Fairy tales have been around since my great-great grandmothers birth and they will continue to be around for centuries. In today’s society, though, some people are saying that the fairy tales are not socially acceptable to read to children. They are tales filled with violence, witchcraft, handsome princes and dwarfs walking around wearing big pointy hats. This may seem weird or inappropriate to some parents, but to me, it just seems normal. Children’s stories aren’t famous for the violence and somewhat inappropriate messages, they are famous because they do and will continue to enchant children for days to come, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them.
One fairy tale that I found interesting is Hansel and Gretel. The children are rewarded in the end of the story after they killed the witch and stole the candy. It surprises me that a story meant for children would include murder, but the fact is, the main focus of the story is not Hansel and Gretel killing the witch, but that you should listen to your parents, and don’t trust strangers, because they can be deceiving.
I have a pretty good relationship with my parents right now. In the future, I hope to maintain this relationship with them. I don’t need to get any closer, I just don’t want to get farther away from them. I know that I won’t be able to see them every day, but I still want to try and come home for holidays and weekends if I can. As long as I can still see them, I will be happy.
Lots of movies and TV shows have family relationships in them. In The Simpsons, Homer is not always the nicest parent to Bart, and always gets mad at Lisa for playing her saxaphone, but then in the end you see that he cares about his children and would do anything to protect them. Also, in the movie Step Brothers, Brennan and Dale are forced to live together and be a family, and at the start they both hate each other but once they get to know each other, they become best friends.
I left a comment on Dielle’s blog about family relationships.
The first unit we took in ELA 20 was Recollection of Childhood. We read a few short stories like “Penny in the Dust” and “Back to Wolf Willow” about authors recollecting certain childhood memories that are either based on reality or just a writing style they used to help grab your attention. I think that authors write literature about recollecting childhood memories because it helps to add a mood to the story. For example, in the poem “(I Remember) Back Home” by Joseph, the author is recollecting his memories of “back home” were he grew up and you can tell how angry he feels toward what was happening to his hometown where as if he would have just been writing as a child there may not have been the same emotion in the poem.
After I read some of these stories I started to see my memories differently I it also helped me to remember some important memories that had been lost to me over time. Before I read these stories, I wouldn’t have looked much into my memories and said that I was a happy kid and good things happened all the time but after the class disscusions and short stories I realized that there were things I did as a kid that I’m not proud of and that I was very enexperienced (obviously) and if I had a chance to live it all over again with the knowledge I have now my childhood would be a lot more meaningful and happier.
This unit was good because it helped me to reunite with my inner child and remember all of those memorable memories that would have otherwise been left forgotten.
I left a comment on Dielle’s blog about recollections.
Good evening, i’m Ron Burgendy, and here’s what’s happening in your world today.
One of our assignments in ELA B10 was to interview three people: a teacher, a parent, and a mentor. The two questions we asked them were “What experience changed your life the most?” and “What is a good morale or motto to follow?” That’s not exactly what the questions were but I’m writing this at home and I don’t remember what they were.
I interviewed two people, my ELA teacher Ms. Waldner, and my mom. I learned a couple things like somtimes the people you look up to aren’t as strong as you thought, to never let opportunities pass you by, live your life to your full potential, stop and smell the roses once in a while, and always remember to spend time with your family, because without them, you wouldn’t exist.
It was a pretty good assignment because it gave you a couple of peoples perspectives on life and taught you the life lessons they wish they would have learned sooner.
I left a comment on Amy’s blog where she tells what her mentors and others answered the questions.
We are working on a Life Pressures unit in ELA B10 and we read a lot of poems and stories about people facing challenges in their life and and pressures from themselves to succeed.
One story we read was titled The Michelle I Know. It was about a teenager who was in the hospital with cancer. She had a friend who came and visited her every day but she was worried he wasn’t going to show up today. After a while, her friend showed up and she found out he was just stuck in traffic. She was basically pressuring herself to believe that he wasn’t going to come because she didn’t want to be too dissapointed if he didn’t come. She was under a lot of stress because she used to be popular and now she was bald and thought she looked ugly. She thought that no one wanted to be her friend, but she learned that Rob would always be her friend and that he would stick with her to the end.
People face a lot of pressures, some more than others, and you need to learn how to overcome those obstacles and challenges and try to live a long, happy life.
I left a comment on Dielle’s blog where she also wrote about The Michelle I Know.
In our English B10 class we were asked to write a narrative story about an issue where someone experienced a significant event related to inequality or discrimination. I chose to do a story about racial inequality because it is something that you still see around in everyday life and it is a topic that is close to many people.
Tonight started just like any other Saturday night for me and my friend Marcus. We had went and ate at Burger King and then went to a movie. We’ve been doing that same thing every Saturday night for two years now. Some of the nights haven’t ended so well but never before has one ended like this.
I was driving my friend home to his house in Virginia when two police officers pulled us over. He looked into my driver window, locked his eyes on my friend and said to him, “you are under arrest for the murder of Joe Smitt.” Immediately I thought, how could Marcus have done this, because I knew he was a good guy and wouldn’t hurt anyone. I asked the police officer when it happened and he told me that it was just two hours ago in the alley between McDonald’s and the Bingo Hall on 152nd street. I’d been with my friend the whole night and I knew he didn’t do it so I knew exactly what the police officers were doing. This wasn’t the first time me and my friend had been pulled over by two white police officers for something we didn’t do. I tried to control myself and I told the police officer I had been with him all night and we were no where near 152nd street. He responded by saying, “you are under arrest for aiding a criminal.”
Both of us kept our mouths shut after that including the ride up to the police station because we knew anything we said would be twisted and turned against us and just get us in more trouble than we were already in. I was sentenced to 10 years in prison for aiding a criminal and Marcus was charged with 1st degree murder and given the death penalty. We were both also charged with assault on a police officer.
