Unique Essay

     I'm different from everybody else because I don't do things to follow what everybody else does. I like to be my own person. I like to dress and act the way I want, I don't like people telling me what to do in my life. Another thing is I don't care what people think about me and I'm not going to worry about what they say about me when I'm not there. I learned that you shouldn't trust nobody except yourself. That's something that's hard to do though because I trust people and they end up stabbing me in the back. It's okay though because that's just life, you can't change anything about it and I believe everything happens for a reason.

     I would like to be remembered  as a nice person that you can come to when you need help or advice with something. I like to be there when my friends need help with something. I think that I'm a loyal, caring and loving person. I might have some problems with a few people, but I think that happens to everybody on this planet. It's just a part of life that everybody goes through sometime in their life.

     I'm not really sure what's the nicest thing I've done for somebody, but I'm usually a nice person. I think that I could work on that a lot more and help many more people with different things.

My Final Essay

     I think I learned a few different things this summer. I learned what some words mean and I learned how to be a better writer. I also learned that I have a voice in this world and if I use it I can help change the world. Which I did use my voice, I signed some petitions. Thanks to Mr. Leh I learned things this summer and he also showed me the website change.org. This has been a good summer with my friends and having Mr. Leh as our teacher.

     I never thought I would ever write this much in such a short time, but I guess I was wrong. I learned that if I'm focused I could write a long story in under an hour. All I have to do is use my imagination and dig deep inside myself. I made myself a better writer this year thanks to Mr. Leh. My favorite blog this summer was the alphabet story. It was kind of challenging on some letters, but I thought it was fun to write. I never tried writing stories in that format and I liked it. I also thought some blogs were hard and I thought I wouldn't finish them, but I made myself think and I finished them.

     I also learned that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Anybody could write a good story if they just put their mind to it. They can do anything if they just try. I learned a lot of root words this year and this summer. I might not remember every single word, but I still have the paper and I think it will help me a lot in the future when I can't figure out a word.

     This summer I learned more about what's happening in the world. Mr. Leh is all about nature and the world. If he wasn't my teacher I probably wouldn't have really cared what's happening in the world, but when Mr. Leh showed us all the videos about the oil spill it really got to me. He made me change about how I think of the earth. Earth is a beautiful place that we got to be a part of and I learned that we are just destroying it. I thought this planet would last longer, but I might be wrong because that oil is killing all the life in the ocean and pretty soon it might get to us here in New Mexico. I learned to respect our earth and I want to help change things and make it better.

     Hopefully I have Mr. Leh as my teacher next year. He taught me a lot of things I never knew about. With the teacher I had before him, I didn't learn anything that whole semester. I'm going to use my voice a lot more and help the world. Summer school was kind of cool, but if I did  better the first semester I wouldn't be here. I think summer school was a good experience, I learned to be a better writer, then I was.

    

  

Persuasive Essay: School Uniforms

     In my opinion I don't think we should have school uniforms. I don't like wearing uniforms to school and a lot of other people don't like them either. I had to wear school uniforms in elementary and middle school. It wasn't really fun, nobody could dress in their own clothes and look the way they wanted. Everybody looked the same and families had to go out and pay more money just to buy uniforms for their kids. Why should we have to wear uniforms, schools should let you wear what you want as long as it's appropriate and doesn't relate to gangs or anything bad.

     I also think we shouldn't have school uniforms because everybody has a different personality and they like to express that by the clothes they wear. You can't exactly do that when everybody wears the same colors and looks the same. When a school has uniforms, they only have a few colors you can wear. If you don't follow the dress code you end up getting into trouble. I think that's something you shouldn't get into trouble for, they are just clothes. It's not like you have drugs or a weapon on you. I also think that when you wear your normal clothes the administration sometimes assumes you're a bad kid or you have something that you shouldn't have. Sometimes they are right, but sometimes they are wrong. I also think that school uniforms are boring since they are like solid colors. They are never bright or have cool designs on them, they are so plain.

