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   My current event is the closing of schools in Philadelphia. This caught my attention because I was very interest in why they are closing the schools and is it a pro or con to other people and the district.

   The details I found on this website was:

• ·      The Philadelphia School District is planning on closing 40 schools and 6 schools per year until 2017 because of the huge debts they’re in
• ·      25% of students in the Philadelphia School District goes to charter school

   On this website, it tells us that:

• ·      The School District want to divide up into 8 different corporations with 30 school per corporation
• ·      The employees would go from 650 to 200
• ·      Some principles like what’s going to happen but some of them think it would mess up the School District
• ·      Someone think that Philadelphia will take the same path that New York has took and the academic skill might not increase

   As I read and took notes about closing of schools I was filled with a lot of questions and comments. So some of my questions were:

• ·      Instead of closing the school, why don’t they close small or poor businesses to save money?
• ·      Where is the school district going to send the kids that are in the schools that are closing?
• ·      Why are they acting on paying their debts now?
• ·      If Philadelphia keep closing schools, is there going to be enough school left for us, children or when the future comes (our kids)?
• ·      What’s going to happen to the public schools?

These are question that I wondered about when I was reading these articles. I feel that the articles give information but not as much as I wanted.

   Some comments I have about this current event is to be honest, I think it’s idiotic. They’re too busy thinking about the debt they’re in, they are not even paying attention to the children. What if one of the schools they’re closing is a child’s only chance of graduating because that child has a learning disorder, what are they going to do about that? Just because you send them to a school that you think would be good for them doesn’t mean they’re going to catch on quickly. But other than that issue, I have other opinions. Another opinion I have is I don’t think other people are seeing this as an issue like I do cause if they did I believe some one would had protested or tried to do anything they could to prevent this from happening.

   As the years go on everything is going to get worse. People might not see it now but they’ll see.

Years ­increasing = Academic skills decreasing

Click here for all my links. 

  Animal cruelty happens all around the world. There are hundreds of thousands of recorded cases just in the U.S (that’s not including the global animal cruelty or the cases not recorded). We take what we need to survive from them. We take over their land and there homes. We take away their families. When will we ever stop taking and start treating them right? In my opinion animal cruelty and abuse is just disgusting.

  I am interested in animal cruelty because I am an animal lover, just like millions of people around the world. The animals need a voice to stop this abuse. There are many types of animal cruelty that people aren’t even aware about. People fail to recognize and report animal cruelty. The only reason this happens is because people are not aware of the laws. The thing is, laws differ from state to state. This makes no since there should be no animal cruelty period!   

  Once I saw videos of abused pigs, killed whales, and dog fighting I had to contain the tears. Dog fighting is a local case in Philadelphia where dogs are put into an arena to have vicious fights. This most of the time ends with serious injury or in some serious cases death. The dogs that are mostly used are pit-bull and Rottweiler, which are very power majestic animals.

    Pig farming abuse is highly known in the state of Iowa where there was an undercover video footage of abuse to the pigs. The company that was doing this crime was the Hormel Food Company. In this horrible caseworkers were videoed jabbing piglets and throwing them around. They beat and hit Pigs until they were not capable of walking or protecting their selves. They also were held in living conditions that were just not suitable for any life. The investigators were from the PETA and that witnessed one worker kicked the pig in his face and genitals to make the pig move. It was recorded that the worker said, “You got to beat on the bitch. Make her cry."

     The Denmark whale slaughter is a dragged on tradition by the local citizenship. The whales come close to the shore because they are friendly creatures that feel comfortable with interacting with humans. The young men of the town to prove that they are men kill them.

      Whale, dog, and pig cruelty are just a taste of the animals around the world that have been tormented.

Click here for Bibliography.

This disease is more than just risky. It is also an embarrassment, and a deadly disease. It is a serious health issue. If you don’t get checked out or don’t find out you have one, you can do some serious damage to your body and even lead to death. The younger you are, the greater your chances are to getting an STD.  It is very easy to get one too. First off all, you don’t know what the person you get intimate has. 9 times out of 10 the person doesn’t know they have one as well. You can also develop a STD if you involve in intercourse with numerous people. Sexual isn’t is the only way you can get one. You can also get one by touching a cut of someone that has one.

