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Joseph Kony-AOW

May 22nd, 2012 by

Photo by Roel Wijnants

This article, “Joseph Kony On The Move As Manhunt Steps Up, UN Envoy Says” by Louis Charbonneau reports about Kony, who kidnapped tens of thousands of children for nearly three decades! He has not been captured yet and wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. In order to capture Kony, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are preparing join the African Union guerrilla coalition. Also, UN is getting involved in capturing Kony. Because of this, Kony is getting nervous. As a result, Kony is currently moving everyday with his troops, which is totally different from the past, where he stayed in once place for one or two months. The article also talks about the influence that the Kony campaign(video) made to the world. Because of this campaign, it raised the awareness of actions that Kony is currently doing in Uganda.

 

It has been nearly three decades since he kidnapped children and use them as sex slaves. Kony is a father of more than 50 children with many wives. However, he used the other children to use them as a sex slaves for his army and himself. I’m guessing that Kony’s children are still young, just like the other children who were kidnapped by Kony. I mean, how can he do this to such a young, innocent children as a father of more than 50 children of his own? Isn’t he embarrassed to his children and wives? What is Kony thinking right now? Because the world focuses on his actions, I think Kony is thinking that he has a great power to overthrown the Uganda and take control of the world. However, because of his silly and evil actions, a lot of children are innocently being killed, used as sex slaves and forced to serve as a soldier in Lord’s Resistance Army. All of these children, who were kidnapped by Kony, could have lived a happy life with their family. However, Kony broke the happiness and separated the children from their parents miserably. Kony is just unpredictable. I wonder what will he do next, since so many countries and organizations are getting involved to catch him. Will he neglect about all the actions that he did and surrender?

 

This article made me to think about a situation, “What if my sister gets kidnapped by Kony?” This article made me to shiver, thinking about my sister. Like the children who were kidnapped by Kony, my sister is young. If my sister gets kidnapped, I probably wouldn’t go to school, I mean, I can’t go to school. How can I go to school, socialize with my friends, and normally study when my sister is missing? My parents and I will probably do everything we can to find my sister. Unless my sister is really lucky to escape from Kony, we will never be able to find my sister. These days, because I was so busy with my school work, I ignored my sister quite a lot. However, I realized that I should take a good care of my sister and always look after her so that something miserable like this won’t happen.

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Life not sweet for Philippines’ sugar cane child workers-AOW

May 15th, 2012 by

Instead of going to school everyday, children in Philippines are working in the fields and mines to support their family. This article,  ”Life not sweet for Philippines’ sugar cane child workers” by Kyung Lah, tells a shocking story about this 14-year-old Dante, who work in the sugar cane fields, only earning $3.50 for seven-hour day. However, more shocking news is that there are about 2.4 million kids who work like this in Philippines, according to the International Labor Organization. ILO also estimates that about 60% of these kids are doing dangerous work such as dealing with drugs, dangerous chemicals, mines, and etc. Another story is about Alvic James, who wanted to learn how to read and write. Because his family was so poor, he had to quit school and work in the fields to support his family members. Because of poverty, some parents forced these children to work and earn money instead of going to school and get education. The children should have rights to go to school, get educated, and play. Therefore, Sugar Industry Foundation and the Coca-Cola Foundation decided to build a high school for the children. In addition, Coca-Cola Foundation states that they do not support or encourage the child labor. Therefore, Coca-cola Foundation joined with ILO, private industry and local government to help the children to get back to school.
Overall, I think this article shows the tight relationship between child labor and poverty. By seeing how the children’s mom beg the landowners to let their children work in the fields, I realized that poverty is the problem that leads to child labor. Then what is poverty about? It’s all about money. Depending on how much money you have, your life can change greatly. I think the big message in this article is to give the rights to poor children to go to school, learn, and play. The rich kids have these rights because their parents have money. Also, these kids can have more chances to maintain their riches and be the leaders of the world. However, the poor kids don’t have the rights to go to school, learn, and play. These kids don’t have much chances unless they study really hard. However, kids from this article don’t even have chances to study hard because they can’t go to school and have to work all day long to support their family. If the poverty never have existed, the child labor also would have never existed.
After reading this article and doing some research about the child labor, I realized that not just other people, but I was also one of the consumers who provoked the owners of the companies  to use children as their workers. Because of consumers like me, asking for cheaper products, the companies had no choice but to use the innocent children as their workers to reduce the amount of money that they spend on workers. Now when I see things like Coca-cola, banana, sugars, jewelry and electronic devices, I keep on thinking about young children, working hard to produce these products. In my opinion, if we don’t change the way we live, we will never be able to end the child labor. In 2012, the world population has reached to 7 billion. Because there are more people demanding for more products, the child labor will never stop. Therefore, in order to stop the child labor, I believe that more people should know about all the things that happens during the procedure of making the products that they use everyday in their lives.

