Change for a Lifetime

This first marking period has been an adapting time. I am not used to using the computers so much in one class in the span of a couple of weeks. I do find this to be very helpful though because it allows me to use technology in my classes and I am a person who learns well with computers. I think that the idea of a blog was very fun, it had let us view other people's view point of the story. This was a huge help because it gave me a better understanding of what was happening in the story. I personally think that the story To Kill A Mockingbird was a really well written story. I loved the book and think that all 11th graders across the country should read the book due to its interesting topics covered and the view point of a kid in the 1930's. I think the first theme was alright, it was a little to lose for the first theme. I mean that it was such an open topic to cover, its hard to come into school with that openness. I think the second theme goes well with the curriculum and it helps a kid go deeper into a story. Overall I would say it has been a good first marking period, the only thing I would change is the first theme and I would move it farther back in the year. I think the pace works well and that the keynotes help with the quizes.

Where Is My Love?

The song "Where Is The Love?" by the Black Eyed Peas, is directly related to the book "To Kill a Mockingbird", in which Jem and Scout are asking at the end of the trial, where is the love for Tom Robinson and the African American community.

"Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
'Cause people got me, got me questionin'
Where is the love (Love)"

This is right after the trial when they have lost all trust in the community and they thought that they would do the right thing and say Tom was innocent. But the community is racist and they do convict Tom, which upsets the kids greatly. This leads the kid to look up to their father though cause he had tried to make things right, with him defending Tom. At the end of the trial the black community had even given him a hand of the good work that he had done for the community.

"I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I'm gettin' older, y'all, people gets colder"

This is very similar to Jem and how he is growing up to be more and more like gentleman. He is starting to notice how the world really is and since Scout hangs out with him she is seeing the same stuff. They are seeing that the country doesn't think about race, and that they only care about their own race generating hate.

GIRL POWER

The idea of women's rights, has just recently come into our society. The women used to always be treated in a lower lever, and they are starting to come up in society. This is seen in politics, such as when Hilary Clinton ran for Presidency, with just 50 years ago this would be completely unheard of and never would have gone to the stage it did. This does not mean though that men and women are equal completely yet, this is seen in the work force at times when men are more likely to get a job because of their gender. Or if the women and men have the same job, the men are more likely to be paid more, this is wrong and should not be allowed in society but it happens everyday. There is a change going on with high school sports though, with the passing of Title 9. This makes sure that the men and women teams are all getting the same funding and that there has to be the same amount of men’s sports teams as there is women's team. This may not always be enforced to the full extent but they are moving their way to equality. Things have made a big step from the way they were though. Women used to not be able to vote and they used to marry at a very young age and the husband used to always make more money then their wives. But all of this has changed and it has changed society greatly. The women are now able to vote which made a huge change in society and the fact that some women are making more then their husbands shows a huge jump in a very short time. I think that within the next 20 years there will be a women president, such as we just had our first black president in the history of the US. I think there are some huge steps still to be made though and they start in the working field. All women should be treated equally to the men and they should be able to work the same jobs and get paid the same amount. No one should be allowed to discriminate at all against anyone, and women should be able to work the same jobs as the men. There should be more women running businesses and they should be put in powerful positions because they are smart and not because of their gender.

Brown vs Board

1950's the time of struggles. There was a famous case going on called the Brown vs Board of Education, and it was about the white and black schools in America. The black schools were inferior to the white schools because they were not getting the funding from the schools. There was a third grade girl named Linda Brown, who was African American. She had to walk one mile to get to her school, when there was a school 7 blocks away, but it was a white school. Her father, Oliver Brown had decided to enroll her into the white school, but the principal had rejected her from the school. He then went to the NAACP, and they had taken the case to trial. With the case going to the supreme court, on October 1, 1951, and was part of some other trials that were going against the school segregation. The case was actually heard on December 9, 1952, but was failed to reach a decision. When there was another trial from December 7-8 1953, they had come up with a verdict in the end. The judges had made the decision that the schools were going to be no longer segregated. This did not change everything though. The court case was just about the schools, they had not changed the segregation in restaurants, restrooms and water fountains. Also they did not set a time date in which the public schools had to change by. But this was a huge step to Civil Rights Movement.

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html

The Controller of Life (Gossip)

The art of gossip can be very hurtful and untruthful. When someone decides to start gossiping rumors start and things start to get skewed from person to person. This is seen during the clip from Doubt when the priest is talking. He tells a lady to go home after she has gossiped about someone in her community and to go on her roof, to cut up a pillow and she does. When she goes back to the priest after she had cut up the pillow, he asks her what happened when she cut up the pillow, and she says feathers. He then tells her to go and collect all the feathers that have fallen from the pillow that went with the wind. She says that is not possible and that she does not know where all the feathers went. He then tells her thats gossip, and its very true. When you tell someone something, you have no clue who they are going to go and tell, and you don't know how they will view the story and how they will explain the story. In To Kill A Mocking Bird, the art of gossip affects Boo Radley a lot. When Scout hears stories about him, she hears all about how he has stabbed his parents and how he eats his cats. She has no proof of these things, but being a young child she believes everything she hears and she talks about everything she hears. With the problems of gossip in the town, people get a wrong view of other people and they start to make assumptions. Scout and her brother Jem, act very immature at times when they imitate the Radley family, over the summer. They base all the gossip they hear around the skits and this puts thoughts into their heads before they can even really know anything about Boo. This is similar to the clip from Doubt, when the priest tells the lady to go to her roof and cut up the pillow. All the feathers are the adults and children in the community and how they hear one thing and they spread that idea around and put their own thoughts about it on the story. With no one knowing anything about Boo exactly they all think he is some big mean guy, who easily could be a very nice man, who just has very strict parents. Gossip is a simple part of life though, and everyone goes through it. With Scout being a young child, she is first experiencing gossip, and it his taking a huge part of her. She is oblivious to the things that she is doing and saying about other people, and she doesn't understand the control of one's words. Also she makes assumptions about everything she hears and skews that into her on way and then she makes judgements from the things she hears, which somethings she is not supposed to hear at all. Another thing that causes a problem with her being so young, is she does not have a huge vocabulary. So when someone says something, she may not understand what they are saying but she still repeats those things and she also takes offense to them sometimes.

The Amazing Woman of the South

Born on April 28, 1926 in Alabama and she was the youngest of four children and she grew up being a tomboy. When she was growing up her father was not around that much because he was a lawyer and a member of the Alabama state legislature. Also her mom had a mental illness and she was thought to be bipolar, which made Lee’s childhood very hard. When she was in high school she started to get interested in english and after leaving high school she went to Huntingdon College in Montgomery. She had ended up transferring to the University of Alabama, and she was known an being a loner and being very to herself. When she was a junior she entered the law school at Alabama, but she had started to see that she really wanted to be a writer. In 1956, friends of hers told her that they would support her for a year, so she could dedicate her time to writing, and she got an agent. She then wrote her one and only book To Kill a Mockingbird. A couple years later, they had made a movie from the book To Kill a Mockingbird, and she had supported the film completely. She ended winning a Pulitzer Prize winner from her book To Kill A Mocking Bird and attempted to start other novels/books but she never published any more books.

References

http://www.biography.com/articles/Harper-Lee-9377021

http://www.teenreads.com/authors/au-lee-harper.asp

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mocking/