Dear Chamblee Community,
        I would love if my teachers were missing school to go on strike personally. Striking to protect their pay, and no school for a couple of days would be absolutely great! Unfortunately, the teachers in Chicago went on strike for their salaries being cut based on student tests. There are students that skip class, disrupt class, and ones who don't have the eagerness to learn which is why the teacher's salaries shouldn't be based on test scores, but there is also the argument of if the teacher is actually teaching or not.
        There are good and there are bad teachers. Teachers can be loving, involved, and caring. But some can be unfair and egotistical. A good teacher should make her students excited to come to school each day. A good teacher should respect her students, make them feel comfortable in the classroom, and be consistent. They will not snap back if a student asks a question. If they do, the student tends to not ask more questions. Then that causes them to fade out. This would consist of a bad teacher. When the bad teachers are evaluated in their classrooms it always seems as though they tell the students to act on their best behavior and pay attention more diligently than usual.I had an experience with this once. My teacher told us the principal was coming in so we needed to be on our best behavior and that teacher actually made us take notes off the board for the first time ever.  But, in reality those components should always be present in a student's learning environment, disregarding whomever is present in the classroom that particular evaluation day. These bad teachers should be punished for their wrong doing salary wise. 
          Some may say, teachers have to be teaching if the students are getting the answers correct. Although, they don't know that some teachers,the bad ones of course, may cram in work before the standardized tests or maybe even cheat so that their salaries don't get changed. Outside factors in communities, class disruptions, and student eagerness to learn effects children's test scores, but most importantly it's on if the teachers are eager to be a good or a bad teacher.

         
         


                                                                                  Sincerely, 
                                                                                                  Malaika English & Meghan Hall
                                                                                                    10th graders

          

Can you catwalk down a 8' wide 36' long runway with ten inch heels on, in front of over one thousand people? Well, I can't. I love to watch women do it often though. Fashion is so interesting. Like from the models being casts, the clothing designers & their inspirations, and  the setting of trends. I love to set trends..from hair, nails, make-up, clothes, and shoes. Not caring what others think and making it your own style is setting a trend, and that's all about what fashion is. Fashion sense is so important because it's like a sense of creativity. I would adore to be a model for a huge fashion company if I were maybe like...taller and skinnier but whatever. Watching over people do it is more fun. So what passion is my fashion? I encourage everyone to know what their passion is and maybe to endure some career in what they love and think they're good at.

Pets are often said to be helpful with a person’s well-being. How? Find some examples.
Have you ever heard of a dog being a man's best friend before? Well, lots of people probably have. Animals, especially one's pets, sort of give human beings a comfort that's unexplainable in my opinion. They often help humans  physiologically with being lonely. Old people and growing children in particular probably get the most comfort out of having a pet. Old people's well-beings aren't really that important because they have lived long enough to not even need a sense of comfort in their lives, but having a pet may comfort them if they have a lost one or it may make them an active person. Like, having to walk a dog is being active. For growing children, pets have the effect of making them more mature. You would rather your child grow up with a pet rather than to be an antisocial child or hooked on technology. It teaches them a sense of responsilibity and playfulness. Does your pet give you some type of comfort? How does caring for your pet effect your everyday life?

       As most teenage girls, I have grown up dreaming of my wedding day. I pictured myself in a stunning, white gown, standing next to someone who resembled Ken, the male Barbie. I would vision a crowd of friends and family that were there to see me enter into a never ending fairytale. For some reason, I always left the most important part out. Which is, having the man that God created just for me ask me to marry him.

          I experienced a life defining moment on February 14, 2010. That was the day that Michael, also known as the most perfect person in the world, asked me to marry him. The weather that day was so nice that it forced us to skip class and spend the afternoon sitting in the gazelle. I did notice that Michael’s smile, admirable and dandy, was a little wider than normal, and I assumed he was up to something. I had no idea what he was about to do though. When he asked if he could give me a foot massage, I was positive that something was about to happen. I went along with him, anxious to see what he had in store. About twenty minutes pasted before he casually asked what was hanging in my dorm room window that was facing by back. When I turned to look at my third floor window, with him kneeling carefully, he looked at me and asked, “Will you marry me?” Wow! I was in shock. When I turned to look at Michael he had pulled the ring out of his pocket and pushed it towards me. He anxiously waited for an answer while I sat there speechless. He finally interrupted the chaos that was going through my mind by saying, “Well?” I stumbled across the words, “Of course.”

