DECLARATION OF LEARNING INDEPENDENCE!!!

I signed up for this course, not sure exactly what to expect,

I knew what I wanted, but I just hadn’t done it yet.

“We want more independence!” my fellow students cry,

“But did you do your homework?” “YES!” we all lie,

“Can I see your English homework, the one from last night?”

My friends all ask staggered in fright,

But it’s no longer Junior year and with that I can comply.

That’s not at all what this class is about.

Our very first assignment; post a question, here’s the link,

What? You mean he actually cares what we think?

It’s been five weeks and I’m proud to say I’ve progressed,

Learning through a new method, the very best you can select.

I plan to make changes within myself,

Because since the beginning, we all needed help.

The doctor dives deep in the core, examining our flaws

The way he makes us think, makes me question the law.

Why are we here? Why musn’t we live life as we please?

It’s all just too complicated, I want to live my life at peace.

All questions that never before I would have tackled,

He doesn’t look at us strangely or even let out a cackle.

He nods in agreement and searches for an answer,

His style magnificent, a true enhancer.

I now understand that with freedom comes responsibility,

I want to be given tasks, that grant me endless possibilities,

A transition from a child to adult is what I will be looking to taking place,

I know this class will leave a mark, impossible to erase.  

No Child Left Untableted

I feel as though this is a common issue today with all of our technological advancements and finding ways to make our education more enjoyable. As Klein stated, students will learn much better if we adapt to their learning style. The opening statement with young educator Sally Hurd Smith, demonstrates a bit of selfishness in her way of reasoning about the situation. She's only thinking about herself and what "she" likes better but not overall the entire class and what suits her students. This transition will boost the students' enthusiasm in the classroom in terms, making school more enjoyable for both the student and the teacher. Pull out a book and watch 50 kids moan and groan at you and perhaps even refuse to complete the assignment, or complete it but not at the best if their abilities. But pull out a tablet and watch all of their eyes sparkle with excitement. You'll be fascinated at the fact that there CAN be new ways to educate a population. I think the best thing to do would be to engage in this type learning, test it out and if it doesn't raise test scores and improve learning then we can analyze and change the learning styles. 

Fall Vocab #5

 1) Adroit (adj) -cleverly skillful, resourceful or ingenious

Mrs. Byrne's adroit Honors English class of 2014 demonstrated student proficiency and are being awarded by visiting Hawaii this summer as a Senior trip.

2) Amicable (adj) -characterized or showing goodwill; friendly

The teacher had her amicable mother substitute for the day which I enjoyed after I realized she was handing out bags of candy.

3) Averse (adj) -strong feeling of opposition; opposed

The averse team came back with a much stronger statement than their previous one. 

4) Belligerent (adj) -warlike character, aggresively hostile

The thousands of soldiers fighting on the Union side utilized their belligerent attitudes to win the Civil War. 

5) Benevolent (adj) -characterized by or expressing good will or kindly feelings

The benevolent man at the Donut Shop threw in a few extra donuts in my box.

6)  Cursory (adj) -going rapidly over something, without noticing details

I was unfortunate to be given the cursory Calculus teacher for the second semester. 

 7) Duplicity (n) -deceitfulness in speech or conduct; acting in two different ways to different people concerning the same matter

The duplicity the judges resulted in the absolute best performer possible.

 8) Extol (v) -to praise highly, laud

The Greek extolled the acropolis building because it literally meant "high city".

9) Feasible (adj) -capable of being done, effected or accomplished 

She maintained a feasible attitude all throughout Junior year when she discovered the key to her problem.

10) Grimace (n) -a facial expression, often ugly or contorted that indicates disapproval, pain

My father greeted me with  grimace when he witnessed me return simply two minutes past curfew. 

11) Holocaust (n) -a great or complete devastation or destruction especially by firing

The Holocaust in Germany left many devastated and marked a great turning point in the German's history.

 12) Impervious (adj) -not permitting penetration or passage incapable of being injured or impaired

My raincoat was impervious to any rain because it costed $40.

13)  Impetus (n) -moving force, impulse, stimulus

The car hit the woman as the strongest impetus she had dealt with.

14) Jeopardy (n) -hazard or risk of exposure to loss harm, death or injury; peril or danger

Eddie's procrastination had set him in jeopardy of failing the course for the semester. 

 15) Meticulous (adj) -taking or showing minute details; precise, thorough

Her meticulous speech was not enough to catch anyone's attention resulting in half of the room falling asleep. 

 16) Nostalgia (n) -a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's lives

A feeling of nostalgia is one many will experience throughouy their lifetimes.

17) Quintessence (n) -the pure and concentrated essence of a substance

My anti-biotic prescriptions were a quintessence of azthrithidrozemil. 

