Meaning: The meaning of this song was to shed light onto the problems of minorities, whether it’s women or black people. This song was meant to empower people in face of oppression. Despite the many problems, 2pac preaches the fact to stay strong and “Keep ya head up”.
Si Lo Ecoutait
Tell Tale Heart – Isabella B.
- Would the story have worked if it had been written in the third- person? Rewrite the part with the police officers from a different point of view (omniscient, limited omniscient, objective).
The point of view I used is limited omniscient
The three police were exhausted when they had been called to find out what the shriek heard on the street had been. They went knocking at the door in anticipation to find out what the shriek the neighbors heard had come from. As a man opened the door, they introduced themselves and explained what had happened during the night. Foul play? one of the officers thought to himself. The man with a smirk across his face explained how it had only been himself during his own dream. He also explained how the owner of the house was out of the country. The officers followed his into his house as they proceeded to his chamber to speak. They started to notice though, that the man was beginning to look uneasy. As they began to question what was wrong, he confessed.
Brunch served with a side of memories at my Grandparents’ house
When I was a little girl, at least one day of each week would be dedicated to going to my grandparent’s house. Today that tradition remains the same. Each time I walk through the doors I can’t help but feel anything but safe and content. It feels like home.
In that house, we spend the most time in the kitchen. When I walk in, I hear the same thing almost every time. On the radio, the French music of Celine Dion plays loud to diminish the noise of the fan cooling down whatever my grandmother may be cooking. In front of the stove is where she is. Apron on and humming to the music playing, she always makes sure to welcome me with a warm embrace and a gentle smile.
All around her kitchen I see portraits of relatives. Some of my cousins from a couple hours away, some of my grandparents themselves, some of me when I was younger. Seeing those photos can’t help but make me feel nostalgic. It’s got me feeling as though I’m still that same age and that since then, nothing has changed. Even if a lot has changed. The sight of the Fall colored walls always stay the same as I remember them. When I inhale, I smell maple as sweet as the memories that I’ve made in this kitchen.
As my cousins and I would help place the cold, shiny silverware on the table, my grandmother would announce that she’s finished. On a plate, a stack of crêpes sit, still too hot to touch. Since every meal means variety for my grandmother, another plate of the French-Canadian dish, ‘ploye’ is on the table. Along with bacon and eggs of course. This is there to provide the option of savory compared to the sugared taste of the crêpes. I usually take a seat on the leather booth. The heat of the heater underneath the booth warms up my feet on a cold autumn day. All the food is spread out onto the table, now it’s just up to us to decide what we want to eat. The food, as well as the smiles, are priceless.
I run my knife through the melted butter assimilating just enough to spread over the delicious-looking crêpes. They appear almost as thin as paper, although only a few have the capacity of having me full. I drizzle some bittersweet blueberries onto the crêpes, topping it off perfectly.
Slowly more and more of my family enters the small kitchen. We save a special place in the booth for my grandfather. It’s been his spot for as long as I can remember. No matter how many times we tell my grandmother to sit down, she always makes sure that we’re absolutely satisfied with what we have before taking a seat. And we always are. The dishes themselves are great, but my favourite thing on the menu that has everyone satisfied? Love. And that’s not something that’s served at many other restaurants.
First They Came For…
Adapted from the poem by Martin Nienoller “First They Came for the Jews” in response to the poem “Danger of Silence”.
I decided to give my take on the poem a voice to victims of rape and/or domestic abuse.
First they came for those under the influence
and i did not speak out
because that wasn’t me
Then they came for girls who wear less clothes
and i did not speak out
because that wasnt me
Then they came for children who never met innocents
and i did not speak out
because that wasn’t me
Now when will they come for me
because i was too busy or too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers
How does one resist injustice?
No matter what, we all experience injustice. Whether it’s on a personal level, or a social one, at one point in our lives, we may be a victim of it. One thing I learned is that there are many different ways to resist. One way would be to stand up to the oppression that you’re facing. Take Rosa Parks as an example. She faced racial injustice and resisted by standing up for herself and every other African-American, whether it was those on the bus with her, or strangers she didn’t know. Her resistance fought for many. In my opinion, change doesn’t come easy in this world. As unfair as it seems, everyone has privileges based on their country, race, gender, religion, sexuality, and class. And sometimes that can make your voice less powerful than those with more privileges than you. Throughout history, people have always fought for rights that they think they deserve. In the beginning of the book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, the main character is afraid to resist, but with the help of others, she finds her voice and gains bravery. With courage, alliances, and an influential voice, anything can be possible.
What it means to be human
Humans want to communicate
Humans have/need a dream
Humans have a desire to help others
Humans seek happiness
Humans need friends/ Humans need companions
Humans want to learn/seek knowledge
Humans need to express their emotions
Humans can be ignorant and should be more aware
Humans are violent
Humans fight for what they believe in
Humans have conflict/war
Humans prevail despite conflict
Humans may abuse power
Humans evolve
Humans want to be remembered because most like recognition
Humans disagree
Humans may be discriminatory/racist
Humans like to make our lives easier and better
Humans like to help and fight against perceived injustice
Humans are curious and seek knowledge
In the book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, I learned that if we truly want something to change, we have the ability to change it. In this book, a sixteen year old African American girl witnesses her friend get shot by police officers. Not only does she feel distraught, but she also feels powerless because of her gender, race and age. This book taught me that no matter how little we think we are, we can still create a movement. As long as one person listens, at least we’ll leave a mark on them.
Collaboration Fluency Reflection
During the Collaboration Fluency presentation, my team and I were sure to make our Dragon’s Den presentation prepared and full of information, however there are still a couple of things that we could have done better. The first step to the begin our project was to dream. Our team sat together and brainstormed different ways that we could’ve made an innovation that would help our world a little more. Personally, I loved this step. I have always been a bit of a dreamer and I absolutely love to express creativity! My favorite part of this was how we weren’t afraid to pitch out any ideas no matter how unrealistic they were. I learnt that every single idea has the potential to become more, which I think is very important. Our invention, the Personal Healthcare Companion (PHCC) had started out as something that wasn’t exactly attainable. Like we had included in our presentation, the PHCC was inspired by the Disney character Baymax from the movie, “Big Hero 6”. We began by thinking of a robot that could do just as much as Baymax could. That includes being able to scan a patient and knowing what kind of treatment they needed. Obviously, this technology was not attainable for us, being four teenagers.
When presenting the project, I think that everything went exactly as we planned that it would. It had gone very smooth and we included all the information that we wanted to talk about. Our invention also seemed to be very clear and everyone seemed to understand what it was. In the end, we took from what the judges said. There were ways that we could make our invention even better.
Doing this project, we did come across some “bumps in the road”. Personally, one of the things that I would have stopped myself from doing was procrastinating as much as I did. This has been something that I do often and it doesn’t usually result in anything good. One of the things that I disliked about this project was that the class time was spread out and sometimes we’d go an entire week without working on the collaboration fluency project. This resulted in me not being as motivated to work on it as I was. I also found myself confused about which days we would be working on the project. As for us as a group, I think for the most part I wouldn’t change anything. We each supported each other and overall were a great team.
The slip of paper that I chose after our presentation had been one under the category of Personal Responsibility skill, “I practice self-determination”. I chose this slip because I used to often silence myself when doing group projects. This year I told myself to never do this. The first criteria on the slip was “advocate for myself and my ideas”. I do think that I am refining for this one. Every idea that I had during our project was never left unsaid. I found myself comfortable to say even the craziest ideas. The next criteria were “Imagine and work towards change in myself & the world”. Now if we were talking about my personal life outside of science class, I would 100% say refining. As for this project, I do want to change the world, but I don’t think that this project would be what would I want to change it with. But it is a step to something that could possibly become bigger in the future. As for change in myself, I think that this is a step towards that, as I think everything should be. I would say that this finds itself in between developing and refining. The final criteria on this sheet is “Take the initiative to inform myself about relevant issues”. I would say that for me, this is refining. I have always been very aware of the issues that are happening right now in this world. This was the first step to starting this project. But it’s not only this project that has made me think outside of what is happening to me personally. I think that this alone is something that everyone should try to take part in. How can we help an issue if we don’t know that much about it.
One thing that I wouldn’t change would be the people who I chose to do this project with, Shannon, Olivia and Elise. I feel as though we all clicked like pieces in a puzzle. Each one of us weren’t afraid to express our ideas and to help each other out. We each made it a priority to stay on track. We told ourselves that certain work would have to be done by a certain date and if one of us didn’t have their part finished, they would have to do more work to make up for it. I do think that this helped our work process since we were motivated to finish and were aware of the consequences that would come without work.
But in the end, I did learn a lot from this project. I learnt a lot about electricity, issues going on in our world and finally, teamwork. I do think that I will carry a lot of this information on for my future projects.
Cancer Story
Part 1: Cancer Story
It all began when my 4-year-old host, Timmy, started getting the symptoms of Neuroblastoma. The wheezing, the chest pain, he went through it all. That’s when his mother decided to take him to the doctors. She found it out of the ordinary that her usually energetic child, was becoming much more quiet because of the pain he was going through. I am one of Timmy’s genes that went through some mutations because of the cancer found inside of his neuroblasts which are immature nerve cells that a fetus must create as part of its development process. These nerve cells are supposed to grow and become functioning nerve cells, but, unfortunately, they become cancer cells instead. Because of the immature cells it is the reason why Neuroblastoma seems to only target children 5 and under.
At the beginning, Timmy’s cells grew and didn’t respond to the signals telling it to stop (like regular cells do). Instead they began to multiply out of control. This is what created his tumor. To get to the stage I am today, I underwent a somatic mutation. Somatic mutation is what is passed from the mutated cell during cell division. The effects on poor Timmy’s body have not been the best. Tumors have been growing on his spinal cord causing spinal cord compression which will eventually cause pain and paralysis. The cancer is also spreading quick to his bones, skin and liver. Timmy is not the child that he used to be. The cancer has made it impossible for him to have a normal child hood. The treatment that Timmy’s parents must choose from include, surgery followed by watchful waiting, surgery followed by chemotherapy, radiation therapy or low-dose chemotherapy. The surgery is meant to break the tumor and chemotherapy is meant to slow down the process. Like every other type of cancer, there is no cure yet, but I, as a gene, believe that one day there will be and my dear host, Timmy, will get better!
Part 2 : The Making of the Cancer story
1. What questions did you need to research in order to create your cancer story?
I did not have to type question after question in the google search bar in order to find my information as it was mostly found on the same two websites. However, the questions I did search for were “What do the genes and cells undergo with neuroblastoma?”, “What are the treatments to neuroblastoma?” and “What is the cause?”.
2. What new or familiar digital tools did you try to use as you worked through this project?
I used the Riverside digital library at the beginning just to find the basics of neuroblastoma. That was new for me.
3. What was the process you used to further investigate this project?
I started this project by looking at neuroblastoma at a beginners level (since I had never heard anything about it). But with every task that we were told to accomplish, I gained more knowledge.
4. How did you verify and cite the information that you found?
The websites that I used were all official health websites so that let me know they were giving out true information.
5. How did the process of completing this challenge go? What could you have done better?
Overall I find that the process went good. It was a bit challenging at times since this cancer does have a lot of undiscovered aspects. Something I wish I had done was work on this time earlier instead of procrastinating.
Links : http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/neuroblastoma/symptoms-causes/dxc-20164445
http://www.medicinenet.com/neuroblastoma/page6.htm
Observing Cells Lab
On Friday, our science class used a microscope to observe cells. Some animal cells and some plant. Unfortunately, I was absent so I wasn’t able to experience this lab “hands-on”. My solution is to simply search up the cells that I would have been observing. Which were onion cells and cheek cells.
Observations :
What can I observe about the onion cell? Well, I can make out some of the parts of it. Parts like the cell wall and what looks like the vacuole.
In this image of some cells from the inside of the cheek I can see the nucleus on the cells and apparently, the cytoplasm. The nucleus are shown as blue dots in the middle of the cell.
The question is, if I already didn’t know that these cells were plant and animal cells, how would I tell them a part? A good way to do this is to look out for parts that plant cells have, that animal cells do not. For example, cell walls and a chloroplast. There are also parts that animal cells have but plant cells do not. Like the vacuole!
During the lab, a substance called methylene blue was used with the cheek cell. This was used to “stain” the cell. Doing so enhances the cell underneath the microscope. Methylene blue is a stain specifically used to enhance the nucleus in animal cells.
By doing some of this research, I got to find some real-life pictures of cells and not just a drawing in a text book. I also found some ways on how to differentiate animal cells in plant cells. All in all, I think that this lab will be useful later on in our biology unit.