Savannah's Blog

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Dear Manuel J. Rivera, Superintendent of Schools

I understand that the current lunch protocol does not allow high school students to leave school for lunch, but as the time changes so should the laws and restrictions. In order to let students distress in their only free time of 45 minutes for lunch, they should be able to leave school to be in a comfortable, stress free environment.

In order to ensure the well being of our students, we should be allowed to leave school for the 45 minutes out of the 7 hours we spend in school. Leaving could simply mean going home to eat our own food and relax, or go to a food restaurant to eat and study. The 45 minutes we have for a lunch period should be a free time for us to relax, unwind and maybe even get ahead on some homework, in a comfortable environment like Starbucks or Panera, or maybe even just our own home. We clear our minds and take a break so that by the time we have to be back at school, our minds are recharged and ready to take on the rest of the day. Many students do not like the lunches the school serves; in fact some even find it unsanitary and not very edible. Why should we deprive our students of having an edible meal of their choosing?

Should you be thinking about how to make our schools a better place, think of this; letting our students leave for 45 minutes would allow the school to be a happy environment, everyone would come back from their lunch break refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the day.

Best regards,

Savannah Kayal

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Stress Relieving Lunch Time

High school is the most stressful place there is for the normal teen, and if you ask adults today they would never want to be a high school student now with all the work, deadlines and restrictions we have today. Open lunch or off campus lunch is a very common thing that many high schools have, unfortunately mine does not. The open lunch idea is a stress reliever. What high-schooler doesn’t want to leave their school for the 45 minutes (or so) that they have free, to go get coffee, or food that is actually edible? The 45 minutes we have for a lunch period should be a free time for us to relax, unwind and maybe even get ahead on some homework, in a comfortable environment like Starbucks or Panera, or maybe even just our own home. We clear our minds and take a break so that by the time we have to be back at school, our minds are recharged and ready to take on the rest of the day.

19.3 percent of high school students have seriously considered killing themselves, and 14.5 percent of high school students made actual plans for committing suicide, from being so stressed from school and from depression in many cases. If we could be granted the permission to leave just for our lunch break to de-stress and relax, maybe even just to go home and eat lunch, this high school student suicide rate could decrease.

A free lunch break is the normal life of a businessman or woman who works on Wall Street. They leave their office for their 30-60 minute lunch break to free their mind of all the stressful work they have. So by the time they do go back to their job they return with a clear mind and in turn the employer get a refreshed employee who can work at 100% capability. They are allowed to leave and go do whatever their hearts desire; as long as by the time this lunch break is over they are back sitting at their desks as if they never left.

In the real world if you’re allowed to leave for your lunch break then why can’t high-schoolers, preferably upperclassmen leave too? Highschools expect us to be able to make decisions about our future. How can we be able to predict or plan our future when we can’t even leave the school for 45 minutes just to distress?

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Sunday, September 21, 2014

High school Independence

As a high school student we are pressured into figuring out what college we will go to, what career path we will choose, basically we need to figure out what our life will be at the age of 14-18. But we still have to raise our hand to use the bathroom and most importantly we can’t leave the school during our lunch break to relax outside of a stressful school environment. How can we go from being so restrained from being independent to being thrown out into the real world expected to follow a career path? In the real world you can take your lunch break, leaving your job for around 45 minutes to get some coffee or get some food away from the stressful work environment you are in all day. We as high school students are babied wayyyyyy too much, and can’t even leave our cafeteria to go upstairs without being stopped and forced to stay there. Many students don’t even eat lunch because the school premade lunches are absolutely appalling, and to top it off we are forced to buy an apple or have a side of broccoli. This “healthy” side is usually just thrown out, so not only do most teens just not eat, if we do the majority of the lunch is thrown out, wasting a lot of food. If we could just leave the school for 45 minutes many students would eat food that is appealing to them.

High school is the most stressful place there is for the normal teen, and if you ask adults today they would never want to be a high school student now with all the work, deadlines and restrictions we have today. 19.3 percent of high school students have seriously considered killing themselves, and 14.5 percent of high school students made actual plans for committing suicide, from being so stressed from school and from depression in many cases. If we could be granted the permission to leave just for our lunch break to de-stress and relax, maybe even just to go home and eat lunch, this high school student suicide rate could decrease.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Egyptian Revolution

The two biggest problems Egypt is facing right now are political and economical. Politically there is currently no secure government, which means there is no control over its people or the land. Without a government there cannot be any politics, which goes hand in hand with economics. Without a government there is no possible way to control or even have any trading or buying going on amongst Egypt and other participating nations. Without any set government other nations hesitate to become involved with any situation with Egypt, and the ones that do get involved have motives as to why they want to trade, for example control over the Suez canal or other resources that would be helpful to them.

As of right now the United States is withholding any military or any aid for that matter, from Egypt. We are in a “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” situation right now. The United States has to be very careful with how they handle this issue, because it could easily blow up in our face. With the presidential election not too far away (a year and a half to be exact) our current president would probably like to leave his rein in doing something positive, that will down in history in a good way, as being something he was able to accomplish while in office. Seeing that all our presidents are known for something, if he does aid or not aid Egypt it could leave the next president cleaning up a huge mess. I think as of now we should not get involved until all options have been exhausted and all ideas have been thought through.

The western world has looked at Egypt or any Middle Eastern country for that matter as uncivilized, uneducated, and prideful people. They look upon them as a very unstable government to get involved with, partially because of all that has happened after September 11^th attacks on the United States. Its very hard to become involved with such a unstable, risky nation/area, not knowing what the outcome would be. The news we see on TV obviously doesn’t show both sides of the story, in fact a lot of information is withheld from the people of the United States, to protect and government decisions or involvement.

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