Posted in AOW, Class Content (RSS), Grade 8, Middle School | 1 Comment »

BP Oil Spill Aftermath-AOW

Apr 30th, 2012 by

What’s currently happening in Gulf of Mexico? According to this article, BP Oil Spill Aftermath: Eyeless Shrimp, Clawless Crabs and Fish with Oozing Sores by Casey Chan, it states that the BP oil spill caused a huge impact on sea life in Gulf of Mexico. Al Jazeera reports that there has been deformed sea life found, such as shrimp, fish, crabs and many more. Their shells, eyes, gills and claws were missing or it had problems. Scientists are predicting that the oil spill and the dispersants that were used to clean up the oil caused the sea life to deform. Not only it caused the sea life to become mutated, but the dispersants, chemical that BP used to clean up the oils, are very toxic to people. What will happen to us now?

BP oil spill was just an accident, but it caused a huge impact on the sea life in Gulf of Mexico. However, during the process of cleaning up the oils, BP used dispersants to get rid of the oils. Even thoush dispersants are very useful and effective in dissolving oils, it’s very harmful and toxic to people and sea life. Why couldn’t people think ahead and predict the effects that will come from using this dangerous chemical? Why did the government allow BP to use dispersants? Was using dispersants their only choice?
On top of that, BP refused to take the blame. According to this article, BP states that the sea is as safe as it was before the accident. However, the evidence from the sea does not support this statement. The evidence clearly shows that the sea is not safe for fish nor for humans. Oils are still pulled up by the fishermen’s nets and there are numerous numbers of mutated sea life. It is so clear that the sea is not safe, but why BP refuses to take the blame? In the company’s point of view, I understand that BP refused to take the blame because they will have to spend more money try to clean up the mess. Fine, I understand that. However, why did the government refused to comment about the things that are currently happening in Gulf of Mexico? Shouldn’t the government take this issue seriously and try to solve this problem? What if all the sea life dies because of the oil and dispersants? Maybe we will never be able to eat seafood again. Before this problem gets worse, the government and BP’s attitude towards this situation must change at this instant. This problem is not just about money. Even though it takes a lot of money to solve this problem, BP should be responsible for this because they were the ones who created this disaster, even though it was an accident. If BP and government just sit there and watch what’s happening, it will not be helpful at all. The sea life will extinct and eventually, we, humans will die. Then what’s the use of saving money if everyone dies? Scientists predicted that the effect of this oil spill will be clear to everyone after four years. Now, two more years left. If the government and BP both don’t solve this problem, we don’t know what will happen in the future.
I really love seafood. My family loves seafood. However, after reading and seeing video about the mutant seafood, I realized that seafood is no longer safe to eat. This article reminded me of the trash that were thrown in the sea and river. Last year, during advisory class, the whole middle school students were working on the recycling project. During this project, we learned that every year, numerous numbers of fish and birds are dying from swallowing the caps of plastic bottle. Also, trash like plastic wrap, rubber bands, glass and etc are causing sea life to die every year. Combined with the oil spill,the  sea life are dying out everyday and because of the climate change, due to the global warming, less fish are caught by the net. This shows that the number of the sea life has dramatically decreased and who knows? Sea life might extinct and we, humans will not get to eat the seafood. So, before it becomes worse, everyone must get involved in saving the sea life. Everyone! Don’t just sit there and expect BP and government to solve this problem. Let’s step in and make this world a better place to live.

