Writing for Social Awareness

Writing for Social Awareness Project

Prompts Chosen:

·       Media/ News Immersion: Watch the news and /or read a newspaper every day. Keep a daily diary for at least five days. For each day, choose 1 or 2 articles/news stories to focus on. Summarize the news story and write about your reaction to it. What does it make you think, feel, and/or know? Finally, write a final reflection on what you learned and realized from the experience.

·        Observe your surroundings (school, home, neighborhood, and media) : Write a list about all the scenes or situations you come across on a daily basis that you think are unfair and/or not right in some way. Pick one of the ideas from your list and write a longer entry about it -2-3 paragraphs. Describe the problem, what’s wrong with it, cause and effect, and possible solutions.

·       Write a reading response on a social issue in a literary work (your independent reading boo, short story, essay, or poem/song) Write a 3-5 paragraph reading response. What problem/issue is it about? What is the message? What does the text make you think, feel, and/or know about the issue?

News Diary

Day 1: There was a story about how hackers can access your credit card information with an app. They just put their phone on your wallet and they can access your credit card statements and pin. To prevent this, you can get a metal induced wallet or wrap your credit card in aluminum foil. This made me think how easy it is to access personal information nowadays. This made me realize how there’s an app for everything and you really need to pay attention to your surroundings.  Source: Good Morning America, ABC Channel 7

Day 2: A news story called Is Love Blind talk how when people speed date, they started putting paper bags over their heads. The reason for this is because the people want focus more on their date’s personality than their looks. This made me ask myself how shallow have people become. Obviously, not everyone is shallow nowadays but I find it very interesting how people need to kind of force themselves to focus on someone’s personality and not their looks. It made me realize that people have to prevent themselves from being considered shallow with their potential future partner. Source: Good Morning America, ABC Channel 7

Day 3:  There was an article online that was about an Idaho teacher who got into a lot of trouble for killing and skinning a rabbit in class while teaching a lesson. The biology teacher was trying to demonstrate how “foot gets to the table”. The teacher is facing disciplinary action after a complaint from a parent. This made me think that this is a form of animal cruelty. Killing an animal for human purposes, unless it’s for food, is wrong in my opinion. This made me realize that there are other forms of animal abuse and cruelty than just hitting and neglecting an animal. Source: NY Daily News

Day 4: In the news, there was a story on how Pope Francis is going to visit America. In the story, the mentioned how some think Pope Francis is working too fast on his ideas on gay marriage. This made me think that if a Pope, a person who is supposed to hold all the beliefs that the Bible says, isn’t’ discriminating against gay people, then why are other? This made me realized that there might be some hope for gays to receive the treatment they deserve since  a Pope is working on allowing gays into his church and getting equality and rights for gays. Source: Good Morning America, ABC Channel 7

Day 5:  A story in the news today was about a mother and her daughter, that was a toddler, was in a department store. The daughter started choking and a teenager came and performed CPR on the daughter. She learned how to do CPR form school. This made me think that the girl was really brave; she took a chance to help someone even though she didn’t know if it would work. This made me realized that anyone can become a hero just by doing a good, kind thing. Source; Good Morning America, ABC Channel 7

A Social Issue in Everyday Life

      Every day, I see at least one person with clothes that are dirty and tattered. I see a person digging through the garbage. I see a person with a shopping cart full of empty cans and bottles. These are the signs that homeless people bear. Homelessness is big issue in New York City. When you walk out of your home, you’ll see at least one homeless person on your way to work, or to see a friend.

      A lot of things could cause homelessness. Whether it’s people kicking out relatives, being a drug addict, an alcoholic, not having money to pay the rent and more. Being homeless, you won’t be able to shower. You may always wonder where your next meal is coming from. You might end up jail for stealing some food or robbing someone for money to buy food.

      Some possible solutions to help with homelessness are if the person is a drug addict or an alcoholic, we could help get them into a program. A program that would help them get sober and find a job and a place to live. If they aren’t, we could still try and help them find a job. We could be generous and give them some money or food, offer them a place to stay. We could also start by building more homeless shelters. With more homeless shelters, the homeless could have places to go without having to fight over a spot at the limited amount of shelters we have. These are some solutions that might help with the issue of being homeless in New York.

Reading Response

            Capital punishment is a controversial topic. More commonly known as the death penalty, some people favor it, while others oppose it. In the article To Kill or Not to Kill by Patricia Smith, the author talks about the decline in the use of the death penalty in the US. She wants readers to know, despite it being legal in the majority of states, the use of the death penalty isn’t as high as its use in the past.

            Smith uses words like “terribly wrong” and “lethal injection” to express her opinion. She also says “high costs.” Smith says “the high costs of carrying out death sentences has been a factor,” while describing why the use of the death penalty has gone down. I think that both opinions on the death penalty are represented. Smith includes opinions that represent why the death penalty shouldn’t be used and opinions on why it should. For example, the article says, “Other death penalty supporters say that capital punishment serves as a deterrent, stopping would-be killers, since they’d fear the possibility of execution.” It also says people who oppose the death penalty say killing is wrong, no matter the crime.

            I think Smith is trying to get readers to think about the use of the death penalty. In my own opinion, I think the death penalty is wrong and isn’t justice. I think no one should play God, meaning they shouldn’t decide who gets to live or die. I also think that killing the committer of the crime would be much easier than for them to go to jail because there are worse things than death. I think the author leans more to the side that the death penalty shouldn’t be used since she uses words such as “terribly”, “lethal”, and “high costs.”

            After reading this article, my opinion hasn’t changed on whether the death penalty should be used or not. I think New York did the right thing by choosing not to use the death penalty as punishment. I would like to research more cases on botched executions (executions that went wrong) and how they went wrong.