Closing on a Great Year

Our class is rowdy to say the least and it can take half the period for the "back corner(s)" to settle down, but through all the chaos that it Pugliese A Block, I've learned the most about my writing skills than in any other class. English, a period based off of writing essays, has taught me nothing in comparison to what I have accomplished or more so learned over the past nine months in Modern World History. Rereading an essay that I had written back in September made me laugh. I lacked the ability to organize, use topic sentences correctly, and form a thesis. Although I still have trouble putting together a thesis, I can see that something has drastically changed. Maybe it is not shown on paper, but I notice it when going about writing a paper. For the past couple years, I've tried to use the basic thesis structure: "although -----, (claim) because (reason)." For every paper, that has been my building block and i've learned to elaborate my reasons from there. My thesis for my final project turned out to be just a claim essentially. I've now learned how to gather information from many different sources, organize it, and interpret before starting to compose an essay. I can see the difference from when I tried to do that in my Simon Bolivar project to my final project on the Brandenburg Gate. At first glance, it's overwhelming to have to deal with all the information from different sources, but I've learned how to go about it in a more organized fashion. Another issue with my writing is my analysis of the facts. I ask questions in my papers, but tend to leave them unanswered. Although I still tend to do this even now, I can now recognize this when writing and reading through my essays. I've enjoyed the class itself, but it has greatly changed the way I write for the better and helped me feel more confident when assigned a paper. 

What I've Learned

Before this year, I think that my writing was argumentative, but I think that my thesis statements were not very strong and did not well represent my persuasive, argumentative writing. I think that this year I learned to develop more concise, argumentative,  and representative thesis statements.  This overall makes my papers much stronger and makes it easier to organize my evidence in a way that makes sense and makes it easy to read. I also think that I consistently provided too much background information and factual evidence before getting to my point. One example of this was in my paper about feminists this year. I had about a page an a half of unneeded background information. After cutting this, and reforming my thesis, my written paper was much stronger. This year my writing improved, but it was mostly my organization of my papers and making it concise so that it was easy to read and made sense, that improved. My ideas also greatly improved this year. I feel as though the things that we learned were much less factual and memorizing than history classes in the past. I think that our class discussions made me really think deeper into the surface of these historical events. Mostly I think that this new outlook showed up in my writing. One of the papers that I was most proud of this year actually occurred at the beginning of the year. We had spent time in class discussing current events and we had to write a paper linking some of these events into a common theme. The theme that I chose was ethnic nationalism. I think that this beginning of the year paper really helped me to think of history in a new way for the rest of the year, and the years to come. Before this class, I would have probably just read these current events off of my Yahoo page and absorbed them, but not thought much about them. Now I am able to see connections between different things happening in the world at different times and how these patterns have repeated throughout history. I think that this new outlook makes me appreciate history even more, and makes it a much more interesting class.

Final Review- A Last Post Salute

Ms. Pugliese  A block. What a year. With A block being the most enlightened block (for obvious reasons), I was able to grab the reins of world history in an incredibly unique way. The improvement I am most proud of in this class is my new approach/perspective upon history as a whole. The history classes in years previous have seemed like a routine of going through the motions, compared to my engaged and thoughtful experiences as a sophomore in World History. Because of the way we go about class, history has provoked an interest that goes beyond facts and dates. I discovered that the past is ultimately a connection to the contemporary themes in politics, society, and economics that dominate our lives today. Although I cannot say I fully understand the mysterious power of history in our world, I feel that I have drastically improved my ability to comprehend what it means to me as a white teenager in suburban America. I feel in some way that Ms. Pugliese A block has taught me more about analyzing the blur that is life and academics, and how to approach this blur with an open mind and an opinionated voice. I now have a better idea about how history affects the patterns and form of my lifestyle- I am ready and able to question anything that comes my way. As Ms. Pugliese warned us, our ideas and beliefs will change with the seasons, but the most important part of this is that we allow our beliefs to change. And with these components of new knowledge in history, I have seen my writing transform from a plain piece of paper w/ facts on it to a crafted essay that strives to find ideas lurking in  the corners of historical elements. I now find the desire to explore on my own, to simply deepen my understanding of the world around me. History isn't just history, basically. So to conclude, I thank Ms. Pugliese for opening these doors and I enthusiastically thank my fellow classmates of A block (reppin' for life) for helping to ignite the classroom. It really was fun. Thank you, and goodnight.