     Some families don't have enough money to be buying their children new clothes just for school. They probably have to buy new uniforms every year because their kids grow out of the clothes from the year before. After school is over the family has no use for the uniforms so they probably get thrown away. All schools are doing is making families waste money on new clothes that they will use for a few years. The children already have clothes and I don't see why schools want them to wear a uniform. 

     I know the administration has to wear uniforms, but it's part of their job. As students school is not really a job, we are coming here to learn not to be told what to wear everyday. Others may think differently, but that's just my opinion. I think the only people that should tell us what to wear is our parents. They are the ones that are the boss of us. The school shouldn't try to be our parents and tell us how to dress everyday for school.

     Nobody likes to wear uniforms and I bet if you ask every school that has uniforms, mostly everybody would want to wear what they want. There may be some people that like wearing uniforms and that's okay because that is their opinion on this. Everybody has their own opinion on everything and they view it differently. If teachers had a choice, they would probably wear jeans and a T-shirt everyday. The principal would most likely do the same thing. I think schools should give students a choice. If they want to wear uniforms they can, but if they don't they should be able to wear whatever they want. I think there should be some rules though, nothing gang related or bad and you shouldn't show too much skin.

     Some rules shouldn't be there because they aren't bad things, for example wearing flip flops. They are just shoes, they're not going to hurt anybody. Besides even if that rule is there most people don't pay attention to it they just do what they want. That's not good, but it's true and that's why the students get into trouble. So I think they should let the students wear whatever because they will do it anyways and they don't really care if they get in trouble. Even if they get in trouble for what they wear, they will most likely do it again and again.

      That's all my reasons why we shouldn't have uniforms at our school. We all have our personality and we want to express it and be unique. We want to be our own person and not be the same as everybody else. If you let us wear our normal clothes I think everybody will follow the rules because they don't want to end up wearing ugly, boring uniforms.

My Earth Letter to the President of the United States

Dear President Barack Obama,

My name is Patricia Gonzales. I am 16 years old and I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm sending you these wisdom quotations because I am concerned about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is destroying our planet more and more each day. People are trying to clean it up, but it's not working that good because more oil just keeps coming out. I'm worried about all the animals that are getting killed and covered in the oil. I'm also concerned about the people that live in the area and even where I live because who knows if the oil is going to reach us. These wisdom quotations are from different authors, but they have something in common they are all about the earth and the environment.

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. ~Robert Orben

In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. ~Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. ~Ralph Nader, quoted in Linda Botts, ed., Loose Talk, 1980

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. ~Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958

I am the earth. You are the earth. The Earth is dying. You and I are murderers. ~Ymber Delecto

For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death. ~Tom McMillan, quoted in Francesca Lyman, The Greenhouse Trap, 1990  

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. ~Wallace Stegner, letter to David E. Pesonen of the Wildland Research Center, 3 December 1960 (Thanks, Bekah)

 

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. ~Ansel Adams

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. ~Cree Indian Proverb

Some day the earth will weep, she will beg for her life, she will cry with tears of blood. You will make a choice, if you will help her or let her die, and when she dies, you will die too.John Hollow, Horn Oglala Lakota (1932)

     I want the earth to live forever so please help her stay alive. Like I said I'm concerned about this planet, the people and the animals so I would appreciate it if you could do everything in your power to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and try to prevent it from happening again.

Sincerely, Patricia Gonzales

Murder Mystery

     One afternoon this girl named Tiffany was going to have a huge party that night. All of her friends were invited. Her brother Jake was there also and he invited all of his friends so you know this is going to be a big party. Tiffany and Jake loved to pull pranks on their friends, they were always funny pranks. Tonight they had something planned for a girl named Bianca. Tiffany didn't really like Bianca so they planned to put drugs in her drink and when she was really messed up they were going to shave her head. All they wanted to do was a harmless prank, but it turned out bad. When Bianca went up stairs she got really dizzy and fell off the balcony. Everybody screamed and when Tiffany came into the room she started crying because Bianca was dead. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this nobody was supposed to get hurt" said Tiffany.

