Author’s Note/Intro: I want you to think about where you came from. Where did your life begin? What is the earliest memory of your origin or home? What was it like? How did it look, how did it smell, how did it taste? How did you feel there? Could you ever replace that? Your origin is not replaceable.

The definition of origin is the point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived. Some may say they don’t truly know where their life began, where they came from or what it even means to have an origin. Your origin can be something you know little of, something you’re proud of, something you want to know more about or something you don’t know at all. An origin could be your birthplace, a certain group or culture, or something you remember from growing up. When thinking about the origin, many people ask, can people ever replace their home? There can be many different opinions on that, but it could also lead to other questions. It could lead to asking, could you adopt other origins? It’s a good question to ask if you can have more than one origin, but people also have different opinions on it. Since your origin is unique to you, whatever you think about these questions is true to you!

Can you ever replace your home? What do you think? Well, my opinion is no, you can not. Your home is your origin. Wherever you come from, that sticks with you. The culture, the language, the music, the clothing. Nobody can ever take that away from you. There will always be a sense of comfort because that is all you know. It’s been with you since you were born or since you can remember. You grew up in the culture, the people, the food, the clothing, and the homey feeling. You cannot just get up and move somewhere else and expect it to have the same feeling or ultimately replace your birthplace/home. Nobody should feel like they can tell someone to get used to their new home and let it replace your actual home. Even when you think you want to leave everything behind, you still get homesick or want to fill that void. This was evident in a book I read called Behold the Dreamers. The main character, Jende left his home in Africa to have a better life in America. He thought everything was going good for him until he started running into problems and started to get homesick. “ Neni, …. I’m ready to go back home… I want to go back to Limbe”(Behold the dreamers- Imbolo Mbue p 305) These are words I would have never thought I would hear from Jende at the beginning of the book until now. Jende and Neni just loved America so much when they first came and to think of everything that they’ve been through so far, I just would have never imagined hearing those words. Another example of loving your origin is found in a movie called Beast of the Southern Wild. A young girl named Hushpuppy who lives in a poorer part of New Orleans feels like her home and origin is special, even compared to the richer side of New Orleans. She thought that since it was her home, it was very special and that it offered more than what the people on the rich side of New Orleans could get. She said, “They ain’t got what we got.” Even though they didn’t have much, they made things work and made the things they do into the rich culture while having fun. That was much better to Hushpuppy than living large and having money. She loved where she came from and she truly valued her origin. Staying true to where you came from is a great feeling of comfort and pride. Someone’s home is something very personal, special, unique, and dear to that individual’s heart. I don’t think you can ever replace that special place called home. Your family, origin, and the way you were raised can combine different cultures and I feel like many people in our societies now are the way they are because of being exposed to different people, cultures, societies, religion, clothing, literature, food, values, arts, activities and more. Everything that we have in our lives now is because we adopted and combined things from other cultures into ours. For example, my family is black and makes soul and Caribbean food, but since Chinese food is something that has been put into the mixing pot of America, we’re not afraid to try it and add it to the foods we already like. A lot of things here were integrated to make one big culture or society of many different puzzle pieces of smaller societies, cultures, and practices. I don’t think we would have made it this far in the world without the combining and adopting of different cultures, origins, and societies to make it fit in all one.

My origin is Philadelphia and being raised in a black household. My origin was very special to me. Just like many people feel, where they come from, they’ll never forget. Your origin can be influenced by other cultures you grew up around. Those cultures may have rounded you well and have made you the person you are today. So my feeling is that your origin can be influenced but you can truly only have one origin. Your origin is your beginning. It’s where you started—where your seed blossomed and where you started to become YOU. Now, YOU choose to discover, take your origin, treasure it, hold it dear, or let it go to start a new life. There is always a beginning to every story though. It can always be tracked down and revisited. Your origin is what makes the world as diverse and special as it is. As a young girl once said, “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right.” Everyone’s origin is unique. Those are the different puzzle pieces that make the universe fit together just right.

“ Neni, …. I’m ready to go back home… I want to go back to Limbe”-Behold the dreamers “They ain’t got what we got.”- Beast of the Southern Wild “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right.”-Beast of the Southern Wild

Introduction: In this essay, I focused on the importance of understanding the connection between immigrants and the modern world. Throughout the process of writing this essay, I tried to make it engaging and informational to the reader so that they can leave knowing something new. This essay is a bit more heartly written because it personally relates to me and I thought that the bais aspect makes it more entertaining.

