The school year is slowly coming to an end and I can’t wait for June 12th. Seems like we’ll be working up until that day. Science Unit test tomorrow; Spanish 2 Exams and Algebra Exams on Monday and U.S History on Wednesday. Talk about overwhleming. June 12th is promotion though I’m looking forward to that, not the promotion itself but showing off my dress =].  I can’t wait till summer I’m going to be so busy. I’m working as a CIT for  weeks. Then I’m going on a trip to South Africa, Botswana and Namibia for 2 weeks in July with 3 other kids my age. When I come back my Mom and I are going to New Jersey to visit my cousin, and I’ll probably go back to school shopping down there. When I get back Hello High School. I am so excited.   

Since the beginning of the school year I think writing on this blog has helped me grow as a writer. And that was the objective all along. We may not realize it but because we know other people are reading our work besides our teacher we tend to put a lot more effort into our assignments. Truth be told nobody wants to appear stupid to a complete stranger. So we analyze our sentence structure;and are more cautious with our word choice/spelling and grammar. Some of the assignments we were given were dumb but Mayo gave us the freedom to write whatever we wanted on here just as long as it was appropriate. Sometimes it takes just the simple fact that the writer knows they have an audience to improve their writing. And that’s exactly what this blog has done for me.

Once again Mayo has outdone his self with another pointless assignment. I’m supposed to write on here what we  should do with these blogs since the school year is winding down and we’ll be moving on to high school. Okay well I think we should just keep them, because they do come in handy. If Mayo does decide to keep the weblogs I think we should be able to change our passwords and e-mail’s because we wont be in his class anymore. In the beginning him knowing our passwords gave him access to delete our accounts if the content is inappropriate for school but next year we wont be in his class so that isn’t his concern or responsibilty.

 So she’s a little misunderstood

Hides her feelings

Smiles

 And pretends everything’s like she wish it would

An actor

And unaware

She plays her life

 Like a movie star;Fake and unreal

She talks of lies Never revealing her true self

And while she covers things up

Trying to fill a void

Of the things she never had, and the peopleWho were never there.

Smile baby,

You’re just so good at pretending nothing’s wrong.

(pg 48)

“If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told. Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. If you teach a nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave”

* I think this is evident to the story because masters not wanting to provide their slaves with an education was a sense of power. They’s figured that is he/she doesn’t know how to read it would be easier to keep information from them. That’s why many slaves were still working after slavery was abolished because nobody ever told them they were free. Harriet Tubman once said “I could’ve freed thousands more slaves if only I could convince them that they were slaves”.

(pg 59)

“And the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn”

*I try to tell my peers this all the time. We are so lucky because when you think about it back then black people and women were denied and education and were not allowed to vote. And today, those things are given to us. Our ancestors fought for us, died for us and many of us are taking it for granted.

(pg.50)

“Move faster you black gip. If you dont move faster I will move you”

* The way Ms.Hamilton talked to her slaves were not as if they were people, but someone unworthy of your respect. She hardly ever fed them and when she did it was not alot. Helllloooooooo they are not barbie dolls!

“They kill everybody in the village if you aren’t running. If you were children, elder, woman, man. Everyone they found. They kill us. My brother, my best friend, like a father to me. They shot five bullets in his back. Nobody was helping me. Nobody was there. Everything was destroyed. If I have a chance to say something for my brother: I’m praying all days for you and asking God, just let you into heaven and rest in peace.” says Moheamed Ishak. If you want to hear more stories about people who were in Darfur and were able to escape click here.

They need and want our help and that video evidently proves it. We’ve sat around for 5 years and thousands have people have died, and yet here we are still thinking, many of us oblivious to what’s going on. March 6th and 7th is still on!!! We are still encouraging students all around the world to get involved by leaving well thought-out comments and your opinions on the issue. It’s our job to raise awareness, because obviously news reporters are not going to. “The first step to change is to educate and make people aware of the subject”

Click here if you plan to comment on March 6th and 7th

In English class currently we’re reading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas. Frederick Douglas was an African-American slave, who taught himself to read and write secretly because at the time blacks were deprived from an education. In chapters 2,3, and 4 it’s an introduction. Even if you never knew anything about slavery Mr.Douglas goes into details about the slave-owners,how they were treated, things that were said,murders he’d witnessed almost as if you were there. One part of the book that was really painful to me, was in Chapter 1. Often times during this time period slave owners would have affairs with their slaves despite their family and wife. It was usually kept secret, if the slave-owner impregnated the slave, no one would ever know the child was the master’s because if your mother is a slave you are as well no matter who your father is. In the first chapter he goes into detail on how he watched his master beat his Aunt Hester”until the warm red blood dripped to the floor” because she’d disobeyed his orders.

• My favorite blog post from this school year so far was when we got to do Free-writes and had to write Imagery Poems. I don’t really like structured writing I like to be able to write about whatever I want. So basically what we got to do was find a place in the school and write for 10 miutes, the sounds we hear, things we saw, and how we felt about our school enviorment.
• I enjoy writing on our blogs, when Mr.Mayo isnt making up random stuff for us to do. It’s alot better than writing on paper. I believe it’s another way to show others how talented we are as teenagers, writing on such deep issues like Darfur and other concepts many of my peers might not think twice about.

1. Classification- Every culture has categories that divide their people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality.

2. Symbolization- Given names or symbols to the classifications, to reconigze them by colors or dress and implement them to members or groups.

3.Dehumanization- Treating a particular group as if they are less than human simply because they are associated with the enemy or a particular group. Often during this stage hate propaganda is used to criticize the victims.

4.Organization- Genocides are always organized. Plans are made. Militias/armies/terrorist groups are trained and armed.

5.Polarization- Revolutionist drifts the groups apart.

6.Identification-  Victims are identified and separated. Many people in the victim groups are forced into concentration camps, or are famine-struck and deprived of food.

7.Extermination- killing of its people (genocide). Its extermination to the killers because they dont consider victims to be human.

8.Denial-the perpatratos of the genocide hide the evidence and intimidate the witness. Basically ignoring the fact of what happened and carrying on with life as if it is “all good” 

Today in 6th pd, two highschool seniors Alex and Ben came to our classroom to talk to us about Darfur. I must admit that before this project I knew nothing about Darfur at all and today I learned why. Mr Mayo asked us to take notes and here’s some of the things I found pretty intresting.

*The central govt attacking the western side of Sudan.

*Sudan is the largest country in the continent of Africa.

*There is little to no media coverage of Darfur, and this is why many people have no idea whats going on. The Center for American Progress found that during June 2005, CNN, FOX, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS ran 50 times more stories on Michael Jackson as they did about the genocide occuring in Darfur.

* Second Civil War in Africa ended in January 2003 and a month later in Febuary Sudans, Darfur conflicts began. This Febuary 2008 marks the 5th year of the genocide in darfur.

*This is the 1st time the UN securitycouncil has said to have something done, and it hasn’t happened yet.

* No Major Darfur advocacy orginazition supports an invasion. There are other ways we can help