Farhad’s School Education Blog

          The third quarter has been by far the best and most thriving for me as we did a variety of different activities and projects that really involved the ESLRs not only within our community but also with three other schools around the world that’ll I talk about later in more detail. The reason that I believed that this was the best quarter is because we got to think outside the box as we did activities both technologically, physically, emotionally we had never done before. We learned everything in such an enjoyable way that really helped us gain loads of knowledge both independently and collaboratively. Below I’ll describe each event from January to March as proficiently as I can with my strengths and weaknesses. The events are the book we read over the holidays, The Wave, Poetry unit including the construction of the book and more, Teen Life Project, the movie we made as a class with pictures and video, and finally discussions we chatted about in class that helped you understand where you are at or things you need to improve on. Overall I think we did a lot of activities and projects in a short amount of time without even realizing it, and it truly amazes me how hard I worked in English class.

         I had the option if I wanted to read The Wave over the Christmas holiday because Mr. Raisdana was not able to it with us during school. I really enjoyed reading this book even though I was having a nice cold winter holiday in Iran, and to be honest, it is one of the best books I read in my life as it is truly one of my favorite and motivating books unlike Anne. Honestly after reading Anne Frank, my interests of books were totally vanished until when I was assigned to read The Wave. I wish we could have done some activities or projects regarding to this book. I think was more of a Self-Directed learner because I “Accepted responsibility for my own learning” which means even though we didn’t have to read the book, I did and finished my task of finishing the book completely. I could although have been a better Self-Directed learner by posting my thoughts about The Wave on my blog. I would grade myself 9 out of 10 for doing this part of 3^rd quarter. To put it briefly I read The Wave and I think it was really helpful in terms of education.

          Poetry Unit was just incredible as we explored the secrets and culture of Poetry. How can we forget this unit as it truly showed us the skills we actually had and yet didn’t realize. Without a doubt I believe everyone thinks that the Poetry is and will be the best unit we’ve done over the term. Through this unit we have written poem after poem with being well edited and finalized for our books for the Poetry Night which I miserably failed to go to. In the course of this unit we have learned writing poems of diversity, and learning poetry terms and actually using them for our poems. We also learned how to recite poems in front of audience with emotions and the pace it’s supposed that depends on the theme of the poem. Fun activities included a game sort of where we had to write a poem on a random picture in the one of the senses it’s supposed to be written in and heaps of other group activities that involved me with the ESLRs: Involved Citizen and Effective Communicator as I interacted respectfully with group members and showed my skills of collaboration as I shared helpful ideas right through the discussions we had. While making my book I was impressed with my grade, but I thought I could have done better because I was missing three poems which took off 10% of my grade. To improve next time I can be an Academic Achiever as I adjust my work to higher standards, meaning next time I should keep track of my poems, be organized, and finish a project completely to get the grade you really strive for. As I did my analysis on the poet I chose which was Angelou. I was a critical thinker as I “gathered, analyzed, and processed from a variety of sources” which means I took information about this poet using four kinds of websites of information of her background and then analyzing it in my own words. I could have gotten a better grade but I had missing a few poems in my book so next time I could be more of a Critical thinker by being more organized. I would rank myself a 8 out of 10 for this Poetry Unit. In conclusion I enjoyed this part of quarter three even though it involved these all this hard work nevertheless it was worth it as I experienced poetry in my own style.

          We have participated in the Teen Life Project which consists of four schools from around the world. They are in Colombia, U.S.A., and Canada and we communicated with these teenagers using a wiki as we are divided in about 20 groups of at least 6 people and have our own page to put our information. The purpose is to see how teenagers think about the global issues surrounding us and how we can help to solve these problems. So in my school we are supposed to write a poem that sends out a message and also a picture you made representing your topic and mine was Terrorism. It was hard communicating with our group members so I decided to get their emails and the Colombians were the only ones interested in talking to me as I chatted with them in MSN. Now the other members are supposed to put everything in some sort of project perhaps a movie in our group. I was definitely an Effective Communicator because I “Used technology as a tool for communication” and “collaborated with others in appropriate learning situations to achieve group goals.”  This defines that I used the internet to communicate with my group peers for effective strategy to complete this Teen Life Project. Next time I can do better if I emailed the Americans and Canadians to help out in the project. If I was to be graded for this section, I would give myself a 8 out of 10. Overall I wouldn’t say this was the best project due to lack of communication with different time zones but at least I got to know some new people from different cultures and this is how business is nowadays so it’s worth it to do this project even though I think that 10 graders because they would be have better knowledge of communication with being mature and responsible and would be more suited for this than us.

          At first I thought 3^rd quarter was going to be torture. Truthfully seeing that I was never into poetry, I was wrong as I realized I write poetry fairly well but I wouldn’t consider myself being a poet yet. Finally I was filled with pride to be apart of this great 8^th grade English class with Mr. Raisdana and also with my peers since everything came out being a success for everyone. A truly unforgettable experience!

In modern generation if you consider me as a 14 year old female from the west or else where that is popular and known for her friendliness I would try to get as much attention to help advance my high status. That would mean one way of getting guys to like me is by wearing the newest fashion and for instance I would wear short skirts or shorts to actually show off my attractiveness. Since there is this so called “media” surrounding our environment I could think of being anorexic at some point to look like some celebrity, putting a lot of make up on, trying to get the best boyfriend of everyone else, do sports to normally being the reason of being popular and showing off my athletic skills, and chatting online with boys. However on the other hand not all girls are like these due to religion, low self-esteem, being shy, culture, and ext. So if you imagine me as a 14 year old religious girl I would do the complete opposite and have a point that all men and women are equal, never try to be the most attractive, and not looking for a boyfriend until you get married after school or college.           

Class has been the way of people being divided of inequality from the day the humankind was created here on earth. If I was an American adult who was a lower class person, not educated too well, and looking to make money for my poor family, I would obviously have no chose but to get forced into the army to have a good salary and go fight the war in the east not knowing if I’ll ever come back and make profit use my dedication and money I worked for. I could also be an uneducated Indonesian who’s thinking to come to Singapore to make good money for my kids and next thing I know I’m a maid with a monthly fee of only 50 Singaporean dollars.

Race is the most important in culture as it simply shows a person of his or her difference towards another person. If I was an English boy who plays war games of whites fighting terrorists all the time and hasn’t had the chance to understand a Middle-Eastern culture, I would go around and call all the so called Middle-Easterns “terrorists” or maybe make fun of their skin color or religion. On the other hand if I was a poor Iraqi who’s not happy with his family members dying in the war of being purely innocent and getting mistaken that they militants. Then I would think that westerners are trying to ruin my life and fight us for no reason, and destroying my home country though the army is trying to help the Iraqis fight the terrorist groups. Nevertheless since the west has accidentally killed this boy’s dad in front his face, he would probably grow up becoming a terrorist himself perhaps and try to get his revenge. Overall this is why I think wars sometimes just don’t seem to end or get started and the reason for this is mostly misunderstanding towards people of different race