English  Literacy Module 3 (Just Mercy)

In this round 3 of the academic year, we learned about justice in our English literacy class with the essential questions: 

• Who is responsible for improving society?
• If there are multiple sides to every story, how do I know what is true? 

We have to read a book called “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson in order to discuss these essential questions. For our skills on this project, we aim to focus on rhetorical analysis (triangle & situation). This rhetorical analysis has 3 techniques which are:  

• Patho, techniques appeal to emotion
• Logos, techniques appeal to logic
• Etho, techniques to build credibility

Just Mercy is a book that is based on real events which talked about how Bryan Stevenson helped to bring justice to the poor, the wrongly condemned, women and children. In this book, it was mainly focused on how he helped Walter McMillian. Walter McMillian was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a young white woman in Monroeville, Alabama. But he was wrongly convicted so Bryan and his team tried their best to help find justice for him. 

After learning about this, I started to make more awareness toward this topic. Some people are truly wrongly convicted and it is really unfair for them. They deserve justice too. At the end of this topic, we also got to do a debate on “The Death Penalty is applied unfairly and should not be used”. It helped us to gather information and learned about the death penalty. To be honest, I am still in the middle of this topic whether it should be eliminated or not. But if that person kills another person, he or she must pay back their life to be executed. But before executed, we must have to prove that person is the right one and had committed murder to another person. That way, I might agree more with that. 

Round 5: Online Learning during Lock Down

Even Though CoronaVirus has stopped us from going to school, but we still can learn and improve our knowledge through online learning. English literacy is still one of the subjects that we still need to improve. For this round 5 during the lockdown, we had to improve our English literacy skills such as reading and writing. We had 8 weeks and 8 different themes for each week. One of the themes that I like the most was “art”. Art was a theme for week 7. After I have done this theme for week 7 I can know how important art is to everyone and so on I can reflect on my own relationship with art, how art has helped me to release stress. I also can explore more about art in different museums on the internet all around the world to see different art pieces so I can recreate them by using my creativity and household items whenever I felt bored during this lockdown. Moreover, for this theme, I got to learn more things about art, especially one of the types of art called surrealism. In addition, after I learned about it, I also got to write a short story by using it too. In conclusion, even if we can’t go to school, online learning is still engaging between students and teachers and we still can gain knowledge and improve our skills through different subjects that we learned.

Exploring Mental Illness

Every round in our English Literacy class, we always have a different theme to learn. But for this round, we have a theme to learn called “Exploring Mental Illness”. When I first heard it, it sounds interesting to me to learn about mental illness. This round, teacher had divided into two different unite one is about “Exploring and Understanding Mental Illness and Health” and another one is about “Examining Mental Illness in Literary Works and Film”. In the first two weeks, we learned about what is Mental Illness as well as what is Stigma. Continue two the next 4 or 5 weeks we continue two our second unit which is “Examining Mental Illness in Literary Works and Film”. In this time, we learn about the story that the authors were written related to Mental illness. There are three different authors which are Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Gabrielle Roy. During our 4 or 5 weeks, we have read a book from each author which are The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the last story is Alicia by Gabrielle Roy.

       

 

Literacy Round 1

Case Study: Why do People flee home?

The first round of Literacy class, students were learning based on the case study: Why do people flee home? We use resources such as websites and books to further perceive the topic . We read a book called Inside out and back again, written by Thanhha Lai. When finished reading, students have a much more in-depth understanding about this very universal problem. At the end of the round, each student was required to write a poem about a made up character, and how he/she felt being a refugee and while fleeing home. Below is my poem. And it’s about a guy who flee home because of civil war happen in his country. 

 

I believe!

 

My name is Marko.

I am not Christian, but Muslim.

 

I grow up in Bosnia

living with my parents.

 

My house was so beautiful 

with one dike flow nearby.

 

I always fall asleep 

with the sound of the water 

That flow

From the dikes.

 

After seven years, my parents had died

Because of an accident.

 

Everything had turned inside out.

 

I need to live by myself

In order to survive.

 

I need to do everything.

It’s really hard for me 

Because I’m just 7 years old.

But I had to accept it.

 

But here, I’m 20 years old right now, 

Everythings had turned back,

I BELIEVE!

 

I live peacefully in Bosnia,

In the same house as usual.

 

I still always fall asleep

With the sound of water

That flow from the dikes. 

 

After two decades, 

I thought I will live peacefully forever.

 

But now it wasn’t,

WAR had turned my life

Back Inside out again.

 

Not just me,

Everyone were worried,

They don’t want that 

to happen in their country.

 

Civil war had begun

In my country.

All of the troops had declared. 