The idea that the story of immigrants is the story of modern times is often used in debates as a rebuttal when arguing against someone anti-immigration. The argument usually brings up the fact that the U.S was founded by immigrants who were seeking a better tomorrow. Despite this knowledge being present in our everyday society, our culture refuses to fully accept that the story of the immigrant is very similar to the story of the modern world. To understand how both stories relate to each other at all, we must first acknowledge that modern society has come a long way from what it was, even if we are not living in the best version of society, it is considerably better than what it used to be 50 or 100 years ago.

The immigrant person, just like society, is on a similar path. Immigrants seek a better future for themselves, however, this hopefulness for a better future is cut short by a misunderstanding on what a citizen believes the immigrant is truly seeking. In the U.S, many people believe that the agenda of immigrant people is to take jobs or live off the taxes of U.S citizens, this belief along with the assistance of others led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Immigrants, much like the rest of the world, look forward to progress and prospering even if that means enduring temporary hardships and accepting a society that is in need of many improvements. While conducting some research on the refugee crisis I came across a picture. The picture was of a beach at dawn, the beach was clear and on the sand of the beach laid the body of a little boy, unconscious and slightly blue. Over the dead body of the boy stood an officer with a red vest looking longly at the washed-up body of the little boy. Situations like these are not uncommon in history.

Throughout history, we can see how people of different cultures are treated when they first arrive at a new home. When the Italians, Irish, Jews, and Polish first came to the U.S they faced prejudice and discrimination, however, a century and a half later these groups have somewhat become the backbone of this country. The 116th class of congress, according to the Pew Research Center, is 13 percent composed of immigrants or children of immigrants parents. Given the basic understanding of immigration and how it relates to history and current systems, it must be concluded that the immigration story and the story of modern times are the same. Both stories are fixated on progress; the hope of a better tomorrow. The refugee crisis due to conflict in the middle east is the latest great form of history repeating itself. When the holocaust was happening the U.S among other nations refused to take in refugees, the same celebration of isolationism is occurring only this time it’s meant for the Muslim refugees. In our time in class we read a magical realism novel, Exit West, that focuses on the refugee crisis and the effect it has on those enduring it, I gathered a couple of quotes that somewhat further help us understand the possible emotional and mental headspace of an immigrant or refugee person. The first quote is a short excerpt from Exit West:

“ It was an easy promise to make because she had at that time no thoughts of leaving Saeed, but it was also a difficult one because in making it she felt she was abandoning the old man, and even if he did have his siblings and his cousins, and might now go live with them or have them come live with him, they could not protect him as Saeed and Nadia could, and so by making the promise he demanded she make, she was in a sense killing him, but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.”

This quote gives us an understanding as to what is happening in the mind of a migrant who is seeking a better future for themself. Filled with the deep-aching feeling of neglecting something dear to you, a close companion of guilt. When Nadia and Saeed flee from their home, they leave behind everything they knew, loved and owned. The author does a great job of illustrating this by making Nadia and Saeed frightened hopefuls as they arrive in a new home filled with trials of great magnitude. This is an example of the mental state of a migrant individual, messy and hopeful. As a world filled with democratic institutions, we must start to be more empathetic towards people of different backgrounds. With empathy comes understanding and with understanding comes results. We are trained in this modern society to look for issues and criticize, and rarely ever create change. To stop history from repeating itself and to fulfill our duty as humans we must first learn to be empathetic for those who are not like us. To accept and create change and the first step would be to accept that progress is the greatest connection between the story of the immigrant and the modern world. The will to never stop improving.

Work Cited:

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Penguin Random House, 2017.

Smith, Helena. “Shocking Images of Drowned Syrian Boy Show Tragic Plight of Refugees.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Sept. 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees.

Introduction: We had several topics to choose from in writing our project. I wanted to write something personal, and something I think is incredibly important. My essay deals mainly with the issue of immigration in America. Specifically, how we are dealing with it. I wanted to answer the question by highlighting America’s need for a change of ideals before they can change their actions.

I have a habit of compulsively reading the news. Whenever I’m on the bus or in the middle of something I’ll scroll through my news feed. Recently I came across an image of an immigration detention facility in the United States. The image showed dozens, maybe hundreds of people packed in by a fence. In a small space, in an unfurnished, beigie room. Towards the fence were children, some toddlers if you looked closely, were laying on the ground, tired, aching. As the sea of people reached the other side of the room I began to notice that there were so many people that I couldn’t see the floor. Looking at the picture, even looking at it as I write this makes me feel claustrophobic, nauseous, and angry. Is this the fate of those striving for a better life? My questions grew. How can America, one of the richest countries on the planet, treat these people so mercilessly? I settled on a final question, what should America’s role be in an immigration crisis? The answer lies in the stories of immigrants.

