Memoirs

Memoir:

Students were asked  to write a memoir about an experience that affected them. Here are some samples from Ms. Zubiri's 9th and 10th grade classes.

By Angie Maximo

During my 2012 summer vacation, I traveled with a group of handbell ringers from Mark Twain Middle School to London, England. Our handbell choir is a group of seventeen young teenagers ringing bells to different type of music. For example, church music, rock ‘n roll, and many more. We were invited to ring at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. We took 8 chaperones to take care of us in this long trip. We all stayed in the University of Kent right outside of London, England for 9 days. 
We performed in places and events during the time we were there. Our first performance was at an Olympic Festival. We rang a little bit of everything. Such as, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Adele, and Beethoven. One of my favorite performances we had was at the Olympic Park, where the open ceremony was taken at. Although, we got wet while ringing because it was drizzling and we didn’t have nothing to cover us. We walked for a long time and we had to carry our equipment, which was really heavy. It was worth it. But we didn’t just go to work hard and perform. We had fun spending time with each other like a family.

The bus rides in our tour bus were the funnest out of the whole trip because all of the kids would talk, sing, take pictures, and even dance. And because of the tight schedule we had, sometimes we had to change in the bus or because we didn’t feel comfortable with what we were suppose to wear that night for a performance. Our tour bus guy drove us everywhere around the city, took us to different restaurants and always made it on time to all of our performances.

On free days, our bus driver would take us out to look at historical cathedrals, museums, and towers. Some of my favorite parts of this trip in London, was going to the London Eye, going to the Tower of London, eating the traditional dish “fish and chips”, which is a fried piece of fish with French fries with lemon, and going to the Wembley Soccer Stadium. Going to the Wembley Soccer Stadium was a dream come true. Our whole bell choir and chaperones were invited to go see the soccer game France vs. Japan. It was woman soccer, but I didn’t mind as along as I was there. It was amazing and super fun. Being able to hear everyone in the stadium cheering for their favorite team was the funnest thing besides the bus rides.

However, we also went to Paris, France for a day. We took a train from London, England to Paris, France. The train ride was about 3 hours straight. We had snacks to enjoy while in the train and a comfortable seat to sit on. While in Paris, we couldn’t do many things we all wanted to because of a tight schedule.

We didn’t have a tour bus there but there was a family from Los Angeles living there for the summer, we knew them because they would also go to Mark Twain Middle School, and they showed us around. We traveled form place to place by using the subways. We went to the most important places to visit which were the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Norte-Dame, and Ave des Champs-Elysées. All these places were amazing and unforgettable. The Eiffel Tower was huge and really hard to take pictures with. I couldn’t believe I was right in front of the Eiffel Tower. We went back to London and kept going out to perform. But our time there was up. We sadly had to get back home after 9 days in London. This trip was a good experience and I will always look back at this memory.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech "I Have a Dream" Lesson Plan

The above video is the full speech given by Martin Luther King Jr.

LAUSD Teachers: The second video above is a shorter version that includes the section of his speech that is in the 9th grade Prentice-Hall anthology. You can assign this for home viewing, because it cannot be opened in the classroom due to LAUSD filtering. Just have students google "VeniceHighBuzz" and they should be able to easily find this page.

To view the Youtube videos in the classroom,  I have included links below, which should lead you to the LAUSD sign in and show allow you to view it in the classroom. To view it without pausing problems, click on "low quality" once you open the video.

Link to Part 2/2 of MLK Jr.'s speech, which includes the section of his speech in Prentice-Hall.

  Link to Full Speech on Youtube

Oprah Youtube videos for "Night" by Elie Wiesel

Youtube videos related to Night by Elie Wiesel
The following videos were created by Oprah Winfrey when she produced a special documentary on the Holocaust, which included collaboration by Elie Wiesel in person.

For teachers with filtering systems: To view them in the classroom, click on the links and go to the Youtube page. This should allow you to then sign in to your filtering system and hopefully view the videos in the classroom. Don't forget to click "low quality" when viewing, to avoid pausing problems.

Oprah and Elie Wiesel Part 1

Oprah and Elie Wiesel Part 2

Oprah and Elie Wiesel Part 3

Oprah and Elie Wiesel Part 4

How It Ends: The Lady or the Tiger Lesson Plan - ESL 4 (Highpoint Level C)

Here are various endings for the short story "The Lady or the Tiger," written by Ms. Zubiri's ESL 4 class, Sept. 2011:

Behind that door was the lady. The man married her, but the man and the princess were sad because they still loved each other. After a few days, the man escaped with the princess and they were happy. But the king was sad because he lost his daughter. After a few months they came back. The king was happy to see his daughter again. Then he accepted the man and the man married the princess.

Celina Valeriano

Suddenly the princess forgot the door that had the tiger and the fair lady. It all went too fast and she turned back to the young man and chose the door with the tiger. The people shattered in tears and the man died.