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Dhaka slum dwellers live under threat of eviction-AOW

Apr 23rd, 2012 by

               Imagine, how would you feel when the bulldozers rush in without any notifications and destroy your whole community? You would probably be dumbfounded. Then after three seconds, you will realize that you need to get your family out of here and run as far away from the bulldozers. This article, “Dhaka slum dwellers live under threat of eviction”  by  tells about people in Bangladesh who lost their homes because of their own government. The World Bank estimated that around 12 millions of people are currently living in slums, which is more than half of the population in Bangladesh. However, the government of Bangladesh are trying to get rid of the slums by destroying it with the bulldozers without notifying it to the slum dwellers, who are currently living there. Without thinking about their citizens, the government is sending bulldozers to demolish the illegal buildings. People are getting injured and one young girl was crushed under a bulldozer and died. Government have a duty to protect its own citizens. However, the government isn’t supporting these people who lost their homes. Currently, some of the slum dwellers who were effected by the bulldozers, don’t have enough water and food to eat and feed the children. Because there was a demonstration in the airport, the government stopped their plan for now. However, we don’t know when will the government resume their plans and threaten the slum dwellers again.  It’s unpredictable.
               In this article, I didn’t really get the government’s intention of getting rid of these slums. What is government try to do with these lands that they had taken away from the slum dwellers? I think the government of the Bangladesh knows that they can’t support 12 million people who are currently living in the slum area that they need to get rid of.  However, if the government just get rid of the slums and not give these people new shelter to live, more than half of the citizens in Bangladesh will become homeless and jobless. Therefore, I think the government should do step by step to get rid of the slums and people should be provided with the proper settlement. I think this article shows how slum dwellers’ human rights are being ignored by the government. The government is not treating these people like their own citizens. The citizens have rights to be protected by the government and have rights to live. However, the government is injuring massive amount of people! The government should never, ever, abandon its citizens no matter if they are rich or poor.
               If I was involved in this situation, I probably couldn’t do anything because I’m just a young girl. However, I will remember what the government did to our family and community so that when I grow up, and be one of the important figures in the world, I will get the apology from the Bangladesh government. However, for now, I can’t do anything. This article definitely changed my view of the world and I have realized that many poor people are being mistreated. Is it their fault to be born to live in the slum area? No. Those people also wanted to be born in a rich family. I think just because those people were born this way, as a poor citizens of the Bangladesh, their opinions are not heard, and they are just invisible to the government. Without thinking about injuring their own citizens, the government crushed everything with the mighty bulldozers.  The government sent the bulldozers before trying to talk with citizens. In other words, the government ignored its citizens just because they are poor people who live in the slums. Every citizen’s voice must be heard and cannot be ignored.

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Free Write 4

Apr 23rd, 2012 by

I think trees are very similar to us. Like we, humans remember important events that happened in the past, trees also leave a mark every year in their trunks. These rounded marks on their trunks are called, “rings”. To begin with, trees contain more than 100 years of history. There are numerous number of rings inside the trunks when you cut the tree.  The number of rings can tell the tree’s age and the shape of each ring shows what happened in the past to the trees.  By observing the rings of the trees, we can easily predict what happened to the trees decades ago. Their trunks remember all of the hardships they had, as a tree. I think these rings are really cool because by looking at rings of the trees, people can tell what happened in that area. Since the trees can live for a long period of time, they can observe the changes in the world and make more marks of rings in their trunks.