America, a land of immigrants striving for something greater, has never really been all too kind to immigrants striving for something greater. And with all our wealth, all our capacity to be generous, we stay stagnant in our selfishness, our ignorance. I can imagine you’ve seen the televised political discussions and debates concerning immigration. Old white men, who’ve never had to work a day in their lives, speaking of the lives of people they can’t begin to understand. The point is best conveyed through a quote from the book We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, a book about immigrating and trying to assimilate into America. “When they debated what to do with illegals, we stopped breathing, stopped laughing, stopped everything, and listened. We heard: exporting America, broken borders, war on the middle class, invasion, deportation, illegals, illegas, illegals. We bite our tongues till we tasted blood, sat tensely on one butt cheek, afraid to sit on both because how can you sit properly when you don’t know about your tomorrow?” This quote does a lot to highlight the treatment of immigrants, but illuminates particularly how little control or voice immigrants have over their lives. This is a point America should take into account if we want to play a better, more helpful role globally and in the lives of immigrants. Does this mean we have to make immigrants dictate exactly how we should be treating them and do things? No. It means America can listen to the specific issues of those being displaced or having to move and working with those people to help them join our country, and live comfortable lives.

The issue of American involvement in immigration goes farther. America would rather kick undocumented immigrants out then keep them in the lives they built, letting them get their citizenship with their homes and families intact. We see this manifest in the ICE raids happening across our country. If we should be taking a more humanitarian approach, then the raids are the antithesis. The New York Times reported in an article (Miriam Jordan, Aug 7, 2019) that, “The raids were by far the largest to occur since Mr. Trump took office, and the biggest since December 2006, when more than 1,200 people were swept up in a raid at several units of a meat processing company.” The same New York Times article interviews Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, who said the following, “The American economy loses a workforce that is contributing in more ways than we can imagine. And, along the way, we are no safer as immigrant communities are pushed further from law enforcement.” The article goes on to confirm that both companies involved with the raids (the poultry raids predominantly featured in the article) made sure that the workers were able to work in the United States using E-card verification. Not only are the raids brutal, ripping people from their children and their livelihood. But they are hurting our economy. These are not the actions of a developed society.

So once again we are brought to our question: What should America’s role be in a immigration crisis? The answer is not in specific actions this time, but in values. We should approach our immigration problems and any immigration crisis we see with Egalitarian values. These immigrants are people and their lives should be treated with this in mind. As a nation, we should strive to understand the problems these people are facing, to see what we can do to help, to accommodate them into our society. Because in the end, anything we do to help them, will, in some way, be returned back to us. Not by karma or in any spiritual sense for that matter. Just the simple logic that helping people makes people want to help you. Something our country has clearly forgotten.

Bibliography

-We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo -https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/us/ice-raids-mississippi.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/19/opinion/opdocs-immigration.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/29/opinion/migrant-crisis.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/what-do-we-owe-each-other/?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Welcome back from winter break and happy 2020! With the juniors returning to 440 full-time, we are making the following changes to room assignments:

• All classes with Mr. Enzweiler will be held in Auxiliary room A (including Astronomy and Advisory)

• All classes with Mr. Block will be held in Auxiliary room B (Advisory will still meet in the cafe)

• All classes with Mr. Clapper will be held in Auxiliary room C (Advisory will still meet in the cafe)

• All classes with Ms. Martin will be held in Auxiliary room D (including Advisory)

• Mr. Grzywinski’s senior English classes will relocate as follows: B band to Auxiliary room D & C band to Auxiliary room A (all others remain the same)

• Mr. Symonds’ C, E and X bands will relocate as follows: C band to Auxiliary room B, E band to room 1078 & X band to Auxiliary room B (all others remain the same)

• Mr. Hernández’s Advisory will be held in Auxiliary room B

Thursday, 11/21

• 08:15-08:55 – C1 Band
• 09:00-09:40 – D1 Band
• 09:45-10:25 – E1 Band
• 10:30-11:10 – A2 Band
• 11:15-11:55 – X1/Y1 Band (Report to your non-lunch class. If you have class for both, speak with your teachers to find out which course to attend)
• 11:55-12:00 – Advisory (Transpass Pick-Up)
• 12:00-12:30 – Lunch/Dismissal

Friday, 11/22

• 08:15-08:55 – B2 Band
• 09:00-09:40 – C2 Band
• 09:45-10:25 – D2 Band
• 10:30-11:10 – E2 Band
• 11:15-11:55 – X2/Y2 Band (Report to your non-lunch class. If you have class for both, speak with your teachers to find out which course to attend)
• 12:00-12:30 – Lunch/Dismissal