This will be a part of your grade. Feel free to use all the resources of the website to help you get the right answers. This quiz is due by the end of the week. Good Luck!
Monday, September 21, 2009
Grammar Quiz #1
Read through the information on nouns. Take the quiz at the end. Self report your score (you are on the honor system) to your teacher. You can retake the quiz for a higher grade as long as you report your score.
This I Believe #1
Read the following essay and comment on a teacher you have had that made an impact on your life. Please make sure that you say who the teacher is and what the impact was.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Editorial
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2009/09/04/are-the-sats-a-must-for-college-admissions.html
Click the link at the top of the page and read both sides to the story. Come back to this page to put in your comments.
After reading both opinions, tell me which of the writers you agree with and why. Please try to use their words (like quotes from a book) to back up your opinion.
Your comments should be about 2-3 sentences. Who do you agree with? Why do you agree with them? What made them so convincing?
Click the link at the top of the page and read both sides to the story. Come back to this page to put in your comments.
After reading both opinions, tell me which of the writers you agree with and why. Please try to use their words (like quotes from a book) to back up your opinion.
Your comments should be about 2-3 sentences. Who do you agree with? Why do you agree with them? What made them so convincing?
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Special Day Essay
"What do you mean not all of the money is there?" I couldn't believe it, I was standing in front of my future wife, an engagement ring on her finger, and a student loan officer who had no way of knowing what was going through my mind. I could only react to the rage I felt, the utter embarassment of trying to make something out of the nothing that I had created. I knew at that moment that I had to make sure that my wife understood everything that was happening so that our 'beginning' would be built on a foundation of honesty and not on a facade of lies.
My wife and I had always been honest in our relationship. It was a magical relationship to begin with and here I was screwing up the one completely right thing in my life. When I first met my wife I knew that she would be the one. It was one of those moments in your life when you just understand where everything is headed after that. We met purely by chance, a fraternity/sorority 'raid' on a monday night, January 27, 1992. Neither one of us agreed to go to the party at all, we were coereced into going by friends. We both had classes in the morning and we both had exams coming up that we needed to study for. The party itself was moved three times because other fraternities and sororities had already booked the places we were just showing up at. It was fate that brought us together.
That fate blossomed into love very quickly. Within two weeks (Valentines Day) we had said I love you. Within two months we were living together. By the end of six months we had decided to get married. I wanted to make sure that she had the proper ring on her finger but money was always tight in my world. I was putting myself through school by working full time and a series of student loans and grants. There wasn't enough money just lying around to by an engagement ring. The end of that summer I had put a ring on layaway, paying it off $50 a week (the ring was $3000), just so I knew I was making progress. The wait was killing me, I wanted to pop the question, I wanted the special feeling that comes along with announcing your lifetime promise to someone. I knew what I had to do and I knew just how to do it.
When you make a lifetime committment to someone you want it to be perfect. You plan every detail to such a degree that you actually cannot sleep until you see it through. My master plan was to take my last check (I was working full time and it was a good size check) and supplement that with the 'leftover' amount from my financial aid package. Financial aid is always more then a student needs to pay for classes and books, it is also supposed to help you pay for the living expenses that you encur along the way. I was set. I was impaitent. I went to the jewlers the weekend before I would get the financial aid and bought the ring. I wrote a check that would bounce higher then a superball dropped off of the Empire State Buliding if I did not get my financial aid. I was confident (cocky) that my plan was perfect. I took my girlfriend, soon to be fiancee, out on to the beach at sunset and proposed just the way I had planned. It was perfect, or so I thought. When I got to the financial aid office on Monday, my fiancee's ring shining in the sun, I found out that I would only get half of the amount now and the other half would come in six weeks. I threw up in my mouth a little and tried to figure it all out on the spot.
No matter how sick a feeling you get in certain situations it is always better to have someone there to bolster your spirits. I had to swallow my pride (and bile) and tell my wife what was going on with her engagement ring. She understood. She consoled me. She told me that it did not matter to her if she had the ring or not. I was dumbfounded, shocked and confused. She did not blame me for it she just wanted to help. It was something that I always knew I could count on during our marriage. It solidified every thought I had about her and what a could person she was all the way to her core. It always made me think twice about whether the planning of the gesture was as important as making sure you could pull off the gesture in the first place. In the end, she was able to keep the ring. My fiancee calmly took out her checkbook and wrote a check to cover the rest of the payment. I've been trying to repay her ever since.
My wife and I had always been honest in our relationship. It was a magical relationship to begin with and here I was screwing up the one completely right thing in my life. When I first met my wife I knew that she would be the one. It was one of those moments in your life when you just understand where everything is headed after that. We met purely by chance, a fraternity/sorority 'raid' on a monday night, January 27, 1992. Neither one of us agreed to go to the party at all, we were coereced into going by friends. We both had classes in the morning and we both had exams coming up that we needed to study for. The party itself was moved three times because other fraternities and sororities had already booked the places we were just showing up at. It was fate that brought us together.
