Thursday, May 19, 2011

Final Essay

DJ Rivera
Mrs. Borsen
Expository Writing, Period 4
5-19-2011
Final Essay Assignment
       
        Imagine this, you’re with the person of your dreams, and you feel like you want to be with that person forever and ever, and then decide to have sex, then “uh oh!” a baby comes along the way. Things like this happen all around the world and it’s not always necessarily just with the person of your dreams. As of the year 2010, 494,357 teenagers have had kids. (Nationmaster.com) Kids everyday are constantly asking for help with just everyday problems, but now they think that if they were to get daycare centers in high schools, they would either do better in school, or not drop out. I believe that it’s not exactly the schools responsibility to take care of something that is your fault for having in the first place. Schools have their own responsibilities as it is, and one of them doesn’t have to be your own child.
        The argument I’m fighting against is whether or not we should have daycare centers in schools or not, and I’m personally not very fond of the idea. Not only is it not the schools fault for you to have a kid and not be able to take care of it on your own, but how on earth do you expect the schools to pay for a daycare as well. Within the next year or so, schools are getting majorly huge budget cuts that can affect just about anyone. With only in California, for the last 2 years they have been cut a total of $17 billion dollars! That’s a lot of money for something that people live to have on a daily basis, an education. There are kids not only in the United States wanting an education, but also in other countries as well. Not everyone gets the loyalty to be able to get a decent education in the high school level or in any school level in general. Also with California, they handed out 23,500 pink slips obviously meaning they have to let them go. But last time I checked, especially in Roosevelt High School, we’re looking to find more teachers and not get rid of them. The only reason that we can’t get more teachers is because of things like budget cuts. If California is getting $17 billion plus budget cuts, just imagine what kind of budget cuts Texas is getting, or even our state, Colorado!
        Going along with the budget cuts of all schools around the United States, Daycares aren’t exactly cheap. A daycare provider can cost as little as $4,388 to $14,647 a year! I don’t know about you, but I know what schools could use up to $14,000 on that would much more benefit the schools more than Daycares. We could buy books, better technology, or even better sports equipment. All of these things would greatly benefit schools all around the United States much more than a daycare could. In my eyes, Daycares are for people who had sex irresponsibly and aren’t of age to take care of a kid on their own. I feel it’s very important to be able to take care of your own child; just look at the days in the 80’s, parents did anything to make their kids healthy and to make them happy. The reason daycare providers can be so cheap or so expensive truly varies. But in order to be a legal daycare provider, you must have a license. “Nearly all states, licensing regulations require criminal record checks for all day care staff. This screening requirement protects children from abuse and reduces liability risks, making insurance more available and affordable.” Obviously, a daycare provider without a license is a huge problem according to bls.gov.
        When it comes to having a kid of your own, the responsibility of the kid is your own. You chose to have it, and now you have to take care of it yourself, and should expect anything from anyone. I know that when I have problems of my own, the first thing I do is I try on my own, but usually I don’t like anyone to help me at all. People now a day’s always put their own responsibility on other people such as their friends or even their family. I can completely agree that taking care of a baby is a huge responsibility and a lot of hard work. But who was the one that chose to have sex, and in result have a baby in the first place. Things might not always go the way you want them to go, but people make choices in their life, and usually almost always regret them. If we were to put a daycare in the school here at Roosevelt High School, I personally think it would make them a little more irresponsible. Look at it this way, right now they always have to come home to their kid and take care of them and make sure they get what they need to live. Now take that out of the equation and you get a mom who comes and now looks to go to parties because she doesn’t have a huge responsibility to come home to. As you can clearly see, taking the baby out of the hands of the parents can put some major problems out on the table.
        When I become a parent, well first of all, I’m going to wait till I’m a decent age to be able to take care of one properly. I want to be able to play with my kid and teach my kids the importance of life. There aren’t always the best role models when it comes to daycare providers. With a story from adequacy.org, is a little boy named Micah who wanted to play with some blocks after the provider had set them out for the kids to come get some. “The daycare provider walked over to Micah, looked disapprovingly at his pile of blocks, and then forcibly took nearly half of them away. She then proceeded to give them to the other children, so that they all had roughly the same amount.” I wouldn’t teach my kid that if you have too much of something, that you have to share with others around you who were too lazy to get them before you. I would teach him what my parents and friends and even teachers have taught me. “The early bird catches the worm.” Not, “The early bird catches all the worms that he can get and then has to share it with other birds so they all have the same amount. This might make me sound maybe like a control freak, but think about it. The whole world is just a giant competition of who can really be the best. They don’t want people to slow down to let other people catch up; people want to do their best in what they do so they can get the most recognition with it.
        All this information is clearly important to know when making a decision to make a daycare in all the high schools, but that is mainly for you to take a look at it all and actually see the truth behind it. It makes sense that the schools nearly don’t have enough money with all the budget cuts going on in these next few years, just think about it. $17 billion from California alone, I can’t begin to imagine what other states could be losing just on education. And to along with the budget cuts, once again, the prices of daycare providers aren’t as cheap as you’d hope it to be. They have to be licensed so in order to get a really good one, you must pay them a lot of money just like anyone else who is good at their job. And when you create something, you have the ability to clean it up or make it an even bigger problem, you should put the responsibility with your own child into the hands of the schools, they already have to teach you a numerous amount of things, and I doubt they’d want to have more to do. And based off the story I had told you, obviously all daycare providers aren’t best suited to take care of everyone’s kids the way they might want them to be taken care of. When you want a kid to be the best he or she can be, leave it to the parents to fill in the blanks that the schools can’t even come close to filling in for them.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Essay Option #3

