Changes, Challenges and Choices: Our best work

Be organized, focused, and careful with your diction and syntax.  Use details.  Use rhetorical devices. Check all spelling and grammar.  Make this your very best work.

Changes, Challenges and Choices: What's your story?

Tell us about it.
(Drafts)

Is fast food ruining American bodies? (Extra credit blogging opportunity)

There are forty-seven fast foods restaurants in Frankfort (OK, that's a guess, but I bet I'm close).  In Midway?  None.  We have an ordinance against it.  Some posit that the ability to get fast food cheaply and quickly is destroying our bodies and maybe even our minds.  Fast food is of the lowest quality and the highest in fat, preservatives, and processed food stuffs.  Others insist that this is a free country and that we ought to be able to destroy our bodies if we want to.  Still others insist that fast food isn't as bad as we think.

We are the fattest and least healthy nation in the world.  What should we do about it?  Would limiting or banning fast food or soft drinks or other offenders bring us closer to a fix? Should we put restrictions on it like cigarettes?

Photo credit: Jon Feinstein

Got Milk? (Respond to the 2008 AP Lang prompt for extra credit)

For years corporations have sponsored high school sports. Their ads are found on the outfield fence at baseball parks or on the walls of the gymnasium, the football stadium, or even the locker room. Corporate logos are even found on players’ uniforms. But some schools have moved beyond corporate sponsorship of sports to allowing “corporate partners” to place their names and ads on all kinds of school facilities—libraries, music rooms, cafeterias. Some schools accept money to require students to watch Channel One, a news program that includes advertising. And schools often negotiate exclusive contracts with soft drink or clothing companies.

Some people argue that corporate partnerships are a necessity for cash-strapped schools. Others argue that schools should provide an environment free from ads and corporate influence. Using appropriate evidence, write an essay in which you evaluate the pros and cons of corporate sponsorship for schools and indicate why you find one position more persuasive than the other. 

Why Should I Care?

The world is full of problems; our environment may not support life much longer, we suffer from myriad diseases, many are plagued by poverty.

What do you care about?  Why should anyone else share your passion?  Explain what issue(s) you are most concerned about and why anyone else should also care.  Educate us.  Inspire us.  Make a difference.

Extra credit for boxes of Kleenex? Points for Pens? What are the ethics of offering incentives for charitable acts?

(AP Language Exam - 2007)

A weekly feature of The New York Times Magazine is a column by Randy Cohen called “The Ethicist," in which people raise ethical questions to which Cohen provides answers. The question below is from the column that appeared on April 4, 2003.

At my high school, various clubs and organizations sponsor charity drives, asking students to bring in money, food, and clothing. Some teachers offer bonus points on tests and final averages as incentives to participate. Some parents believe that this sends a morally wrong message, undermining the value of charity as a selfless act. Is the exchange of donations for grades O.K. ?

The practice of offering incentives for charitable acts is widespread, from school projects to fund drives by organizations such as public television stations, to federal income tax deductions for contributions to charities.

In a well-written essay, develop a position on the ethics of offering incentives for charitable acts. Support your position with evidence from your reading, observation, and/or experience. 

What's wrong with girls?

In high school, girls out-perform boys academically.  As a result, young women are showing up in unprecedented numbers in higher education.  As a nation, however, "women are still under-represented in all areas of government" (WCF Foundation).

Socially, girls still appear to worry more about appearance and appropriateness rather than intellect or character.  Young women suffer from such tragically low self-esteem, it has given rise to organizations like Girls on the Run which work in elementary schools to reverse this trend, or media efforts like the Dove campaign for "normal" women. Despite these efforts, however, eating disorders, self-harming behaviors, and suicide rates remain outrageously high.

Add in a healthy dose of bitter, backstabbing girl bullying, and the outlook is bleak.  When she was 19, author Sara Shandler capitalized on her own sense of isolation, fear, and lack of confidence and put together a compilation of teenage girl's journals, essays, poems and stories revealing the universality of this suffering.  She also exposes rampant sexual abuse, abuse that is often tolerated or even encouraged by the media (check out the Miss Representation Project).

So, what is wrong with girls?  What insight can you gain from these sources?

Why, after so much success, does a girl still face this social construct?

What should we do about it?

What is it like for girls in our school, in our town, in this culture?

How will you measure success?

In an Op-Ed for the Seattle Times, Shoshana Wineburg writes about how cell phones cut us off from each other.  It's a cool article, and you can read it here (and respond with your own thoughts on our blog).  Her bio at the end of the piece reads like this: 

 “Shoshana Wineburg graduated from Stanford University in 2009 with a degree in American Studies. She waits tables in Seattle.”

Readers flooded the paper with comments about how sad it was that this Stanford grad was only waiting tables and not achieving something more substantial.  Wineburg responds in her own blog here.  

How do you measure success?  What must your life look like now to be defined as successful?  What must it look like when you graduate from college?  What defines success? 

Does technology bring us closer together or tear us apart?

Many complain that our technology makes us more concerned with the virtual world rather than the world under our feet and in front of our face.  Has technology torn us apart from each other or drawn us closer together?

What's wrong with boys????

We talk a lot about the pressures of being a young girl today.  With high rates of anorexia, cutting, and depression, there is no denying the social pressures girls endure.

But, what is it like to be a boy these days?  What pressures does society put on them?  How do they handle it?

Why do boys statistically drop out of school more often, attend college less frequently, and get poorer grades than girls?

What do you think???