Discussion Day

Today was discussion day. I don't know how to start this blog, but I guess I'll start it how we started class. We started off by continuing the podcast. We would stop the podcast every few minutes to talk about what we just heard and that led to the beginning of the debate. One of the first things we talked about which I mentioned in yesterdays blog was the asylum. Asylum was first created in 1951 at a U.N. meeting that was called to talk about refugees going from one country to another. The original criteria to seek asylum was created at the meeting, and it listed you had to be suffering from one of these five things: race, religion, nationality, political beliefs, or social groups. However, when Obama became president he added a sixth category of domestic violence. This was in effect until recently when Trump became president. Personally, I am against Trump and don't exactly believe in what he does sometimes, so this topic brings out a lot of strong opinions. In the podcast they explained that Trump is chipping away at asylum, and is changing so much in such a short period of time. Trump now denies the victims of domestic violence and gang violence, and has put something called metering in effect, which limits the amounts of migrants seeking asylums. The fact that raised the most concern for me was that Trump has suggested we use Mexico as a 'waiting room' for immigrants trying to get into the U.S. ??????????????????? I do not understand how this is a good solution. Although it may be slightly better than living in a terrible condition of their home, will it not eventually cause the exact same problem the U.S. is currently having? Too many people are going to want to stay in this little waiting area and if the U.S. knows they have some place to stay this might delay the acceptance of immigration to even longer than what it is right now. Also, currently how the United States handles it, as stated in the podcast, is immigrants are let in with restrictions or maybe an ankle cuff but are still allowed to live and work here. If we changed it to now people must live in Mexico, it will be much worse for people. I understand it is a hard situation and it's hard to please everyone but I don't understand why the conditions are now getting worse instead of improving.
                 In the discussion, many people participated and I was surprised at some of the people's comments and also shocked at who was saying what. In my opinion, Colin Westermeyer really did a good job brining up points and talking about compromise. Also, I was really proud of Patty for keeping his inputs short and important. What I didn't exactly like was the input from Trent. I do realize that I most likely didn't like it because we have such different point of views, but I feel he didn't exactly back himself up or provide any explanation. I was overall proud of the class though and would love to do this again.

Preparing for Debate

Today in class we decided we wanted to try something new. Tomorrow Mr. Schick has told us we will have a debate, or a class discussion on the topic of migration and the current state of immigration for the U.S. We started off by discussing how we were going to handle this. Our class has the tendency to talk over each other and as one side of the room talks to Mr. Schick the other side finds new conversation. Because we all know this is true, we decided to split up into 3 sections; pro Trump, neutral, and against Trump. We also decided to add a time limit of two minutes, for students like Patty that would talk the whole class if this wasn't set. After coming up with a few basic guidelines, we listened to a podcast about asylums. My first thought was an insane asylum, but it actually is like a refugee camp for immigrants in poor conditions. I'm glad I was informed of that for the discussion tomorrow, and I'm excited to see how we do tomorrow.

Class Today pt. 20

Class today went by relatively fast. We had it first period this morning and we started off with a story time from Mr. Schick and a class rating of the 8th grade teacher Mr. White. (who I've never had but with all the stores shared about him I feel like I have.) Instead of using a powerpoint like every other class, we went through the powerpoint from yesterday with a section of a textbook going over the same information. As we found a highlighted word in the text that matched up with the powerpoint, one of us would read it out loud. We also found that some of the information in the text was more accurate than the information on the power point. That led to us looking up information to fact check and figuring out what was accurate and what was outdated/no longer true.

New Unit

Today in class we started a new unit. This unit is called migration, and is the last unit before exams. When Mr. Schick told us this I honestly was surprised because that means only one unit until Christmas break!!!!! Which is very exciting and also stressful because I am not ready to take my first exams. In middle school I never had to take exams, or at least exams that counted towards your grade and so this will be a first for me. Hopefully I don't fail because I have the tendency to forget everything from a unit after we take the test, which is not ideal for exams. Also, I am not the best at studying and studying for exams will be challenging. Anyways, today in class as said earlier we started this new unit and only went through a couple of slides learning about things I somewhat had learned previously.

Pop Quiz

I hate pop quizzes. We were going over the worksheet that we filled out yesterday, and right after he collected them he gave us a quiz on the same questions. I don't know how it's possible but within those 5 minutes I forgot all the information we had just learned. When I went to go turn in my pop quiz I saw the paper on top had way different bubbles filled in than I did. Then after I turned in my paper I looked at the girl sitting behind me's paper and she had different bubbles filled in than BOTH my answers and the paper that was on top when I turned mine in. So basically two of us are doomed. Or maybe all three of us who knows. But in other news its the last day before break and I'm SO excited for thanksgiving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

4 Minute Video

Today for the whole class period we watched a four minute video. Now I know that makes no sense as to how we could only watch a four minute video for the whole 50 minutes of class today. Well, we started off the class with our usual chatter and craziness, and then Mr. Schick passed out the work sheets. We were to take notes on this four minute video and answer questions about it. We watched the video all the way through the first time, and wrote down every answer we possibly could in those 4 short minutes. After watching it through once, we watched a second time, this time stopping the video every time there was an answer and talking about it. After going down the paper and answering almost every question together as a class, the 50 minutes were up and class was dismissed.