DJ Rivera
Mrs. Boresen
Expository Writing, Period 4
Option #3
May 6, 2011
            Time after time again, people are always trying their hardest to fulfill their dreams, it’s so easy to do, but everyone overlooks it and makes it harder and more frustrating. Chicken Little is a perfect example of this; he’s the guy who wants to help out his town when nobody will believe him till he sees how to make it come true. Chicken Little is a movie that definitely shows off a little of the secret with the help of Walt Disney by showing that if you keep going after what you want, you’ll get it in the end. Chicken Little plus the song, has a whole lot to do with the secret with positive thinking bringing you positive results.
            In the movie “Chicken Little”, he becomes the fool of the whole time because people thought that the piece of the “sky” that hit him on the head, they all assumed it was an acorn instead. Later in the movie he is in his bedroom after hitting the winning ball for his baseball game and then becomes a hero to his friends and even his dad. While in his bedroom he is celebrating and then the piece of the sky flies into his bedroom window and then the whole thing starts again. When I first saw this movie of course since I saw the piece of sky fall on him before, that I was on his side for it from the beginning. As a quote from kidstvmovies.about.com, “His cute optimism and perseverance inspire a desire to cheer on the underdog”. Even though his own father didn’t believe Chicken Little, he never gave up on the fact that what he saw was what he saw and he was going to prove it one way or the other. By the time everyone believed Chicken Little about the piece of the sky falling, it was a little too late for everyone in the town. An alien invasion then attacked the town for that piece of the “sky” and Chicken Little wasn’t going to let his town down. He did everything he could to save his town and had tons of confidence that his town could make it out of this mess and finally the town was saved and everything was alright again.
            In the movie, the one song that stuck out to me as one of the songs that really related to the whole story of this movie was Barenaked Ladies ‘One Little Slip’. The lyrics of this song explain the movie almost word for word. I feel the lines as stated by stlyrics.com, “It was a cup of good intentions, a table spoon of one big mess.” Chicken Little really thought that he could make the town proud by helping them realize a piece of the sky fell out and that something bad may come out of that. But when everyone thought it was just an acorn that hit him over the head, everyone thought he was a fool and that’s when his life turned upside down. This song has taught me one valuable lesson that I should bring into life is don’t assume everyone will believe what you have to say. That’s the whole thing in life, everyone has their own opinions and what someone might have to say is the other person’s choice to believe it. Both the song and the movie have many similarities to ‘The Secret’, and it would be very hard not to see it.
            ‘The Secret’ was all about if you think positively and get rid of the negative thoughts and replace them with the good thoughts then good things come to you. I saw the same thing when I watched Chicken Little. He was a little chicken that had so much faith that his town was in danger and that something bad was going to happen, and when he put his mind to it and never gave up on it, the town finally believed him because he found the ‘piece of the sky’ and showed everyone. When it comes to the song “One little slip” by the barenaked ladies, I hear nothing but things about the secret. “It was a cup of good intentions” is a line in the song that just screams out the secret from stlyrics.com. Everything in life no matter what happens has something good come out of it whether or not you chose to see it. With a quote from lightparty.com “What you focus on with your thought and feeling is what you attract into your experience.” Chicken Little had on his mind that octagonal piece from the sky that it came at him a second time for him to deal with it once more.
            When Chicken Little wanted something to happen, he didn’t give up on what he believed and he keep throwing his thoughts out there until someone really understood him and then started to help him out in saving his town. Chicken Little was a fool at first, but with a little heart he finally got everyone to believe him. One Little Slip proves that if you keep trying over and over, but still you don’t get your results, keep going for it and you’ll get it sooner or later. The Secret and Chicken Little are both very similar in the learning aspect, Chicken Little believed that he was going to get people to believe him and after a while, everyone realized he wasn’t a fool and he got what he wanted because he thought positively. When something like this happens in your life, keep going for it, when people don’t believe you at first, it’s still possible to change people’s mind, so don’t stop chasing. I’d like to end with this, a quote from lightparty.com, “You are not here to try to get the world to be just as you want it. You are here to create the world around you that you choose.”


Bibliography
1.       Bryson, Carey. ""Chicken Little" (2005) Movie Review for Parents." Kids' Movies and TV. Web. 03 May 2011. <http://kidstvmovies.about.com/od/movies/fr/chickenlittle.htm>.

2.       "Barenaked Ladies Lyrics, One Little Slip Lyrics." SoundTrack Lyrics Source #1. Any Movie, Musical, TV, Cartoon! Web. 03 May 2011. <http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/chickenlittle/onelittleslip.htm>.

3.       "YouTube - Chicken Little - The Official Music Video." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 03 May 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFXumBN63fg.>

4.       "100 Quotes from "The Secret"" The Light Party New Political Paradigm and Health Care. Web. 04 May 2011. <http://www.lightparty.com/Spirituality/100QuotesTheSecret.html>.