What made me interested in this topic is because lots of people today are infected with this disease. Everyday someone either gets the infection, or they die from it. I sometimes think what i would do if i were to be infected with this disease. It makes me sad to even think of the young men and women who have to go through this everyday. You can’t have sex, or have a kid. It’s crazy how even having sex with one person can get you infected.

            In the United States, 1 in every 500 baby delivered is diagnosed with Hydrocephalus. Fortunately, there are more than 3,500 neurologists in the United States to help cure the patient affected. In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are about 100,000-375,000 NEW cases of Pediatric Hydrocephalus every year and more than 4,000 every month. In addition there are only four doctors that have the ability to help with this disease. Additionally, there is only one hospital in that entire area that patients can go to. The hospital isn’t close to most villages. Families affected must  save up all of their farming money for 6-7 months just to get transportation to the hospital. So by the time families come back home, they are usually always bankrupt. 

  In America 62% of households have a pet cat or dog, that’s about 4 out of every ten homes. About 26,874,879 pets were bought in 2009, and about 2-3 million are adopted. There are 5-7 million cats and dogs put into shelters a year, 70% cats and 60% dogs. Yet there are still people going out and buying pure-breads. When you can go give a pet a home and spend a lot less. Why is this?

  A lot of these animals are lost and less than 2% are not returned to there owners and put in shelters. 25% of the dogs in shelters are pure-breads, which is what most people want. Even though that the science shows that mix-breads are healthier.

  There are protest a most pet stores trying to stop people from going in the stores and buying pets. The biggest concern is about people buying dogs from stores, because of the U.S puppy mills. Puppy Mills are a place were people bread female dogs so they can sell them to pet stores then the pet stores sell them to people. They keep the dogs in cages stacked on top of another, and they don’t clean them. The worse part about all of this is when the female dog can’t have puppies any more they just neglect her until she dies.)

 Bibliography

Human Trafficking is a horrible thing and it’s happens to poor people who have dreams of going to another country. So they talk to some person who owns this “transporting business” and then the poor person gets taken to another place where they work and get paid below the minimum wage. Simply to put it, they are trapped there for most of their life because the owners destroy their Passport and Id. Then they are put to work past the limit of human capabilities and they are fed food that probably doesn’t taste good.

The continuation of Human Trafficking is terrible and it’s all done for profit. All this does is destroy the migrants from other countries and towns who just what to support their families and instead they get captured and worked to the edge of death. Children and especially women are sold into prostitution and are tortured by their Slave Masters; I think the weight of this subject is a lot to handle but even harder to talk about. Can we stop this or will it continue to go on for many more years? Can you stop it? 

Victims of Human Trafficking are being shown the dark parts of the world; children, women and other victims are being terrified and the growing fear of never seeing your family again. The Numerous Words of Human Trafficking are hard to look at but they all say the same thing, Human Trafficking has to stop!

Victims of Human Trafficking are looking for Help but the locations of these enslavement places are hidden from the outside world and lets hope that this modern day Slavery stops and be ended before any more family are disconnected from each other.

The Shackles that hold these victims captive are locked with a key, a key of despair. They take away the victims belongings, demand money, work them half to Death and worst of all, they keep the victims separated from their families. Lives are at stake here and I don’t see the rates going down. People are becoming Victims because they are lied to about having a new life in another country. Victims are dying because of this; the Slave Traders do this all for profit and do not even care about the victims, all they care about is the profit and themselves.

Will This Ever Stop Happening?

Interesting Quotes and Facts

A senior U.N. official says that as many as 2.4 million people may be victims of human trafficking worldwide at any given time.

Click Here to See My Bibliography

You know when you wait at the checkout line at a supermarket? Sometimes the line is long, but so are all the others. While the person in front of you is handling their groceries, you go ahead and pick up one of the many magazines at the checkout. You usually pick up the one that has the most interesting cover, or a magazine brand you’re familiar with. As you flip through mindlessly, you see ads and articles about being skinny and losing weight. There are also ads that have models with seemingly flawless skin and no imperfections to count for. They’re tall, ageless, and always thin.

Mass media’s perception of perfect has changed over the years. About forty years ago, it was all about being thick and having curves. Now it’s about having a slim waist and being skinny. Young girls have always looked at magazines of television and compared themselves to the models. Am I too fat? Am I too skinny? Those are the questions running through heads constantly. Once females see the media’s perception of ‘beauty’ or ‘perfection’, they go out and try to become what they’ve just seen.

