12/12

Today we had a substitute in class since Mr.Schick wasn't here. We went up to the substitutes classroom on the third floor. I worked on my essays just like most people and I finished my first essay and started on my second one. The substitute also let us listen to music on our phones which was really nice of him. 

12/11

Today in class we took a test on immigration and asylum. I felt that I did well on the test and thought it was fairly easy. There were a couple that I may have mixed up like immigration and migration, and then there was the word "Brain Drain" which I remember talking about it but I just couldn't remember what it meant. Anyway mid-terms are coming up next week and I am not ready for them at all so I really have to study this week.

12/10

Today in class we talked about how our textbooks are sometimes outdated and that can lead to getting wrong information. The book we were using had studies from the year 2010 which was almost 9 years ago. The studies talked about how people in the US used to not think of immigration as a big deal but we know now that it is a very prominent topic in today's media. It also criticized the European people for being against immigration because it is hanging their culture while back 100 years ago that's what they were doing to the US.

12/6

Passing of the 1921 act and the national origins act in 1924 by the US congress marked the end of unrestricted immigration in the US. Unauthorized immigrants are those who enter a country without proper documents. Characteristics of unauthorized immigrants in the US. Roughly 58% emigrate from Mexico. Of 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants nearly 1 million are children.

12/5

I was not in class because I was sick.

12/4

The US has around 80 million people who migrated to the US between the years 1820 to 2015, this includes 42 million who were alive in 2015. In 1790 the US population was only 3.9 million people, 950,000 of those people had immigrated to the colonies. In 1790 around 62% of the immigrant that came to the colonies were from Europe, and from that 45-50% came from The United Kingdom or The Republic of Ireland. Between 1820 and 1920 around 32 million people came to the US, and 90% of these immigrants were from Europe.

Class discussion blog

Yesterday we had the debate. Overall I thought that the debate went fairly well, a lot of people that usually don't talk in class got involved and I thought that was very good. I learned more about immigration in that class than I had in my entire life, and although my opinion didn't change I did learn a lot. One thing I learned was how Trump authorized military personal stationed at the border to use lethal fire of people start throwing things such as rocks, this in my mind is not a bad idea in some circumstances, but it needs to be the last resort in that situation, officers can not shoot someone to death if they throw a pebble it needs to be controlled and an absolute last resort. Another thing I learned about was the people being tear gassed. I had heard about this in the news but I didn't know much about it before we discussed it in class. In my opinion I thought that an excellent show of force, it showed authority and power, it was also a good move since it deterred the threat without any lethal consequences. One last thing that I learned from our debate was how big of an issue immigration really is. I thought that it was only thousands of people trying to cross the border but in fact it's millions. This changed my opinion on the situation from a being against open borders to being very strongly against open borders. The reason for this is very simple, safety and jobs. For one safety is the most important the people that could be getting in could be very dangerous and want to get in to hurt the country, secondly is our jobs we can't have unauthorized citizens be taking jobs from good hard working American citizens, we need to step up for our people, the American people and defend our country from the evil but be welcoming to the good.

11/29

Today we talked and discussed about class discussions on current topics and whether they were a good idea or not. I thought it was an excellent idea since a lot of  kids (including myself) don't know much about whats happening in the world today. I look forward to our first discussion tomorrow and see how it goes.

11/28

Today we learned that there were some discrepancies in our book. One instance of this was that on our packet that was handed out to us in class read that only 3% of the worlds population are international immigrants, however on the power point it read that it was 9% of the population. We also had a debate about illegal immigrants and what society has labeled them as. I think that illegal immigrants is what we should call them, however I do not think it is right to call out random people on the streets and label them this just because they're Mexican or Hispanic. The reason that I do not like calling them undocumented immigrants is because it makes it seem that the crime they are committing is not as serious as it really is, to me it has the same affect as calling a drug dealer a substance seller. Some people feel bad for the legal immigrant that are being called illegals and I do to, but that does not mean we should hold the real violators of this law be treated the same respect.

11/26

Key Issues

1. Where are migrants distributed?

2. Where do people migrate within a country?

3. Why do people migrate?

4. Why do migrants face obstacles?

Mobility is the most generalized term that refers to all types of movements. Short term and repetitive acts of mobility are called circulation. A permanent move to a different country is called migration. International migration is a permanent move to a different country. Internal migration is a permanent move within the same country. Only 9% of the worlds population are international immigrants. The US has more foreign born residents than any other country.

11/20

Today in class we reviewed our worksheet that we worked on yesterday, and then we took a pop quiz that had questions relating to the worksheet we just did. I felt that I did pretty well on the quiz but there were 2 that I forgot the answer to and probably got wrong.

