19 thoughts on “You Mean I’ve Got Rights? Bill of Rights, 1791-present”

1. Hi Ms. D. I just remembered a situation I heard about last. Some kids from a high school got suspended for tebowing in the hallway. If you don’t know what tebowing is it is when you put your elbow on your knee and your hand in a fist on your forhead. Anyway they did it in the middle of the hallway while switching classes. They were suspended and the kids did not agree with the suspension. They said it was violating there first amendment by taking away there freedom of speech by saying they were showing praise to an idol. They also said that it was violating the first amendment of freedom of religoun. It was a way of praying and that was how Tim Tebow was using the move on the field. The punishment was not changed and the boys were still suspended.

   here is a link to the storyhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=boys%20get%20suspended%20for%20tebowing&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDUQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Frivals.yahoo.com%2Fhighschool%2Fblog%2Fprep_rally%2Fpost%2FN-Y-teens-suspended-for-Tebowing-in-school-hall%3Furn%3Dhighschool-wp9989&ei=ZMImUcniO46z0QHEnIGAAQ&usg=AFQjCNEoxSxgi5JKPUJjYpdk7ZUMWRWFTQ

2. Hi ms D!,
   Recently my friends, sister, and I went to see the movie “Warm Bodies”. In the movie, the whole world is pretty much taken over with a disease that turns everyone into Zombies and creates a state of nature which we learned about in the begging of the year. The main charcter “R” who is a zombie goes out to try find a living person. He goes out with his zombie “friends”. During this he finds a girl who hasn’t been changed by the disease and instantly falls in love with her. So any way, he takes her and offers to protect her and at the end Julie’s people help the zombies become human again. At then end they make a civil government.
   Another connection I have is when I was reading the book “The Lucky One” Logan the main charcter was walking his dog at night and a cop asked if he could search is back pack, Logan said no because of the 4th amendment and the cop had no reason to so Logan walked away.

3. hey Ms. D!
   over the course of learning about the Bill Of Rights, i had a lot of connections to movies I have seen. Here are some of my connections!
   The first connection i had was to the movie Field Of Dreams. In the movie, the mom and dad of a family go to a school board meeting to discuss the banning of books in the school. The mother protests against banning these books. This was violation of the first amendment.
   Another connection i had was to the movie 12 Angry Men. This movie is about 12 men of jury trying to settle a court case. 11 of the men think the man being tried is guilty, however one man thinks he is innocent. Since the decision has to be unanimous, they cannot decide. This relates to the 6th amendment, which says the decision of the jury must be unanimous.
   Finally, i have a connection to Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. Someone in class had a question about settling out of court, which means the people in the court decide themselves, usually over money. Mark Zuckerberg was sued by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narenda. The three said that Zuckerberg stole the idea of Facebook from them,. which they called HarvardConnect. They went to court, however they settled it out of court with Zuckerberg paying them $20 million dollars in cash. This was how they settled out of court.
   These are a few connections i have to the Bill Of Rights! 🙂

4. Dear Mrs D,
   I know this is a little late but late week the L period class was taking about police men and women. And we were talking about how no one was sure what police men and women use in Great Britain . I did some research and found that they use a Baton. It looks like a baseball bat, but a little bit smaller . The British only use guns for special circumstances.
   Here is the link that i used.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom

5. In class, we have been talking about free speech. I learned that speech includes clothing that expresses something. A couple days ago everybody wore the color orange to support Tommy who just was diagnosed with leukemia. I think that wearing this clothing expressed our opinion on the issue. It showed that we wanted to support Tommy. Based on what we learned in class i think that wearing these clothes would be considered speech.

6. Also in men in black will smith was randomly arrested and was forced to tell what happened. But the people did not read him his miranda rights. So therefore he was indeed compelled to testify against himself.

7. In class we learned about how the police get evidence. I saw this show called the first 48 is about police solving murders in the first 48 hours of being notified. So on the sly to get DNA they took a brush and then picked out hair that matched the suspects. Except the suspect was “homeless” and was staying with the victim. So they got his dna and found out who it was i thought that this was a good connection to class.