I left a comment on Amy’s blog about her story called My New School.
People are very fast to judge others who look different, act different, or are different than them in any way. It can be because of their race, gender, skin color, religion, nationality, piercings, tattoos, clothes, family, likes, dislikes, car, house, money, etc. You get the point. People usually judge others to make themselves feel superior, and are not worried about how they are making the other person feel.
If you judge someone because they are different than you, you are making them feel like they are less of a human being than you are. It can really hurt someone, even if you are just joking around with them, and by judging them, you make them want to change the way they are, just to try and meet your standards. There can also be more serious consequences like making the person so miserable that they want to commit suicide. No matter what they consequence is, or whether or not it’s a joke, judging someone else never leads to a happy ending.
Dielle wrote about this topic on her blog and i left a comment on it.
I enjoyed reading Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. It was the perfect length because it wasn’t that long so it wasn’t boring, and yet it was long enough to have a good developing plot and well-developed characters. Another reason I liked the book was that it didn’t have the cheesy fairytale ending where the friends just make up and get back together. It didn’t leave you wondering about anything and it didn’t leave room for a sequal. This is good because then once the book is done, it’s just done. The author also did a really good job of foreshadowing and using lots of literary devices. Overall, it was a good book.
George found himself in a very difficult situation at the end of the book. It think that he didn’t have any other choice but to shoot Lennie because if he hadn’t, Lennie would have been brutally murdered by Curley. I think George will continue to waste away his life working from farm to farm making fifty bucks, and then wasting it away. It was a very good ending, though, because it wasn’t cheey and it was what George had to do. There was nothing else exciting the author would hav ebeen able to write at the end.
I left a comment on Mike’s blog where he wrote about his thoughts on Of Mice and Men.
We are just finishing our rights and responsibilities unit in English B10. We recently had to write an essay about a current situation where someones rights are not being protected. I wrote mine about child poverty in Canada and how among all of the richest nations, we have the highest child poverty rate. One out of every nine children (person under 18 years of age) are living on less that two dollars a day and have to rely on food banks for nutritional support. I found this shocking because whenever I thought of poverty my first thought was always children in Afica because that’s all you see on TV and on those infomercials. I didn’t realise that there was over thousands of kids in our country that were living the same as those kids you see on the commercials.
Our last unit we took in English B10 was inequality, mostly racial inequality. Because of the generation that i grew up in, we don’t see racial tension as much as our parents or grandparents.
I think that racial inequality is bad and should be stopped. I also think that it is impossible to stop it. Racial inequality may slow down and not be as open as it is and has been, but there will always be people who can’t accept that people of a different race are equal to them. No matter how hard you try, if you see a person of minority walking down the street, even if you ignore it and don’t say anything, you will notice that that person is different than you.
In some ways, when people are trying to be non-racist, they are actually being racist because they are setting people of a different race apart from the way we are even if we are treating them better. An example is Barack Obama becoming the President of the United States of America. People thought that they were being non-racist by voting for him, but the majority of the people who voted for him just did it because he was black, even if they thought it was a good thing. So either way, I think that no matter how well we treat people of a minorty group, there is still going to be racism and there is still going to be inequalities between us.
I left a note on Mike’s blog where he wrote about racial inequalities.
I was looking through some blogs so that we could better understand how to write them and I found one blog about Child Soldiers in Africa by Warren and left a comment on it. I found another one about Pearl Harbor by Conlan and commented on it as well. Warren put a lot of content in his blog and he had a good picture on it. Conlan had a lot of stats about pearl harbor on it and knew about what he was talking about. They were both very good blogs.
read to children. They are tales filled with violence, witchcraft, handsome princes and dwarfs walking around wearing big pointy hats. This may seem weird or inappropriate to some parents, but to me, it just seems normal. Children’s stories aren’t famous for the violence and somewhat inappropriate messages, they are famous because they do and will continue to enchant children for days to come, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them.
Simpsons, Homer is not always the nicest parent to Bart, and always gets mad at Lisa for playing her saxaphone, but then in the end you see that he cares about his children and would do anything to protect them. Also, in the movie Step Brothers, Brennan and Dale are forced to live together and be a family, and at the start they both hate each other but once they get to know each other, they become best friends.
to his hometown where as if he would have just been writing as a child there may not have been the same emotion in the poem.
to your full potential, stop and smell the roses once in a while, and always remember to spend time with your family, because without them, you wouldn’t exist.
One story we read was titled 
looked into my driver window, locked his eyes on my friend and said to him, “you are under arrest for the murder of Joe Smitt.” Immediately I thought, how could Marcus have done this, because I knew he was a good guy and wouldn’t hurt anyone. I asked the police officer when it happened and he told me that it was just two hours ago in the alley between McDonald’s and the Bingo Hall on 152nd street. I’d been with my friend the whole night and I knew he didn’t do it so I knew exactly what the police officers were doing. This wasn’t the first time me and my friend had been pulled over by two white police officers for something we didn’t do. I tried to control myself and I told the police officer I had been with him all night and we were no where near 152nd street. He responded by saying, “you are under arrest for aiding a criminal.”
can be because of their race, gender, skin color, religion, nationality, piercings, tattoos, clothes, family, likes, dislikes, car, house, money, etc. You get the point. People usually judge others to make themselves feel superior, and are not worried about how they are making the other person feel.
Another reason I liked the book was that it didn’t have the cheesy fairytale ending where the friends just make up and get back together. It didn’t leave you wondering about anything and it didn’t leave room for a sequal. This is good because then once the book is done, it’s just done. The author also did a really good job of foreshadowing and using lots of literary devices. Overall, it was a good book.