Usually, there is no problem with this. Yes, it’s fine if girls desire to be a healthy weight. But currently, media has made this view of beauty deadly. Many models are now digitally altered and ‘airbrushed’. This means that they are photographed with their original proportions and skin flaws. But then the photograph gets to the magazine editors; they send it over to the people who have exceptional skills in Photoshop and other photo editing applications. There, they manipulate the thickness of the model, like slimming their thighs and elongating their legs. They airbrush their skin to get rid of age flaws and to destroy blemishes. Their arms are thinned also. After all that, the photograph goes back to the magazine and is published.

Most girls see these types of images and think that their body is horrible, repulsive, and imperfect. As young as nine, girls start to diet to try to live up to the image on the television screen. They begin to develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Some even go as far as to starve themselves to death.

All just to be perfect.

My question is: Why? Why would young girls do this to themselves just to try to live up to media’s version of ‘perfect’? What happened to the time where being thick and healthy was the way to be?  What kind of transition did the media take to end up like this? 

I am doing this project in English class about you and the world. It’s about problems around the world. So I have to find issues that happen in the world. My issue is bullying. Bullying is one of the things that happen a lot in the world and I want to tell you all about it. Then I would like to see if we can find a solution. If you asking yourself how is bullying an issue? Or what is bullying well today is your lucky day I’m going to tell you.

According to www.stopbullying.gov “Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.”  To me bullying is when you are not repeating someone.

There is different type of bullying. There is bullying by saying something example are:

·      Teasing

·      Name-calling

·      Threatening to cause harm

After that there is Physical bullying:

·      Hitting/kicking/pinching

·      Spitting

·      Taking or breaking someone’s thing

Last but not less that there is social bullying:

·      Telling other children not to be friends with someone

·      Spreading rumors about someone

·      Embarrassing someone in public

These are just the beginning with bullying. Bullying can be even harmful.

Bullying happen at school, online, and even where you live (in that neighborhood). A lot of parents don’t even know that it happen in their neighborhoods.  Some bullying can happen at home. But most of it is happening online no because of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and many more. Your phone can even be one of the things that can help others bully you. Example by text message or e-mail, and more. There is way to find out if you that bully or not maybe you can take a test. If you a teacher you can make thing a class game.

Hello out there everyone. Today I am writing about the impending, possibly even hidden problems in the United States’ food culture. Let’s face it, America has some problems with the way it eats. Otherwise 33.9% or more of us would not be either overweight or obese. The facts are startling; not to mention the way they are treating the animals in the meat packing industry, and even more problems that I have not even found out about yet.

Why am I writing about this? A wise person once said “you are what you eat” and I care about what I eat. My English teacher gave us an assignment to chronicle an issue that is important to us, and I chose food. Though what got me thinking about the problems with American food? It all started with a documentary film called: Food Inc. It brought the issues out to the world in an emotional and devastatingly realistic way. It brought up issues that I had never even heard of and I thought never happened. I was intrigued and disgusted and I wanted to know more about the food culture in America.

I found on a 2010 government report, which you can see here that 33.9% of adults over 19 years old, were obese. And 18.1% of teenagers were obese as well. What is going on? Most of the problem lies in how and what Americans eat. A lot of people consume McDonalds or high fructose corn syrup, which has been linked as a cause of weight gain according to Princeton University. Cholesterol and heart problems are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to health issues caused by bad food.

In the course of these blog posts I would like to get to know this problem in a more in depth manner and try to really think of practical solutions that will help get Americans healthier.

Bibliography here.

         Hello readers! My name is Liza Cohen and I am a student at Science Leadership Academy. I am writing this blog post to inform you and everyone else about teenage obesity, why it is important, the effect it has on us, and how we can prevent it from happening.

