The First Amendment

   The First Amendment covers many different subjects like Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Protests, but the only subject that confuses me a little is Freedom of Religion. Why do people still look down on certain religions if people are legally allowed to believe in what they want to believe? Why doesn't the government ban certain religions if they could be potentially harmful, sort of like the way they were in the Commonwealth vs. Twitchell court case? And one last question that I've had since we have started talking about Freedom of Religion, are people allowed to make their own religion if thousands (or many other people) begin to follow that specific religion? Well, I guess I'm gonna find out sooner or later.
     Creating your religion always confused me, whether you could make your own religion or not was kind of fuzzy, bit that has been cleared up. Apparently, you can believe whatever you want to believe as long as its legal and doesn't involve sacrifice or death or anything out of the ordinary. To be completely honest, I find this to be a good thing because if people weren't allowed to believe in what they want to believe in, then our Freedom of Religion section of the First Amendment is pretty much worthless. now we move onto religious discrimination.I don't really think there is a solid answer for this question, but more of the persons views both religiously and in general. If people find the certain religion to be either out of the ordinary (to them of course) then they will discriminate against that religion. And my final question of this topic, can the government ban a religion if it is harmful. Apparently, they can ban a religion even if it isn't harmful, or at least they are trying to ban them. I found an article that the NYC gov't is trying to ban religious meetings in churches and in schools across New York. I really don't know if they will ban these meetings or not, but in my honest opinion, I think that they don't have the right to ban such a thing across such a wide range of area in the first place.
   The First Ammendment covers many different subjects in a simple 45 word sentence. As it is very important to our freedom as a whole, it is also very confusing on its limits and boundaries. Though, all of my questions were answered, it still seems a little bit confusing to me. Maybe in the future I will understand all of the First Ammendments secrets and tiny loopholes, but for now, I'll never know.

Sources:
http://www.nycreligion.info/?p=2478
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/15/make-your-own-religion_n_964570.html

Grades

    The purpose of grading is to assess you of your knowledge on the subject they are testing you on. My opinion on the grading system, both letter grades and number grades based out of the 100 point scale, is that we should change it to advanced proficient, proficient, and below proficient, only because, it won't lower children's self esteem if they do poorly on a test, they won't think less of themselves and do poorly on other school work. I do not think that the grading system accurately represents our learning and knowledge because numbers and letters, shouldn't ,and don't, determine your intellegence. We should use a mix of the current grading system, and the standards based grading system because they are both useful, and we should incorperate them both into grading today. Grading can determine our future, so we might as well make the grading system used today fair.

Creativity Crisis

  No creativity in schools to me is just really sad to me. In reality, it is comparable to no more water left in the ocean. If America runs out of creativity at this point in time, then our future won't be looking to pretty for us. If we don't have creativity in the future, then the number of jobs and good ideas coming from our jobs will drop significantly. I have expirienced a loss of creativity in just about every single one of my classes so far throughout school except for Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and 7th grade writing class because we were allowed to free write about everything we want to for 20 minutes. Even halfway through the year in 2nd grade we started to lose most of of the creativity in that class.
  Again, in the future, our economy is pretty much screwed because no one will be able to think of anything original and no one will spend money on anything becuase they have seen it all already. Also, we will lose jobs because we will lose the ability to come up with alternative solutions to solve everyday problems, which will eventually cause us to not come up with original ideas. This issue should be addressed as soon as possible because if not, our society as a whole will be in deep trouble both economically, but socially as well.

What Kind of Learner Am I?

  In takingn the two tests which gave me results based on how I liked to learn as an individual, I learned a lot about myself. The Gardener Multiple Intelligences Test told me more about me than I already knew. It told me that I like to learn by reasoning and that I like to work with math, numbers, and science the most out of everything. it also told me that I like to learn through somatic sensations, such as: running, jumping, building, working with manipulatives, etc. I love working with numbers and manipulatives, so this test was extremely accurate in telling me how I like to learn. The next test that I took was the Gregorc Learning/Teaching Styles Test.
  This test (in my opinion) was more accurate than Gardener's test was.  This test gave me results of the adjectives that describe what type of learner I am. This test said I was a Concrete Sequential learner which means that I enjoy charts, summaries, computers, labs, short lectures, practical reading, etc. Also it gave e a list of adjectives to describe what kind of learner I am. This list includes: ordered, structured, practical, accurate, directions, organized, hands-on, detailed, and exact. This test alswas correct in saying how much I like math and how I like outlines, computers and labs. Taking the tests was fun and quick, and gave off results that will describe me for the rest of my life.

Being Gifted: Good or Bad?

  Though being gifted has many advantages to it like better courses in high school and middle school, it has many disadvantages to it as well. And, even some people even believe some common myths about ROGATE students (or gifted and talented students), like that we get straight A's in every class, or  that we are extremely smart, when the truth is, some of us have D's in classes and we may not be bright in all of our subjects in school.
   Many advantages amd disadvantages come with beingin the program. One is a larger selection of colleges to choose from when you get out of high school. This can eventually lead to a better job when you graduate from college. Furthermore, we have asynchronous developement which means, our maturities (social maturity, emotional maturity, physical maturity, and intellectual maturity) develop at different rates, meaning, that I could be extremely smart in school, but I could have the body of 10 year old and the emotional maturity of maybe a 6 year old. There are also disadvantages that go with being in the gifted and talented program as well. One disadvantage is that people think that we are to "into" school and think that we never stop studying and think that we are nerds, dorks, geeks, etc. On top of that, our guardians have high expectations because of our excellent grades in school.
  There are even myths that many people believe about gifted students. One of these many myths, is that we have exeptionally high IQs and that we always do good on our school work. The truth is, some of us only excel in one subject over all others and may not have a high IQ at all. Furthermore, people believe that we are always good students and that we always get good grades no matter what subject it may be. The truth to that is that many of us don't do very well in our classes in schoolo and only do exceptionally well in 1 or 2 of them.
  Whether it be advantages, disadvantages, myths, or truths, the gifted program is fun and a great program to be a part of while you are in school.

First ROGATE Post

Hey, name is Tom and I am in 8th grade. My personal favorite subjects in school are Algebra, US History, and Lunch. I honestly don't have any favorite topics to talk about because everything that I don't already. In my free time, I usually just go outside and have fun with my friends. When I grow up I plan to be a stock broker because they make a lot of money and their job incoprerates lots of math and skill. What makes me happy is when other people don't pester me to death about little things. Thats all I can really tell you about myself, well see you later.