Blog #14

When we were first told about the blog that we were supposed to keep all year I was kind of angry.  I did not want to do something that just took up time and I though would be pointless.  Now my view is very different.  I enjoyed doing the blogs this year and learned quite a bit from them.  It helped to reflect on the stories and it made me analyze the story more which in turn helped me on the tests.  One of my favorite topics of the blogs this year was creating endings to stories.  It was so much fun and it made me remember the actual story.  I also am not the most creative person ever so it was kind of fun to practice making things up and having it pertain to the story.  I definitely thought it was a good learning experience. I learned not to just do something half-minded even though it is simple and to take your time on some of the small things.
My favorite stories
1. Pit and the pendulum
2. The Great Gatsby
3. Owl Creek Bridge

Blog #12

The 1920's were a time of fun and excitement following World War 1.  One of the most memorable things from this time was the music.  The majority of the music can be summed up in one word: jazz.  Or Dance may be more appropriate.
1. St. Louis Blues- Bessie Smith.
       I chose this song because I remember the title from jazz band ad it was a song that we played.  Then I listened to it on youtube and it was pretty exciting to listen to.  It definitely showed what this age was all about.  The soul that Bessie Smith sang with showed how much she meant the lyrics, and I really enjoyed listening to it.

The next song that i picked was also off of a list of the 100 most popular songs during this time.
Heebie Jeebies-Louis Armstrong
     I mainly looked up this song because Louis Armstrong is an amazing trumpeteer and singer.  I listened to it while typing this and it was a lot of fun.  It just put me in a good mood.  I can just see the characters from "Great Gatsby" going to club and dancing to Louis Armstrong playing and singing live and everyone having a lively time.

Blog #13

Advice is always something I enjoy giving haha. My first word of advice is to try and be friends with your students.  Say hi to them if you see them (unless you don't like them of course, just kidding.)  I know from my experience, it makes working with teachers a lot easier if they are friendly to you.  It is simple logic.  If you are kind to someone they are typically kind back.  Teachers need all the help they can get when it comes to gaining respect especially with some classes from what I have heard.

A second bit of advice involves homework and tests.  I know you can't just not assign stuff and just give everyone 100s on test, but try to be lenient on test dates.  Junior year was honestly the worst year of high school by an enormous margin. However, Mr. Fisk was always willing to move a test back a day if we had other stuff going on.  Sometimes we had a test in 7/8 of our classes in one day.  Just take the time to ask what else is going on and the students will greatly appreciate it.

Blog #11

To find Mark Twain quotes, I literally googled " Mark Twain Quotes."  I clicked on the first site, and from there on read the first quote.  Reading the first quote was all I had to read.  It applied to me perfectly and I was actually just going what this quote says at the same instant.  It was kind of weird. 
The quote is: "A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."  This really applies to me.  For some reason I am extremely hard on myself.  People will tell me good job, and I will just shrug it off because in my opinion it was not good enough.  Mr. Weiderkehr reminded me of this the other day.  Math has never been challenging for me until these past few weeks.  I have spent multiple hours in his room trying to get help.  At one point I was so angry at myself for not understanding the math.  Eventually Mr. Weiderkehr told me that I can only do as best as I can.  I have to accept myself for who I am and what I am capable of.  I cannot be perfect at everything, so I need to accept myself before I can truly be me.

Blog #10

One of my favorite television shows is Glee.  A lot of people consider this show gay or girly.  But that is one thing that it really has a good perception of.  In fact it shows people who are gay and shows the problems that they have to deal with every day.  In the season finale one of the kids tried to hang himself after kids made fun of him.  The show always has good messages like that.  Mixed in with the life lessons is a fun musical environment.  I love singing and the songs that they do are great. It is also full of issues and things that kids in high school go through.  Unfortunately I have work on Tuesday so i have to miss the new episodes.  And now on fox.com, you have to wait 8 days to watch the episode.  But I really like this show.

Blog #9

One person that i found who has an untold story of her civil rights part was Viola Liuzzo.  She was a white woman who marched with Martin Luther King and thousands of black citizens.  She had five kids at home but wanted to make a difference in the rights of African American citizens.  In 1965 during the night of one of their marches, she was killed.  The KKK brutally murdered her by shooting her in the head.  The members of the KKK were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  People will not see her name in history books but she definitely had an impact.  Anyone who was willing to give their life for the cause deserves to be recognized.  

Blog #8

One of the people I chose to write about was Countee Cullen.  I remember that we read some of his poems in class, and they were interesting.  He excelled at most all of the things he did, and was very smart.  He received his master's degree from Harvard.  Later on he was also a teacher like one of the Delany sisters was.  His poems influenced many people during this the Harlem Renaissance time, and his poems are famous still today.  
 Another person who was mentioned in Having Our Say was W.E.B. Du Bois.  The sisters actually met him and they played a role in different NAACP activities.  

Blog #7

One thing that was on my mind today and bothering me were the drivers who are in a massive hurry.  The traffic in Rockford is already bad enough.  Then you have the people driving half a foot away from the person in front of them because they are trying to get somewhere.  Then they go around you and cut you off.  They get stuck at the same light as you do 90% of the time.  Congratulations you got to wait at a stoplight five seconds sooner than I did. I really just do not understand it.  I am actually usually driving 5 miles and hour over the speed limit, and I still have people who do this.  Like come on, you are going 60 in a 35. You have to be kidding me.  Not to be sexist but it is typically a teenage girl and whether it is a girl or a guy, they are usually on a phone.  So one, you're following too close, and two you are texting.  So when I need to stop really quick, have fun buying me a new bumper.  You aren't Michael Shumacher, so stop trying to drive like him.

