A Hero's Journey

This is my slideshow for A Hero's Journey on the show One Piece, created by Eiichiro Oda.

Our class did this so we can understand the narrative structure of stories.

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Apartheid

Speech Unit Reflection

 

• Which steps of the speech unit did you complete? 

I have finished every step.

• How well did you manage your time in class and at home?

I didn't manage my time that well, though I finished my speech on time, I was up late at home trying to finish and record it.

• What have you learned from this process?

I have learned that I need to manage my time better and to get the work done earlier rather than when it's due.

• For our next unit, which is the NCEA static image/poster assessment, what are your goals in terms of the learning process, managing your time, and achievement?

I will try to work harder to get the work finished quickly, but not rush it so it won't turn out bad.

Speech on The Right to Health

    "The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition." 

    These words, which were incorporated into the World Health Organization's Constitution nearly 80 years ago, are more important and powerful than ever. Because everyone should have the right to access the healthcare they need when and where they need it without facing financial hardship. This is known as the "right to health for all people." Nobody should suffer illness or pass away simply because they are unable to access the necessary medical care. Other basic human rights, like access to clean water to drink, adequate housing, education, and safe working conditions, which are also clearly linked to good health, are still something that third-world countries haven't come close to addressing. We still have a long way to go until each and every person-regardless of who they are, where they live, or how much money they have-has access to these basic human rights. 

    Throughout the world, many countries don't have equal rights to health, mainly due to a lack of funding. People who have serious illnesses can't afford the many drugs that could help them, even in New Zealand. For instance, a groundbreaking treatment for cystic fibrosis, which can provide patients with a much improved quality of life, is not funded by our health system, costing sufferers and their families over $330,000. However, in Australia, their healthcare system fully funds this, letting patients lead an almost healthy life. So some people move there in order to get the medication that can treat it. But you can only get it if you can prove that you entered Australia for a long term or permanently, sign up for Medicare, and provide 100 points of proof of your identity.  

    The lack of trained healthcare providers is one of the main issues affecting healthcare in New Zealand. How we can train and keep this important resource is just one of the many questions that need to be answered. Once students finish their training, they leave the country for better pay. What else can we do to keep them from leaving? Can we offer them training with the condition that they remain in the country? Or can we keep charging them student loan debt and pay them more? So should healthcare workers' training be subsidised? In my opinion, if the healthcare workers receive subsidies, they must work in the industry in New Zealand or the country they're working in for at least five years before leaving to find better financial opportunities in another country. 

    So, what then can we do to ensure that everyone has access to healthcare and to ensure that it is reasonable? And what is the government prepared to do to bring about that outcome? Would it be better for us to follow in the British footsteps, or are we leading towards the US healthcare system where they don't provide free healthcare to the entire population? Many of our lawmakers decide on a lot of these issues, so voters should be aware of what each party stands for and do their research before casting a vote in a general election that's taking place next year. This is the only way things are going to improve. Everybody has a voice. Make yours be heard. Thank you very much. 

Reflection on the Night unit

 1. What did you learn about Judaism? 

It is the religion of the Jewish people.

2. What did you learn about the Holocaust? 

During World War II, Jews were subjected to a horrifying genocide. I knew how cruelly the Nazis treated the Jews, torturing and killing them when they were deemed unfit or sending them to be burned alive in crematoriums.

3. Do you think you increased your own empathy, integrity and compassion, and how? 

Yes, because reading "Night" helped me to understand and feel a deep sense of sympathy for what the Jews went through.

4. Which activities did you enjoy the most? 

Even though the essay was initially difficult to write, I really enjoyed writing it.

5. What recommendations do you have for Mrs Torley to change anything if she is teaching this again next year? 

I wouldn't like to change anything, because I liked everything and it was very fascinating.  

Video Reflection on Speech Techniques

 My class has started to research about our topic for our upcoming speeches. We were given the task of describing in our own words how to write an effective speech, and we are now learning new strategies to apply in it.

Night Essay

The Holocaust was an appalling and atrocious genocide of the European Jewish people. Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor and the author of Night, a memoir about the murder of six million European Jews. He employed literary devices such as repetition, alliteration, negative construction, and first-person narration in his autobiography. The first-person narration makes Wiesel's writing more sorrowful because it makes it seem more real, bringing the book to life and encourages you to imagine yourself in his shoes. Wiesel's writing emotionally moved me, making me feel exceptionally lugubrious and sorrowful.

Deportees departing beyond the horizon aboard a train, where they were swiftly forgotten, was one of the first awful occurrences Elie witnessed. There were rumours that the deportees were in a town called Galicia, employed and content with their fate. "...crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police, they cried silently," is a statement that makes use of alliteration with the words 'crammed/cattle/cars' to emphasise how the Jews were being crammed into the cattle cars like animals. I was profoundly moved by it because I would never want to experience what it was like to see defenceless individuals being deported to a location where it was impossible to know whether they would survive or not.

In another incident, Elie and his father were standing before an SS officer who resembled all the other officers. vicious, but not unintelligent, and well-known. Elie was fifteen years old when the man questioned him about his age, but he claimed to be eighteen since another prisoner had instructed him to do so. The same was true of Elie's father, who was fifty but instructed him to claim to be forty. In the end, they were both directed to the left, where the crematorium was located. However, they were told to turn left again and proceed to the barracks, two steps from the crematorium. He had written a stirring prose poem by the time the conflict was over. "Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under the silent sky," was a quote from Elie's autobiography. The phrase "Never shall I forget" is repeated, so the technique employed for this quote is repetition. By employing this technique, it strengthens and expands the reader's view of the story he is telling. It had an emotional impact on me since I would never want to witness my family or any other person set on fire whilst they were still alive.

The father of Elie Wiesel, Shlomo Wiesel, developed a horrible illness as the war was coming to an end. Additionally, SS officers used wooden clubs to strike him in the head. "Elie" was Shlomo's final utterance; he cried out his name but did not respond. He was out of tears, so he refrained from crying, which bothered him. "No prayers were said over his tomb," was one of the last passages I cited from Wiesel's writing. I found the use of negative construction in this quote to be quite upsetting since, although Elie loved his father, he had not seen Elie in his final moments and Elie had not even prayed for him when he passed away. It made his story feel more sorrowful and sad. My final quote from his work is, "I might have found something like: Free at last!" The latter two were taken from accounts of Elie Wiesel's father's death. The first-person narration technique added to the emotional nature of the situation as a relative had passed away. Therefore, you should have been sorrowful or maybe angry at the SS officers. The first quotation was written using the "Negative Construction" style, while the second quote was written using the "First Person Narrative" technique, as it was written from the perspective of the author, Elie Wiesel.

Alliteration, negative construction, first-person narration, and other literary devices were used to make the Holocaust more horrifically real to me. They also showed me how ruthless the Nazis were and how they made the Jews' lives a living hell. "That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget." This quote comes from Wiesel's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, which was given to him because he raised awareness of, and spoke out against, the war on terror. Through this book, he shared his experience and described what the Holocaust was like for him, his family, and many other Jews.