Teach For America Part II

A long time ago i made a blog post about my brother and what he is doing in teach for america and how different inner city schools are from New Trier. This is just going to be a follow-up post on how the rest of the year went for him. First of all there are just a couple stories from my brother about how much different it is to teach at a school that is not as lucious as NT. He got punched in the face by one of his students, his computer was stolen, there have been many gang fights in the school, and yes a student even told him that he was going to send a hit out on my brother for calling his mother about his grade. I dont believe that any of this has ever happened at NT and people at our school should be thankfull for how good we have it. i know my brother,altough his job has its days, he has gotten alot of character and can use this experience to better his own life and recognize how hard some people have it. Even though the odds for being choosen to teach for america are extremely slim i would like to be apart of the program after college because knowing now what my brother knows i want to help out and maybe spread the way New Trier is to other schools that are not as lucky.

The End is Near!

Yes the end of the school year is almost here and i can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But the problem is that as we get closer to the end of the year i begin to go into hibernation from school. seeing all of the seniors be done and them saying how good it feels to not have finals or worry about highschool anymore has kind of been burned into my brain and i feel that as i get closer to finals i am starting to become a senior among juniors. And this is a problem because i have borderline grades in almost all my classes. According to a comment by Adam the Great on Gordie's blog post he said that east coast schools have a rule that if you have an A in a class then you dont have to take the final of that class. i wish this happened at New Trier because people that get A's in classes obviously have worked hard in the class all year and they deserve to take a break at the end of the year. basically i dont like finals and i want to be a senior so i can wreak havoc on the fresh meat(sophomores).

Immigration

So during the final weeks of school i thought that any video i watched during a class would be a joke. haha i was wrong, in spanish class we just finished the movie "El Norte" and we also watched a documentary called "Crossing Arizona", both of which were very eye opening. After watching the videos i am split 50-50 on my thoughts of immigration. Illegal immigrants are crossing the border to america in order to have a better life for themselves and their families, and in doing so they are doing the jobs that most americans would not want to do. so for this instance i believe that since they are making the long journey to america and risking life and death to help their family who cant afford barely anything. they should be helped and not deported. and people are helping the immigrants by putting out water and food for them were they normally cross. on the other hand i believe that immigrants have no place to stay in america, first of all they are taking jobs from some americans and getting benefits that most americans dont even have. the immigrants are also leaving many tons of trash where they are crossing and along the way are shooting cattle and just leaving them. this is wrong. i cannot make up my mind where i stand so i will stay in the middle.

Since we have been talking about the flag alot recently something surpirised me during the videos. for one during a protests to stop immigrants from crossing the border many people were carrying the american flag and a couple from washington said they were never patriotic untill they got associated in the protest. So is that what it takes for people to be patriotic?

Questions for the audience

I really enjoyed american studies day, although all of the classes were great i liked louis masur and mississippi heat the best. Masur speech was very interesting and got me thinking, and i had some questions that i would like you to answer. Is a staged photo as powerfull as a original non-staged photo? Does cropping a photo ruin the true meaning of the photo? And what is more memorable a video or a picture? I will be making another blog post answering these questions for myself but i want to hear what you have to say first.

Patriotic sweet dreams

As we have been learning about what we feel the flag symbolizes in class it really made my thinking juices start flowing. people said that it symbolizes peace or hope or freedom and should not be wrongfully used like on napkins. while i believe that alot of people think the flag symbolizes these things I, on the contrary, feel a little bit different. i think that the flag is just an identity of a country. every country has different colors and different representations on the flag, and this identifies a country. i also believe that it is not wrong to use a flag on a towel or napkin because it is just a drawing and not the real thing. now if a person took a flag down from a flagpole just to wipe off their face on it then that would be disrespectful

Our assignment was to find a flag and photograph it. i had never really critically looked around to see flags but this weekend i did. one thing i saw was American flag covers on a bed. Who would not want to sleep in the flags of their country? i feel that these covers were not meant to spark a big controversy or even make you second guess the fact that there are flags. i believe that covers were made just for decoration. I dont think that there can be anything said about them like the walls are a lighter blue then the blue in the flags so that means america is darker then the outside or something like that. there is although one problem i saw with the flags, instead of having stars it has really small stars and half moons. why would there be a need to chnage the flag for these covers anyways?