Should ACMS have a longer passing time?

Every 70 minutes, 243 students pass through the halls from class to class. That’s a lot! I am trying to give examples of why we should make the passing time from 4 minutes to 7 minutes.

          Most students go from their previous class to their locker, sometimes on the opposite sides of the building, then to their next class. That normally takes more than four minutes! Plus, people drop objects in the hallway all the time!

          Most of the teachers in the ACMS building mark people late all the time. The thing is they don’t know why their late! A teacher could think that a student was late because he was messing around with his friends, but he was actually being bullied. The school should put in a camera system and have a guard monitoring it constantly so that people don’t get bullied s often, and so the students have proof of why they are late.

          Every once in a while, when the hour has ended, people stay in their previous classroom and ask their teacher a question if they were having trouble during class. So if they just stay for about 2 or three minutes and their teachers think that they don’t need a pass. Once the bell rings, the teachers assume that they were tardy. I was thinking that the tech team could create a software that would function like the program that teachers used last year that told them where the students have to go during resource, but they could put it on the students desktop. Using the technology, the students could pull it up (if they think that they would be late) and have the teacher sign and date the document so that the student could show their next teacher.

                 

The Pearl

The Pearl

Andrew Westenberger
Have you ever been in a situation where you feel like you’re on rock bottom and you can’t get out? “The Pearl”, by John Steinbeck, is a book over loaded with adventure, mystery, Death, and sorrow.

The pearl took place in a slave village, filled with huts. The main characters’ baby was in the family’s hut, resting peacefully in the bed hanging from the ceiling. A scorpion fell on the baby and stung her. The town doctor was very greedy and Kino, the main character, couldn’t afford to pay for the treatment. One day, Kino was diving for pearls and found the biggest one anybody has ever found. The town jewelers wouldn’t give Kino a reasonable offer so Kino took a journey into the city, which became a disaster.

The climax of the story is when Kino finds the gargantuan pearl. Once he got into the boat, he felt like all of the weight was off of his shoulders, nothing bad could happen. He though that his newborn son could be treated, he could get new clothes, builds a new house, anything.

Afterwards, when Kino, his wife, and his child get to the city, bad things start happening. There’s the town doctor’s son chasing them down to kill them, the city is trying to rip off Kino on the pearl, and Kino’s son gets killed. Kino had enough of it. His wife thought that the pearl was cursed, and she was right. Kino got so mad because so many bad things were happing, he gave up the opportunity and threw the pearl back to where it came from, the ocean. After that, almost everything returned back to normal and Kino was relived from the bad spirits.

The situation Kino was put through wasn’t an everyday thing. This book is a perfect example of how if you become greedy, well, it’s not always a good thing. This book has taught me a lot and that is why this book will remain as one of my favorites.

Sailing The High Seas

SAILING THE HIGH SEAS

Sailing is one of those sports that can be for any age group, size, and mobilization, depending on the size of your ship. A sailboat can be as small as 12 feet, and can be as large as a house, but you don’t see those everywhere or often. I love to sail, and this is my favorite sport.

Sailing is a great sport. I have 5 sailboats at our lake house and I have been sailing for three years and I love it, but there is the time that I first got on a sailboat. I was at summer camp and on the last day, my patrol leader brought me on a sunfish sailboat that 12 feet long. I can still remember when he pattalled us out to the mooring buoy where we set up the sail alongside my best friends. We got our sail up before them, but sense they were lighter than us; they went way faster than us. Unlike in “Secret for Two” the boat doesn’t steer itself like how the horse knew the whole entire route. We didn’t go fast at all in our boat because of the weight, and because both of us didn’t know how to control the sails or which direction the boat should be pointing, but I had a blast just watching my friends go speeding past us. I remember how we couldn’t stop laughing at my friends freaking out when they came inches away from capsizing their vessel.

Evan thought some people would rather sail on a big, fancy, luxurious boat, I’d rather go on the small dingy boat with one of my friends because you get a better experience of speed, some amounts of stress when you are a bought to turtle it. Sailing is a great sport and is easy to learn, and is a great bonding sport.                

Independence at last

about 40 children per year die by drowning in 5-gallon water pails. Water can be a very dangerous thing. You can think of water in a lake as a great thing to play in, or a blue death trap. “Deep Water”, by William O. Douglas will show you that a near death experience will change the way you spend your life.