            The topic that I want people to become more aware about is child obesity. Whether it is a young toddler, growing child, or teenager; this problem has continued to full extent. The percent of overweight children has increased since the 1970's. The age range for obesity is ranged around 6 to 17 year olds. That is a wide variety of children, which more than 1 out of 5 are struggling with this issue. Small things like lacking of exercise and a poor diet can cause obesity. To elaborate on the numbers, I want to compare obesity then to how it is now. In the 1900’s, obesity was less of an issue than it is now. In fact, in the 1900’s being stood out for being overweight was a good thing. I say this because when you were seen overweight, it meant you had wealth, to afford food. However, things are the complete opposite now. Obesity for anyone, especially teenagers is an issue. There are medical, physical, and emotional problems all due to being obese. Just because the causes and perspectives on obesity has changed, doesn’t make it less important now as it was then.

            Now that you know what exactly obesity is, and how big of a role it plays in people’s lives, I want to inform you on why I care particularly about this topic. This world issue is important to me because it is an issue that I am constantly surrounded by. I have gotten to the point where I feel I should look more into this issue and see what I can do to prevent it from happening continuously. Another reason why this issue is important to me is because I personally can relate to it. I am not overweight, or even on the road to obesity. However, I am very cautious of my body and how I can keep my body in good shape. If I learn more about obesity I can help others and even myself from letting it happening to us. 

In my upcoming blog posts, you will get a bigger taste on my perspective on teenage obesity and how I can prevent it from happening!

Stephen Eager-White

Orange Stream

The me and the world project that I’m doing is focused on child sex trafficking.  Child sex trafficking is a worldwide issue. Child sex trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. It’s estimated that somewhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 women and children are trafficked each year. UNICEF reports that across the world, there are over one million children entering the sex trade every year.

I’m interested in stopping child sex trafficking because no family should have to see their child become a sex slave. At the rate of how many women and children are being sold into human trafficking a year to how many days in the year there are approximately 111,111 women and children being sold each day. Adults and children are killed and abused in this industry. Even if they do make it out the industry they’re scarred for life. Ways to protect your child from being kidnapped and being sold into sex slavery are: don’t leave you child in an isolated area, don’t leave your child unsupervised, make sure your child knows not to talk to strangers, and to scream and call for an adult if they are being taken.

What I’m wondering is what do some women and children do that makes them a target for kidnappers? Do they have a look? Do they act a certain way or is it that the victims were just at the wrong place at the wrong time? I hope to learn how UNICEF plans on strengthening the laws to protect children. Also how do they plan on raising security to prevent kidnappers from exploiting children? If you want to help end human trafficking you can help here

BiblioBibliography:

1.   "Child Protection from Violence, Exploitation and Abuse." UNICEF. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58005.html>.

 2.       "Human Trafficking: Sexual Trafficking." Human Trafficking: Sexual Trafficking. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.atg.wa.gov/HumanTrafficking/SexTrafficking.aspx>.

   3. "The Project to End Human Trafficking." Individual Action. The Project to End Human Trafficking. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.endhumantrafficking.org/get-involved/individual-action>.

    4. USAID Office of Women in Development, Trafficking in Persons: USAID’s Response, U. S. Department of State, Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report, and Commercial Sexual Exploitation Position Statement." UNICEF UK. "Sexual Trafficking Facts." The Facts. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.iast.net/thefacts.htm>.

     5. "The Project to End Human Trafficking." Slavery Education & Anti-Slavery Advocacy. The Project to End Human Trafficking. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.endhumantrafficking.org/>.

In Ms. Dunn’s 9^th grade English class we had to choose a topic that was important to us. We would be making blog posts that keep our audience up to date with the headlines of today or bring awareness to the topic. When I heard that we had to choose a topic I immediately knew I wanted to blog about the topic of immigrant rights, but more specifically, the DREAM Act.

The American Dream, it is the title of the wish that many foreigners wish to obtain in the land of America, the land of opportunity.

Most families from all over the world come to the U.S to escape tension, war, or poverty in their own countries. Most immigrants come to the U.S seeking a better life. The ones, who come here illegally or even stay when their visa has expired, are often deported to back to their own countries. To a bigger dismay, excellent students who have come to the country when they were young, are denied education past that of high school, even when they are willing to pay tuition and have had numerous chances for scholarships.

