social awareness

Emile Beniflah 811 11/26/12

Social Awareness Writing Project

Part 5- Write an original literature piece responding to social problem

People die, all the time

Work to stay alive-

What a crime.

People get sick, trying to put up with it

They all work and cry, until they die

If they could get the medicine and pills, they need

Then they wouldn’t be left alone, to bleed

Why in the world can people not have it

Healthcare is something everybody needs,

The medicine is what can answer your plea

So why can people not get it for free-

That is my question

Response to Song

                    I started off by thinking- what is a problem in this country that affects thousands of people, and that our government (at the moment) is treating poorly. As I was brainstorming, it came to me immediately: health. Healthcare is incredibly expensive and so many people cannot afford to buy the medicines they need to keep themselves healthy. It is unfair. I did some research and found that (estimated by Harvard) 45,000 people die without health care insurance. That immediately gave me the urge to write that in the first lines of my song, so the reader wants to learn more, because he/she is shocked. And then I tried to come up with words like bloody to make my song seem more dramatic. The end is supposed to make the reader understand that these people want and need healthcare, but they cannot get it, just because they do not have the money.

Social awareness

Emile Beniflah 811 11/26/12

Social Awareness Writing Project

Part 3- Find a true story about someone who changes the world every day

Interview with Ms. Demeo

Do you personally think you change the world by teaching?

            “I think that I do in a small way, but honestly if you have ever lived on this planet, you have changed the world. Everyone changes the world in one way”

Why did you choose to teach? Was it something you wanted to do young?         

            “Ever since I was small, it is something I wanted to do. It started at my High School where one of my teachers changed my life, and ever since I really enjoyed teaching”

Do you ever hate your job, and just want to stay home?

            “I think that hate is a very strong word. If you hate something, you should move on. No one should ever feel stuck. If I hated my job, I wouldn’t still be here. Sure it is very tough to deal with children and teachers sometimes, but I don’t hate my job”

If you got 1 million dollars, would you quit your job?

            “At this point in my career, I probably would, because I’m already thinking about retirement, but if it was when I was younger, I think I would have still worked”

Are things in your life that you saw wrong, and that you tried to fix?                   “I think that foreign language is not treated seriously at all in this country, and I try to get students to be interested in this subject”

Response

Ms. Demeo is an admirable person because she dedicated her whole life to teach students, even through hard times. She took foreign languages, a weakness the United States has, which she felt was important, and spent her career trying to fix that problem.

Social Awareness project 1

Emile Beniflah 811 11/26/12

Social Awareness Writing Project

Part 2- Observe your surroundings

List-

·         Having to wake up early every morning, feeling dull and not always focused or alert in my morning classes. Performance decreases in morning especially when taking tests.

·         Public schools have a tiny budget which results in having barely any decent material! I know we’re in debt, but come on!

·         My cleaning lady pays more taxes than my family.

·         Because healthcare is so expensive, millions of people are left without it, and when they get sick they can’t do anything about it. This should be changed.

·         People are left uneducated therefore not able to get decent jobs leaving them poor. Everyone needs education- a chance.

Having to wake up in the morning might seem like a tiny problem in life, but for us teenagers, it could alter our future in a dramatic way! We are in an extremely important stage in our lives, and sleep could be the reason we go to a good High School or College!

Scientific evidence supports that the average teenager needs 8 ½ -9 ¼ hours of sleep a day, and studies show that teenagers tend to go to bed later, therefore waking up later. They can go to bed as late as they want, but they can’t wake up whenever they want! A survey from CBS News asked children from 12-15 years old how many hours of sleep they got, and the results were stunning! The average student got about 6-7 hours of sleep a night (not really shocking to me though…). That means that we (teenagers) lose about 2 hours of sleep a night!!! This has a huge impact in our daily performance in school, especially the morning classes. As we get less sleep, we “zone out” more in class and fall asleep. 6 or 7 hours of sleep might not seem like a big deal, but we could end up with sleep deficit, and that could harm us.

 So why are most schools starting as early as 7:30 -8:30, forcing us students to wake up at about 6 or 7 am? In order to meet the healthy sleep hours, we should then go to bed at about 9, which cannot happen to most teens because their brain hormone melatonin is produced later at night than adults and kids. Why not start school for example at 9:30? This could help students to concentrate throughout the day, but still leave room for extracurricular activities and family time.

After Reading Mause, a graphic novel written by Art Spiegelman the feeling that anyone should feel, is shock, but also terror. Many people are very uneducated about WW2 and what actually happened, but after reading this novel, you can really feel what a Jew at that time period would. A Nazi giving small Jewish children a bomb to play with, and all the children dying, is one example of the shocking things in this book the writer expresses.

Vladek, the main character, tries to hide himeself with his family, from under a garbage disposal, to behind the walls of an attic. These so called bunkers, where Jews would hide in the war, could be as small as a school bathroom, for as many as three families! At one point in the novel, Vladeks former best friend sells him out and tells the Germans where he hid, just for three loaves of bread and a piece of cake. But as Art Spiegelman says in the novel- "it didn't matter if you were best friends with the wealthiest man in poland- when the Germans caught you, and send you to a concentration camp, you were on your own..."

Jews had to find ways to find these bunkers, because many poles would tell Germans if Jews tried to hide near their houses. People did not think of jews as fellow humans, they thought of Jews as animals or filthy creatures. Hitler quoted- "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human" .  People would think that Jews would come and haunt them or kill them at night, and people started writing stories about them!!! It was terrifying.

Hurricane Sandy

     Everyone in New York City knows that hurricane sandy was a terrific storm that destroyed thousands of house,(which made thousands of people homeless...) and flooded almost all of lower Manhattan, which lead to lack of power. The city was destroyed, and that cost millions of dollars! Hurricane Sandy is one of the most major storms we have had in a long time. But the question that lots of New Yorkers wrangle about is- could this storm have been more prepared?

     One major problem New York City, Long Island along with New Jersey and many more places faced, is the flooding. The flooding was the major issue that destroyed houses, and made thousands of people homeless. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that the state should consider levee systems (a natural embankment beside water, often use to prevent water from passing the embankment in case of flooding...) and face up to inadequacy of existing protections. He also quotes- "The construction of this city did not anticipate these kind of situations. We are only a few feet above sea level". Because of climate change and global warming, scientists predict that storms like Sandy will come up to 3 times a year, and we need to be prepared. What happened with Sandy can't happen twice. This must be taken extremely seriously.

     But a problem of course in every situation that has ever happened, is the money of course. For Park Slopers and many other neighbourhoods that lay in the high parts of New York City, Sandy was a small problem. But it destroyed many families lives, and to give you an idea of the damage, the rebuilding could cost up to $10 000,000,000!!! This is how much the storm has affected the East Coast! And thus marks the arguement that people dont want to spend EVEN MORE than those 10 billion dollars they already have to pay off!!!


    Never the less, after this harsh experience, at least we have learned that another storm is going to come, and we have to be ready, cause the storm always is.