11/19

Today in class we watched a video about population ad migration. The person in the video's name was Hans Rosling who used to teach a class on Global Health. There was a graph in the video with that showed life expectancy and income in countries from 1700 to 2009. On the graph the y-axis represented the lifespan of people in the country and the x-axis represented the income of people. The lower left section in the graph represented nations with poor and sick citizens while the upper right represented the citizens that were rich and healthy.

11/14

Today in class we talked more in depth about Demographic Transition or DT. We learned that there are four stages of Demographic transition and that if you go to a higher stage you can not revert back to a lower stage, for example going from stage 3 to stage 2. We also learned that the United States was in stage 3 which means it had low birth rates and low death rates, and that the population would be declining if it weren't for immigration.

11/13

The Demographic Transition or DT is when a country's birth and death rates go from being high to becoming low. This happens when a region develops from a pre-industrial era to a industrial economy. This idea was first presented by an American demographer named Warren Thompson in 1929, who saw changes in Americas birth and death rates over the last 200 years.

https://www.history.com/shows/men-who-built-america

11/7

Today in class we took a test. The test was very easy and I felt I did very well. For the test we had to look things up on the CIA world fact book which we have been using in class fro the past few weeks. One question that I found very interesting on the test that I can remember was what country uses the least amount of their GDP on military their military. The nation that uses the least that I found was Iceland which I don't know why but it came as a surprise  to me.

11/5

Today in class we talked some more about population pyramid. We went over some stranger pyramid shapes such as Ann Arbor, Michigan which had a high population of 20-30 year old's because Michigan University is located in Ann Arbor. Another strange pyramid that we discussed was Leavenworth, Kansas which had a large population of middle aged men and women, this is because there is a very large penitentiary there. What was funny about this was that I used to live in Leavenworth because my dad was stationed at Fort Leavenworth when I was around 4 years old, but I don't remember the penitentiary since I was so little. 

11/1

In today's class we talked about population pyramids. There are three basic shapes of population pyramids, which are the Christmas tree, the box, and the cup. The Christmas tree was the first and usually meant that country was under developed. The second was the box and the box meant that the country was a developed country but it's birth rate was declining. The last one was the cup and this meant that the country was developed but not many children are being born. 

10/31

I was snot in class today because i was sick

10/29

It's almost the end of the first quarter and we reviewed our blogs from Friday. I had a mistaken my blog and said that men in america drop out of school at 16 years old when that actually means that that is how many years of schooling they had not age when in school. We also talked about the Somalian pirates and how the film that was based on a true story called Captain Phillips was released about that event. The movie is about how some Somalian pirates took over a ship and held it for ransom, but then the some Navy S.e.a.l.s were contacted and they freed the prisoners. I just thought that it was funny how that conversation came up when my dad who works in the military only a few days ago had met one of those Navy S.e.a.l.s that was on the operation.

10/26

Germany

1. Only 30% of Germany's population is Roman Catholic. I found this interesting because Catholicism is very wide spread in Europe and that a lot of European culture is largely based on religion I just thought the percentage would be higher.

2.The population growth rate is extremely low at only -0.16% which is ranked 208 in the world. With Germany being such a big and prominent country I expected the population to be increasing not decreasing.

3. Another interesting fact about Germany is that 91% of their populations ethnicity is made up of Germans. I think this is because Germans tend to be very proud and have strong feelings for their country so generation after generation they continue to stay.

United States

1. The United States spends the most on health care in the world, with a health expenditure of 17.1% of our GDP. I knew that the United States was one of the leading researchers in health but I had no clue that we did so much to help.

2. Another fact that I found interesting about the United States was that the male expectancy for school was only to 16 years old. This would mean on average the men tend to drop out of school in either there sophomore or junior years of high school.  

10/23

Today in class we talked about the Birth Rate, the birth rate of a country takes in to account the total births per every 1000 women, for a country to have an increase in people the birth rate would have to be 2.1 or higher and less and the population would decrease, this does not take into account deaths and migration. The United States' birth rate is 12.5 per 1000 women which is ranked 158 globally in the CIA fact book.

10/22

Today's topic was very interesting on how much the population has grown in the past 200 years. What really surprised me was the statistic that the world hit it's first billion in the first 10,000 years but after that it sky rocketed and no we get a billion more every 12-14 years. This also got me thinking will the rest of the world have to do something like what China did with the one child policy? Because it is becoming a more and more relevant issue and if something doesn't change then we will be, as you said, literally fighting over water. That's just what I thought about the issue.

10/17

In today's class we reviewed our notes for the test that we have tomorrow. I've been studying a lot the past week to get ready for the test. At the end of class I answered the question about "what time is it on the north and south poles?" and even though I knew the answer, which is that there is no time because all the time zones converge on that point, I had always found that very interesting that there is a spot on the world that there is no concept of time. Well there is a concept of time you still get older but there is no 2:00 or 12:00 and I find that very interesting.

