Micaela's AP Blog

We started class with begging given 3 different pieces of paper. All of them were different and I already had a bad feeling. One was a poem one was questions and another was a project! We have been assigned to act out a Maya Angelou poem, write a one page paper about it and do a poster. The hardest part of this for me will define fly be memorizing and acting out the poem. It puts me out of my comfort zone and I am scared I will stumble on my words. The project will be due in about two weeks I hope everything goes well.

Today Mr. Rease actually surprised us, especially myself. He began class of course saying that we would be reading another Maya Angelou poem. Though, he did not do this normally, he asked the class as a whole a series of questions and we all discussed and shared our answers. They were actually quite deep. There were 15 in total and I felt deeply about each and everyone of them. I did not speak out on most of them just because my feelings were so strong. But I did learn that a lot of my pears suffer or go through some of the same problems or fears as me. It was a great day of bonding as a class together.

Today was almost like a continuation of yesterday. We read more poems from Maya Angelou, which I have been thoroughly enjoying. Seeing the way she perceives the black community is spot on and what we need to do to bring change. This is most specially brought up in her poem called the Black Family Pledge. It speaks of how our ancestors and their purpose is being washed away while the rest of society swallows us in through all of our weaknesses. As black people we need to keep pushing forward and restore our livelihood and bring forth our best selves to the world for all to see.

As an African American have you ever thought to yourself, what does it mean to be this? I most definitely have thought about this before. In our society our race is perceived in so many different ways. It can even make others or ourselves feel down or not proud to be who we are. What it means to be black is to be strong, strong enough to overcome the daily struggles that can still be faced by the world even in now ,2020. To be black means to be unique and beautiful. We come in so many shades of skin, hair textures, and more. We always strive to be different and move against the standards of society. To be black means to be you and only you. No one person is the same whether you are black or not we all come in different personalities and ways to express ourselves. Being black is beautiful and we should all have self love for our blackness.

So as most people may know seniors have a senior project in order to graduate. For Mr. Rease we picked a book independently and he will be giving our assignments at a later date. Today we were able to go to our school library and check them out. My book is Wuthering Heights. I’m excited te d to read it although it was quite long I seems interesting. When we came back to class we did our weekly multiple choice but it was on a poem we had just read and analyzed. I did okay on it but I wish I had done better, I have to work on comprehension.

Mr. Rease was finally back in class today. We begin with listing tens songs that have a great effect on us or out memories. I was very happy about this because I absolutely love music and showing others what I like. Afterwards the entire class got to  show a song and and express how we feel about it. Mr. Rease also did this and I enjoy when he tells us about himself and his life. We also dove into a new poem today I missed reading them. All the kinds he presents to us are always intriguing and pushing us to make us think deeper which is something I need to work on.

Mr. Rease was not here again today. I had no idea what he had planned for us to work on. At first I finished some work from yesterday and worked on things from other classes and then started on our new assignment. It was actually a group essay prompt we started sometime last week. A lot of us had totally forgot about it and had to struggle to find our papers. It was still a hard task to do because when my group started we had not gotten past our cluster. We still had two whole paragraphs to write, this was going to be a long block.

Today was one of the coldest it has been in weeks! I literally almost froze this morning just from walking from my car into first block. Friday Mr. Rease told us he wasn’t going to be here but I forgot. I instantly felt relieved when I walked into class because I am very tired I had a long night at work yesterday. I spent the block working on our assignment he gave us and watching funny videos.

Today I walked into class expecting to begin a new tale from the Canterbury tales. I was most definitely  wrong about this. He surprised us with a multiple choice excerpt from an old Ap exam. I was quite nervous because I usually do pretty terrible on these. As I read the passage it began very smoothly I actually understood then suddenly there was a huge shift in the writing and I immediately began to get confused. Although I had such problems I just went on to the questions and used process of elimination and context clues. After he saw our grades we were given a chance to work in groups and get a better grade potentially. Turn out I had a good grade and I was very happy about it.

Throughout the week especially yesterday a lot of us, including myself, have just not been paying attention in class. It varied from sleeping to people just being spaced out so today he introduced something to us. It is like a new opportunity to end our senior year with a bang and also by using the most EFFORT we can. Honestly it was a good concept and I will be striving towards doing my best with it. For the rest of class we were in groups doing open ended questions from the pardoner and went over them with the whole class.

Today I was prepared to go into class and begin our class Q&A that we made on our own. Each group did a question and as a class we would make our own answers to proceed to chose the best one. Honestly I thought that everything was gonna go fine and quite smoothly but of course that is not the case. Mr Rease immediately began with speaking about the wording of things we turned and I immediately knew the questions were going to be a bit hectic. My group was first and I was actually the one who wrote the question which he changed it to be a bit simpler, although I thought the meaning was still the same. We continued this throughout the rest of class and even talked about our senior AP class yearbook and more.

This year Mr Rease has constantly reminded us of how important multiple choice is and how he wants to help us get better. Being said, of course we had a quiz today on the take we read yesterday about the Pardoner. Honestly I was quite afraid, I hate tests quizzes or anything of that nature.It turned out to be kinda difficult for me but in the end I came our with a passing grade on it so I was happy. We started on a group activity that we will further speak about tomorrow.

Today went along into the reading of the tale of the pardoner. Before we read we turned in the names of our person we were assigned to comment on their blog posts so he may check our grades. I honestly don’t even know if my comments ever showed up I kept trying, refreshing, and more but it just would not show. I did email Mr. Rease so I hope that I got my grade for it. Back into the take of the pardoner, it was actually intriguing how the men traveled together basically scamming people. Seems like an action from this day and age I would say.

Last night was one of the longest ever due to so many reasons. Today has been nothing but constant battle between staying awake and feeling like a risen zombie. I still happened to push through though. In Mr Rease class today we finally started the Canterbury Tales. It was exactly what I expected, thought he speech tone of characters introduction and more. Honestly it was slightly boring at first but I got into it the more we ready and discussed with Mr. Rease.

Today began our introduction into the Canterbury tales, but before this we watched an inspirational speech called effort is everything. It generally explained the name because with effort you can do anything. This was meant to set the tone for the rest of our semester in this class. We will begin actually reading tomorrow.

Today started our first day of second semester, my last of highschool. Mr rease started class with an evaluation of questions for the class. Then we watched and completed a paper on a ted talk. It was very interesting.