What I Learned

This year, the most important thing that I learned was how to be more argumentative in my writing. In the beginning of the year my writing was almost purely factual and my arguments were weak with little evidence. Now I'd like to think that I provide a lot more evidence and my arguments are stronger and I inject my opinion more into my writing subtlety. I can attribute most of this progress to the blog posts. In most of the blog posts we have been required to post our own opinions on whatever the topic is, and in the beginning of the year we wrote op-eds. Writing these, and reading other people's op-eds helped me develop my own way of presenting my argument.

The Most Important Thing...

The most important thing that I learned in this class is how to transfer my ideas onto paper. The blog posts that we have used really helped me with that. Instead of doing homework assignments that focus on writing down useless facts, I learned how to express my opinion. Most of the writing that we did in this class focused on creating your own thesis, which holds your opinion on something. Expressing your own opinion is what is going to matter when we grow up: ether writing your Thesis for College or creating your own Senior Project. This class was really helpful by allowing me the opportunity to express my feelings about numerous topics.

Perspective

One of the most important things that you have to think about when you are learning about history is what perspective you are looking at it from.  What is being exaggerated, left out, or misreported.  You also have to think about what is fact and based off of analysis of remnants from an event.  It is very hard to get exactly what happened, and that is why we must analyze today.  To try to determine why things happened.  This can help you make a better decision in the future.  History is just a story of what happened, and it can be affected by who is telling it.  (For example, Norways role in WWII is completely left out, possibly due to the misreport of a reporter who said that they "rolled over.")

A New Tone of Voice

This class has been very different from prior classes I've been in. I found that the more easy-going atmosphere made me feel more free to show what I'd learned casually, like it were just interesting information I was sharing with others, rather than something for a grade. This class has challenged me to think in new and different ways, analyzing not only history but how history is told (a far more interesting subject, in my opinion). The most important thing this class has taught me, though, is that I can think deeply and critically and express my ideas and opinions intelligently and eloquently while still maintaining a tone that is more casual than I've always been taught is "correct".

A Year (or Semester) in Review

Not to be cliche, but I truly have learned a lot this year.  I've learned many details and facts about empires, but that's not what is important.  My analytical skills have increased vastly due to the hours of fact analysis we did.  I now feel comfortable making connections between seemingly different events that occurred throughout World History.  I learned enough about the French Revolution and Islamic Empires to last me a life time, although there's definitely more I can learn.  All the blog writing we've done this year has helped me greatly, and I need it because writing in my English class is scare.  This has been more of a humanities class than just MWH due to this blog.  The blog has certainly matured my writing by allowing us the opprotunity to look over past work and correct it, or admire it in some cases.  Overall, I've had a great time in Modern World History, as well as learning a great amount.  I'd go so far as to give three cheers for MWH, instead of the mediocre two.  Thanks for a great year; I hope you enjoyed us (only A Block), as much as we have enjoyed having you as our teacher.

Becoming a More Concise Writer

The most important thing that I have taken away from this class is how to be a better writer. I have had to make my writing much more concise and focused. This is largly due to the blog and the fact that my posts always looked so much longer than everyone else's. When I looked at my posts, which were in a smaller font than everyone else's but longer than everyone else's, I felt the need to find a way to make them shorter, and I went back through and took out any unneeded words and sentences. In the end, I think that I succeeded in becoming more concise; even though my posts still tend to be long, they are still shorter than what I started with. This informal way of writing that allows me to see the writing of others as well has truly helped me to become a better writer.