Also, I like how trees remain in one spot and protect its hometown. Most of the humans tend to move out of their hometown and move to the city for their work. However, trees does not, or cannot leave. They set their roots on to one spot and remain silent for hundreds of years. Also, don’t you feel eased and relaxed when you sit under a tree? Like this, trees can bring peace to people’s minds and make everyone happy. Even though trees don’t have abilities like us to run around, it spreads happiness to people. There are a lot of mountains in Korea. Therefore, in the early morning, people go to small mountains nearby their home, to breath in fresh air from the trees and feel relaxed. Like this, trees make everyone healthy and help to relieve stress from our busy life.

In addition, trees are so tall! When the trees grow up, they are always taller than humans. Trees can always grow tall. However, I can’t. I don’t know why, but I’m so short. I can’t grow over 160 cm! My friends are almost 170cm, but I’m still below 160… There are many problems being short. First, in the concert or festival, every time people stand up, I can’t see the stage. I tiptoed and jumped, but it was no use.  Also, when I go to Korea, my cousins still treat me like a child. I’m already in middle school and soon, I’ll be in high school after few months. However, they tease me saying like, “You look like a elementary kid to me!” Now I’m used to their jokes, but I want to grow tall so that they won’t tease me in the future. If I grow tall like a tree, nobody would dare to make fun of me and I will be able to see the stage! If I grow as tall as a tree, it would be so cool. However, it’s my wish to reach 170cm.

Photo by Ward.

Posted in Class Content (RSS), Grade 8, Middle School | Comments Off

What’s Happening In South Sudan? (AOW)

Apr 17th, 2012 by

Did you know that in some cultures, people still treat women as their property?  The article, “In South Sudan, Girls Are Given Away to Settle Family Feuds” by , states that currently in South Sudan, the girls are being sent away to pay for the crime that one of her family member have committed.In South Sudan, there’s this old tradition that when someone in your family commits a crime like killing somebody, you need to send one of your young female family member(maybe your niece, daughter and etc) to a new family who lost their family member. Once your niece is selected to pay for the crime, she has no choice. Whether she like it or not, she must be separated from her original family. In this article, it gives a story about the girl in Sudan called, “Atia”, who was selected to pay for her brother’s crime, for killing a man. As a result, Atia was sent to the other family when she was at the age of 8.Do you think she lived a happy life after being sent to the new family? No… No… Never. Of course, member in the new family treated her like a trash. In the new family, Atia was raped numerous of times and married twice with the members of the new family to produce a child to replace a dead man. For the past six years, she worked like a slave.. Atia states, “I tried to kill myself twice.” It’s horrifying to me that 14 year old girl thought of killing herself twice at a young age.

I understand that this is a very old tradition in Sudan. However, the society has changed and the perspective of people has changed dramatically. Currently around the world, people are trying to give the women rights as a human being. However, here, society of the Sudan are trying to go back into time where the girls were treated as a property and trying to use the girls to pay for the crime that the girls did not commit. I just don’t know why the chief of this community wants to keep this tradition. Also, why should Atia pay back for his brother’s crime? How old was his brother when he killed a man? I think her brother is pretty young because Atia was only eight years old when she was handed to a new family. In addition, Atia was married off to one of the members of the new family. Atia was only nine when she married. At this age, Atia was just so scared of everything surrounding her, so she couldn’t even think of escaping from her new family. I think this is the reason why people in Sudan are sending young girls because young girls isn’t developed or have enough courage to stand up for themselves.

Atia states, that she tried to kill herself twice. In my whole entire life, I never, ever thought of killing myself. However, if I was situated in her situation, where I have to be used as an object to pay for my brother’s crime, I would have already killed myself numerous of times. I just can’t stand being abuse d, raped, threatened, and be mistreated by the new family. I wonder how did Atia managed to live in the hell for six years? If the stories of these girls in Sudan spreads to the world, I’m sure that the chief of this community will change his mind about keeping this tradition.