The Delany sisters had a rough time with oppression and segregation.  Luckily they were more sheltered and didn't experience it as bad as some other African Americans did.  I chose this picture because Bessie Delany had a close run in with the KKK.  She said she was almost killed by the clan. She was walking home and was confronted by them.  She gave rude excuse and was almost captured by them.  Luckily she escaped.  This picture shows how scary the KKK was and how dangerous it was for the Delany sisters during this time. 

Blog #5

I enjoyed reading this peom.  When I connect to it though I do not really think about nature.  I think more about how the things we watched on TV is what we "became."  After watching TV shows such as power rangers and things like that, we played that at school.  I think it is funny how what you see you really do become.  We watched a lot of things and then we made our own games about them.  On the flip side of this, if you are alwasy watching death, you will most likely become less affected by it.  That is why a lot of serial killers have a traumatic childhood and see someone they love die (I am a big fan of criminal minds). The things that we see in life define who we are. 

Blog #4

The Bee

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee's experience
Of clovers and of noon!

This poem is personifying a bee.  Emily Dickinson makes it seem like the bee is a person.  The insects do so much work throughout their lives and we do not really realize it.  They are constantly working and amking new things that we use in our lives but may not consider where it came from. I think she is trying to convey what work the small animals do.  It makes us realize that there is life other than ours.  Also a message she may be trying to get accross is that life goes on seperate from ours.  The bee goes about its daily work as we go through ours.  As seen in other poems, when we die, nature goes on.

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Blog #3

Today was not a very swell day.  A lot of things that I relly didn't want to happen definitely did.   But for lunch I had a delicious cupcake.  Also, today was the egg drop in physics.  I was luckily chosen to be my group's egg dropper.  It was very nerve racking after seeing other classmates eggs hit the ground and shatter.  Luckily though I dropped our egg and it hit exactly where it needed to. Tomorrow we will be attempting our 4th drop from a height of almost 2 meters.  I hope we beat the previous record.  

Blog #2

In fact, I have felt a connection to nature.  Two years ago, my family and I went on a trip to Colorado.  It was a really cool experience.  The main point that I connected to nature was while I was biking down Pike's Peak.  We saw a brochure to be able to actually bike down Pike's Peak.  My family and I enjoy the outdoors and were definitely up for a fun trip to go on.  I decided not to go whitewater rafting since I hate water.  We drove up to the top of the mountain and unloaded all of the bikes. We then proceeded to start biking down it.  There were so many parts of it where you could just fall off and die.  That is why I felt my connection.  I was so high up, and in a really cool environment, that I didn't really care.  I felt like it didn't matter, and that I was actually connected to nature.     

Blog #1 of 2nd Semester

Both of these authors are very good and I enjoy reading their stories.  However, I think I like Edgar Allen Poe better, because he uses less description.  Sometimes, description just gets too overwhelming.  I found myself skipping pages just to get to the moral of the story.  I really did not care about the depth that Hawthorne went into.  I would've rather had him get straight to the point.  Edgar Allen Poe's stories are also more interesting.  They are a lot more suspenseful, and even scarier.  In my opinion, Poe is a much better author.   

Blog #10

I learned a lot in my research paper.  It was a topic that not many people do or think of, and some may even think it is ridiculous.  My topic was the causes of 9/11.  At first I thought this would be easy, but then i learned it would not be easy at all.  I learned that no one really knows the definite cause of 9/11.  Through my research I saw many different theories.  Even ones saying that it was the United States own doing.  I thought this was crazy, but after more research, it really could have been possible, and the facts led to that almost as much as they led to a different thing.  So during my research paper I learned a lot, and the two main things were about the causes of 9/11, and also about different theories of what caused it.   

Blog #9

The past two weeks we have been reading romantic poetry.  One of the poems that I enjoyed and found interesting was The Psalm of Life.  I have always liked the the metaphor of the footprints in the sand, and it reminded me of the story in the Bible.  Even though I usually seem happy, sometimes I need someone to carry me through something.  However, the poem was more of the footprints that we leave on the earth when we die.  Physically, we are gone, but our spirit and impact is still there.

Blog #8

The leaves are all falling around me, soon there will be none left.  Just as the days left of school are ticking by one at a time.  The leaves of school are falling quickly and before we know it snow will be on the ground, and we will be on Christmas break.  The birds are singing their final songs before they hunker down for the cold, and the squirrels are gathering food to hibernate.  While the animals gather final supplies, we are turning in our final assignments, and it is now time to celebrate Christmas.

Blog #7

As I looked up, the Scythe came down in a perpetual swing.  Slowly, it inched towards the ropes.  It dug deeper every time until it cut all of the bindings and I was free.  I was able to get off with just two shallow slices in my chest.  For once I had a feeling of relief as I slowly moved around the outside of the room.  Then, all of a sudden, a trap door opened.  I fell for what seemed like hours.  Eventually I hit the bottom, but found it to be soft.  From behind a pane of glass I heard, "Congratulations, you passed the test, welcome to the brotherhood."  Then I passed out.

Blog #6

I thought that The Crucible was an okay story.  However it got slightly annoying that it was basically mass hysteria.  Almost everything in there was just because one person started doing something and everybody joined in.  Once someone accused someone of witchcraft, everyone else did as well.  Overall, it was a decent story in my opinion, but could have been a lot more interesting if it was more personal, and the actions weren't just all repeated.

Blog #5

HUAC, stands for the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was part of the House of Representatives, and its primary goal was to be an investigate Committee.  It looked into cases of disloyalty, and subversion to and in the United States.  It was active until about 1969, and eventually dissolved in 1975.  Their actions during their time attracted a lot of public attention, and the committee is still studied today in History classes.