I like Twilight because it’s not the Day,

I like Twilight, because only stars or clouds can hear what I say.

At Twilight, everything is forgotten that is not there,

At Twilight it feels as if there is no room for despair.

For some, Twilight is a time to rest…

But for me, Twilight is the time when I’m happiest.

“The past is never dead, its not even past.” 

“Do me a favor and look up the word intrepid and remember me as such.”

Intrepid: Determinedly fearless; dauntless (confident).

Mr. R just always knows the right word. Intrepid is the exact word to describe him. Though I do not understand, I won’t ask why he left. He has written to us all he wanted us to know, and I understand. His letter to us was heartbreaking, beautiful, and shocking. No-one in that room was happy when we found out the reason for Mr. R’s absence. There wasn’t a sound to be heard except for Ms. D reading the letter written with great care. It was a sad day, and lately, March seems to be a sad month for me. Mr. R was a great teacher, and won’t be forgotten. Thankyou Mr. R, we’ve learnt a lot from you.

Laurie has noticed that non-Wave members are being bullied into the Wave.

*Have you ever been forced to join something against your will?

No, not that I can remember, which makes me relieved. I hate it when people will stop at nothing to get what they want, forcing people into doing something they really don’t want to do.

*How should we behave if we see someone being taunted or bullied by a group of people?

I know it makes people seem like a tattle-tale, but the best thing to do is tell a teacher, especially if the victim is being hurt physically. If that doesn’t work (but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t), if it won’t make it worse, you could try stopping it yourself with words. BUT TRY THE TEACHER OPTION FIRST!!!!!!!

*Should we try not to get involved or should we intervene?

It depends on the situation. Unfortunately, sometimes the geed guys get hurt. But if it’s a non-violent situation, try to stop it yourself by standing up for the victim. If it is violent, however, inform a teacher straight away.

This week in class is different. No Mr. R, and until recently, we just thought he was sick. We have a sub, and she didn’t really know too much about what we were doing and starting. So, we went to Ms. D’s classroom.

“It takes two sides to start a fight.” - Ms. D

 Ms. D talked about The Wave and how it compares to the Germans. The Germans had nothing, then Hitler came along…

I daydreamed about what would happen if our school had something like The Wave. I imagine us all in different lines having been told an order by our “leader”, and having to complete the task. I also imagine a teacher (I imagined Mr. J) asking a question and everyone raises their hand all at once.

Laurie’s father likes The Wave idea of getting people to work together as a group, while Laurie’s mother admires people who are not afraid to act as individuals. Whose side are you on?

1. Do you need to be in a group or are you more independent?

I like to be in a group because otherwise a lot of the time I just feel alone. But I am an independent person, too. I basically have the best of both worlds, because I like to be with my friends, or people, I know. But I also like to be independent, if I’m doing a project or something like that.

2. Have people in Qatar achieved a balance between individualism and community spirit?

Well, I think Qatar citizens will act as a community and can still be independent. So I think people here have achieved it, maybe not as much as it could be achieved, but there’s a nice balance of both.

3. Is individual freedom more important than community?

No, I think they’re about as important as each other because it’s a skill to speak your own mind, but it’s also a skill to act in a group.

What’s the difference between being the same and being equal, or are they the same?

I think that being equal is having the same rights as everyone else, the same respect, and the same freedom. Whereas if everyone’s the same, then everyone thinks the same, have the same personalities, and no-one’s different.

This week we worked on our blogs and talked about commenting. I learned that it’s very good to write things down, such as google reader passwords! But it’s ok now, I wrote everything down so I won’t need to try 20 made up passwords again! I also learned a kind of “cycle” of comments. Mr. R told us how to start comments, too:

v     This reminds me of…

v     I wonder…

v     I noticed…

v     I’d like to know…

v     I’m suprised that…

v     If _________, then _________

v     I’m not sure that…

v     This is similar to…

v     I realized…

v     You can relate this to…

v     I’d like to know…

v     If I were ________, I would _______

v     Although it seems…

This week in class was a bit different than the rest of the year. Mr. R has now left the school, and everyone who had him is upset, even some people who didn’t have him. Mr. R was a great teacher, and he was the best Language Arts teacher I’ve ever had, too. Even though he did say things like “I don’t want to teach you” (and other things meaning he REALLY didn’t want to teach us), he was still a great teacher and we learnt a lot from him. So, thankyou, Mr. R.