18) Retrogress (v) -to go backward into an earlier and usually wise condition

It was best to retrogress and review the applied skills and knowledge in order to perform the task at the best of his abilities. 

19) Scrutinize (v) -to examine in detail with careful or critical attention

The lab scientists scrutinized my cat scans to see if there wa anything unaparent in my body.

20) Tepid (adj) -characterized by a lack of force or enthusiasm

The tepid children in the back row understood the material yet refused to demonstrate it infront of the classroom. 

NONFICTION LITERATURE ANALYSIS #1

 

“Ishmael: An adventure of the Mind and Spirit”

Daniel Quinn

TOPICS/EVENTS

1)      My book was like nothing I’ve ever read before. Its existentialist view allowed me to open my mind more to comprehend these grand concepts about life in general and human nature. The protagonist, a young student in search of a teacher, finally comes across an ad on a newspaper by a teacher seeking a human who is interested in ‘saving the world’ as it stated. They come into contact with each other and he teaches him life-long important lessons about saving the planet, mankind and other species. He teaches that has ‘Taker’ humans we must learn to change our evil ways or perish with the rest. We are slowly destroying the world without realizing. He teaches that we are trapped in our own cultural prison and the sad thing is that most realize this without caring much about the facts but concentrate on achieving power in this prison to have more control over it than anyone else, rather than actually changing our horrible lifestyles. He teaches about the different ways to live and evolution; theory of how man came to be. He gives man hope and gives us exactly what we need to survive and thrive.

2)      My author chose to write about this specific topic for obvious reasons. The world or at least the world for MAN as we know it is quickly coming to an end. Why? It all comes down to our increasing human population and human interaction with other species. Over-population leads to over-production which becomes a never-ending cycle. We are the cause of our own problem. The way we have chosen to live for the past couple thousand years from the agricultural revolution and on, is the selfish way categorizing us as the ‘Takers’ in the world. We take what we want, what we need and what we think we need. In doing so, we are slowly supporting the extinction of various species in our environment. We have been doing this for years, killing off anything interfering with our evil ways and not minding the ‘Leavers’ of the planet and our precious innocent animals. The ‘Leaver’ would be categorized as the peaceful, mindful people who abide by the natural law of nature which is: take what you need and leave the rest alone. He wrote this book to alert us about our selfish ways, just in case it wasn’t obvious, and how it eventually WILL backfire and have a negative effect on only us, but it’s what we are asking for living the way we’ve been for generations and generations. It’s sort of like a reality check.

3)      Well, Eddie, Izamar and I walked into Mrs. Byrne’s classroom and said, “Mrs. Byrne, we need thin books.” So she appointed us to her small in-class library and showed us multiple books giving us insight on each but we mostly just cared about the length. Then she grabbed a book in the quickness and said, “Oh, Ishmael! This is a really good book!” We looked through the pages and realized it was sort of long and we all called skips. Then she mentioned it was an existentialist book and I re-considered. The bell rang and by this time Eddie and Izamar had found their books and feeling defeated I grabbed Ishmael. Then I told myself to stop being lazy and read this book because it was a topic within my interest and I knew I would not regret it, so I did. The minute I opened it and read the first Chapter I knew I could not go wrong. This was my type of book! The thing about this book that made me want to continue reading was the fact that it tackled such incomprehensible aspects of life that many refuse to explore. I could EASILY relate to this because many of these questions I have asked myself for years and they were answered in this book. I finished the book yesterday and I am extremely proud of having made this decision. Thank you Mrs. Byrne, I shall return to you for more of your amazing books.

4)      Yes, definitely. The book’s ideas and themes were realistic. The realest of the realest. It was all there just waiting for someone to piece it all together, and that’s exactly what Daniel Quinn did. I made connections with history and human interactions with the world and with humans themselves. After reading this book, everything just makes sense now. How he explains human nature and how we think and react, it was truly astonishing.   

PEOPLE

1)      The author chose the average young human being confused about the world and extremely curious and caring for the most part attempting to solve an issue we’ve had at hand for so long without anyone clearly doing anything about it. The fact that I could replace the main character with myself was all I needed to understand the complexity of this book. A real person with the same thoughts as I and reacting how I would react. The tone is irritated and angry, not with any single person specifically, but with the struggles of life in general and the nature of these ideas and how ignorant we have been since we came into existence has homo sapiens. These choices prove that the author wants us to relate to the protagonist and place us in the inquiry stage as in: What will we do next?

2)      The protagonist, I never quite got a hold of his name however it is irrelevant, was a determined man in search of answers about life and how exactly is the correct way to live it. He never gave up in his search and did not quit until he found exactly what he was looking for. The entire book was a conversation between him and his teacher Ishmael. The book doesn’t give much physical description of the character but mainly sticks to their actual personalities because that is what actually matters in the book. As fictional characters, I would describe them through both direct and indirect characterization. I would stick to indirect characterization as the author did due to the fact that it is important to be able to make assumptions about characters because in real life that is exactly what we do therefore it can be found in literature as well.

