This week Mrs. Soper challenged us to find a contemporary article and post about it here on our blogs.  To do this I found an article on the G-7’s most recent meeting in Hiroshima.  The G-7 is made up of some of the largest and most powerful nations around the world who all want to better the future of our planet.  This article was long but very reassuring.  They discussed their tentative plans for everything from social media to the growing rate of food scarcity.  However, I really enjoyed the article because at the end it details how President Zelensky of Ukraine made a surprise appearance and then how the nations pledge advanced fighter jets to aid Ukraine.  I liked this because it was a pleasant reminder to Ukraine that we had not forgotten them and that world still cares.

The only questions that I have are…

1. What else would you want the leaders of the world to talk about?
2. How will Russia respond to these prominent countries supporting Ukraine?

For my independent novel project, I chose to write a poetic summary of the award-winning graphic novel Run by John Lewis.  I had fun doing this project because the book was so eventful that it was super easy to create a poem.

My poem features an aa bb rhyme scheme and is exactly 20 lines long.

NOTE:  This book was part one of a series that covers the entire life story of John Lewis.  This resulted in both the book and my poem having a slightly sudden ending to them.

You can access my poem here.

The book that I have read over the past few months has been Run by John Lewis.  This book is an autobiography where John Lewis explains his journey through life as he faces racism in his communities and fights for civil rights.  I really enjoyed this book because the visuals that it brought added power to the message that taught.  I won’t say how it ended but I will say that John Lewis’s story is one of fighting against the river and fighting to ensure that his voice is heard.  I strongly recommend this book so in order to demonstrate this I will be creating a poetic summary of this book.

This week, Mrs. Soper challenged us to think about what makes us proud to be American.  In order to answer this, I first had to establish that I was indeed pleased to be American.  It seemed like a natural instinct to be proud to be American but I wondered what made me feel this way.  After all the rest of the world views us as fat, power-obsessed, meatheads who bully the middle east.  At a quick glance, it seems that taking pride in anything American would be brainless.  Yet, something deep inside of me still swelled with pride at the thought of the American flag.  After debating this for a while I realized that I find pride in America not because of what we did but because of what we represent.  Boys of all generations have laid down their lives in order to defend the ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This reality is why I find pride in the idea of being American.

This week we finished The Great Gatsby movie in class.  Although I had heard this movie was good I didn’t expect it to follow the book so closely.  Nearly every scene was detailed for detail which I really enjoyed.  I know that when great books like this one are turned into movies, the producers sometimes skimp out on some minor plot details.  The exact details that had made the original book so good.  Overall I had an extremely pleasant time reading the book and watching this movie.

This week we were tasked with finding a news article that went along with what we were learning in class.  For my paper I chose The US Has a ruling class by Bernie Sanders.  I agreed with most of this article but still feel we shouldn’t paint the wealthy as evil.  Sanders is notorious for trying to appeal to the middle class and appear to be on their side.

1. Should politicians who support this idea take pay cuts?
2. What would if our rich citizens broke away and became a part of a country that we hated?

For this week we were tasked with picking another book to read outside of class.  For my book, I chose Run by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, L. Fury, and Nate Powell.  This graphic novel is based in the heat of the civil rights movement in the twentieth century.  Unfortunately, with Track in high gear right now I have not been able to start it yet but I’m sure it will be very good.

This week’s prompt was asking how much control we really have over the kind of person that we grow up to be.  This is a complex question because we have to factor in the control that our parents have over our lives.  For our first few years, they control every aspect of our lives but lose a little bit when we grow a little.  The moment that this happens we are confronted with a choice; whether to listen to what they say or not.  I think that this choice is what defines a lot of who we grow up to be.  This principle decides whether or not we can be on a team and even if we can get a job.  Because of this, I believe that we have a lot to do with who we grow up to be.  We can blame a little on what how we grew up but at the end of the day it comes down to how we respond and only we can control that.

For this week’s post, we were told to creatively present our independent book to the class.  In an attempt to do this, I decided to create a timeline that describes the events of the book.  I hope you enjoy my presentation!

This week we were challenged to find an article, share our opinion about it, and ask questions.  For my article, I chose Conformity – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly by Bruno Mirchevski.  In his article, Mirchevski does a great job of explaining all of the ups and downs of conformity so I don’t really have any objection there.  However,  midway through his writing, Mirchevski states that many people aren’t living the lives that they want because they conform to the norms of society and this goes against their natural inclinations.  This act of betraying themselves leads to a disappointing lifestyle.  I don’t necessarily believe that this is the whole truth.  I believe that we must be wary to place the disappointment in our lives on one single thing.  By doing so we can miss the stuff that is really making us sad and end up being even more disappointed, or worse, even begin blaming ourselves.  Nonetheless, this article did leave me wondering two things…

1. In class, we learn that conforming can lead us to do things that we wouldn’t normally do.  However, this article makes it seem that conformity can make the world a safer place.  The combination of these two things makes me wonder if not conforming is worth the risk of decreased public safety?
2. In my independent book this year One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the characters were taught to conform to the rules of the medical ward where they lived in order to not be punished.  Is this type of conformity also wrong?