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.