3)      The fact that they have such open minds about realities and increased knowledge-based judgments makes them interesting enough to write about. They are sort of like interpreters to the things we already know and things we are still trying to figure out as a society and distinguishing the difference between what is right and wrong.

STYLE  

1)      Yes, he utilized foreshadowing when the teacher was taken away to a town a couple miles North because this enabled the reader to infer that the relationship between Ishmael, the teacher and the protagonist was slowly beginning to fade and would possibly come to an end by uncontrollable life factors. He still managed to utilize this journalistic style throughout the entire novel mainly because the entire thing was a collection of thoughts and connections about the world.

2)      The author definitely utilizes lengthy descriptions about ideas and mise en abymes, a French term referring to a story within a story but the same principle does not apply to people. He focuses mainly on dialogue between the same two people the whole book. These have positive effects on the book in the way that if the author spent more time giving us lengthy descriptions on the places and more people we encountered, it would simply be a waste of time and completely irrelevant to the facts and the point of the book.

3)      To create tone and mood, the author heavily portrays emotions. He makes it very clear when a character is in pain, confusion and especially anger. These emotions are important because we need them in order to evaluate ourselves as humans and exactly how we react to real life situations.

4)      I think the author’s attitude toward the subject was obviously very strong in the sense that he felt the need to educate a population through a well-structured novel. His attitude toward the characters is just a self-evaluation of ourselves to prove a point. His attitude toward the audience would be much more sort of angered but still patient. His overall attitude is positive filled with hope for humanity even if the reader does not believe so himself. His great task of teaching us something so important for our nature tells us everything about his attitude regardless of any misinterpretations by any mistaken readers.

5)      The author offers countless references. The novel includes everything from religious to science aspects of his views. He mentions passages from the Holy Bible, theories of Evolution, parables, laws, interpersonal connections, people to people interactions, and ethnic/cultural/religious history accounts. Within these, they vary from a range of long periods of time and some dating back to B.C. as well as A.D. of course. Yes, it matter MAJORLY because it proves that he took REAL information to give us knowledge on our inner selves and our ancestors that we may have never paid attention to. Without these multiple references and facts, this book would be meaningless because it would not be using things we can actually relate to and it would become a book placed in the Fiction category.   

 

ENDURING MEMORY

I expect to remember the entire novel for as long as I live. Mainly, I will carry out the many quotes and references in the story pertaining to life and human beings in general. On page 201, the protagonist makes a statement about the past, which I can connect to something we have studied in this class. Does the past really matter? In terms of learning from our mistakes yes yet he claims, “Mother Culture says that this is as it should be. There’s nothing in the past for us. The past is dreck. The past is something to be put behind us, something to be escaped from.” This is one point of view which makes sense and just reminds us that it IS behind us and we cannot simply expect to continue to live in it. Many are far too obsessed or personally traumatized by their own pasts that they cannot seem to continue forward, and it is sad because they do not acknowledge the fact that they are wasting their time trying to change something that already happened and can never be changed. This quote serves as a reminder to move forward and leave the damaging things in the past where they belong. Another famous quote makes a reference to the way of how peoples live, meaning to the cultures of the world. “…but I’ve read enough of it to know that the Zuni don’t think their way is the way for everyone, and that the Navajo don’t think their way is the way for everyone. Each of them has a way that works well for them. And that way that works well for them is what they teach their children.” This is important when it comes to understanding world cultures and beliefs within our own cultures. It is important to understand how things get passed down in a community from generation to generation in order to avoid our key defect-ignorance. The third, which I feel is one of the most important talks about the type of world we are living in unconsciously. “I’m afraid it’s a cause to which almost none of humanity will subscribe. White or colored, male or female, what the people of this culture want is to have as much wealth and power in the Taker prison as they can get. They don't give a damn that it’s destroying the world.” Again, it illustrates our selfishness in the world and how we are not really aware of what we are doing or why. We do things simply because we imitate our ancestors, we think this is the correct way to live when in reality it is killing millions and we need to change our minds because ultimately, we can’t change the world if we can’t change ourselves.       

Fall Vocab #4

1) Accede (v) -to give consent, approval or adherence

My mother acceded me the rest of the week.

2) Brandish (v) -to shake or wave, as a weapon 

Alex savagely brandished his sword at the children. 

3) Comprise (v) -to include or contain

Maggie comprised the new child in the group so that he wouldn't feel left out.

4) Deft (adj) -dexterous; nimble; skillfull; clever

Eddie, a very deftful student, received a 25 on his ACT.

5) Destitute (adj) -deprived of; lacking food, clothing and shelter

While in Africa, the girls were deprived much of their clothing.