Photo by Sean MacEntee

Posted in AOW, Grade 8, Middle School | Comments Off

Declaration of Independence Reflection

Apr 10th, 2012 by

As a writer, I have many strengths. To begin with, my voice is really strong. I have my own unique and strong voice which adds richness to my writing. When I read my writing out loud, it sounds exactly the same like when I speak. My other friends also said that they can recognize that it’s my writing because of my writing style. Also, I write for the audience in mind. I state the problem and give details to support my statement. In the details, I include my thoughts into it so that the audience can read my minds and understand my writing better. In addition, I’m a very focused writer. I stay on the topic all the time and give full supporting details on the given topic.

 

This was my first time writing my own declaration of independence. I had many grievances, but I never applied those grievances to my writing. My brainstorm was full of ideas to write about, but I did not know where to start and how to begin the delcaration of independence. Therefore, I started to make an outline, making topic sentences and supporting details. By doing this, it generated ideas about how to write this piece. Afterwards, it was smooth along the way.

 

I had many grievances towards the school, but I wasn’t really passionate about those grievances. It was hard for me to write about the grievances that I’m not really passionate on changing the problems. However, by discussing as a group and hearing the different kinds of grievances, I started to get an idea of the grievances that my friends have towards the school. Therefore, I used some of the grievances that I agreed with and wrote my declaration of independence.  I think when you don’t know where or how to start, having discussions with the other people can be the best choice to get numerous numbers of ideas from different perspectives.

 

Actually, I satisfy with my declaration of independence. However, if I can start this writing over, I would write from my perspective. In my declaration of independence, it was a perspective from the whole eighth graders. However, I want to make this personal and write personal grievances towards the school. Also, I would use a better word choice to clearly express the grievances. By using a better word choice, the readers will have a vivid and clear idea about the grievances that I have and understand why I’m declaring independence from my school.

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Tornadoes in Kansas and Missouri

Apr 8th, 2012 by

In the southeast of Missouri, the massive EF-5 twister wiped the community and killed 161 people. It was a deadly tornado. Also in Vietnam, a typhoon caused some damage in my community. The typhoon created a strong wind along with the heavy rain and caused the trees and poles to fall down. Because of this, there was a black out in most of the buildings and malls including my apartment. In my room, a bird slammed the window and was unconscious. I wanted to save the bird, but the wind was too strong for me to open the window and I did not know how to cure the injured bird, so I just left it on the window. The next morning, interestingly, the bird was no where to be seen.

 

Then why on earth, these days are having so much trouble with tornadoes and typhoons? According to CNN, the article states that tornadoes and typhoons that are currently happening around the world, are caused by the climate change. Well, climate change are causing some problems such as changing the ecosystem in the ocean, climate, creating natural disasters like tornadoes, typhoons and many more. Therefore, I think the world must find a way to minimize the number of people getting killed.

 

Like the article states, the tornadoes are killing massive amount of people. In order to decrease the number of deaths, I think people should evacuate to the safe area in advance, before the tornado wipes everything out of the town. To make this work, the weather services must alarm the residents to evacuate as soon as possible. However, the article states a problem that there were high number of false alarms made, which led people to not believe it until they really see the tornadoes coming with their own eyes. The residents couldn’t trust the weather services and this reminded me 0f “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. In this case, getting more sirens won’t help to solve this issue. No matter how many sirens they use to alarm people, if people don’t react to it, then they all die. Therefore, instead of getting more sirens, I think the government should invest more money into the weather services so that they can  improve their accuracy and save hundreds of people from getting killed.