10/16

In the future I think that the world will be a much different place. In the future I think that there will be many more laws in place to stop land and air pollution, such as electric cars only and no plastic straws and other things that would help the environment. I also think that by the time I am 30 we would have put a man on mars. In the future I would hope that our relations with countries such as North Korea and Saudi Arabia will have become better and that there won't be the threat of war. Lastly I think that there will be more and more laws being put in place to reduce over population.

10/11

I'm finally not sick anymore! But today we have a football game and it's supposed to rain during it so I might get sick once more. Besides that I had a good day. I recently changed my hair style so I got a lot of questions for that, and I actually think i'm going to change it back. Also I thought about what we talked about in class and found it very interesting how with out even knowing it our every move can be tracked by someone on earth. Although many people found this very appalling I thought that it's a good idea with consent and agreement that a company or someone can track your location for your own safety. People thought it was an invasion of privacy and it can be if you don't want it but it can be used to help and save lives. So overall in my mind the good outweighs the bad on this topic.

10/4

Today I had a math test first thing in the morning. The test was very easy and only consisted of 10 questions and I ended up getting a 91% on the test. Then I also had a test in health class and I'm still waiting on the result for that one. After school today was the powder puff game which I was looking forward to but then I remembered that we had a football game and I was going to miss it. Our game was against Pallotti and they're a very good team. Earlier in the season we lost to Boy's Latin 20-23 but Pallotti had beaten them 54-0, so we were not supposed to win against them. On the first play of the game Pallotti scored and we thought we were done for after that, but we stuck through and won the game 25-8 .

10/3

All the things we talked about in class today were very interesting. I didn't think about how the GPS in our phones can have some negative sides to it. It amazes me how blind we are to the real consequences of things we do in our daily lives, also with how the Alexa and other personal home assistants could potentially be negative. Some people don't want them in their houses because they think it's an invasion of privacy, but I think that the people who designed these things never had bad intentions when creating them. There are risks that come with everything but it's our choice to decide if we want to take on that risk or not.

10/2

Today in class we went over our tests on Socrates and Elbert Hubbard. I got a 85 on the test which I was happy with but I thought I could've done better. Today I had an off mod first which was pretty cool, but during the off mod I was planning to eat breakfast in the cafeteria but forgot my wallet in my moms car so I went through the day pretty hungry. I also had football practice today, because on Thursday we have a game against Palotti. While at practice I fell on my hand awkwardly and may have fractured it. I went and saw the physical trainer after practice and they said to put ice on it and come back tomorrow.

9/27

Today in class I didn't do much but that's mostly because I wasn't there instead I had to go and get my braces tightened. The appointment was very fast and only took like 5 minutes so I got in and left, but for the rest of the day my teeth hurt really badly. I got back to school so fast that I was still in the Human Geo, so when I got back I asked what to do and people told me to finish doing my maps but I had already done that at home so I just had conversations with the people around me.

9/26

I had a pretty good overall day today. The first good thing about today was that it was Thursday, the best day of the week. What was also cool about today was that we got to go to the upper gym during our 3rd mod and check out all the clubs that our school has, I didn't sign up for any but the mountain biking and fishing clubs looked interesting. Next I went to Intro to bible and had a test on our first chapter, Mr. Huber graded them in class and we got our scores back I got a 23/25 or a 92% which I felt really good about. The last awesome thing about today was that we won our Jv football game against St. Marys the final score was 18-8, I got in in the fourth quarter and got a tackle and an assist.

9/25

In today's lesson we went over different maps throughout history and how they changed over time. The first map we saw didn't even look like a map and was made out of sea shells and bamboo, this map was supposed to represent were certain islands were and the high and low tides. We also learned that maps used to be mainly directional devices explaining how to get from point A to point B, but are now most commonly used to communicate the location of complex geographical places. The next thing we talked about were meridians and parallels, a meridian is an arc drawn between the north and south poles using latitude and a parallel is the same thing but it uses longitude. The last thing we learned was scales on maps and how they can be written in one of three ways a ratio or fraction, written scale, or a graphic scale.

9/24

Overall I agree with the points of the cartographers in the video and how we should change to the Gall-Peters map, but there are some points that I either didn't understand or didn't agree with. In the video they talk about how the size of a country or continent may change the way we see a country and how powerful it is. However later on in the video they talk about how Greenland and Africa look roughly the same size on the traditional map but in reality Africa is around 14 times the size of Greenland, the part of this I didn't understand was that even though Greenland is represented as being much bigger than it really is it still isn't that powerful in the worlds view. They say that the size changes how we see power but Greenland is pictured as being large but in fact it is not perceived as having much power in todays world.

