TOW # 30 Letter to a New APELC Student

Dear New APELC Student,

I hope you are ready for an interesting class. This class is not like your other classes. Expect to get really bad grades on your first few essays. Mr. Yost is grading you on the AP scale, and will be until the end of class. Expect to be disappointed with your test scores, you are going to see some grades and not like them at all. They will be C's and D's all throughout the class. However, if you play your cards right you can make it in the class by getting a B in the overall class.

What worked for me in the class is to pay attention. This seems like a no brainer, but it is very important and I can not stress it enough. The things that Mr. Yost go over in class are going to be on the tests that he gives you. You will not have to think abstractly in the class. All the knowledge that you need in the class is to think like the AP graders and then right an essay in which fits the rubric. There is nothing to it, except that it is extremely hard to pull off successfully.

What did not work for me in class is not being a part in the class discussion. It is imperative that you be a part of the class discussion. That is the only solid way that Mr. Yost knows that you are paying attention in class. He hands out worksheets and has projects to see if you know what you are doing, but asking questions and answering his questions are the best. If you afraid of being wrong in his class, don't be because you are in school to learn and being wrong is okay.

I think something that I would have liked to hear in the beginning of the class would be that this class will can be fun. I went into this class thinking that it would be really hard and that you would just be dragging through the mud trying to finish the class. During the Plato part of the year, it is pretty fun and during the year there are some times where I enjoyed being in the class.

The class is hard, but fun.

Sincerely,

An old APELC student

TOW 29 Good ol Freda

In the documentary one of the ideas is that Freda Kelly was an important person to the popularity of The Beatles. A main focus of the movie it elaborates in many ways. Kelly is a quiet character in The Beatles's history. One who has stuck to the shadows and has been someone who has helped from afar. Through here persistence and maintaining the fan club and at working on the magazine that was sent out every month kelly was the unsung hero that has finally reached the spotlight after many years.

One main aspect of improving The Beatles popularity was the constant work in The Beatles fan club. Freda Kelly was the secretary for the club and she made it her job that all the little girls and the boys would get letters back saying that The Beatles had received it. The club was always on top of their job and Freda kelly was said to have run quite an operation among her workers. Kelly would even take home letters to her apartment to work on them. She was dedicated and hardworking. Allowing The Beatles rise to fame smooth.

Another thing that Kelly did that was extremely helpful and revolutionary to the music world was that kelly had created a Beatles magazine. This was a magazine that held the most up to date things on everything Beatles. It was a new way that artists could get in touch with their fans.  Kelly invented this new mode of interaction and kept up with it all the way until The Beatles dissolved.

A major player in the growth of the most important band in the world. Freda Kelly was the secretary the helped propel The Beatles into golden status.

TOW #28 Good Ol' Freda

This documentary was about the secretary of The Beatles. Her name was Freda Kelly and she is still alive. This documentary tracks her life from the beginning of The Beatles to the current day. The main speaker in this documentary is Ms. Kelly. She speaks through the whole documentary explaining every what she was doing in respect to what The Beatles were doing. An example would be when The Beatles went to India, she said that she was there with them. The audience that the documentary is appealing to is The Beatles fan base. It is trying to educate them on someone they might have never known who was vitally important during Beatle-mania.

The documentary was trying to teach its audience about Freda Kelly. A person who has mostly been at the sidelines of The Beatles history, she was very important. The documentary uses pictures and interviews to achieve this idea. There are many pictures in which Freda Kelly is next to The Beatles or she is working with her group of girls on the many fan letters that The Beatles received during their years as a band. In the interviews it has important reporters and workers of Freda Kelly. In the interviews they talk about how Kelly liked to stay to the sidelines and help the band from afar.

Good Ol' Freda also explains how The Beatles rose and fell. In explaining the history and importance of Freda Kelly the documentary also explains the history of The Beatles. The documentary does this by comparing the history of Freda kelly to that of The Beatles. The documentary tells the two stories but has a balance between the two that is unnoticeable.

The final purpose that this movie was made was for Freda Kelly's grandson. At the end of the documentary Freda Kelly explains to the audience that she did not really talk about it a lot with her children when they were growing up and learning about The Beatles. Now Freda Kelly has changed her mind after her son died. Since she feels regret for not going into detail about her life with her son she wants her grandson to have what her son could not. The documentary captures this with the last few scenes as it shows Freda kelly with her grandson as they walk into the sunset,

TOW #27 TOW Reflction

This year has been one of growth and new experiences. I believe that from my original TOWs I have changed as a writer for the better.

I feel as though that I have steadily progressed as a writer. I have been able to write with more detail. I am able to get to the point and back up that point with few words. I have been able to keep my TOWs focused and organized. In the first few TOWs that I wrote I would begin very broad and then try to get specific. This however was not always the case as many times I ended up going off course. IN my later TOWs I started specific and moved to broader areas.

I think I have mastered putting the right amount of detail into my TOW. I feel as though I have not overflowed the TOW with quotes and I have also not made it full of just my thoughts in the TOW. I have made the TOWS a mixture of my analysis and quotes or aspects from the certain pieces that I analyzed.

