Hide and go seek

In the article, Baby missing for 5 days found alive under bed by Associated Press explains a mysterious case where a baby was found under a bed, alive, in a box. After a five day search, investigators found a seven month old girl named Shannon Dedrick, under Shannon’s Aunt’s bed. Chrystina Lynn Mercer (her mom) gave the girl to her baby sister (Susan Elizabeth Baker) early Saturday before she was reported missing.I thought this was very weird and confusing. In the first place why would you even give your child away, that you are supposed to love and care for, to someone else. But whose fault was it? The mom wrote a letter to the governor of Florida saying she needed help with her daughter because Shannon’s father shook the baby girl and that Christina Mercer and other people smoked and did bad drugs around her. You know what they say, “never shake a baby.” Reporters say that the father of the baby wasn’t involved in the crime.When investigators found the baby under the bed it was in perfect condition and it had been fed recently. Although they say the baby girl had been fed, there was no bottle in the box with her. The parents said they saw Shannon about five hours after she had gone missing.“Statistically Shannon should not have still been alive,” said police officer Bobby Haddock. This event that all happened because someone obviously wanted attention. So they did something very wrong that caused a lot of havoc. More then 100 law enforcement agents and others spent hot days looking in vines and deep bushed looking for the child.I go back to the question whose fault was it? Was it the aunt’s fault or the moms fault? I am lost. Did the mom give the baby to her sister on purpose or did she just need to take a break. Was the sister forced to hide the child by the mom or else, or did the sister plan to do it and forcibly took the child away. The sister was involved in a case exactly like this more then two decades ago. She told reporters her stepson, 3-year-old Paul Leonard Baker, disappeared from the family's Beaufort, S.C., home on March 5, 1987, while she was napping.Both the mom and the sister are in jail. . Mercer is charged with interference of child custody, desertion of a child and several other charges. Charges against Baker include neglect of a child with aggravated circumstances and interference of child custody.I don’t know whose fault it is but why would you even think about doing this.

Hise and go seek

In the article, Baby missing for 5 days found alive under bed by Associated Press explains a mysterious case where a baby was found under a bed, alive, in a box. After a five day search, investigators found a seven month old girl named Shannon Dedrick, under Shannon’s Aunt’s bed. Chrystina Lynn Mercer (her mom) gave the girl to her baby sister (Susan Elizabeth Baker) early Saturday before she was reported missing.
I thought this was very weird and confusing. In the first place why would you even give your child away, that you are supposed to love and care for, to someone else. But whose fault was it? The mom wrote a letter to the governor of Florida saying she needed help with her daughter because Shannon’s father shook the baby girl and that Christina Mercer and other people smoked and did bad drugs around her. You know what they say, “never shake a baby.” Reporters say that the father of the baby wasn’t involved in the crime.
When investigators found the baby under the bed it was in perfect condition and it had been fed recently. Although they say the baby girl had been fed, there was no bottle in the box with her. The parents said they saw Shannon about five hours after she had gone missing.
“Statistically Shannon should not have still been alive,” said police officer Bobby Haddock. This event that all happened because someone obviously wanted attention. So they did something very wrong that caused a lot of havoc. More then 100 law enforcement agents and others spent hot days looking in vines and deep bushed looking for the child.
I go back to the question whose fault was it? Was it the aunt’s fault or the moms fault? I am lost. Did the mom give the baby to her sister on purpose or did she just need to take a break. Was the sister forced to hide the child by the mom or else, or did the sister plan to do it and forcibly took the child away. The sister was involved in a case exactly like this more then two decades ago. She told reporters her stepson, 3-year-old Paul Leonard Baker, disappeared from the family's Beaufort, S.C., home on March 5, 1987, while she was napping.
Both the mom and the sister are in jail. . Mercer is charged with interference of child custody, desertion of a child and several other charges. Charges against Baker include neglect of a child with aggravated circumstances and interference of child custody.
I don’t know whose fault it is but why would you even think about doing this.

Is the curriculum and teaching the right way to do it?

In the article titled Rigor Redefined by Tony Wagner the author is leaning towards making schools have a better curriculum and preparing them for jobs in their future. After research in classrooms and talking to employees how are high up in their job, he says that in most classrooms we aren’t preparing the students well enough for jobs.
The central idea of this article is; are schools providing us with the right skills we need for our future job. I was surprised when the number one thing big businesses were looking for where employees who could question well. Clay Parker, president of the Chemical Management Division of BOC Edwards, said: “First and foremost, I look for someone who asks good questions, we can teach them the technical stuff, but we can't teach them how to ask good questions—how to think.” I can relate to this because in my English class, I am very inquisitive. What makes a good question though? Another thing that surprised me was the fact that they hardly even mentioned grade point average or what college you went to. I mean, I know they look at that but if I were a big business owner I would look at GPA and how you did in high school and college. The business owners also said they wanted someone who could engage in a good discussion.
Wagner also examined some classroom situations. He was surprised about how the students either weren’t engaged or how much they didn’t know. (These weren’t just average classroom situations, they were advance placement classes.) Wagner said, “The students weren’t engaged and it looked like they were falling asleep.” During the expectations of the classrooms he found a room that he thought was perfect. The algebra-two teacher put a question up on the board that required the knowledge of their past years of math. The teacher said “After each of your groups is done coming up with two ways of how to solve this problem I will select some of you at random. You will come up to the board and show how your group solved problem.” Wagner stated this was one of the best ways of teaching because it gets everyone has to do the problem since someone will be selected at randomly. Second it is something that the students have never seen in the past. Lastly, Wagner said they have to find ways to solve the problems that will get them thinking.
Are we teaching the students the right things for the future?

