Aidan Jamison-Frank

12/18/08

GOLD – Q2 English benchmark

“Yo, grab that purple jawn overthere”

“I have no idea what you’re talkingabout”

No, honestly I hadn’t a clue whatmy friend was referring to; my room is a cluttered mess.

“The, the… the plastic jawn. Rightthere!”

“Elaborate fool”

“Water”

Taylor V.
Iron English
9/8/08

By the end of the year, I was feeling reasonably secure in my ability to craft a unit plan that engaged the students and pushed them to engage the world around them. The unit plan found here and subequent project descriptions and student work provided me with the first true inkling of what was possible. It led the way for the Othello Unit Plan and the World Change Unit Plan in 10th and the Hamlet and Memoir Unit Plans in 9th. Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out, but want to add more definition to the benchmark description so that the students feel the guidance they need. I'd also differentiate between the audio and written performance expectations at the outset. Eventually, that happened.

Theme=Jealous

So far whatt my group has done is split up the work, hand out jobs, and starting to look up quotes for our script.Julian does all of act I, i do all of act I, Zach all of act III and Kiara all of act IV. i;m team manger and Julian is like the director person.

Some of the difficulties of working together is that some of us get frusterated easily and some goof off sometimes.Sometimes its hard to get everyone focused because there's something to distract us. but then we can get back on track and get work done and not argue.

what we plan on doing is getting all the lines we need and putting them in an order that makes sense and then editing it to a modern day version. About the understand of Othello, i have gotten a better understanding of it now that we have finished reading it.the theme we chose develops more and more every act and it gets even deeper because of Iago saying things and people beleiving them.

Recently I've been able to find a lot more sites and information helping my studies. So the lack of information is not apparent anymore. At the same time I feel somewhat happy that there are actually a lot more people out there that care and aware. What my main goal in doing this is increasing awareness of the poor funding in Philadelphia Schools. I believe that in a few years that the entire city will actually be aware of this and that change will finally come. I feel happy due to the fact that my entire school just about knows about it and that hope is still very much a consideration. After living in Philadelphia my whole life I never actually thought that the neighborhoods or schools would get better. Living in this environment for my entire life ive come to lose all hope. Now though, I know that as long as there are a group of people that care, in time things will change.

It is said on the “Philadelphia Public School Notebook ” that Kensington and West Philadelphia high school are going to be replaced with new school buildings as part of the School Districts 1.5 Billion capital plan. Philadelphia student union members have looked at and researched new ways for how their new schools should be built. As part of a trip the Student Union members visited schools that have success that are in a similar environment. Some of the states they went to are New York, Chicago, and Oakland. What they found in each of these schools were small schools. Schools that are to big don’t do so well. So at West Philadelphia High they’re ideas of breaking the humungous school into different wings. When schools have 1,000 kids, to educate and support every student is unimaginable.

So the Union came to an agreement that there should only be around 300-500 kids per school.

It is said by a group from Washington D.C that says “Smaller schools correlate to improved student achievement and lower dropout rates.” It’s shown that having small schools can do numerous things. Such as raise student achievement, reduce incidents and violence, student isolation, increase attendance and graduation rates, elevate teacher satisfaction, improve school environment, and also much more cost efficient.

If your even more interested in how the structure for West Philly High will be, the ideas for it is to have each building have no more then 400 students with its own teachers, and staff.

The common building will have a library, lunchroom, gym, and auditorium that will be shared by all of the 4 wings.

The other 4 wings are business and commerce, health and fitness, automotive, and creative and performing arts. Each wing has different interests which are geared, and equipped with different ways to teach the students in what they are interested in.

There are people that destroy works of art to just clear land to build something. I think that that is horrible. There are ways that you can clear land without getting rid of the art. You can also build around it at least. Art is related to our life in many ways. The art of a poem will explain.

Life & Art

Gus Gerstle

In songs, the chords need to refer to the melody.

In paintings, the colors need to refer to the mood.

In designs, the images need to refer to the meaning.

Life is but a song.

The chords changing.

The melody repeating.

Life is but a painting.

The colors changing.

The mood repeating.

Life is but a design.

The images changing.

The meaning repeating.

In us, our thoughts need to refer to our mind.

The question that people always ponder on is why are Philadelphia schools so bad? How would you assess the quality of Philadelphia public schools? Craig Weeks a highschool history teacher replied “If there was funding, the schools would run a lot better than they are now.”
On Activism Online it states that a typical class size is 30 kids, textbooks are ripped, pages missing, drawn on, not up to date, we have under qualified teachers, not enough funding, and much more. The Philadelphia Student Union is also working on these problems. The Union is doing everything they can, they’ve protested, done civil disobedience, went to Harrisburg and talked to the legislature. Talked to city reps, talked to mayor Nutter, been to SRC (School Reform Commission) meetings. The Union has really done just about everything they can to make Philadelphia schools better.
When President Bush's made the voucher plan which uses public money to send kids to privatized schools the Union was a bit surprised. What President Bush just did was putting public schools further down because they are taking money that we don’t have, and giving it to schools that have double or triple what we have. All of this information was cited at Activism Online.
The voice of the Philadelphia Student Union is screaming for help to have the right to education. But to only to be muffled out by the higher ups caught up in other matters. Isn’t the next generation important? If we’re not educated isn’t that a big deal? Why is this kept being pushed aside and not taken care of? These are the questions that stir in the mind of the students that are being abandoned.

One of the problems that the Philadelphia Student Union has is the fact that the Philadelphia School District is in the midst of a state mandated takeover. Which will privatize the district schools just so that the companies that take over can make a profit.
The Philadelphia Student Union greatly opposed this for many reasons. Craig Weeks who is a member of the Philadelphia Student Union and was part of the executive council for the Union said “It's not necessary for there to be a takeover. If there was funding, the schools would run a lot better than they are now.” I agree with Weeks and that basically put, the state is hiring people who don’t care about the students, they only care about how much money is going to their pocket. School is a non profit organization, and should be kept that way. If school ends up being another way to make money for people then the goals, and the intention of school wont be the same.
Education is supposed to be given to children, not a profit made out of. It changes the principles and entire concept of what schools should be. If school is another thing to make a quick few bucks off of how would the students feel? That their own education is just another way to make money. According to the “Activism Online” it states that this is the fight of Privatization.

Blog Post Number 1
Abortion is and has been a very strong topic to discuss. Different people have their own opinions about it being wrong or right. The discussion on something so serious could go on forever. An abortion is what a female gets when they don't want to keep the baby that they are pregnant with. This process is basically killing a baby. Do we consider this murder?. No, not in America. This is legal to do, as long as you have the time and money, you can kill a living human that is being formed in a woman’s body. To get this surgery done to your body, you would only have to pay the low price of about three hundred dollars. Through the years, people have tried to make abortions illegal and band them. This will the main thing that I will be focusing on during this project. I would like to discuss the different pro’s, con’s, and laws of abortions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion