In today society it is hard to have new innovative and original ideas. Especially as a child or teenager you are very influenced by the surroundings making it even harder. In Language Arts class we were assigned to create our own short story using renaissance techniques and themes such as chivalry or courtly love. This was actually not the hard part, but rather finding a totally new and creative idea. I took some time to find a quite original idea and I liked the fact that my story was not a cliché idea. However, as I walked around and took a look at some other people’s plans I saw a lot of very similar and not really original ideas and it was really hard for them, but also for me to find an interesting way of presenting an original story. I saw plans about zombie-apocalypse or teenager suicide and let’s be realistic we all know that there are thousands of those stories existing.

To me this clearly shows the difference between today and back then in the renaissance. Europe just came out of the dark medieval period and ideas could grow. In that time it was easy to find new ideas for stories, but also for paintings or inventions. Today it gets harder and harder as more people explore themes. However, our mind becomes wider and wider meaning that we know and learn more giving us the possibility to do exactly the same thing as in the renaissance just more complex and complicated.

As everyone probably knows we are only a few days from our big exams (actually only one day). This means stress, studying all day and getting told from teachers that we have to do good. All of this does not really help us or me to concentrate because on the other site I am exhausted from 8 hours of school and then I still have to study until late to get a good grade. For me those few days or weeks have always been the worst in the whole school year because you cannot really enjoy anything in school or at home because you always have in the back of your head that exams are soon. No wonder that everyone and everything is under tension.

To me this whole exam thing does not seem quite logical. It is good to test students, but
maybe not ten different exams in 3 days. It should be spread more evenly and fairly for the students. It seems like the teachers just want to get it done with while the students work every night to know all the information for all different test.

Maybe I am the wrong person to talk to about this topic because I never had anything like one week full of tests, since it was always tests spread throughout the whole year, but I had the necessity to share it. It would be nice if some other people comment and also share their point of view on this topic.

Dying or living that is the question?

This was the question for me and my group members for this unit in Language Arts. We studied the human rights and decided on which right we would like to research further on and create a Wikispace about it.  Since I chose the right to die and to learn more about it I gained a lot of knowledge about pain, suicide and assisted suicide.

Knowledge gained:

Jack and Ana who were also interest in this topic explored along with me how physical and mental pain can make people chose death over life. I understood why it was really controversial in the 1900 to suicide or make assisted suicide. I was interesting to read hoe sluicing was a sin in Europe because the Catholic Church was very effective at that time. Also gathering information about assisted suicide (a doctor helps a patient to die) opened my eyes to this topic. Because it was a difficult topic, I learned how to research effectively. Apart from learning new knowledge I also found out that moving pictures, called gifs make the page look more interesting and how to use them.

Struggle:

However, I struggled with displaying the information effectively and in a way that nobody would feel offended. Even though we had problems to make the information look interesting and to hook the reader, I am actually really proud on our page because we displayed and analyzed the information well. We used Gifs so there is some action on our page and we added question on the bottom to engage the reader and make him start a discussion.

Success:

As I already said I think our page layout is really successful, but we also gathered good and effective information from research to give background information and different points of view. In my opinion I think Sophie’s and Hadiya’s Wkispaces looked nice and contained good information.

Improvement for the Next Time:

I think we have to evaluate and analyze our sources more. This brings up more discussions from the reader because they can disagree with us.

The last week or two we were creating an annotated bibliography about a chosen right from the UN declaration of human rights. Because  I already talked about my annotated bibliography in my last blog posts I will introduce my new topic which we are doing I Language Arts. So we are now creating a portfolio about a right we think should be supported or should be discussed. I chose the right to die.

I think this is going to a really interesting unit involving a lot of active debates, to which I am really looking forward to. I think the topic “the right to die” should be discussed because it is a really interesting topic which has pros and cons. For some it is controversial and for some it is the addition to a happy life. Of course it depends on the nationality and belief, but in my opinion it should actually be enforced. It does not make sense to live in pain until you die or live with a mental illness, which makes you think you think that there is not purpose in live. However, it should e proven that you have the “right” to die because I read articles about Japan that people bosses would kill themselves if their business bankrupts.