Parents not caringanymore about swine flu!

For my article of choice to read this week, I choose an interesting one from MSNBC News titled A third of U.S. parents oppose swine flu vaccine. This article talks about how some parents don’t want to get their kids vaccinated for swine flu because of some of the possible side effects. What could some of the possible side effects be for the swine flu? Could some of the possible side effects for swine flu be worse than swine flu itself? I couldn’t find what some of the side effects would be so I just skipped that part. If you don’t want to give you or your kids the vaccine, then you could die just like a man did less than a week ago. That is basically letting your kids get sick. Connections that were brought to my mind were ‘pox parties’ where parents would let their kids get chicken pox. Or I heard that parents didn’t want to let to have the side effects to different flu’s in the past. Parents say ‘it’s not safe”, or “it’s too unknown and to untested to try. After test on volunteers, no side effects were found. Health and Human services secretary said “we know its safe and secure.” If the doctors and the internet say there is no side effects or nothing to worry about, why are parents freaking out so much? Another alternative is for kids to get them at school. Wait, hold on a minute. I have never heard of vaccines being at schools. Is that legal? Do they have that at Arapahoe? After further research on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30435064/ns/health-swine_flu it is estimated that there are about 803 nationwide because of the swine flu and I’m still surprised that parents don’t even care. “It’s no bigger then a regular seasonal flu” they say but do 803 people die from just a regular flu. I mean, I know some people get it and just blow through it but other people are dying because of it. I think it’s wrong and very bad parenting for parents not to care.

Bye Bye Friends!

This week I read an article about Obama titled More School? Obama Could Trim Summer break by MSNBC News. It talk’s about how Obama wants to make summer break shorter or even no summer break at all. The article also says how he wants to make us go to school three hours more then we usually do. If he has it his way then we might as well say goodbye to all of our friends because we will never have any time to hang out with them because school is so long. I think this is truly unfair because kids need at least a little bit of freedom from their teachers droning on about dumb boring stuff that we really don’t even need to know if we want to be successful in life. Obama says the other countries are beating us out. On average kids in America have 180 days of school a year. Kids in Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have on average 190-201 days of school. BIG DEAL! It’s not like ten or fifteen more days of school each year is going to make the difference on you being a rocket scientist or a person who works at McDonalds. In school, it depends on how much you pay attention and listen. Also if we had no summer break, places like Disney World and other major amusement parks would go out of business because everyone would be in school during the summer. This is also unfair to teachers because they don’t get the regular freedom they want also. They already don’t get very much vacation time, and when they do go on a vacation or something, they have to pay for a substitute to come in. I’m sure we would all be esteemed if Obama cut summer break and made the school days longer.

This week I read an article about Obama titled More School? Obama Could Trim Summer break by MSNBC News. It talk’s about how Obama wants to make summer break shorter or even no summer break at all. The article also says how he wants to make us go to school three hours more then we usually do. If he has it his way then we might as well say goodbye to all of our friends because we will never have any time to hang out with them because school is so long. I think this is truly unfair because kids need at least a little bit of freedom from their teachers droning on about dumb boring stuff that we really don’t even need to know if we want to be successful in life. Obama says the other countries are beating us out. On average kids in America have 180 days of school a year. Kids in Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have on average 190-201 days of school. BIG DEAL! It’s not like ten or fifteen more days of school each year is going to make the difference on you being a rocket scientist or a person who works at McDonalds. In school, it depends on how much you pay attention and listen. Also if we had no summer break, places like Disney World and other major amusement parks would go out of business because everyone would be in school during the summer. This is also unfair to teachers because they don’t get the regular freedom they want also. They already don’t get very much vacation time, and when they do go on a vacation or something, they have to pay for a substitute to come in. I’m sure we would all be esteemed if Obama cut summer break and made the school days longer.

the H1N1 virus advancment

This week I read a blog titled H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point by Karl Fisch. It talks about how even though kids have the flu; they are still participating in their daily school life. How you ask. The students do something called skyping. What is skyping though? After further research, I learned that skyping is basically just talking through webcam. Skyping allows you to participate from another location. To me this was different and above expectations, but hey, it’s Arapahoe. If I was sick or any of my friends were sick, I know that my friends or I would not even want to think about school. Not that we are bad students but if it were you, what would you do. I agree with Mr. Fisch when he says “the students want to participate” and “the impressive thing is the student’s willingness to be connected to the class when they are home feeling crummy.” It’s obvious how much these students wanted to learn and get involved.
In the blog, he also talks about how this could be a turning point for our society. He states this because it is advancement in our daily lives with our technology. Instead of being at home sick with the flu doing nothing, we can now be in class when we’re home sick. The H1N1 virus is sweeping across the globe and it is making people absent from school, work, ect. We don’t have to miss class any more over this epidemic because we have tools like Skype to help us get involved.