Blog

I was recently looking at some possible topics for my papers the other day, and I came across an article that sort of caught my eye. The article was about how much food grocery stores waste. The article said that almost 6 million tons of food is dumped annually. Today’s economy is rough. Everyone knows it. A lot of people are having hardships now. I do not know why grocery stores would throw away all of the food that they have that needs to be rotated or that is close to the expiration date. There are a lot of people out there that are struggling to put food on the table for their families, and I think that more grocery store chains should realize this and do something about it. Grocery stores have the resources to help these families who are in need food. I do not see why some of them decided not to help people in need. There are also many soup kitchens that would love to have the extra food to give to people who are in need. Grocery stores are not the only ones that waste countless amounts of food a year. Many restaurants also end up throwing away tons of food that could be donated to different forms of charity. This just upsets me, because these are the places that could help others out and many of them do not take the time to do it. People would be better off if grocery stores and restaurants would help out people in need by donating their unwanted food.

REFLECTION

I have really noticed lately that I have a hard time picking out topics for papers. I am not sure why I make this harder on myself. I usually feel like I will pick a topic that will be boring for other people to read about. Also, sometimes I feel one way about a certain topic, but there is not enough research or evidence to back it up, so I end up having problems writing about it. I wish that good topics would just come to me, but they just seem to evade me. When I am asked to come up with a topic on the spot, my mind suddenly becomes blank of any ideas. Another thing that I have a problem with is letting other people look over my papers. I know that their feedback might be very helpful to me, but I really do not like the idea of it. I do not even like having my boyfriend or sister read any of my papers. This is why it is so hard for me to be comfortable with other people in our class reading over my papers. I guess I may have a fear that my writing might not be good enough or something. Maybe one day I will get over it, because I know that it is something that really should not bother me.

Standardized Testing

When I was in high school, being “taught to the test” for standardized testing was just starting. Our teachers were given packets of information, things we needed to learn and were told to focus more on the packet and less on what they had planned to teach. The idea was that the students would get better scores by being taught what was supposed to be on the standardized tests. This in turn would make the school look better and they would not lose any of their funding. I guess this is happening a lot these days, and I can remember during my senior year my English teacher talking to us about it. He talked about how he did not become a teacher just to teach us what was on a piece of paper. Basically, his freedom of choosing what we were going to learn was taken away from him, and our class really became boring because we would have to take “pre-tests” every week. I do not really think that “teaching to the test” really helps students. For one, I thought that it was boring and pretty stupid when we would have to go over seven pages of information that we “needed to know”, and then do other work in class. Also, there is so much pressure on students these days to do better and to score higher, that when the time comes to take the test they may be too nervous about screwing it up. I know some people in my school did not even try on their tests, because they were fed up with being pressured to do well. I know that what they did was childish but pressuring students until they are nervous to take the test is not much better. What I guess I am trying to say is that I really do not think that “teaching to the test” for standardized testing is a good idea. In fact, I think that it has negative effects on the students and the teachers who are forced to teach to it.