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Chinese Reflection: Unit 7

Mar 23rd, 2012 by

In this unit, we learned some few tips about negotiating the price with the seller and how to get a good price for the items with the cheap price. Like in Vietnam, China has a lot of markets. So, I learned the most important skill that I need to know when I go to China. Well, I think shopping is the best part when I visit another country. By knowing how to negotiate with the seller, I can get numerous of good items in a cheap price when I go to China. In Chinese, I learned how to say, “多少钱？” which means, “how much is it?” which is the most important phrase in the process of buying items. I also learned the way to pronounce different values of money, like “$1.05″ is “一块零五分”.

In addition, it was fun advertising the products and act out as a seller and negotiating with my friends. In this project, Mrs. Isley came by and watched us advertising our store and selling products to each other. This day, one of my friend brought over few bars of chocolate and everyone went wild reaching for the chocolate and I was one of them:) When I visited my friend’s store, they were like crazily raising up their price, so I was like “太贵了！ 我不行！” and my friends said, “你不要， 你去吧。 我不卖。” So, I just walked out of that store. Haha! Overall, I really enjoyed learning this unit and now, I gained  confidence that I can get good items with cheap price when I visit China!

Photo by MookieLuv

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Declaration of Independence

Mar 23rd, 2012 by

From today, we, eighth graders are declaring our independence to the world. Sometimes in our lives, everyone gets tired and needs a break. I think this is the time. We, should obtain the rights as a human. We are not working robots and we need some priviliges as students.

 

To begin with, I will state the fact that students are not studying robots. I have been working like a robot since 2004, for eight years. Especially in this year, we feel like we are test machines. This week, students from our grade had numerous of tests right before the spring break. Because of this, none of the students slept well and had to stay up late, studying for two or three tests that will happen on one day. IN ONE DAY! Well, we are humans too. These crammed tests are effecting our health and stopping us from growing. It does not mean that we will never, ever going take the tests again. However, we kindly ask you to balance the date of the tests between subjects. Otherwise, we have to seperate from each other and have a break.

 

There’s a favorite time that we, all students like during the school hour. Lunch and break time. However, stop trying to take away these valuable time from us! Now, we hate hearing the fire alarms ringing during our precious break time. Like we mentioned, we are not working robots. We need some time to rest. Humans have limited stamina and break time is the only time to gain it back and and it helps to concentrate fully on the next class. However if you just take our precious time away, what can we do? We kindly ask you to not ring the fire alarms during our break time. During the school hour, we have five hours of studying. However, we only have one hour(including lunch) to relax. Maybe we can have fire alarms during advisory or SSR time. If the fire alarms ring during the class time, it will definitely going to interrupt the flow of the class. So, I suggest to ring the fire alarms during advisory or SSR time so that our class and break time won’t be disturbed. Because we have short of amount of time to rest, we kindly suggest to change the time so that it doesn’t effect our break time.

 

If teachers want us to be in class at the exact time, the teachers should do the same when they dismiss us. For example, advisory. Our advisory teachers, wants us to be exactly on time at 12:05. However, our class before advisory ends at 12:05. Therefore, in order to get to the advisory on time, teachers should dismiss us right away at 12:05 so that we can have 60 seconds to get to our advisory. If my class was located in the first floor and my advisory was located in the third floor, then I would have to run all the way up to be on time. Anyway, this is just impossible. Therefore, I suggest that the school should give five minutes between advisory and the class, so we can have time to stop by our lockers and teachers should dismiss us at the exact time.

 

We, students of the 8th grade, don’t ask much for our freedom. Just let us rest, and have a break from our complicated studies. We are just asking the world to view us as a citizen of a country, and an existing human in this world. Yes, if we study diligently, we will have more chance to be a successful leader in the society. However, what will be our memories of middle and high school? Nothing. We will just remember about the fact that we studied like crazy. Is this life worth a living? For the unknown future, we have to work hard and get peer-pressures from parents and people around us. Sometimes, our parents console us by saying that we are having the greatest time of our lives and  that they want to go back to the time where they were students. However, if our parents put themselves in our shoes, they will definitely freak out. Students from all around the world! Let’s shake the world with our passion towards independence from school!

 

albertogp123

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