That fate blossomed into love very quickly. Within two weeks (Valentines Day) we had said I love you. Within two months we were living together. By the end of six months we had decided to get married. I wanted to make sure that she had the proper ring on her finger but money was always tight in my world. I was putting myself through school by working full time and a series of student loans and grants. There wasn't enough money just lying around to by an engagement ring. The end of that summer I had put a ring on layaway, paying it off $50 a week (the ring was $3000), just so I knew I was making progress. The wait was killing me, I wanted to pop the question, I wanted the special feeling that comes along with announcing your lifetime promise to someone. I knew what I had to do and I knew just how to do it.
When you make a lifetime committment to someone you want it to be perfect. You plan every detail to such a degree that you actually cannot sleep until you see it through. My master plan was to take my last check (I was working full time and it was a good size check) and supplement that with the 'leftover' amount from my financial aid package. Financial aid is always more then a student needs to pay for classes and books, it is also supposed to help you pay for the living expenses that you encur along the way. I was set. I was impaitent. I went to the jewlers the weekend before I would get the financial aid and bought the ring. I wrote a check that would bounce higher then a superball dropped off of the Empire State Buliding if I did not get my financial aid. I was confident (cocky) that my plan was perfect. I took my girlfriend, soon to be fiancee, out on to the beach at sunset and proposed just the way I had planned. It was perfect, or so I thought. When I got to the financial aid office on Monday, my fiancee's ring shining in the sun, I found out that I would only get half of the amount now and the other half would come in six weeks. I threw up in my mouth a little and tried to figure it all out on the spot.
No matter how sick a feeling you get in certain situations it is always better to have someone there to bolster your spirits. I had to swallow my pride (and bile) and tell my wife what was going on with her engagement ring. She understood. She consoled me. She told me that it did not matter to her if she had the ring or not. I was dumbfounded, shocked and confused. She did not blame me for it she just wanted to help. It was something that I always knew I could count on during our marriage. It solidified every thought I had about her and what a could person she was all the way to her core. It always made me think twice about whether the planning of the gesture was as important as making sure you could pull off the gesture in the first place. In the end, she was able to keep the ring. My fiancee calmly took out her checkbook and wrote a check to cover the rest of the payment. I've been trying to repay her ever since.
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“Bitch,” she muttered just under her breath as she came abreast of me in the hallway, sure I could not quite hear her. The disdainful squeezing of her eyes said it all though.
I slowly moved away. I could feel her scowl on my back as I took my position by my open classroom door. I turned and greeted her with my usual handshake and cheery good morning. Her morning wasn’t good and she let me know that as she lazily sauntered past me to claim her seat. I would try again tomorrow. I think that each sunrise illuminates a chance to try again, a new day, a new world and that was the only tool I knew how to employ with her.
However much she wanted to, she didn’t deter me. As much as I believe in the promise of a new day, I also believe in teenagers. I believe in their power, their confusion, their bravado and their passion. I have been teaching high school for 24 years now — I am well past my own teenage angst, yet I live teenage every day. I can almost breathe in their fears and joys. They don’t scare me; rather they remind me that life is terribly beautiful and deeply fragile at the same time.
I knew that this young woman’s father had just been arrested for possession of cocaine and she was vainly attempting to pretend that her crazy life was normal. Her anger was a facade. She wasn’t aiming for me exactly; I was just the one closest. I continued to smile at her each day, to encourage her to submit her poetry (the only thing she thought she could do well) to our literary magazine. I worried about her each night and continued to demand that she participate each day. And I smiled.
Then one day, she didn’t show up at my classroom door. Of course, calls home went unanswered. I had a cell phone number and left as many messages as I could during the next several days. She did eventually return, even more sullen and withdrawn. She never spoke about what happened. She did manage to make it to graduation and then left my life to try and shape her own. I could do nothing more than watch her walk away under the dimming lights of our football field. The wilted crepe paper roses floated disconsolately in her wake.
Five years later, she appeared in my empty afternoon classroom. She held an inquisitive tow-headed toddler loosely on her jutting hip. She aimed her jaw at me in that familiar angry attitude and asked me if I remembered her.
“Amber!” I was delighted and moved toward her to shake her hand. She rearranged her little girl and embraced me in an awkward hug.
Slowly, she told me about her life. She’d moved away from our small town, gotten pregnant, married, and then quickly divorced. She and her daughter lived in California in a tiny trailer. She was working full time and attending community college at night. She lifted her chin, her face filled with pride and strength and then she apologized about the name calling and anger. She told me that she thought of my smile often when she was tired and wondered why I never wrote her off as so many others did.
I locked eyes with her and her adorable daughter and said, “This is exactly why not.” As she left that dusky afternoon, she offhandedly presented me a copy of a small journal published by her college. It contained two of her poems.
Teenagers matter. They may seem surly, disconnected or withdrawn, but I believe in them. They will eventually grow up. Their bravado probably won’t last, but how I treat them does. I believe in teenagers and there’s a framed poem hanging on the wall behind my desk just in case I ever forget to smile.