H/W - Read for 25 mins. Spend 5-10mins collecting your thinking about your reading. Are you using a strategy to collect your ideas?
Reader's Notebook cover pages. Final DUE DATE - Wednesday.
OPTIONAL - Write a brief comment explaining the message the guess speaker was delivering today.
+ point for all contributions
RECAP of guidelines for Notebook Design
8 comments:
Twesigye Jackson Kaguri
Twesigye shared his life with us today in the library.
Twesigye was born and raised in a village called Niyaka in Uganda. He lived faraway from the school that he went to, but he could only attend the school if he had brought a pencil. The walk from his house to school was 2 hours walking up a hill and getting water and 7 and half miles to his school.
Twesigye shared with us that his brother and sister passed away.
He told us a story about him climbing up a tree and falling 200 ft and having a piece of wood going through his leg, he was in the hosptial for 6 months.
Twesigye told us that he was building different schools that children with no parents and no money could attend to. He told us how to be our own Hero!
From Mille Thrane
To Mr. Buxton
Twesigye was talking about how he grew up in a place where the lifestyle was nothing like our lifestyle. He lived where it took him 2 hours to get water and bring back home and 7 1/2 miles to get to school. But the people who live there are still as human as us. They have big dreams. Little kids who have no parents to wake them up or say goodnight are happy because they get education from Twesigye's school. In fact, there was a boy who walked 50 miles in 2 days just to get an education. He told us how a kid growing up in a house with terrible conditions is happy, he had big dreams and now is in medical school. If he can get into medical school, we should be able to get into any kind of college we want. Twesigye taught me to stop imagining other people as heroes, and instead imagine myself as that hero. Those kids taught me that it's possible to do anything if you have big dreams and are is your own hero. I remember how Twesigye told us that he built the biggest, baddest school brick by brick. Brick by brick. I thought of that like our big dream. Then I thought of the lesson you taught us about stepping out of our comfort zone and thought that you can accomplish your goal and reach your dream if you step out of your comfort zone step by step, just like Twesigye built his school brick by brick.
-Sophia
Jackson Kaguri taught us many important life lessons today. One of the most important was no matter where you come from or what your background is, if you try your hardest you will be able to succeed. He was a poor kid but he studied hard, even though sometimes he wouldn't even have a source of light to do his homework. He also walked 7 1/2 miles barefoot everyday to go to school. In the end, his struggle paid off and he managed to go to Columbia University which is a huge achievement. His life also teaches us to be persistent, and not give up even when some things are hard. He told us that we are privileged and if he- a poor Ugandan boy- could attend Columbia University, we could soar to even greater heights. We just had to dream big, and be our own hero!
I think that Jackson taught us the life lesson of how you don't need material items to make your self happy. He showed us this by showing us pictures of happy children who not only were orphans but came from an economically challenged background. He also taught us that as long as you dream big, anything can happen. After all, most people wouldn't expect that a man that came from a small village with no electricity and extremely hard access to education would not be able to achieve his goal. However, Jackson proved all of us wrong, showing that all you need is grit and perseverance in order to turn dreams into reality...
-Rui Yi
Mr. Jackson, the guest speaker, was really conveying a message of happiness and hardships in his be your own hero talk. What I feel like the main message was: "Your savior or hero won't fall from the sky and rescue you from your troubles, we must advocate and do it ourselves to make our dream possible" He talked about and showed this during his speech and showed us the life he had and the lives of other children who are not fortunate enough to have anything close to something like cell phones, electricity, or the keyboard I'm typing on. His story is really inspiring. He went to school on 1/5 of a pencil while we don't take a second thought about the boxes of pencils we get. But he had determination and persevered, and spread more of that to everyone. I hope we all can find the same determination burried somewhere in ourselves.
Today, Jackson taught us how we can all be our own heroes. A lot of people worship someone that they have never met. Or they call them their "heroes." But my question is, "How can someone be your hero if you have never even met them?" That, however, led to another question which was, "Then who can be our hero?" I hung onto that question until when Jackson taught us that we could be our OWN heroes. That was when I realized that we can do amazing things if we try. And that every difficult road leads to a beautiful destination.
+1 for your contributions - Impressive insight
The "step by step" - detail was very insightful
Today after the wonderful class we had, my eyes were open while reading my personal book. In only a few pages I was able to see how the main character (Luke) had changed before and after his father wrote the Darkwood series. I have the feeling that the book Mr.Toppin is about how fame does not always mean happiness. There was a scene where Luke decided that he the bees in his garden were not where they wanted to be, he picked them up by the wings (he never got stung) and put them under a tree. I saw this as a way Luke realized that he was growing up, or blossoming like the lavenders in his garden. He realized that he wanted other things/people feel comfortable, as he was not. Also, in a scene where Luke goes to visit his sister Rachel in the hospital because of drug abuse, he explained that Rachel was never mentioned in the book, however, he was the main character. I think Rachel never expressed her anger toward her father, therefore, she got sick. I think this represents that repressed feelings can hurt you and that fame is not always something everyone craves. One does not appreciate what one has until it is taken away from us. It surprised me how in only a couple of questions I could notice so many things going on in the characters life. Thank you, Mr.Buxton for the exciting class we had today! I am having a lot of fun reading.
-Carolina Mejia Rodriguez
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