Marking Period Reflection

This marking period was a lot different than last years language art class. This marking period, language arts is definitely moving at a much faster pace than last year. However, just from these past few weeks I do feel that I am growing as a writing and reader. Even though we got a lot more work this year than lasts, the class is much more fun and entertaining. You make the class a lot more interesting so it is easier for us to learn and gain new concepts. I also really like how we take our TKAM quizzes online. I think it is much more efficient and its is fun for us because, well for me i've never taken a quiz online before. This class is a lot more challenging for me than the past years, but to feel like I am already getting better, I hope that I will have drastically gotten better. However, I am not too happy with the vocab quiz. I really do not think you should put them into sapphire because you knew all of us were going to fail, and it is just going to bring all of our grades down. I think it was a good idea for us to take it so we know what future vocab quizzes are going to look like but I do not think you should have put it into sapphire. In the end, I really enjoy this class. I look forward to it everyday, and I am very happy that it is my first period of the day because it starts the day off on a good foot.

Musical Connection

Atticus Finch is a very important character in the story "To Kill A Mockingbird."The song "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty relates to Atticus' personality. He is totally against the discrimination towards African Americans which is the reason why he does not turn the Tom Robinson case down and chooses to support him. Once the people of Maycomb started figuring out that Atticus was going to be Tom Robinson's lawyer, they all started to judge him. For example, Mrs. Dubose decided to call Atticus a "nigger lover." However, even with all of these people talking poorly about Atticus, he does not even question not helping Tom. In the song, there is a line that says "hey I will stand my ground and I won't back down,"that is exactly what Atticus is doing. He does not care at all what people think of his actions. He is going to stand up for what he believes in, and try to make a change in his town, no matter what it takes.

Emmett Till

In the summer of 1955 Emmett Till decided to visit his relatives in Money, Mississippi. During the time of his visit, there was a lot of segregation between blacks and whites and social injustice was at its peak. Till did attend a segregated school back in Chicago, however he was not aware of how different the extent of the situation was. His mother warned him, but at his age, everything just goes in one ear and out the other. On August 24, 1955 Emmett was standing outside a country store. His friends decided to dare him to flirt with the white woman who was working in the store. Foolishly enough, Till did just that. Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman who Till "hit" on, was away on business during the time. However, when he returned and found out what had happened to his wife, Roy got angry. Roy and his brother-in-law went to the residence where Till was staying and forced him into their car. They drove down to the Tallahatchie River, beat Till, gouged his eye out, and shot him in the head. Then then proceeded to attach a cotton-gin fan with barbed away to Till and threw him into the river. After finding the body, Emmett Till's family decided to bring this case to court. This trial "brought to light the brutality of the Jim Crow segregation in the South, and was an early impetus of the African American Civil Rights Movement."

Social injustice did not just happen back during the days of segregation. It is occurring in today's world too. A great example of social injustice that is a problem currently is human trafficking. Many of us are aware that human trafficking takes place in many foreign countries. However, it is also happening in our own country. "FBI estimates that there are over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. Their ages range from 9-19 years old." They say that these predators try to do anything they can for the young girls to enter their lifestyle and that they go anywhere the children go.

A girl named Debbie, experienced being abducted, and decided to tell her story. She explained that her friend Bianca told her that she was going to come by her house. Debbie proceeds by going outside to meet her. Bianca was in a car with two older men, and as they were about to leave the two men pull Debbie into the car and demand Bianca to tie her up or else they will shoot her. They brought Debbie to an apartment and ganged raped her.

As you can see social injustice has not gone away. Yes, it may have died down a little and there are other forms of social injustice. But it is happening in our own country. We need to try to put an end to this so no one experiences what Emmett Till went through, or the danger that Debbie went through.

