Good Bye Freshman

In this final blog post of my ninth grade English 1 class, i must write about many things i enjoyed during my freshman year, including best memories, most important things iv learned or experienced, and some advice for up and coming freshman.  I am going to divide up my best memories from this year into athletics and academics.  From playing sports you experience many situations that turn into great memories.  This year in football when we went to camp we had freshman initiation and had to run through an isle of beds and get hit my anything and everything, with a helmet on though.  This year in baseball, my friend Wilson went to get a foul ball that went over the fence and when he attempted to jump over the fence he got his pants caught and was stuck on the fence for 10 minutes.  When he finally got down, he had about a foot long hole in his pants.  These memories were very funny and I won't forget them.  For school memories I would have to say my best memories are beating the sophomores at tug-of-war on field day.  Another great memory in general is attending  almost all of the basketball games and watching the team win the state championship.  That was great to be able to experience.  The most important things I'v learned from this year is take freshman year seriously and don't give up when things get hard.  Because, things do get hard for you quite a lot, since it is your first year of high school.  The three pieces of advice I would give to any up and coming freshman would be to be yourself, start of strong grade wise because it is hard to come back if you slack off your freshman year, and to challenge yourself and keep trying (But DON'T take Latin).  Any foreign language on your freshman year is just a bad idea.  Well, Good-Bye ninth grade.

What I Have Learned About Leadership

In my ninth grade English class, the unit we are studying is the novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.  In this novel, the author is trying to show us as the readers the struggles and hardships of African Americans during and after the Civil War.  There were many things I learned from reading this novel, such as; the importance of man's freedom, self respect, education, and leadership.  The one I learned most about would have to be leadership.  I learned that being a leader isn't just something you are born into, you should work for it and strive for excellence.  In the book there are many characters that are leadership material.  There were African Americans who were trying to be politicians shortly after the war, trying to own land and start there own business, give inspirational speeches and stop segregation, and even joining the army during the Cuban War just to serve their country, no matter how much animosity was between the white people and the black people during that time.  This has taught me very much about leadership, and how no matter who you are, if you try hard enough and don't give up, you can achieve great things.

Why do We Make Stereotypes

In this unit of my ninth grade English class, we are studying The Auto Biography of Miss Jane Pittman.  This is a novel written by Ernest Gaines in the early 1900's.  It is a bout a struggling African American slave who has been freed but encounters some man vs. man, man vs. himself, and man vs. nature issues.  She grew up as a slave and only knows farm working as a skill.  Our blog post is supposed to contain stereo types as seen in the novel.  A stereo is a generalized assumption of a group of people or objects.  An example of a stereotype I will use is how Southerners hate black people.  Even in the story Jane and others find themselves benefiting from southern white people as they try to make their way to the north.  That just shows that some stereo types may be true for some people, but you never need to judge somebody just because of what you have heard or thought you saw.  All people are different and you can never understand them if you don't try and interact with them.

The Best Detective Story I Have Ever Read

For my English class, the unit we are in right now is all about detective stories and different forms of irony.  We have read 3 different detective based selections.  My favorite out of the 3 was "Wasps Nest".  It has the famous French detective, Hercule Poirot.  In this story Poirot is trying to stop a murder before it happens.  It actually turns out to be a suicide that will try to be framed as a murder.  John Harrison is the man who has found out he only has 2 months to live, so he invites a "friend" over to destroy a wasps nest with poison but instead he will try to drink it and them frame the "friend".  But, Poirot stops all of this before it happens and they all forget about it.  We were told to pick which out of the 3 was our favorite and i chose this one.  It has great built up suspense into what you think might happen next.  You never really know what is going on until the final sentences of the story.  This story's author really added in foreshadowing into this story.  She also added some irony as in how the story ends.  I enjoyed reading it because it is very exciting and just a great detective story.

The Man Behind the Big Red Dog

Growing up in Kokomo, Indiana, Norman Bridwell, the author of the great children book Clifford the Big Red Dog, was always drawing dogs.  He said he wasn't a very good artist in his opinions but loved to express his passion for art and love for dogs.  He did not even imagine that his drawings would become a children's  best seller.  One day one of his high school teachers took away his school supplies because he wasn't paying attention and gave him a note pad and two pencils and said, "Here, you seem to like to draw, so stick to that."  He said, "He was never considered very good at drawing, someone was always better than me throughout junior high."  After high school, Bridwell wanted to take his drawing and turn it into career.  He studied first at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis and then moved to New York, where he took classes at another art school, Cooper Union, for two years.  A few years later, Bridwell had published 15 children books.  Soon after his classic best sellers were turned into a show and some movies.http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-bridwell-norman.asp
https://www.google.com/search?q=clifford+the+big+red+dog&hl=en&prmd=imvnsb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=EXMET9aTL8HL0QGlwt2bAg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=685