6) Explicit (adj) -clearly developed or formulated

Her ideas were explicitly stated throughout her essay.

7) Extirpate (v) -to remove or destroy totally; do away with

The citizens decided to extirpate the corrupt dictator.

8) Inopportune (adj) -inappropriate; inconvenient; untimely 

The film was quite inopportune for the age group.

9) Ironic (adj) -using words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning

It was pretty ironic that the teacher's son had received an F on his report card.

10) Musty (adj) -having an odor or flavor suggestive of mold

The librarian's clothing had a very musty scent.

11) Officious (adj) -objectionably aggressive in offering one's unrequested and unwanted services

The escort lead the woman officiously to the doorway.

12) Ominous (adj) -portrending evil or harm; threatening

The alley way looked tremendously ominous yet, we decided to take it anyway.

13) Pinnacle (n) -the highest or culminating point, as of success, power, fame

The CEO of McDonald's decided to lower the price of their Big Macs. 

14) Premeditated (adj) -done deliberately; planned in advance

Julio's premeditated murder was a success.

15) Rampant (adj) -violent in action or spirit; raging; furious

When it comes to doing things right, Izamar will handle tasks ramapantly.

16) Solace (n) -comfort in sorrow, misfortune or trouble; alleviation of distress or discomfort

She was my solace on rainy, lonely days.

17) Stately (adj) -majestic; imposing in magnificence 

The stately portrait of Mona Lisa is kept in Paris, France.

18) Supple (adj) -bending readily 

without breaking or becoming deformed; pliant; flexible

The most supple item in my backpack is my ruler.

19) Suppress (v) -to put an end to the activities of a person, body of  persons

All my activites after school were temporarily suppressed after my parentals had found out about the party. 

20) Venal (adj) -willing to sell one's influence; especially in return for a bribe 

Angel venally helped the children at tutoring.'

Fall Vocab #3

1) Accomplice (n) -a person who knowingly helps another in a crime or wrongdoing

I split half of my stolen money with my accomplice at the time in the year of '57.

2) Annihilate (v) -to destroy the collective existence or main body of; destroy utterly 

Six million Jews were annihilated during World War II.

3) Arbitrary (adj) -subject to individual will or judgement without restriction

The jury's arbitrary statements led to the confirmation of being guilty. 

4) Brazen (adj) -shameless or impiadent 

I live a quite brazen life that many elders do not approve of.

5) Catalyst (n) -a person or thing that precipitates  an event or change

Meeting him was the catalyst in my life that in turn, alieviated my situation.

6) Exodus (n) -a going out a departure or emigration, usually of a large number of people

The exodus of the Mexicans in California left the fields unattended.

7) Facilitate (v) -to make easier or less difficult; help forward, to assist the progress

The Jenson's were asked to help facilitate the meeting.

8) Incorrigible (adj) -bad beyond correction or reform

By now I had realized the damage was done, and many if my errors were incorrigible.

9) Latent (adj) -present but not visible, apparent, existing as potential

It was clear that I was not bringing forward my latent real self during my time of grieve.

10) Militant (adj) -vigorously active and aggresive, especially in support of a cause

The mob had a very serious militant look as they marched down the street chanting the mayor's name.

11) Morose (adj) -gloomily or sullenly ill, humored as a person or mood

She created a morose aura in the classroom the minute she began reading her essay in class. 

12) Opaque (adj) -not transparent or translucent; imprnetrable to light

Many of the children's stories were opaque and definitely needed some clarification.

13) Paramount (adj) -chief in importance or impact; supreme above others in rank or authority

Her performance always paramounted the rest in skill, timing and effort.

14) Prattle (v) -to talk in a foulish or simple-minded way

She was known to prattle over the tiniest incidents and everyone knew she noticed absolutely every detail.

15) Rebut (v) -to refute by evidence or argument to oppose by contrary proof

No matter what he stated, we processed to rebut his claims to prove him guilty.

16) Reprimand (n) -a severe reproof or rebuke, especially a formal one by a person in authority

Although having received countless reprimands I still knew that in the end I was correct and no matter what the authorities tried to tell me, I'd fight until I possibly could.

17) Servitude (n) -slavery or bondage of any kind

In a way, a maid's servitude is very similar to living the lifestyle of a slave with very little pay and no physical threats but worse ones- emotional ones.

18) Slapdash (adv) -in a hasty manner, careless

The form in which Mr. Ilac presented his speech had slapdashingly effects on the crowd.

19) Stagnant (adj) -not flowing or running as water, air stale or foul from standing

As we reached the funeral stepping outside our cars we immediately felt the stagnant air crush our bodies and steal our voices.

20) Succumb (v) - to give way to superior force; to yield to disease, wounds, old age

With very little fight back, the peasants succumbingly gave in to their king and returned to a hard's day at work.