This is a huge interesting topic which has defiantly the right to be discussed and thought through. I am looking forward to taking a deeper look into this topic and debate with my classmates.

Image: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/06/expanding-the-right-to-die

This unit we are taking a look at the UN Declaration of Human Rights. We will learn how to create an annotated bibliography, write news paper articles and debate.

At the moment we are writing an annotated bibliography about one human right that we wanted to make further investigations on. I chose article 11, which states “Right to the presumption of innocence”. Therefore I will be looking at justice, innocence and guiltiness. In fact a lot of my classmates also chose this article because we were actually having a little in official debate on it. So I am really looking forward to discuss more about this topic but with more knowledge gathered by the bibliography. Also I hope that we will debate on this topic because a lot of people will show a lot of interest and it will be a huge discussion in class.

However, I already learned quite a lot about the UN declaration about human rights since I was studying it in Germany and last year in humanities. Additionally, as the millions of refugees are coming to Europe and especially Germany it is really connected to our topic because even if those people are searching refuges they still have the right to the Human rights.

I am really looking forward to the debate to argue with other people, but also I am really interested in what countries the declaration of human rights is actually enforced or if here is any country that even has all of them.

Picture: http://gettipsforeveryday.blogspot.tw/2014/12/fundamental-human-rights.html

In Language Arts we just finished our big unit about culture. Since culture is an enormous topic and has a lot of subtopics I learned and discovered a lot about it. I really concentrat ed on the difficulties people have to overcome if they live in another country. I feel a bit connected with this challenge since I live in China for several years even if I originally come from Germany. Therefore, it is a big cultural difference even if it is not such a big challenge because I do not live hear my whole life and I am not tide to learning the language. Additionally, I really concentrated on immigrants this unit and currently in Germany, as probably everybody knows, a lot of refugees are searching help in Germany. Those people probably experiencing the same problem as I wrote about in my essay. Lastly, had a lot of friends that were children of immigrants and they shared their feelings and challenge, so I could imagine the experience of being an outsider.
Of course this unit also extended my knowledge in terms of having a better perspective about culture or having a deeper view. As I read the book The Serpent’s Children by Lawrence Yep, it caught me or it hooked me and I couldn’t stop reading. I enjoyed it a lot because I felt in some way connected to the characters. However in the book Cassia and Foxfire had bad experience with being an outsider, I had actually a lot of good ones. Especially when I read about how authors display their feelings in their literature it gave me an image of the life of an immigrant. At the end we had to find a thesis statement for our end-of-unit essay and I had to gather all the information I have collected and find connections between them. This actually made me realize how big culture is.
However, I also overcame some small challenges when I had to write my essay. First of all, my whole thesis statement was about a challenge: Hovering between two cultures. Therefore, I was actually proving the problems immigrants had to face. One of my challenges was to go through my gathered information with an open mind since I already had an idea about writing my thesis statement.

In Language Arts we are writing an essay as a final task for the current topic culture. The past few weeks we were gathering information from literature and we had to read one novel, two short stories and six poems. From those texts we had to find a thesis statement. However as easy as it sounds this was actually the first time that it took me quite a while to come up with a thesis. Normally in the first ten minutes I got my thesis and I could start writing my essay.

In fact, we did another project already according to the novel we read and on which I already reflected on. This already gave me an idea what I wanted to write my essay on. However, we had to find our thesis with a open mind by putting all the information we had in one place and find connections between them. It was quite hard for me to go through my information open minded because I couldn’t let go of my idea from the beginning and not surprisingly my thesis was very similar to my starting idea.

This essay really makes me think about what immigrants feel like since my thesis statement is exploring how immigrants hover between two cultures. Even though I live in two countries and I experience a few different cultures, it is probably for immigrants who live the rest of their life in another country it is way more extreme. Especially for people who were children of immigrants think they belong to the new culture, but their parents tell them they belong to their old culture.

In conclusion this topic made me really think about culture in many different ways, especially looking at the feelings of immigrants.

