Article of the Week Impressions

Prompt: Take a moment to reflect upon your impressions of what you have learned from the array of articles in at least two well written paragraphs, using evidence from your graphic organizer.

     This week, we did a gallery walk, where we were able to see a wide array of articles about current events that our classmates shared with us. It's activities like these that I absolutely love, because I am learning so much about the world around me, and feel so much more aware. I don't always have time to just sit down and browse current events on the internet or watch the news, so this allows me to catch up on all of the news, and interact and learn and discuss the events with all of my friends. There were obviously some articles that shared common topics or themes like Climate Change, Ebola, and ISIS, though there was such a large scope of news, and some things really shocked me! Now, I will be able to have educated conversations with people about things happening in the world around me about all different subjects and people and places and information, and will be able to continue to spread this news to other people! I'm most likely not the only person who doesn't have time to just sit down and watch the news. So, now that I've learned all of this new information, I can teach others about it so they can become more aware as well!

     Everybody had extremely interesting articles to share, but I'm going to talk about some of the most interesting or most commonly talked about subjects. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Auschwitz Forbidden Art, from Jesus. He explained that prisoners in Auschwitz during the Holocaust created art to show that they were more than just a number. Though, they were taking a huge risk because the people weren't allowed to create art for pleasure. This may not be something that's huge in the news right now, but it was something that I found cool, and that I'd never heard of before! I learned about something else in history that is coming up today, and I don't think I would've ever learned about this if it weren't for this gallery walk. Something that is more common in the news right now is Ebola, and I talked to a few people who had articles on this topic, one of them being Gianna. I know what Ebola is, and have read quite a few articles on it myself, but learned even more from Gianna. She focused specifically on the "Ebola Children Relief Fund" which is building hand washing stations, treatment centers, and providing education for children sick with Ebola in West Africa. This, I did not know, but think is amazing! A lot of people would rather stay away from Ebola at all costs in fear of getting sick, but some people are giving their time and money to help those sick with Ebola to possibly become healthier and stronger! What the Ebola Children Relief Fund is doing, is really incredible, and I'm glad that it seems like we are making progress with Ebola. One last article that I both enjoyed and is also important news to hear about was Athziry's article about women's inequality in STEM. There is a large gender gap between women and men in STEM, and more men are getting jobs in STEM than women. These jobs aren't particularly hard to get, and what's driving the women away, is unfair treatment. I believe that this is important news because inequality has been huge lately, whether it's through gender or race. People need to start realizing this, and making a change in their actions! Women's inequality was a huge problem in the past, and women were expected to be housewives, who took care of the cooking and cleaning, and were looked as inferior to men. At one point, we couldn't even vote! though, we've made so much progress! We don't want to start backtracking.

So, those are my views on the article of the week gallery walk, and some of the articles that I found particularly interesting or important!