A classmate that I'm thankful for.

I'm going to go with the popular vote here and say I'm thankful for Alaina Stacey!! I wouldn’t like this class as much as I do without her. Not only is she an amazing classmate, but she's a good friend of mine outside of school. Not to mention my future wife, according to Mr. McCarthy. Who knows! I'd be lucky to have her as my wife. I don't think I've ever met someone who cares about everyone else before herself like Alaina does. I always come to her with a problem and she knows exactly what I should do, even if I don’t believer her at first, in the end, she’s always right. She has an AMAZING singing voice, which she is incredibly modest about.

I can’t imagine my life without Alaina, she lives a block away from my house and goes to my church, so I get to see a lot of Ms. Stacey, but that’s a good thing. I can never have to much Alaina in my life. :) Everyone who knows Alaina knows how special she is, and i think I’m one of those people. So Alaina, don't change a thing I love you exactly the way you are.

I am a Plow

Wow. I am a plow....not exactly something that’s all that easy to write about. Lets start of at the top, plows...well that’s a farm tool, used to get the dirt ready for seeds of next years crops. So i guess you could say that we're like plows in that what we do today is paving the way for our kids (were the plows and our kids are the seeds.) So that they can grow up and be successful, and so that they can learn from the experiences we are gaining now, just like our parents did for us.

Looking at it that way, I don’t see being a plow as such a bad thing, I don’t know about everyone else but when I grow up I plan on having lots of children (many with Alaina... :)) but all joking aside I want my kids to have the best chance they can in this world and if that means me having to learn something’s for myself so that my kids wont make the same mistakes, then I believe that’s what I need to do. Just like how our parents taught us from the experiences they had.

I am a plow, and I'm okay with that, because I'm paving the way for my kids, which are going to be the most important thing in my life, so they need someone looking out for them before they're even here, and I'm going to be that someone, by being a plow.

changes in the class room.

I wouldn’t change anything about this class. It is definitely my favorite class of the day. I enjoy the environment, the people, (and even the teacher!) If I was forced to change something about our class, I would change the facts that were reading The House Of Seven Gables. I don’t mind reading, but I don’t like this book. I understand that its part of the class, and it has to be done, but I'm asking why is it a part of the class pre planned schedule? Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone in the situation to read a book that everyone enjoys instead of dragging through one that no one likes?

Other changes I would make not directed to our school is the funding of other schools, I’ve seen other CPS schools and they're falling apart, and we're not doing anything about it. Most of our school given supplies is falling apart because of age. So the fix (although it may not be an easy one, is to have better funded schools).

Again, I really enjoy everything about this class and wouldn’t change anything about it. Thanks to you all of my classmates and especially Mr. McCarthy for making this a great class to be in.

Modern day slavery

I think there is definitely is modern day slavery, in numerous different forms around the world. Almost all are frowned upon because the very idea of anyone being held against their will to do anything at all is unacceptable.

One form of slavery is in major world-wide corporations like Nike, among many others. These corporations use child labor in third world countries because there’s no one to monitor the children and no one to enforce child labor laws. The corporations try to downplay the fact that they use sweatshops because it makes them look bad. But if you ask why they use sweatshops to a Nike executive they'll probably say because it stimulates the economy there because by giving the kids a job, they can bring that money home to their parents to help support their whole family. But this isn’t all true because at the sweatshops the workers get paid so little that it barely helps their family at all because there’s no minimum wage.

Another form of modern day slavery is the sex slave trade. This can be found all over the world, but one place where is extremely popular is Russia, because their government doesn’t crack down on human trafficking as other countries, it has only become bigger as time goes by. This starts usually at a young age for girls and by the end of it, most of the women are addicted to drugs and have huge issues, such as self confidence and they can't trust any men anymore.

Any type of modern day slavery should be stopped because it brings nothing but harm to the people who are the "slaves". These are human beings and should be treated as such.