     About two years later Tiffany meet up with her brother Jake and their four closest friends Adriana, Selena, Jacob and Steve. They were all there the night of the party and they all got a letter saying to meet at a restaurant. Nobody knew why they got the letter, but they were really freaked out because it was from Bianca. When they all met up with each other somebody delivered a package to them. Nobody wanted to open it so Jake decided to do it and he found a little DVD player and a note. He read the note out loud and it said "Hi everybody I'm glad you all could make it. I know what you were trying to do to me that night of the party and I'm very disappointed in all of you. It's pay back now I know who did this, but if you don't tell the truth about who did this to me you will all die one by one. If you go to the cops you will die right away. Sincerely, Bianca. After they read the note, they watched the video on the DVD player and it was a video of the night Bianca died.

     "What the hell is this some kind of joke?" said Tiffany. "Everybody calm down this can't be real okay Bianca is dead." said Jake. Even though everybody was freaked out they all went on with their lives like if none of this ever happened. Later that day Selena died in a car accident, when Tiffany got the call she didn't know what to do. She thought this isn't related to Bianca's death. Tiffany called everybody else and they were starting to get scared, but not scared enough to tell the truth. About three days later Jacob drowned in his swimming pool. Nobody believed that happened, but when they went to his house they found his dead body floating in the pool. Ariana yelled at Tiffany saying "now do you think this is a joke". Tiffany stayed quiet and they all left.

     In the car Jake told Tiffany "why don't you just tell the truth already" and she said: "because this isn't real it's all a coincident". Another week went by and nothing happened so Tiffany thought it was all over, but the next day she went over to Adriana's house. Adriana was getting ready and she was curling her hair. She asked Tiffany to get some hairspray for her, but when she came back Adriana was on the floor dead. Tiffany noticed there was water on the floor all over the plug so she guessed that Adriana got electrocuted. Tiffany called her brother, but nobody answered. She decided to go to Steve and tell him what happened. Right when she walked into his house  he said: "I can't live with this anymore" and he cuts his throat.

     Later that night she got a text message saying "all you had to do was tell the truth and none of this would have happened love Bianca". Tiffany finally got a hold of Jake and told him everything, he came over to her house that night. Before he got there, Tiffany thought she saw somebody and it looked like Bianca. She was terrified so she went to the kitchen and got a big knife. She heard a voice saying "Tiffany where are you, come out it's your turn to die" Tiffany started running, but she ended running into the person who was looking for her. Tiffany started crying hysterically and said: "I'm sorry it was all my fault that night, but I didn't mean to hurt anybody I'm sorry". Right after she said that Jake came out holding a video camera, turns out he recorded everything she said. A few minutes later Adriana took off the wig and Selena, Jacob and Steve came out saying "how do you like being pranked for once". Tiffany was shocked, "I thought you all were dead". Jake said: "that was all part of the plan. We just wanted to show you how it felt to be pranked". Tiffany said: "okay I'll never do a prank ever again you really had me scared". After that all happened, Tiffany stayed true to her word and never pranked people again.

My New Identity

     Hello my name is Brittany Lopez. I live in Miami, Florida in a beautiful house by the beach. I was born on July 12th,1990 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My Family moved to Florida when I was 17 years old. I have brownish hair, green eyes, my skin is a nice tan color and I'm five feet two inches tall. I am Hispanic and I'm a very outgoing person, I like making new friends and I love to party with my friends. I don't have a boyfriend, I'm single and loving it. I work as a lifeguard on the beach, it's a very exciting job. I love my life, it's really great. My parents also live in Miami so they are not far away from me.

     I went to La Salle high school, I didn't have the best grades, but they were still pretty good. I also wasn't the best child either I always gave my parents' problems, but now that I'm older I respect them a lot more than I did before. Right now I'm in college, I want to be a lawyer, which is going to be a long time before I graduate from college. For now being a life guard is pretty great. I love being out there on the beach and it makes me happy when I save somebody's life.

