Who I'm thankful for

In my 7th period class I am thankful for Clark Shimoda!!  Clark and I struggled through spanish I last year, but this years American Lit class is different.  First of all it isn't painful like last years spanish, and Clark makes endless comments that leave everyone clueless.  He makes call more enjoyable for me, and everyone else. Clark also might have the coolest afro and mustache combination ever.  I have never seen anyone come even close to having a better one.  He is also a jr master scuba diver!!!

I am a plow

If I were to call myself plow I would have to say there are different people pushing me.  If I am a plow, obviously my family and friends would be pushing me along with teacher, coaches etc. but to be a sucsessful plow you need to be able to operate on your own.  In anything that you have to "plow" through in life, you have to push yourself.  In school you need to want to do good, because if you truly don't care, but your parents are pushing the plow, you won't  do good in school.  For example, I play soccer.  Not because other people think I should play, or my parents force me to play, but I love the game.  Whatever you choose to do you need to do it for yourself.  If you are doing something for someone else, you won't be happy, and you won't put the effort you need to put into something. 

Direction the class needs.

I'm not going to lie and say I look forward to going to American Lit everyday.  I don't have a single class that I can't wait to get to, but American Lit is a more enjoyable class, and most students would agree.  There is always loads of trash talking I hear behind teachers backs, and I haven't heard any about Mr Mcarthy.  So if it were a popularity contest...you won.  Now, what teachers care about.  I don't think the class needs direction.  Part of what I like about the class is that it doesn't have a direction.  Obviously we have a curriculum, required reading, and assigned work, but the rest is up in the air.  The students of the class have more of an opprotunity to run disscussions, and contribute to the class, and on certain days we dictate which direction are class goes which is a great thing.

Modern Day Slavery? No such thing

I don't think it's right to compare anything to slavery.  We can say that people are manipulated, and exploited, but we can't compare any of these instances to the actual slave era a couple of hundreds of years ago.  A case where I think groups of people are forced to do something is going to school.  Students are forced into doing things they aren't interested in, and many things they won't ever even think about in their future lives.  Teachers and school officials can say we are rewarding kids with an education, but like I said most of the stuff we learn ends up being useless knowledge.  Don't get me wrong though.  I like school, and I'm sure most kids do like school, but if we had the opprotunity to have a say in what we are tought it would be more enjoyable for everyone.

Blogger: American Literature Blog - Manage Posts

Blogger: American Literature Blog - Manage Posts: "Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem Massachucettes. He was born a puritan, and came from a long long line of puritans. The reason for the w in Nathaniels name was to distance himself from Judge Hathorne. Nathaniel Hawwthorne is related to Hathorne(the judge from the salem witch trials). It is clear to me that he was born into something he wanted no part of, and he disagreed with his families past, and perhaps the puritan religion. You can't blame him for that either. He might have just been a person who came to their senses, and thought that puritanism was just silly, and he wanted to distance himself from all aspects of their life. I think that there are still things in our society today that can relate to puritanism. Something on a personal level for most of the sophmores at Whitney Young would be the sex ed teacher from PE also known as the "abstinance lady." She didn't try to scare us away from sex, but she focused on all of the consequences and showed us some pretty disturbing footage. This makes me think about Puratinism because of all the fear they tried to instill in every day life.