Class Today

Today we were on a community bell so the classes were all shortened by 10 minutes. We had Mr. Schicks class 2nd mod right before the assembly. We went over all the notes we took yesterday on the Demographic Transition. Everything that was in my blog yesterday was what we learned today. We took notes and then somehow got into the discussion of contraception. Ironically the assembly was about adoption and abortion, which is what we had started to talk about at the end of class. It was a weird assembly but it made us have shortened classes so it was worth it.

Notes on Demographic Transition

           According to Wikipedia, "Demographic Transition is the transition from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as a country or a region developed from a pre-industrial to a industrialized economic system." When put in simpler terms, demographic transition is the transition from a pre-industrial nation with a high birth and death rate to a industrial nation with a low birth and death rate. The demographic transition is thought to predict that as a nation grows to be more wealthy, birth rates will go down. Scholars also question if industrialization and higher income can lead to lower population, or if lower population leads to industrialization and a higher income.
           Most developed countries are in the transition process right now. However there are four-five stages of this transition and all of it happens over a long period of time. The first stage is called pre-transition. This is categorized by high birth rates, and high fluctuating death rates. The two will be almost balanced, but both very high. In the second stage, the death rates seem to drop quickly because of food improvements along with improvements in sanitation. This increases life expectancy and reduces diseases. The third stage is when we see birth rates start to fall. This is due to increases in wages, urbanization, an increase in the education of women, and a reduction in the value of children's  work. This is where we see population growth leveling off. In the fourth stage which is mainly considered to be the last stage, there are low birth and death rates. Birth rates may drop to a level that causes the population to shrink, a threat to many industries that rely on this population growth. Although the fourth stage is considered to be the last stage, there is a 'fifth stage' that some people consider nations to have. This is when nations move into below-replacement fertility levels. Along with this some consider stage five to be very different, and actually suggest an increase in fertility. This is a very idealized picture of population change, but this is the basics of demographic transition.

Last Period

Class today was last period so that means we didn't get mic done. Last period makes everyone hyper and honestly no one is paying attention. For the first solid 15 minutes we did absolutely nothing until Mr. Schick came back and attempted on teaching more on the AP unit. I tried to see how many times I could write Syd on my paper without overlapping the letters or running out of room. After that I decided I should probably take a couple notes so I started doing that until we went on to just looking at pictures of maps. Then I gave myself a dread and for the last 7 minutes Mr. Schick let us do our blogs which is what I'm doing right now.

AP Human Geo

If you're confused on why my blog is titled AP human geo instead of honors, that is because Mr. Schick decided to give us an AP power point today on the unit we had previously learned at honors level. To be honest it wasn't that much harder, the only real difference was the AP powerpoint went further into detail on certain topics we just briefly learned about. I'm not exactly sure why we're doing this AP powerpoint, but hopefully we don't take another test on it. Our school doesn't offer AP human geo this year to freshman, and so our honors class is the highest class you can be in. (Slight flex) If we did have a AP class I would most likely take it, but for right now I'm perfectly fine being in just honors.

Test Day

Today in class we took a test, clearly stated by the title. The first 15 questions were all related to the CIA World Factbook where we had 15 minutes to find the right answer. Mr. Schick had previously told us about this section on the test so I was prepared for it and I think I aced it. After the 15 minutes for the online questions, we had the whole rest of class to complete everything else. There were a few questions that I stumbled on, like ones related to the pull factors and and then one question where it asked what side of the population pyramid was for men and which was women. Other than that I felt the test was fairly easy, and Mr. Schick tried something new for this test and made us keep the tests until the bell rung. The back page was blank for us to draw cartoons relating to our previous unit. I drew Mr. Schick as a population pyramid and then I drew out a blog post.

More on Population Pyramids

Today in class we continued learning about population pyramids. Instead of looking at examples of made up places we looked at population pyramids of actual citied and towns around the U.S. We were given the city name and the pyramid, and we had to guess why each pyramid looked the way it did. For example, some pyramids were really heavily populated around the 19-25 age group. This was because of a big college in that city where most of the population moves to that city for college and then moves away for job opportunities, making the older population lower. The younger population is lower because the bulk of the population doesn't have time to start a family and have kids if they're busy with college.

Population Pyramids

Today we are on a community bell because of All Saints Day. We have mass after 2nd mod and it causes all of our classes to be shortened. At the start of today's class, we just sat around and talked, played on our computers, or did whatever we wanted. After about 10 minutes Mr. Schick started the lesson. We started our last topic of the unit, learning about population pyramids. We learned that there are 3 types of pyramids, the box, the Christmas tree, and the cup. The box is for developed countries with a growing population. This is for countries like the United States, and Sweden, that have similar amounts for all age groups. The cup is for countries that are developed but have a declining population. This is for countries like Japan, where there are more old people than young. The third and final pyramid is the Christmas tree, which is for developing countries, that have a high fertility rate and a low life expectancy. This is for countries like 3rd world countries, that have more younger people than old.