            I thought it was the perfect fairytale to my sophomore year at Howard University. Then, something tragic happened, one day Michael and I were sitting in my dorm room watching people dance in the commons area outside my window, and someone suspicious looked up at my window and gestured his finger as the form of a gun and point at either, me, Michael, or both of us. Terribly afraid we looked at each other with great horror and confusion. We both were contemplating and wondering why anyone would want to come “kill” either of us. Michael and I were good people. We didn’t have trouble with anyone that stepped to our plate. But, then I thought. Maybe someone found out about the proposal, my past boyfriend, Will. Will was crazy for me, at the time when we went out I wasn’t trying to find love nor really be in a relationship. He sort of forced me to be his girlfriend. Then, two months after we were together he proposed to me. Unlucky for him that was the day I was planning to end everything between us because he started to become a pest, and I didn’t want the stress from him anymore. He was also captious when it came to everything about our relationship.  Since then he has been stalking me. He wants to know everything I do and get revenge. Revenge for what? I guess breaking his poor little insane heart, but I didn’t really care. Knowing me, the fearless one, Maia, I have always been known to be that one who when she strives, gets whatever she wants… and he’s what I wanted at the time. I thought I found love, but while in the relationship I was not as ebullient as usual. I was always sad. Wishing to just die and not deal with the pain, unfortunate and terrible, anymore.

            Maybe that random person was a friend of Will’s. Or was it Will? I didn’t take a good look at the person’s face. Now, I am in a panic mode. I told Michael we have to get out of here before anything bad happens. Michael, even more confused than I am, packs a bag and gets his car keys. We walk down the numerous flights of stairs, because maybe the elevator will be too slow, maybe the being that threw up the odd gesture would be on there. When we got outside, put our things in the trunk, and took off. I didn’t know where we were going, all I told Michael was to drive, drive until we get far away…

            The road, dark and gloomy, seemed so endless. It was creepy. We were still panicking in the mist of the darkness. “Just keep going baby,” I said to my fiancée. I did not want to stop until I knew the being was not following us. Suddenly, the engine light came on in the car. Shining on and off, bright red the light starting making a “beep, beep” sound. The car stopped. It’s around nine at night in Virginia. No lights on the road, so no one could see us and the car off to the side in the wet grass. So we walked north until we strained to see some type of light. There was none… no cars, no lamp posts, no reflective road signs. Suddenly a soft, kind of grudging noise came from the woods. It sounded like some type of human-like thing, yet a creature at the same time. My fiancée and I ducked down, kneeling carefully on the grass trying to make not one sudden movement.            

            My foot slipped into a four inch wide ditch. All of a sudden I could hear the being coming towards us, getting closer and closer. I could see that it had some type of construction hat on it with a light on the front. I did a double take because Will had a blue construction hat with a camera taped to the front of it which he used to record actions when he went hunting in the woods. The hat was blue… Terrified for my dear life, all I could do was scream, and try to lift myself out of the ditch. Michael tried to help me but he wasn’t hurrying as he did it. It seemed as though there was no type of fear upon his face. Like, he didn’t hear or see that this huge man was coming towards us with a gun in his left hand. It was puzzling me why he wasn’t afraid. Then, he started to shake me back and forth as if he was trying to wake me up. While still confused, I closed my eyes and just screamed even louder. I heard a gunshot. Who’d he shoot? Obviously not me, right? Because I’m still having thoughts and you don’t have thoughts when you’re dead. 

           I opened my eyes and saw Will with a damp teal wash cloth in his hand. The worried look on his face, as if I needed medical attention. More people were surrounded by him. One looked like a doctor, with the full white nurse suit on. I heard claps. Will said to me, “it was all a dream baby.” Then he planted his lips upon my forehead…