            Personally, I can connect to this book in a very good way. About two years ago, my brother invited a friend over on the last day of school to swim in our in ground pool. There was one stimulation. His friend didn’t know how to swim. They were in the shallow end of the pool. Then, he slipped into the deep end of the pool and started to drown. I was nearby in the workshop fixing my a.t.v. when I heard my brother in a panic. I rushed out into the pool area, grabbed the safety pole, and dragged him out of the pool. If I wasn’t trained in first aid and lifesaving, he would have died.

            I can tell that the author was emotionally impacted from his incident because of how he wrote it. It took him two pages to explain his near death, and how he wrote water or a form of it like twenty times, that should show some signs. 

            Almost drowning is terrifying and live changing. William O. Douglas, the author of “Deep Water” did a great job of describing all of the emotions and modes of the story. Anybody who has almost drowned is scared about water for a couple years, but eventually they will overcome their fears and get right back in.

Patriotism

Do you know what Patriotism means? I bet that you don’t even have a first clue what it is. Not many people do. It’s a shame that they don’t. Patriotism is very simple. It can start by just helping an old lady cross the street or picking up an old can or trash off the street.

            Anyone can participate in it, unless you are disabled or something like that. Boy Scout troops from all over the world are doing nice things like adopting a highway or volunteering for an organization or charity. Patriotism is also being nice to your neighbors or people at school. Saying “hello”, or “
How are you?” is a good act of patriotism. Another act of patriotism is being helpful to your community. Let’s say that you are driving down the highway and there is a stranger in a car in the next lane. All of a sudden, his front right tire popped. He had no control of the vehicle and he went into the ditch and flipped his minivan. Would you stop and try to help him, or go on and try to forget what happened that day. A good person would stay and help as much as they could.      

            The word patriotism comes from the Greek word that means “fatherland” or better known as homeland.  People say it is their homeland because of the physical land features. Now most people agree that patriotism involves service to your country like joining the National Guard, Coast Guard, the Army, the Marines, or the Air Force.  Some people might think that in order to be a good patriot, you must know all of the laws and orders of the government.

            Well, this whole story comes down to this. Do I think patriotism still matters? Yes, it matters a lot to me because without it, the world would be like hell.     

Mad Train

 At noon, a man and a woman are standing at a train station waiting for the train to come. "Where are you going?", asked Mr. Mcraken.
 "I'm going to Wisconsin to visit my relatives.", said Mrs. Jenkens. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to Iowa for a yearly N.A.I.R. convention", he said.
        
           Ten minutes later, the train came. A brand new amtrack. After all of the people got on, " All Aboard!", yelled the conducter. As it turns out, Mrs. Jenkins and Mr. Micraken are sitting side acrost from each-other in the last train car. Two minutes Later, the train starts a'moven.

                                                     100 miles later....

           Everyone on the ground! I gota' bomb! "Oh great", Mr. Mcraken mumbles. He used to be an undercover police officer. With 15 years behind his belt, he had never ben in a situation like this one. He had a desert eagle hand gun in his lugage bag, but it was stored in the lugage compartment on the outside of the train. The only way to get to it is to craw on the outside of the train. So that's out. "Come on! let's get out of here!",  Mr. Mcraken said to Mrs Jenkins. " We need to get to a different train car emidiatly.
       
                                                       30 secondes later into the next train car....

      "Does anybody have a hand gun or any type of firearm?" Sam said.
"Yes, but something different.", said a frightened passenger." Here.", he reached into his carry- on and pulled out a new shotgun tazer. " It's not a firearm, but it will do the trick. Just sneek up on him and pull the trigger when he dosen't have his finger on any of his triggers. " Stay Here.", Sam said to Sara." I'll be right back!"

                                                         In the train car with the Bomb man....
      Sam sneeks up on the bomb man. Making shure that he didn't notice Sam. "Now's the time!", Sam thought. Sam pulled the trigger and the man started to cullapes to the ground. as he did, a nearbly passenger got the gun out of the mans hand, so that when he regainges energy, he doesn't try to shoot someone. with the man all cuffed up and locked in a room by himself and one of the train conductors, the train is back on schedule thanks to Sam Mcraken, a bowling lane enginer, and a hero.