Coming of Age #1

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

In my book Jeannette, the main character practically raises herself. Her parents don't really want to take on the responsibilty of raising their 4 children. After living in so many places, she has seen many kinds of situations that make her strong. She is determined to make something of herself, she doesn't want to end up in the same situation as her parents, absolutley brilliant but doing nothing with their talent. She doesn't want to stay in the same place for the rest of her life, where she can't do what she truly wants.

The author is saying that not everybody has the same youth. Some people have it much worse than others, like the author, who lived a life of poverty but somehow made it through everyday. But that doesn't mean you can't have fun. She took the better of the situation and found her own ways to have a good time even with the little she had. She always tried to make things better than what they were and that made her who she is today.

Test Prep #3

The Bay Citizen

Mental Health Center for Youth Is Closing

By Trey Bundy

Published: April 19, 2012

   A center for mental health treatment in Sanfrancisco is being closed down. 14 teenagers that have come from traumatic backgrounds are being transferred to other places.  The children are so messed up that other programs have refused them, only that center accepting them. I find this very unfair, for the city to close down the only place that they could go to. I disagree with the city closing down the center and using that money for other programs.
  
  The most common diagnosis is post-traumatic stress disorder. They are the children with the highest level of any young person in the system. These teenagers come from abusive and neglected backgrounds. They are so scarred that they are even aggressive toward grown-ups and even other kids. The center was the city's only safe residential program these type of teenagers. It is unfair to send them away to other places where they are not accepted, to send them away where they cannot receive the enough attention they need.
  
   By the time the youth reaches the age of 13, they have already been in 10 or 12 different centers. The center uses $15,000 a month to maintain each client. But the city has come to a agreement to use the remaining money for other programs that serve at-risk youth. Over the last 5 years, there has been an increase in the number of teenagers who are psychotic or have schizophrenic. This is bad because many of the youth are going to go back to their communities, where there is a bigger chance of them being sent to the juvenile justice system, while others are going to other programs that don't offer everything they need.

    This is unfair. It is like sending a child who is autistic and needs to be sent to a different location to recieve different educational requirments to a public school who barely has any programs. It is like taking a animal that needs to be in the ocean and putting it in a lagoon. Some of the things that it needs are there, but not all. What will become of the teenagers? Will they go back to their old ways, or will they become worse?

       

      

Test Prep Entry #2

• What did the student do wrong? What could he/she have done to include the source correctly?:

The student could have put quotation marks around the source and stating the title of the work instead of just copying and pasting the text

• Write a sentence using the original source correctly; use a quotation or paraphrase. Also, make sure to cite correctly.:

"There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies." from A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings

 

• What are at least 3 ways to avoid plagiarizing?:

*paraphrasing
*citing the source
*not taking the easy way out