     I'm a very talkative person, I can start a conversation with pretty much anybody I meet. I'm also loud, I have a big mouth and I speak my mind. I have an attitude and I know how to use it, but I'm also a nice, caring person. If you don't like the way I act or you just don't like me that's your problem, I don't care if you hate me. I'm not going to try to change everybody else so don't try to change the way I am because it's not going to work. I don't change my life or the way I am for anybody.

     I believe in God, I am catholic. My hobbies are I like to dance, I was on the dance team in elementary school, I like to play sports. My favorite sport to play is basketball, I also like to ride dirt bikes, paint and do magic tricks. My favorite hobby would have to be dirt biking, it's so exciting and I ride my bike with my friends every chance I get. As you can probably tell I'm very active and athletic. I like to keep myself in shape. You might think that I'm a tomboy, but I'm actually very girlie. I love to wear make up, do my hair, my nails and I love to go shopping to buy shoes. That's my favorite thing to buy when I go to the mall, I have so many pairs of shoes in many different colors. My favorite color is pink and purple, I love to stand out from everybody else and wear crazy things. People look at me weird, but it's okay because I don't care what other people think I like the way I am. 

     I live by myself, my house is kinda big and I have a swimming pool in the backyard. Inside my house I have three bedrooms in-case my family comes over. My room is the biggest room, it's really colorful and I have a lot of things all around my room. My favorite part about my room is the closet. It's really big and it's my favorite because all my clothes and shoes are in there. I love to listen to music so when I'm home I always have the radio on. If I'm not home I take my Ipod with me everywhere except when I work.

     Well that's my life. I love it and I can't wait to live the rest of it, I'm going to live my life to the fullest. I'm not wasting my life on anything. When I get the chance to do something I'm going to do it and I'm not going to give up on anything. It's great living in Florida, but maybe sometime I'll go back to where I was born. I love my life and everybody that's in it, life is great.

    

    

   

My Alphabet Story

     A long time ago there was this little girl named Angel who loved fairy tales and dreamed one day she would be in one. Because she was an only child she really prayed and hoped her dreams would come true some day in her life. Cindy her mom always encouraged her daughter to keep believing in her dreams and maybe she will live in a fairytale. Days and years went by, Angel got older and she stopped believing in her dreams because they never came true. Eventually Angel started having crushes on guys and would hang out with her friends all the time.

     For once in her life she decided to go for a walk one day to a special place by a beautiful beach. Gazing at the beautiful beach she seen something watching her from the water, she wondered what it could be. Hoping to figure out what it was she yelled out "who are you? Why are you staring at me?". "I can see you" she said and the creature she was seeing was the most beautiful mermaid ever. "Just wanted to know if you want to be a mermaid with me" said the mermaid, Angel was surprised. "Krystal is my name what's yours?" said the mermaid "My name is Angel". "Let me go home and change into my swimsuit"said Angel "there is no need to do that, my magical powers will transform you into a mermaid like me" said Krystal. "Magical powers how did you get powers?" said Angel "from my father, he gives all the mermaids powers".

     "Never in my life have I seen a mermaid, you are so beautiful" said Angel. "Oh well thank you, just come in the water and your transformation will happen" said the mermaid. "Please come with me down to my kingdom and meet everybody, they will be happy to see you" said the mermaid. "Queen Jasmine will want to see you when we get there, she has something to tell you" said the mermaid. "Really wonderful to see you Angel, we have been waiting for you, we want you to live with all of us in this wonderful kingdom" said the queen. "She was very excited that one of her fairytale dreams came true, Angel said of course I'll live with you, but what about my mom and dad? said Angel. "They can also come live with us, I will send my best mermaids to go get them" said the queen.

     "Unbelievable, this is really amazing I can't believe this is really happening to me. This place is so beautiful I can't wait to begin my life here. Thank you so much this is wonderful and incredible!!" said Angel. "Very nice to have you and your parents living with us, we are delighted to have you" said the queen. "When your parents get here I will show you your new home, you will love it" said the queen.  "Xylophones are such amazing instruments, do they always play them down here?" said Angel. "Yes of course they do, it relaxes all of us and the rest of the ocean" said the queen. "Zany people live here, it's pretty awesome. I think I'm going to love it here" said Angel.