 

Before,

The sound of the water 

that flow from the dikes

Used to make me fall asleep.

 

But now,

Everynight,

I never fall asleep,

The sound of gun mixed with bomb

Making me feel more than

Spooky.

 

Sooner,

The war had come 

More closer to my home.

 

I need to escape 

so then I won’t get killed.

So I decide to move to France.

 

Now here I am,

Paris, France. 

I can do everything just to come here.

It’s safer than my country.

 

Paris welcome me so warm.

They don’t discriminate me,

Even Though I am a

Refugee.

 

I came out of the darkness 

and saw the lights here in Paris, France.

My life had turned Inside Out, but now Back Again. 

 

                                                                       Huykea Sun  

                                                                      Wednesday, October, 16, 2019 

                                                                       9:10 PM

How to be happy when you feel bored?

This last round of the year, for English literacy class, my teacher said that this year we have an independent work to do by yourself.  By this, you need to prepare your own schedule for yourself for literacy class. But also the teacher tells us something to do before the end of the year too such as How-to be Happy Final essay, Reading the novel book and more. Below, here is my Final Essay. It is about How to be Happy when you felt bored?

 

Have you ever felt bored? I’m sure you have and everyone doesn’t like to be bored. But wait, What is boredom? Boredom is a feeling that people usually feel when they have nothing to do or doing the same thing every day and every day. People sometimes feel boring and hate bored, but we need to solve this problem. If we don’t solve this problem, we still get this problem forever and forever. That’s why we need to solve this problem to make ourselves and the people around us feel better. There are too many ways to solve this problem that everyone can use to help yourself when you’re feeling bored or get bored. According to Katie Sweeney, an author of MyDomaine said: “ 96 Things to Do When You’re Bored”. So this means that there are a lot of things that you can do which will help you to forget being bored.

 

Do what you love

Doing your favorite hobby is one of the solutions that can help you to forget about being bored. Hobbies are activities that you do every day such as playing a sport or listening to music. The hobby is a very good solution that can help you to feel better when you get bored. Because everyone will feel happy when they can do what they want and what they like or love to do. But first, try to think about the hobbies that you like to do and play so it makes you easier. After you think about your favorite hobbies try to do it or play it to help yourself feel better. So when you get bored, you need to start to do activities that you love to do or you like to do to make you feel better when you get bored.

 

Traveling or Going outside

Traveling or going outside can also help you to feel better when you get bored too. For my experience, I also get bored because of staying at home. It’s very boring to see the same thing that you see every day. You know what, most of the people when they get bored, they always go outside and relax or traveling to other places to see the beauty of nature in the world we have now. Nature helps you when you get bored. But How can? There are too many things of nature that you haven’t seen all yet. All around the world, always have something that beautiful about nature such as waterfall, animals, etc. That way it can help you, whenever you see something cool you will feel happy and have fun about it. That’s why I believe that nature can help our feeling to feel better and forget bored.

 

Watching comedy

Watching comedy is one of the big solutions to make you feel better when you get bored too. It’s can help you to feel better when you get bored because when you watch a comedy it makes you laugh and make you happy to forget bored and stress. Believe me, it’s work!!!! For my experience when I get bored I usually watching some comedy clip or movies that make me feel happy to release stress and bored. Get bored is a big problem but also watching comedy is a big solution to solve this problem too.

Believe me, these solutions are a big solution that can help you to forget being bored. You can try these solutions by yourself when you get bored. Because life is about happiness and excitement, keep yourself happy, don’t be bored and if you get bored try your best to use these solutions to make you feel happy. And last but not least if you get bored remember these quotes: I’m bored is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none perfect of.

Researching About Landfill

In English Literacy, I have learned a lot more about a new thing and new words. In those things that we have learned,  I have one thing that I interest, that is about researching about the landfill. So the teacher has given 4 countries that need research about the landfill. There are India, Philippine, Ethiopia, and Kenya. So I got Ethiopia and I have researched a bit about the country such as the location and a lot about the landfill in Ethiopia. And we, not just research about the country, we also have research about the city and the city that I research in Ethiopia is Addis Ababa. And there is some of my information. So the population of Addis Ababa there about 3.385 and this city is almost located in the middle of the country. And a green energy plant is being built in Ethiopia. That green energy plant will process 1,400 tons of waste per day and produces 185 GWH  electricity annually that will be exported to the Ethiopian national grid. The President of the Ethiopian has created a building of the waste-to-power plant began and burn waste will generate steam which will produce electricity at a projected power of 25 megawatts per day. And also there is one big landfill call Koshe and there are about a hundred trash picker live and work there.