In the last few weeks we were doing a project on culture relating to a cultural book, which we were reading. I chose the story “the Serpents children” by Laurence Yep and I wanted to display my understanding of the story in connection to the author in a fiction story. While I was researching about Laurence Yep it always said that all his books are about outsider or so called aliens. Therefore, I thought I would write a story about real aliens. However, I started off as a story, but then I found it hard to put a lot of information in a science fiction story. At the end I had magazine article which was supposed to be a story. To make the project fid its format, I then formatted it into a magazine article, which turned out really good.

In my opinion, my project was a success. Even if I was not that proud at the beginning for my article it turned out really good when I transformed it into a magazine article. Form this project I learned that there will be always outsiders. In the beginning of my magazine I said that the earth was almost one big country because everybody was excepting each other, but then the aliens came and suddenly there was difference again. In conclusion, there will always be outsiders, but people have to except each other and can learn from each other.

This week Grade 9 and 10 went to Hei Shui, a town near to Tibet, and experienced a lot of Tibetan cultural. To me it was not as much of a new cultural contact because I have been in Lhasa, Tibet last summer. However, for some people it was very different and also difficult to get taught a bit of the religion.

On the first day of the trip, we were visiting the Sichuan-Earthquake Museum. The museum was placed in the middle of the earthquake center where the destruction started 12^th May 2008. To show what destruction the earthquake caused some houses where left and it was visible that this was a deaths machine form Mother Nature. This was really a shock for me to watch the damage, especially the broken houses. I was never really aware how deadly earthquakes could be because I have never experienced the felling of the earth shaking. Also when we were walking around the broken and collapsed houses, I had a strange felling because I knew people died in these houses. For the night we stayed in the Qiang village where people of the Qiang minority lived for 2000 years. I really enjoyed the natural and ancient style of the village. This was a big impact of a different cultural experienced since we slept in ancient Qiang houses. Also the ancient village really reminded me of my holidays in Morocco because the structure and the type the people were living was similar to the Moroccan houses and people.

On the next day, we were leaving the village early to drive to Hei Shui. After we had a typical Tibetan lunch we visit a Monastery on the top of a mountain. By having a shaky ride up the mountain in small vans, I could already feel the simple, but probably interesting life of the monks living there. We were allowed to go inside the monastery and get guided by the Buddhist Master in this area. I was amazed by the colorful and creative drawings on the roof and the walls. I think there was over 200 hundred of the Sakiyamonia Buddha in little holes in the wall. I learned a lot from the life of the monks and their religion. For example, I never knew that there was more than oe Buddha and that there are differ ones for different regions. Additionally, when I looked down on the village I could see the construction and the dust coming from the streets and it made me aware what contrast the village was to the monastery and the life on top of the mountain.

On the last day in Hei shui we were visiting the Hei Shui Glacier, 4800 meters above the sea level. Already the drive up to the cable car was very interesting. The van was stopping at different lakes and we were flipping stones on the lake. This really reminded me of Germany and the nature in Germany. After we reached the top of the glacier with the gondola I could already feel the lack of oxygen. I could barely run without stopping after every five meters to gasp for air.

After these experiences I think it was a cultural as well as natural experience for everybody. Even if I already went to Tibet I learned a lot of new thinks about the Tibetan and Buddhist culture.

Special thanks to Siring and Abu, our gudes on the trip who helped and explained.

Currently we are discovering the different parts of independent learning and what it means for different people. For me independent learning means learning on my own and develop my own ideas by collecting information to connect them to one whole theme. It means to force yourself to manage to finish your work in time. A lot of the student’s independent learning means procrastination because they make excuses to finish the work later. Therefore, independent learning has to be practiced and be developed step by step.
In my old school in Germany independent learning was very rare because we mostly did work sheets and very few posters or projects. This radical changed when I came to china. I had to take control of my own learning immediately without any practice or support. It was really hard for me to change the type of learning so I was frustrated a lot of times. However I did not have a choice so I developed the way of learning. I slowly I could take control of my learning which means I could hand in my work by deadlines and study for test without any help from my parents.

Additionally, we are learning how to create good research questions about culture. Because I was interested in the different learning strategies in different countries my questions is about questions is going to be about the independent learning in the countries. As I already mentioned above the techniques in Germany were different than here with the American school system. Therefore this also partly influenced my question.However I am still developing my idea.