Roger Ebert: The Essential Man

In my last post I explained what we're discussing in GT II right now. So in class we read an article called Roger Ebert: The Essential Man by Chris Jones, and it was in Esquire magazine Now chances are you have heard the term "two thumbs up," if you haven't well then usually people say two thumbs up when they like something. I have always wondered where the term came from and it just so happens, the article was about one of the guys who introduced two thumbs up to television. His name is Robert Ebert, and he is a movie critic. He currently has no lower jaw because of cancer, and has lost the ability to speak and eat.
When I was first handed my copy of the article I wanted to know what the relevance of it was. I wanted to know what this random movie critic had to do with anything regarding the human spirit. When I began reading the article I started to see Roger Ebert as more than just someone over coming cancer, but as a great man who just seemed fulfilled. The amazing part is he knows he has lost his ability to speak and he's dying but instead of wallowing in self pity he continues to critique movies and shares his wisdom on life with the followers of his blog.

By reading this I just realized how blessed I am to have a voice. I don't speak much to people, but can you just imagine having so many things to say and being forced to keep it all in. Maya Angelou once said "Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning." Imagine not ever being able to say I love you to the people you care about in your voice packed with emotion, but being reduced to simply writing down the words. Roger Ebert taught me to be thankful for the voice I've been given and to not waste time being upset with people because if I didn't have a voice my anger would be gone in the time it would take me to write it down.

Hope, Humanity, and the Human Spirit

I think the humanity/hope/human spirit" unit is supposed to get us to think about the role the human spirit plays in our lives and what makes us human. I think that we are trying to find out what keeps the human spirit going; Is it hope, love, faith? Soooo we are studying events that would lead people to need  hope and individuals who have or had a strong spirit so that we can figure out how we too can have stronger spirits and reach our highest potential.....at least that's what I understood we were trying to do. Personally I think that right now I would like to figure out what exactly is the human spirit and how does one obtain a strong human spirit when life has got you in the dumps. I want to know how people's spirits can be so loving and filled with hope and  faith when life constantly kicks them down.

Who Are You? And Why Are You Writing This Blog?

Those are both excellent questions that definently should be adressed before this blog gets started. My name is Nikki and I'm a sophmore (wise fool XD) in high school. I decided to take a class called gifted and talented or GT last year and found that it was a pretty cool class to take, that challenged me; so i took GTII. Are previous unit was about somehow finding a problem in our world and fixing it. Our class decided poor body image is a major problem in America so we decided to do something about it, starting in our school.With the guidance of our teachers we put together the I AM campaign. The point of the campaign is to make our middle schoolers know how great they are just the way they are and to get them thinking about the seriousness of bullying and putting others down. The unit we're doing now is hope and the human spirit, and basically we're blogging the things we learn in this unit... gotta love the learning of the future!!!!