I believe that I still need to improve on my introduction and conclusion. I began with weak introduction and conclusion paragraphs, and have slowly improved them. I still think, however, that they could be a lot better than they are now. They could be a little more broader and the conclusion paragraph could leave the reader with a better thought at the end of the TOW.

I think that my analysis essay greatly improved from this exercise. If it had not been for these TOWs I think that I would have weaker analysis essays.  These exercises allowed me time to think and work on the aspects of the analysis essay that I thought needed to be worked on.

TOW #26 IRB Post Banker to the Poor By: Muhammad Yunus

My plan for this TOW would be to establish a strong introduction and conclusion. I feel as though that my introductions need work. More specifically the introduction needs to be more general. I would also like my conclusions to be a little bit more specific. I would like the conclusions to have something that would allow the reader to have something to go away with.

Bangladesh has many people stuck in the spiral of poverty, and one man tries to find the way out for them. Muhammad Yunus, an economics teacher and Noble Peace Prize Laureate, wrote his stories in the biography Banker to the Poor. The first seven chapters follow his growth from a little boy in Chittagong to a student at Boulder, Colorado. It also shows how he was an activist for the Bangladesh independence movement, and how he has a desire to see his people out of poverty. The author uses real life examples to show how he has helped the people of Bangladesh.

After the independence of Bangladesh is declared and some of the dust has settled, Yunus moves in to lend some assistance. He goes to a college and applies to be the economics teacher. Through this position he is able to help many of the students get a better education so that they may better the country. Another way that Yunus proves to the reader that he is helping the community is by introducing the idea of microeconomics. The idea first begins with a stool maker he meets when doing a census with some of his students. He asks them how much the stool makers make as profit. When he finds out that they only make about two cents per stool and sell hundreds. They can only afford the raw materials for the next stools and not enough for food. Set on facing this problem head on Yunus gives money directly to the stool makers and not to the person with the raw materials. This introduction of money allowed the stool makers to become economically stable and have better lives for themselves. 

This break through idea has not been tested before and in the first seven chapters of the book shock the reader, and allow signs of hope for the people of Bangladesh. This was intended for the mass amount of people. Since many people do not know about the spiral of poverty in most parts of the world Muhammad Yunus introduces this to many people. He does it slowly but also being very detailed in his explanation of what is happening. I believe that this was a very goo way to start a biography on the many trials and tribulations that Muhammad Yunus had to take until he was recognized in his Nobel Peace Prize. 

TOW #25 All schools should have good teachers By: The Times editorial board

For this TOW I would like to focus on my transitions. Looking back on my other TOWs I did not have many transitions and I would like to change that. In this TOW I would also like to work on my use of details. I need to continue practicing on working in details into my essays and so this will help me grow into incorporating details.

The debate over who is a good teacher has gone on since teachers have taught in schools. Some argue that seniority is the definitive mark of a good teacher, while other believe that newer teachers are better because they are more adaptable unlike the veteran teachers. This article believes it can give some insight on the topic. Written by the New York Times Editorial board there are many people who would have written this article. However, it is not shown that many people wrote this article. It is as if only one person wrote the article and not an entire board. While the article tries to stay neutral it becomes biased towards the veteran teachers when it references a recent study in Markham Middle School.

In all arguments articles try to stay neutral, however this article takes an obvious biased towards the veteran teachers. During the article it references a study showing that when newer teachers were laid off and veteran teachers were allowed to do teach freely test scores increased. By using this evidence to prove that there is a difference between having newer teachers and veteran teachers the article takes a side against the newer teacher. After showing its true colors the article can be clearly interpreted.

The article is meant for the masses. It is meant to explain to parents what is going on with their school and the teachers. It is also meant to expose the problems with American schooling at the moment. Even though the article is biased towards the veteran teachers it does bring up the faults that both groups have.

I believe that this article could work on its position. If it chose one side over another then the article would have been a lot more effective as an outlook against the newer teachers.

IRB Introduction Post Fourth Marking Period Banker to the Poor By: Muhammad Yunus

This an autobiography of Muhammed Yunus and his Grameen Bank. Winning a Noble Peace prize off this ground breaking idea Muhammad Yunus shows the audience how his journey. he book follows his journey from a person who originally gave out small pieces of money to help out stool makers in his community to get the raw materials they need to creating a bank based off his ideas of micro-economics.

The idea of micro-economics is that someone lends a poor person some money so that they can get their business off the ground. From there the same person aids the person he lent to into working on good financial avenues. With this combination of teaching and introduction of money to the lower levels of society it has been used to break the downward spiral of poverty in many places in the world.

When I was younger I went to the Noble Peace Prize Museum in Norway and we were there when Muhammad Yunus was awarded the prize. I was too young to understand what he had done, but I did know that he had helped poor people through a fancy new type of economics. I would like to learn about micro-economics and see why he was awarded the prize at the time that he did.