand him wanting to get on another elevator because how could he have known what he was walking into? That goes into the next lesson of not judging a book by it's cover. The man assumed that because in the next elevator he caught were skinny people, that there wouldn't be a catch. The film itself gave me an awkward feeling and I didn't like that. In turn, the air of awkwardness was relatable to me as a viewer because I know what it's like being in an elevator full of people you're uncomfortable with.