Lowe

African Union Day

Yesterday the 7th grade had an African Union Day where we split into groups of two or three and were assigned a country. With the people in your group you had to decide what you wanted to do about the conflict in Burundi. We would come up with a resolution of what our country can do for them and then we would find other countries and talk with them about what they thought they should do. We would find another country that thought the same that you did and then we worked with that group to make another resolution together. We then debated with other countries on what we thought should be done.

In doing this project I learned how the African Union solves their problems only on a smaller scale. It was fun and I liked being able to debate what we thought would be best for the country of Burundi and the continent as a whole.

My favorite part of this was the debating and voting. But I wish that we could have been a little bit more prepared on how things were going to happen and what we need to know ahead of time so it wasn’t so confusing in the morning.

Invectives responce

Some relationships that changed throughout the movie was the relationship between Francios and Mandela. Their relationship changed after they met. They grew closer and grew to understand each other better. Another relationship that changed was the black and white body guards for Mandela. It was originally just black body guards but then Mandela hired white body guards and the blacks weren’t very excepting. Eventually the black body guards remembered that the goal was to keep Mandela safe and so they decided to look over the differences and work together.

This movie represents post apartheid by the way everyone is being more excepting to others. The blacks could vote and had more freedom. Also the relationships between the whites and the blacks were being strengthened. They were now considered a part of government. Although the spring Box remained the same after apartheid. Not everything was solved but you could see a difference.

Africa

Yesterday we spent some time learning about some people in Africa. Something that I took away from this was the fact that not very many people can afford or have access to medicine for HIV or Aids. I knew that a lot of people cant afford stuff like this but it was still kind of surprising.

Carnival math games

The last two weeks we have been in groups working on carnival games that have to do with probability. I had fun coming up with the game and building it with my group members. I honestly still don’t quite understand how to do probability very well, but I am going to be working on it at home to make sure that I understand it.

I learned that in our carnival game we had to take all the possibilities and multiply them by the chances of winning. We had to find the probability of winning in our game and find how much profit we would make.

I don’t really like this type of leaning. I feel that I would have a better chance of understanding the concept if we just did the lesson online. I liked the fun part of making the carnival game with my friends, but I just don’t quite understand probability because of the way that we were learning.

Mexico Google maps

Some differences between Zeeland, Michigan and Mexico.
– The houses. Most of the houses in the poor parts of Mexico are quite small and not very well built. Also the architecture looks and is built quite differently. I saw hat this one family was living in a shack and their kitchen was outside. I made me wonder what it would be like if my family had to live like that.

– The roads/streets. When I looking on google just “walking” down the streets is much different. Most of the streets are made of gravel and the houses and stores are much different. They are built differently and they are smaller and there are a lot of bright colors.

–  Litter. I also noticed that there was a lot of litter on most of the roads. People throw all the junk and trash on the roads. I think that this is because in some of the poor places where they are living partly outside there might be some trash that lingers into the road.

Some similarities between Zeeland, Michigan and Mexico.

-Modern. I noticed that even in some of the poorer places there are still many things about it that are pretty modern like the swimming pools and cars etc.

-Restaurants. I noticed that the restaurants there are some of the same ones we have here. Mostly the chain restaurants.

– Spacial Inequality. In Mexico there are a lot of places that have richer areas and poorer areas Detroit also has spacial inequality like we talked about in class.

Amazon Land Use

I am the Loggers side because they are not doing anything wrong if anything they are helping almost everyone. The loggers goal is to cut down trees for furniture. They go around clear cutting trees to get a certain kind that is good for making tables and other furniture. All they want is to get mahogany and rosewood trees to make money for themselves. Also by doing this it creates jobs for other land uses. It is good the settlers and the cattle ranchers because we give them land for their homes and farms. Yet they compline that we are cutting down all the trees when it is benefitting them. Although it is not benefitting some people like native Amazonian’s, rubber tappers, and environmental groups. The native Amazonian’s want to keep the land the way is so they can continue their way of life and the rubber tappers need the trees so they can use the sap from them to do their job and if they don’t have the trees then they cant get the sap. It doesn’t benefit environmental groups because it affects the land that they need to farm and use. The loggers help some in big ways and does not help many, so I also agree with the environmental groups and the rubber tappers because what the loggers are doing to the land is not good for what they use the land for and it is not fair.

Something I don’t agree with about the Settlers is that I don’t think that it is fair that they take all the good land for them selves and they have all the good land but the poor are left with nothing. I also don’t agree with the Environmentalists. I don’t agree with them because they feel that they can just come in here and convince us that we cant cut down trees to farm and make money to feed our families. There are enough trees in the world that you can still breath so suck it up and be grateful, plus no one cares that you  found a new kind of bug, get a life.

 

 

Immigration Day

Immigration day was a great experience for me because learning about other peoples lives is very interesting to me. The first person that I talked to was Silvia and she was from Spain. She is studying at Hope Collage. She didn’t have much to say but her journey went very smooth. It didn’t take her very long to get her visa. She told us that in her country they are kind of quiet. They also eat at different times then us and she likes that better here. I also talked to Natalie and she was from the Dominican Republic. I loved her because she was really good at explaining what her culture was like. Natalie explained that she Is also studying at Hope. Her process of coming was not hard ether but of course it was hard for her to leave her family. She said that in the Dominican Republic they never wear sweatpants or a sweatshirt because they always try to dress nice. You could say that they don’t dress comfy. When she came here she got a pair of yoga pants and a sweat shirt and she was funny because she said that they were the best thing ever and that she didn’t understand why not everyone has one. She was really funny. I learned that some of the culture there is fading away because there are some of our American restaurants and shops and she is sad because of how her culture is changing. Natalie absolutely loves Michigan and hopes to come back after collage and do work. She enjoys walking down the streets of downtown Holland and loves lake Michigan and she says that the dunes are very beautiful. I think that my group got off topic every one and a while because she was just a awesome person to talk to and she was very interesting to listen to. When we were talking to her I wasn’t thinking “o this chic immigrated” it just felt like I was talking to a friend. I learned a lot for these to girls especially Natalie. It was a blessing able to talk with these girls about there life, even though they didn’t have very many struggles it was just great to hear about there perspective on culture and our country. What was funny is that they both thought that all Americans were fat before they left but now they realized that thats not true for everyone and thats just a stereotype. I am very thankful for this opportunity and this was for sure my favorite part about social studies this year.

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