Elvis Martinez

The young man  saw two big eyes in front of him, then he

saw the tiger jumping on him in the arena.  All the people were watching  how the tiger was  tearing apart the young man. The princess was crying for making the wrong choice, but it was too late to change the decision to kill the young man . 

Damyan Tuchenishki

When the man opened the door that the princess pointed to, a beautiful lady came out of the door. Then the princess got really sad because she wasn’t going to be able to see him again. But when the princess was crying in her bed, the young man knocked on her door and he told her to escape with him to another country. The princess told him ‘’yes." When her father went to see her, she wasn’t there and her father got really sad because he wasn’t going to see his daughter again. And he promised  to never judge a person like he judged the young man again. 

 Abrahan Cortes

He saw the princess’ hand pointing to the right side. And when he opened the right door, he saw the lovely lady. The princess told him where the woman was although she was jealously. The princess was a good woman and she wanted the handsome man happy, because she loved him.

Neyda Reyes

 

When the young man opened the door on the right, the tiger came out. The people started to screaming and yelling because the tiger was going to eat him. The king was sad when the tiger started eating him in front of them. After that the king took the young lady out the door on the left and she saw the tiger eating the young man. She was crying and sad to watch that horrible death.

Christopher Zapata

Here is the original short story:


The Lady or the Tiger
Written by Frank Stockton


Long ago, in very olden times, there lived a powerful king.  Some of his ideas were progressive.  But others caused people to suffer.
One of the king's ideas was a public arena as an agent of poetic justice.  Crime was punished, or innocence was decided, by the result of chance.  When a person was accused of a crime, his future would be judged in the public arena.
All the people would gather in this building.  The king sat high up on his ceremonial chair.  He gave a sign.  A door under him opened.  The accused person stepped out into the arena.  Directly opposite the king were two doors.  They were side by side, exactly alike.  The person on trial had to walk directly to these doors and open one of them.  He could open whichever door he pleased. 
 If the accused man opened one door, out came a hungry tiger, the fiercest in the land.  The tiger immediately jumped on him and tore him to pieces as punishment for his guilt.  The case of the suspect was thus decided. 
Iron bells rang sadly.  Great cries went up from the paid mourners.  And the people, with heads hanging low and sad hearts, slowly made their way home.  They mourned greatly that one so young and fair, or so old and respected, should have died this way.
But, if the accused opened the other door, there came forth from it a woman, chosen especially for the person.  To this lady he was immediately married, in honor of his innocence. It was not a problem that he might already have a wife and family, or that he might have chosen to marry another woman.  The king permitted nothing to interfere with his great method of punishment and reward.

The Rest of the Story: The Lady or the Tiger

Another version of The Lady or the Tiger

Read the Top Educational Articles Each Day

Teachers:
The UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access puts together an interesting e-mail compilation of the nation's top articles on education every day. To subscribe, click here:
IDEA's Just Schools Digest

Persuasive Essays by Ms. Zubiri's Period 5 English class - December 2010

                                          Why Is Headgear an Issue at Venice High?
                                                                By Edgar Gutierrez

        Wearing hats, beanies, or any type of headgear shouldn’t be an issue at Venice High School. Staff assumes that hats are gang-related, but not all students are related to gangs. Just because a student wears a specific hat doesn’t mean they are in a gang.
    People believe this issue relates to gangs for the reason that members wear these type of  caps. It’s true that certain gangs do wear certain hats, but it’s not right to judge a person by the way they dress. Most of the students at Venice High don’t like the fact they get their hats taken away and are made to bring their parents to pick up the hat. In the winter season many students get cold and decide to wear beanies. Same with the summer, many students wear baseball caps for prevent sun burns. Staff should be less strict about this hat issue and more strict on other problems like drugs, alcohol, bullying, and violence.
    Most of Venice High School fights are started by gangs not by hats. Wearing hats or any headwear doesn’t mean you gang-related. This rule should change and only be applied to those that are gang-related. Many students would agree on banning this rule, but its up to the school board, and district.
                                                                                          

                                             More Students Should Graduate from High School
                                                                By Yadira Castaneda
                               The Los Angeles Unified School District should make sure that more students are graduating from high school.

A View of Standardized Testing by a Test Scorer

Teacher Dennis Danziger passed along this eye-opening article that starts like this:

Standardized testing has become central to education policy in the United States. After dramatically expanding in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, testing has been further enshrined by the Obama administration’s $3.4 billion “Race to the Top” grants. Given the ongoing debate over these policies, it might be useful to hear about the experiences of a hidden sector of the education workforce: those of us who make our living scoring these tests. Our viewpoint is instructive, as it reveals the many contradictions and absurdities built into a test-scoring system run by for-profit companies and beholden to school administrators and government officials with a stake in producing inflated numbers.

 

Read the rest of it on the website Truthout: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer 

Posted Wednesday 01 December 2010

by: Dan DiMaggio