A message to Garcia impressions

I very much agree with the message that Elbert Hubbard is trying to convey in his short story A Message to Garcia it is something that I think we can all learn from. People need to take action, we can't just sit around and wait for someone else to do our job for us. More people should be like Rowan, he doesn't ask many questions he figures it out himself, he takes action and does what he is told. Many people in todays society put blame on other people and wait on them to fix the problem instead of doing it themselves like Hubbard is trying to tell us to do. This was my take on the story.

Today in class we learned about the Gall-Peters map. The Gall-Peters map is a more accurate representation of the size of countries and continents in the world. In common maps we see that the prominent world powers such as the US, Russia, and Europe are actually bigger on these maps that they actually are. I think that we should change our current maps to the Gall-Peters map because its more accurate information and gives us a better representation and better knowledge of our world for and how size dose not mean how powerful a country is.

9/8

On my third day at John Carroll I had a pretty good day. My first period was an unscheduled. In this I met up with my friends Ham Sullivan and Terrence Reed which are both on the JV football team with me. Then I went to my second period class which was English with Mrs. Zurkowski which was very fun because at the beginning of class we did some yoga. In my third period class of Health we went over a Quiz we had done the previous day which I got an 85% on so I was happy with that. We then had lunch. After lunch I went to Mr.Schick's class. We learned about a man named Elbert Hubbard who was a writer who wrote a story called A Message to Garcia,.

first day of school

Today was my first day of school at John Carroll. Today in Human Geography we first called role and showed Mr. Schick that we had brought our composition notebooks that he told us to bring during orientation, I think everyone brought their note books today.Then we went over his syllabus which was pretty straight forward. Lastly that we all went down and got our picture taken for our yearbook and student I.D. Overall I had a great first day of high school.

9/17

Today in class we took a test on excellence. I felt that I did fairly well on the test and am excited to see what I got on it. The only question I got stuck on was one asking me what was the main gathering place in ancient Greece, I was stuck on it for like ten minutes when I finally remembered it is called the Agora. The two essay questions were fairly easy as well, they asked how the trial of Socrates happened and how the quote "The unexamined life isn't worth living". I wrote about how Socrates was accused of misleading the children of Greece and dishonoring the gods. I also wrote how Socrates was given a chance to escape but decided not to. For the second essay question I answered how government and media play a huge role in what we learn and what opportunities we are exposed to on a daily basis.

9/14

A message to Garcia was very popular in the time it was published, it sold over 40 million copies worldwide. It was translated into 37 different languages, It was written in March of 1899. The book had two movies based off of it in 1916 and 1936. The phrase "take a message to Garcia" meant to take initiative. The book was set in the Spanish American War.
Slipshod- careless lackadaisical, slapdash, remiss.
Imbecility- feebleness, stupidity.
Stenographer- A person who takes dictation in shorthand.
Missive- A letter, especially a long or official.
The Greek word for excellence is arete.
Agora- A gathering place the center of political, spiritual, and athletic life.
Polis- Political entities ruled by their bodies of citizens, is the origin of the words politics, metropolitan, poll.
508 BCE the birth of democracy the first time in recorded history that a people had revolted against their rulers.

9/13

I agree with Socrates quote "Unexamined life is not worth living."

This quote still has meaning in todays world. For example people in communist countries like China and North Korea are living these types of lives. The people in these countries follow by the teachings and rules of their government, and have no say in changing or speaking up about things that they disagree with or questions that they have. Where as in America and other democratic countries we are free to have our own views and disagree with each other and freely ask questions. Many people in These communist countries try to escape or even lead them to self harm because they have no free will and no human rights.

9/11

Agora- A gathering place, the center of political, spiritual, athletic, and artistic life.

Polis-  Political entities ruled by their bodies of citizens. Is e origin of the words politics, metropolitan, and poll.

508 BCE - The birth of democracy- The first time in recorded history that a people had revolted against their rulers.

Socrates the early years- Worked as a stone mason as a young man, he fought in the Peloponnesian war. His background may have shaped the way he viewed the world.
Socrates Teacher- He met with young students in his workshop in the Agora. His method was to ask a series of questions to determine their beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. His method led to the scientific method.
Socrates Controversy- Athens was a great city that attracted brilliant thinkers, people came from all over the world for astronomy, medicine, meteorology, literature, philosophy, and all things scientific. His teachings often went against traditional thinking.

9/10

Today we mostly took notes here is what we took notes about. We learned that A message to Garcia written by Elbert Hubbard sold over 40 million copies in the US and was very popular when it was written. The Author of the book became very rich and wealthy after the stories success. Elbert Hubbard died on May 7 1915 while aboard the RMS Lusitania. We also learned that one of the characters in the book William McKinley, the 25th president, had a mountain named after him but the name was later changed to Denali in 2015 in respect for the natives who lived there.