            Immigration is a very important topic to me personally, for I myself am an immigrant. I was born in Mexico and was brought over to the U.S when I was nine months old. Like many other immigrant teenagers I was brought here before we could make our own decisions. We were brought here because our parents wanted us to become greater than what we could become in our native homes. It is also not just Latinos, but people from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean islands, who come to the U.S for better opportunities. Most of the kids who come to America for the American dream either have the dream turned into a nightmare because of not being able to speak English. When they do begin to succeed they are sometime faced with the problem of having no education after high school. For this reason, an act is in the process of being approved. The DREAM Act bill needs to be supported by legislators and signed into law, but this can only be done with support from people of this country. This bill will allow foreign illegal immigrant students be able to apply for residency and get an education after high school, if they meet several requirements.

             The requirements for being eligible for the DREAM Act is fair enough for both the person applying and the country. The country will benefit from the talented young minds that will become our future. The next generation is what the country will soon depend on and enabling the leaders of tomorrow, rather than deporting them, will benefit the U.S greatly. Is it really fair to deny immigrant teens the right to study here? By giving them a right to education we are accepting people for what they want to become; true Americans.  

My name is Raekwon Smith and I’m doing a post on a world topic that interests me for school. It’s called You and The World and you pick a problem going on in the world that you want to talk about and then do a series of blog posts on it. My topic is about how the government and individual states spend more money on prisoners than kids and education. This topic is important to me because this could affect our education in the future because all the money we have is going towards funding prisons and prisoners that don’t deserve the care they receive. Prisons cost taxpayers more than $32 billion a year. Every year that an inmate spends in prison costs $22,000. An individual sentenced to five years for a $300 theft costs the public more than $100,000. The cost of a life term averages $1.5 million.One year at New Jersey State Prison cost more than one year at Princeton university.

According to heartsandminds.org, States are spending more money on prisons than education. Over the course of the last 20 years, the amount of money spent on prisons was increased by 570% while that spent on elementary and secondary education was increased by only 21%. They provide prisoners with free health care, internet access, weight room, cable television, access to libraries, free sports programs, computer lab, laundry services, funding to earn a degree, free housing, three square meals a day, clothing, and free dental care. Not all kids are provided with that type of care and attention that they give to prisoners. Our state of Pennsylvania is second on the list of most prisons.

Pennsylvania cut the budget for education to spend it on the growing rate of criminals in 2007. There are 46,000 inmates in Pennsylvania and $90 is spent on each inmate per day—which covers food, health care recreation, etc. The national average is only $63. $3.3 billion was spent last year on prison health care services.  Every inmate is guaranteed access to health care when they require it. It is stated in articlebase.com that if 30% of the prison population went to private facilities then it would save $100 million dollars annually but only 28 states allow that.

Private places could provide better care for prisoners while saving money (which would cost tax payers less) and preparing them for when they are released into the real world again to get along with everyone else. Every day 200 new cells are built. There could be private places instead to have a better outcome in the future. Her is picture of a prison cell in a Pennsylvania prison http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/prison-5.jpg. Here is my bibliography.

For our “ You and the World” project my topic is cancer. In the past years cancer has become a well known sickness. Could it be the environment that is causing this? In the past years the pollution levels have gone up, people smoke more and drink a lot of heavy alcohol. They never really think what kind of effects this can have on your body. Statistics show that over the past 10 years more people are diagnosed with different types of cancer such as, lung cancer, breast cancer, etc.

Here is the link to my resources. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xudY75BgLg1jWMxGISU4dtFSyZfTiu2QMbMkhTFk8RE/edit 

Below are pictures of damaged cells. ( cancer cells) 

In my English class we are focusing on a topic we are intrigued by, want to shout to the world to, and make a difference/change about it. We thought with our potential its about time that we put our voice out there and speak! Let the world hear the voice and see what really goes on in the mind of the educated youth in Philadelphia. This project is called “You and The World” where you develop a passion among a issues that you want to teach others about leading them to what your ideas ad thoughts about what we can do to change such a problem. I am here today to talk about the issues of STDs or if you prefer STIs.

I’m pretty sure almost everyone knows what an STD (STI) is if not an STD is a sexually transmitted disease or infections. Which you can easily catch if you are sexually active in any way with a partner that has the disease. I believe that in high school or near the end of middle school they have a health class that teach about these things but I also believe that there are some teens that don’t quite pay attention or take this issues seriously. That really bothers me. Next thing you know because they didn’t pay attention or cared they end up gaining such a disease. Of course they will have to deal with the consequences, suffer the pain that comes there way and live with regret.