Audrey's Portfolio

Organization:

I feel good about with the way I ged and spend, budget, and keep track of my money, either as an allowance or earning from a job.

Stress Resilience:

When I face a life challenge, I feel confident that I handle the accompanying stress in a healthy way.

Healthy Relationships:

I am able to identify and end an unhealthy relationship when I need to.

Rest & Play

On a regular basis I get enough rest to energize myself.

Handling Emotions:

I have a solid and healthy sense of confidence in myself.

Spirituality:

I have activities that I do regularly to renew my soul, to center myself, and to gain perspective.

School & Work

I am personally happy with my grades.

Care for the Body

The choices I make about what I eat and drink are healthy.

What challenged you the most? 

One thing that challenged me during this unit the most is probably the revision part. At first, I thought revision just meant fixing grammar, and changing a word here and there, but I quickly learned that in poetry, revision is more like re-seeing the entire poem. I had to cut lines I originally loved, restructure stanzas, add stanzas, and sometimes even change the metaphor entirely to make it clearer or more powerful. Overtime I realized that revision isn’t about fixing mistakes; it’s about making the poem more honest and intentional. 

What part surprised you? 

One part that surprised me during this unit is while listening to other poets’ poems. It made me realize that some of the personal things that they want to express are actually much more than what we think about who they are.  

At what point did you begin to feel more confident as a poet or performer? 

I began to feel more confident as a performer after I performed my poem for the first time in front of the whole class. Before that, I was really nervous. I kept worrying about messing up or sounding silly. But once I started reading my poem out loud, I realized that people were actually listening. No one laughed or judged me. In fact, I saw some classmates nod along or react to certain lines. After that first time, each performance got a little easier, and I started to trust my voice more. 

Revision 

One meaningful revision I made to my poem is that I added more stanzas to strengthen the meaning of my poem. My poem is about the passion project, and our group chose to bake it as a team. But then, one of my teammates went to America to revisit her boarding schools, and another of my teammates didn’t even know how to bake. I used simile, I turned me into the captain of the team, and the other two are the crew and traitor. I am afraid that no one can understand my poem, so I added more stanzas to state that the sea adventure was only a dream. 

Performance growth 

After each performance, I received feedback from others. I tried to project and adjust my performance, trying to not overact or be too calm.  

Learning from others 

Watching other poets perform taught me a lot about technique and vulnerability. I noticed how effective pauses, changes in volume, and eye contact could make a poem land so much harder. Their performances pushed me to care more about pacing, tone, and trusting my own voice. 

Poetry and identity 

This unit taught me that emotion, writing, performance, and identity are all deeply connected. Emotion is where a poem starts. Writing helps you shape that emotion into words, giving it structures and clarity. But performance is what brings it to life, allowing you to share your identity with others in a way that reading alone can’t. Poetry allowed me to express something honest and difficult about myself that I don’t usually talk about out loud. On the page, I could revise and hide behind words, but performing forced me to own those feelings in front of others. 

Looking back 

If I could restart this unit from stage 1, I would try to make my poem even clearer for my audience to really understand the meaning of it. As I stated before, I revised my poem by adding multiple stanzas to state that it was a dream. But I still think I can strengthen it by adding more metaphors to my passion project. I will probably also be more productive and write more good poems. 

This work is a part of unit 3: LA PREMIERE GUERRE MONDIALE

This is aimed to deepen our understanding of the historical context, the personal experiences of soldiers and their families, and the format and language of informal French correspondence. The task required collaboration with a partner to create character profiles, one as a French soldier during World War 1 and the other as a family member back home. We are able to exchange the perspective of those two character while writing this letter.

Through this assignment, I not only improved my French writing skills but also gained a deeper appreciation for the human side of history. Writing from a soldier’s perspective made the events of WWI feel more personal and real, moving beyond dates and battles to emotions and relationships.

Overall in this unit I learned how to write a letter in French, and all of those vocabularies in World War 1.