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Sunday, October 21, 2007

Reflection on Leadership

There are a few qualities that leader must have, and I think one is authority and command. A leader must be assertive when making judgment. A leader must also show respect and tolerance for the people that they lead. They must realize that people will make mistakes, and they must be able to deal with that. Lastly, I think that leaders should be intelligent and just. They should be able to have strategies planned to protect the people they lead and they should be fair and unbiased when judging social matters between people.
I think that a good example of a student leader in 8th grade is Avi Singh. He is always friendly to everyone and I think that anyone could talk to him if they needed to. He is in SLAMS and makes many decisions for our grade.

Monday, October 15, 2007

PT Conference Blog

MY BEST WORK

I think that my best work in humanities was on my Industrial Revolution project descriptive piece. It was written from the point of view of an employee of Henry Ford. I worked hard on this piece and I had to know many facts before I could write it convincingly. My final grade for the descriptive piece was a 96%, only one point away from a 100%.

DESCRIPTIVE PIECE

Dear Diary,

He’s a saint! Am I dreaming? Today this heaven-sent manager announced his bold new idea. Most likely the best words I have ever heard from a man in all my life! Henry Ford announced today that he has increased our daily salary from the minimum wage of $2.39, to $5.00! I could not have asked for anything better. We barely had enough money to eat at night with the terribly low salary of $2.39. He even added that we will only be working 40 hours per week now! The thought of it makes even this cold January day seem warm as a summer afternoon. This kind of income is the kind that makes it possible for me to support my wife, my six kids, and myself, with enough money for comfort. Oh, I know, I shouldn’t be all that excited yet, but I just know this is the start of something great!

CHALLENGE

One thing I will work on for quarter two is my socratic seminars. I will prepare better and speak more, while also bringing people into the conversation. Our next socratic seminar is for Industrial Revolution and I think I will be able to speak well in this session.





WoW Flashback

“Week Without Walls” was a beneficial experience for all of us. We were able to try new things that we may not have been comfortable with at first. Many of us had never rafted, jumped off a cliff, or swam in a river before WOW. WOW should continue to be an 8th grade experience for years to come. Here are some reasons why I think that.

I was totally relieved of all stress on WOW. There wasn’t a single moment where I was concerned with homework or school. We just got to do what we wanted and relax sometimes. This made it easy to be friendly and respectful to our peers also. It was hard to have a negative attitude on a trip that was so great. I am coming back to school feeling very refreshed now.

I learned a lot about India and Hinduism on this trip also. We were taught yoga on the beach which was a way to see how many Indian people live. We also visited Rishikesh, a holy city of Hinduism. People go there to seek peace and to bathe in the holy river Ganga, or Ganges as we know it. It is believed in Hinduism that when you bathe in the Ganges all your sins are washed away, and you become pure. It was interesting to learn about the culture and religion of people.

My last and most important reason is that WOW is FUN! It simply can not be beat by any other school trips. I have never heard of people that get to visit a river and go rafting for a week. This was one of the best trips I have ever taken, and the fact that I was with my friends made it even better. I never felt sad or down at all during the trip, even when we did journals!

I hope for the sake of all 8th graders in future years that WOW continues to happen.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Goal Feedback/ Fresh Goals

Although I think my goals were reasonable, I don't think that they were the best goals that I could have set. For instance, we have stopped socratic seminars before I could improve on them, which made this goal hard to meet. I have turned in almost everything in on time, but I could improve on this even more.
For quarter two I have new goals in mind, although I will still work on my quarter one goals. My main goal is to put homework before everything else when I am at home. By this, I don't mean that I want homework to control my life, but instead, I think by doing my homework before recreational things, I will have a lot more time to do the things I want to do. Instead of putting off homework until late, I can finish it with a better pace earlier, and I will use the things I want to do after that as my motivation. Another goal I have is to make sure I understand everything that we learn in class. Many times I feel that the things on tests are exactly the things that I didn't study for. I will try to understand even the little things that we are taught in class. Tests are obviously a huge part of my grade and mastering the skills on them would help my grade a lot for sure. My last goal is to start my AR book earlier than I did in quarter one. This way I won't have to read as much each night and stay up late, and this can build on my first goal. I know this will decrease my stress.