Yesterday we talked about Power, leading into our new book, The Wave. This theme was talked about for a while, and then we were given half an hour to free write about this topic with the quote:“Power Corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”Here’s what I wrote in that time:

Power. We all want it. Some believe they need it. It influences people. But power has corrupted our world. When a lot of people hear the word power, they think of government. Why is that? Well, though not all of us know it, in some way the government has something to do with our lives; the laws, money received, if you’re given any money at all, it controls countries, attacks (wars), and many other things I probably don’t know about, and I’m not the only one who doesn’t know. Why is that? We don’t get taught about the government’s power, maybe because the government doesn’t want us to learn about it at such a young age and consider that they might not be so good after all. I don’t know. But I do know that not everyone like to think about the idea of being controlled by something so big, but yet so unknown. I’ve only so far talked about the government, but it’s because it’s so huge, so controlling, so powerful. But that’s not the only powerful structure that has been built up over the years. Loved ones help determine the decisions we make as well.

Today we talked about Power in class. We all made Power Pyramids of who or what has the most power over us (above) and who has the least (below).

Here are my ideas:

God

Government

Public

Parents/Family

Adults (including teachers)/Elders

*Me*

Pets (Peaches and Freddy/Friday)

Here are examples of some of the power relationships in the world that we came up with in class:

v     Teachers vs. Students

v     Teachers vs. Parents

v     Children vs. Parents

v     Citizens vs. Government

v     Citizens vs. Police

v     Citizens vs. Media

v     Labour vs. Corporations

v     Employee vs. Employer/Manager

v     Citizens vs. Citizens

v     Nature vs. Technology

v     Company vs. Company

Power is always being used/exercised on something.

What is it?

This week in class is about what we do in class. Mr. R wants us to write about what we’ve understood every week in class. He gave us some starters to start off our sentences. These are what he came up with:  

• We talked about…
• I learned that…
• I daydreamed about…
• I wanted to say…
• And also other comments

We talked about a poem called “Thoughts from Within” by Woody Harrelson. We analyzed the poem as well, identifying similies, metaphors, etc. Mr. R told as that we’d walk out of the classroom a new person, and I think he was right for most of us. The poem was a new point of view of issues going on in the world.

We talked about symbolism, too. But I was thinking about and scribbling down ideas for my poem at the time, so I didn’t really catch a lot. What can I say? That Thoughts from Within poem gave me some good ideas. Sorry, Mr. R!

We talked about education and sustainability. We watched a video on these two topics, and was also on environmental issues. This interesting video is called “Did You Ever Wonder“, and is about how education isn’t valued that much anymore. It has lots of facts and statistics (it took me a really long time to find that word, I was trying to think of it for so long!) on education and education on environmental issues, or really no education on environmental issues.

I learned that many people have different points of view on environmental issues, and it’s interesting to find out about them. I also learned from the Thoughts from Within poem that there are really unique ways to start and end poems. For example, in Thoughts from Within, Mr. Harrelson started off talking about issues in the world, and sounding as if the world was going to be helpless and sounding hopeless. But then he starts saying there is still hope, and we can do something about it.

I daydreamed about the world that Mr. harrelson talked about, I imagined it, like he said he dreamed about. He describes it as

“I sit on the grass under a tree
dreaming of the way things used to be
Pre-Industrial Revolution
which of course is before the rivers and oceans, and skies were polluted
before Parkinson’s, and mad cows
and all the convoluted cacophony of bad ideas
like skyscrapers, and tree paper, and earth rapers
like Monsanto and Dupont had their way
as they continue to today.”

 The sad thing is that I imagined it as a cartoon kind of land, because it’s hard to imagine a world like that after you learn about all the bad things going on in it. But it also made me think of clear, fresh, sparkling, blue (and clean!) water, in the ocean or a lake, splashing about playfully. I’m not sure why, maybe because that day it was kind of hot.

I wanted to say about how sustainibility reminded me of a project we did when I lived in Angola (I’ll do another post on it later). We did a whole section on how we could make that project sustainable, and it wasn’t easy; we were only in Year 7 (6th Grade).