Economy

"The economic crisis currently is bad, but it would have to get much worse for it to compare to the 1930s." The Great Depression and the economic recession the United States is going through now do share some similarities. However, the extent of the Great Depression was far worse. In the 60-minute interview with economic chairman Ben Bernanke, he told us that the unemployment rate is at 9.5% and 4% of the of the unemployed have not had a job for six months. He also stated that the people of the United States lost eight million jobs from the peak. Inflation, when the value of the U.S. dollar is dropping, making items more expense is also occurring in this recession. Bernanke also said that the gap between the rich and poor in the United States is worse than it has ever been. He believes it is creating two different societies. This is putting the United States in a very bad position. However, in the 1930s during the depression, approximately 1 out of 4 people were unemployed, putting the rate at 25%. Also during that time, about 9,000 banks failed, leaving the Americans who had their money deposited in the banks with nothing. For those that did not lose their money yet, they chose to withdraw it because they feared they would end up like most of the American population. This happened to lead to even more failures. In the end, both economic crisis are very bad, but our recession needs to get far worse in order for it to end up like the Great Depression.

Gossip

Gossip-Idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. In most cases, gossip tends to be a bad thing because you are secretly discussing things about other people. In the story "To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, gossip plays a very important role. By reading the story so far, we are clearly aware that many of the people living in the town of Maycomb, Alabama are very judgmental. They always have their personal opinions about those around them. This is completely understandable, however spreading your opinions is where the harm begins. For example, Mrs. Dubose is a very sick old lady in the story who eventually passes away but no matter how sick she was, she always felt the need to discuss the  problems she had with people. When Jem and Scout arrived at her house every morning for about a month long, she would always feel the need to harp on Atticus saying he is  a "Nigger Lover", for being a lawyer to a Negro, and tells Jem that he would eventually go to jail sometime in his life for bad behavior. As Jem and Scout continue to hear these things about their father whether it be by Mrs. Dubose or people in their school, they become very upset that people are talking bad about their father. So upset to the point where Scout almost got into a fist fight. Also, one of the main reasons why all of the people living in Maycomb are scared by Boo Radley, is because of gossip. One person had a bad thought about Boo and they just decided to let everyone know. It really upsets me that all of these people have bad opinions on Boo, when they have never even met him. Who knows, he could turn out to be a very nice man. We definitely saw a nice gesture by Boo when he decided to put a blanket over Scout during Miss Maudie's fire. If people stopped talking rudely about Boo, who knows maybe he will come out of his house during the day time.

The video clip from the movie Doubt talks about gossip. A woman who thought she was gossiping decided to go to the priest. The priest told her to go home and stab a pillow. The result of this was feathers everywhere. The priest then told her to go pick the feathers up, however this was impossible because there were too many of them, they went everywhere. This connects to gossip because when people decide to gossip, the opinions they spread go everywhere. There are so many rumors and judgements that you can not remember all of them. Since there are so many opinions (feathers) it will eventually get back to the person you are gossiping about.

We all gossip one way or another, if you want to believe it or not that is your choice. However, we should all try to keep our opinions to ourself as much as we can because gossip tends to always hurt people.

Who Is Harper Lee?

Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. Harper was the youngest of four children. Her father was a lawyer for the legislature and owned a part of a newspaper, while her mother rarely ever step foot out of their house due to a mental illness. When Harper was a child she never had many friends, however  she did have one close friend named Truman Capote, a former writer. The only thing Harper and Truman really had in common was that their life style's at home were very difficult. While in high school Harper became interested in literature. She graduated in 1944 and attended Huntington College in Montgomery, Alabama. Lee then transferred to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and became the editor of the school’s newspaper called the Rammer Jammer. During Harper’s junior year of college she was admitted into the law school for undergraduates. She decided to take that path for a few years until she realized that she wanted to be a writer. In 1949, Harper moved to New York City and reacquainted with Truman. Harper became friends with a man named Michael Martin Brown who provided Harper with enough money to to begin to write her book. In 1959 Harper finally finished the manuscript for the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

http://www.biography.com/articles/Harper-Lee-9377021

Summary Of Chapters 1 & 2

In chapter one of "To Kill A Mockingbird" we learn that Jem and Scout are siblings and there father, Atticus is the one that raised him because their mother died when Scout was two. Dill, who is the niece of Scout's neighbor, starts to hang out with the Scout and Jem. Throughout the whole first chapter, Dill, Scout, and Jem try to get Boo Radley, their scary neighbor out of his house. Throughout chapter two, Scout goes to his first day of school. However, his teacher Miss Caroline makes Scout feel bad for being educated. She also chooses to whip Scout with a ruler because Scout was trying to explain to her why Walter Cunningham was not taking the quarter.