RR 31st Jan

Underage Drinking- Pros and Cons

The United States of America is one of the few countries where alcohol is illegal until 21, and people argue weather it should be lowered to 18 like many European countries, or should stay at 21. But people arguing both want to achieve the same goal; children have to be healthy, drink responsibly and be educated of the matter. Kids who don't know their limits can drink so much they get alcohol poisoned! 

     Dr.David Hanson believes that the legal age for drinking should be pushed even higher than it is now! He says that fewer adults drink in this century, but when they do they tend to drink a lot more. Researchers suggest that drinking should be kept at 21 because the brain doesn't finish maturing before 25, but then should the legal drinking age not also be pushed in that case? 

      But if you can join the army, and you can vote, then why cant you have a beer? European countries such as France, Spain, Portugal and Italy all have the drinking age at 18, and "there is no evidence that it harms them intellectually or behaviorally" (Ogilvie, 2). The problem is not the age it becomes legal, it's that people are uneducated about how alcohol harms the body.

     James Fell seems to think that 21 is a reasonable age for legalizing alcohol. Drinking in 10th and 12th grade has gone down ever since the drinking age was raised to 21. "There's no reason to fix what isn't broken" (Ogilvie, 2). The drinking age at 21 saves lives period.

After reading the article, I wondered what my opinion on the subject was. I was really intrigued when the author writes about how the drinking age should be kept to 21. The writer had evidence to back up her statements, and really persuaded me. For example "In the 1970s, a number of states lowered the drinking age from 21 to 18, we saw an increase in alcohol consumption by youth. When it was raised back to 21 in 1984, we saw lower consumption of alcohol, and we've kept those low rates." (Ogilvie, 2) 

But the author shows bias when talking about the legal age lowering again to 18. She states that if you pretty much become an adult at 18, you should be able to grab a beer.

After reading this article, my opinion is that kids these days don't know enough about drinking and what it does to your body. I think neither 18 nor 21 is a good age for drinking if you know not enough about alcohol poisoning. Knowledge can help the rates of youths drinking, not a legal age. 

RR 1/17

     Reading Response on: Will Grayson.

Will Grayson has pretty much one friend. He was in a group of friends previously but he "quit" and "joined" the only person that would hang with him- Tiny. Tiny was tall and and pretty cool. The only problem with him was that he didn't care what anyone thought of him- AT ALL! He would sing his heart out in a really high pitch... IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HALL!!! And in class he would shout out and express his love for one of his many boyfriends.Everyone could hear and they all laughed. Then after class all the students would come up to me and be like- so hows your gay lover going or other stuff. Will would just ignore, because he was my only friend.
For me just starting to read the few pages of the book really made me think of what was going to happen in the book! So the conflict was either stick with the only person that will ever hang out and do things with you or just get humiliated and embarrassed in public constantly! For me I would actually be better than the main character for the first time! I would go and defend my best friend, but Will seems to have a lot of issues going on. It wouldn't surprise me if further in the story their friendship gets rough...

The Lorax

How does this text make you think about justice in the world?

     After Reading the Lorax by Dr Seuss, I was kind of confused. The Once-ler had come to this land for a small business, and after time he had completely ruined the environment. The once-ler came to a beautiful land were everybody was happy, and when he left, there was not one truffula tree left standing. He had taken them all, and destroyed them for the material. All the animals left that were all once happy. The air was filled with gas.

After Reading that I immediately thought to my self- this is horrible. Everyone was living happy before he came, and killed the land. When everyone was gone, The Once-ler was the only one left, in the miserable land that had been destroyed.

This reminded me of the outside world. How people come to amazing lands like rainforests and destroy the forest just to make buildings/businesses. What about the people who lived in that forest? Or the animals that lived there happily. And the smell of the freshest air for the land was filled with trees.

People destroy millions of homes, and do it greedily for themselves.

Ned Vizzini Beginning of book response

Are there groups you belong to in this text? What do they look like here? If your own groups are missing, what would they say if they were in the book?

            I just started reading the auto biography by Ned Vizzini, and at one point in the story, he writes about all the different groups there are at his school. For example, there are the geeks, the drug addicts, the preppies and all sorts of funny groups. I think then one group that I belong to in his classification would be preppie. Ned Vizzini says that preppies wore okay clothes, didn't smell bad, all recognized each other from the first day of school and always seemed to be doing something. I admit, when I came to this school from Europe, I didn't recognize anyone at all for obvious reasons. But every time I join a club, or go to a camp, there are always a bunch of people I know, and we just hang out. We are always playing basketball or chatting-we always have something to do. But in the book, preppies seem kind of anti-social with people they don’t know. They also seem really posh, not really my style.                                                                                                             

If preppies weren't included in the book, I definitely think it wouldn't really change anything because the characteristics they have are definitely included in other types of groups.  For example, geeks always hang together and never socialize with other people like the preppies.

            

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.