“My name is Joshua Block, and welcome to my class” are the first words I heard when I entered the classroom.  He told us to write our first journal entry. We began writing our journals. This gave me a chance to express myself in a way. There were many different types of things we did to express ourselves. We reached a Unit of discussing prison life. The first thing we viewed was Jarvis Jay Masters. This was a man on death row, and his experiences throughout it. He issues on book on this called Finding Freedom: Jarvis Jay Masters.This was big interest to me, because it was real life experiences. Overall, the book just felt real to me and I can feel the man’s emotion in the book. We next took a trip to the Eastern State Penitentiary. This was a trip of great information and gave me more to think about when it came to prisons. Afterwards, Mr. Block gave us letters and artwork about men who were in prisons and were requesting books, such as a thesaurus and dictionary. I also viewed a website called 360degrees.org. This website had stories of people and prison and the kind of person they are since they have been in prison basically the experiences of these people. I also wrote a entry in my journal later after the website, it was about child abuse, and the question was, Is someone’s child-hood abuse an excuse for their behavior? In my opinion, I felt that this could go both ways until I made a decision and I said, "I don't think someone's child-hood abuse is an excuse for their behavior so, it seems like everyone can turn their life around". I do believe this is a true statement, because anyone can change his or her life around. It’s a choice in the matter. Overall, this was unit that was appealing to me because it showed me that everyone has been through things and it depends on you to make the future whatever you want it to be. So my general statement is going through trials in life reflects how strong you are on the inside. Another unit that we discussed was a closer for the year; it was called Leah Stein Collaboration. This collaboration consisted of performing a piece at a specific site. This site could have been anything like the park or, subway. The point of the site was to see how you could interact with your environment. First, was having background research on Leah Stein. She is a performer and has done a piece called Gate at the Eastern State Penitentiary and currently has a dance school called the Leah Stein Dance Company. We became familiar with Leah Stein and did a workshop with her. She explained some guidelines you could incorporate in your piece. Final step, was to perform a piece, Leah Stein came to the sites to give advice and assistance. My group for this project learned a lot and with her advice we became better than ever. This was an experience that took a lot of courage and strength because it was only in a week’s practice and this was a performance being presented to the school and also neighbors, friends, or eve strangers. This was an experience of something I wanted to get out of this unit. Overall this unit was of being yourself and interacting with classmates, friends, and even strangers. The general understanding that I got from this unit was that, You can only be one person by the end of the day, and that’s yourself.
This year overall started out with me knowing a little about a few people to knowing a lot about my whole class. This year, I grew as a writer, a person, a poet, a performer, and a student. This year was a year to remember, thanks Mr. Block.