8. Dear Ms D,Today during class we watched future fright. Since a family spoke out against the government, the son had to give up a lung. There was some debate on whether or not you could live with one lung. I found out you can. On a website, some people said that it is possible to live with one lung but it is harder to breathe and takes some adjustments. This information can be found on http://www.steadyhealth.com/Living_with_one_lung_t144127.html. Sorry but I don’t know how to do a hyperlink.

9. Hey Ms. D,
   I was thinking today of the similarities between the video and the novel I am currently reading, Animal Farm. In Animal Farm, the pigs are elected freely as the leaders of their community, like President Collins. However, once in power, the pigs take away basic rights and freedoms, just like in the movie. These similarities are remarkable!

   Have a nice night!

10. Hi Mrs. D!
    Wow, I can’t believe I still remember most of the words to this. I miss your class and all the fun activities and videos we watched/ did. In english class my techer was talking about how he black plague got spread ed and what happened during the time. I had immediately thought of the song “bubonic” that we listened to in class. I hope you have a great new class! -Alyssa

11. Dear Ms.D
    In class we have been learning about the 1st amendment and the bill of rights. the Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments of the constitution. These first amendments protect our rights like free speech and more. we have the right to wear and say what we want. Without these rights we would be owned by the government.

12. Hello Ms.D,
    Today my mom was reading the newspaper and found an article about how the mayor of Marlton, Randy Brown may run for governor in 2017. I was happy about it because every 4th of July my dad runs the mayor’s 5k and they mayor always visited my elementary school. This relates to the 1st amendment because the press can say anything thats true about politicians.

13. Hey Ms. D, Today was Jackie Robinson’s birthday. In the video, The Fright Fight, the Bill of Rights were taken away. I bet if he were alive and this actually happened, he would have been treated worse than he did from when he played baseball. Also, I would be really scared if this would actually happen.

14. Dear Ms. D,
    In class we have been talking about how people have freedom of speech. We have learned that speech can be expressed in many ways and one of the ways is clothing. People can wear clothes that send out a message to everyone who sees them. Yesterday at school a myriad of students from cherokee, DMS and MMS all wore the color orange to represent Tommy K and his illness leukemia. We wanted to generate awareness for what has happened so people can donate to finding a cure.

15. Dear Ms. D,
    Today and yesterday in class we discussed the Savanna Redding and New Jersey vs TLO cases. I went on a few websites and watched a couple videos about the topic. While watching the interviews I was shocked to see how big of an impact the strip search had on Savanna Redding. She had been so ashamed and embarrassed that she dropped out of school and began homeschooling. I could never imagine how difficult Savanna’s life had become after this situation.
    In one of the interviews I had watched, Savanna had mentioned how much her life had changed. Making new friends was very hard for her, considering how much embarrassment she went through. Not only was her privacy invaded, but her rights as an American citizen as well. Savanna was forced to take her outer clothing off for a drug search, she thought she was free to go after undressing, but she wasn’t. She had to shake her undergarments to be positive that there were no pills hidden. While watching some videos I realized that Savanna was asked about who ratted on her, but she ignored the question. Was there a certain reason why she didn’t answer he question, or was it because she felt uncomfortable answering it? There is not one day that went by that Savanna didn’t think about that horrific day at school.

16. Dear Mrs D,
    On friday my class was talking about the Bill of Rights. In the second Amendment states that the citizens of the United States have the right to bear and keep arms for protection. You asked us a question ” what other countries allow their citizens to bear and keep arms,” no one knew thw answer so i thought i might do some research to find out what counties do. I found that Finland, Switcherland, and Israel have the right to keep and bear arms.

17. Hey Ms. D,
    While we were reading about the first amendment I was intrigued by how often we see books banned in our society and don’t give it a second thought. I would think that citizens would respect everybody’s right to access knowledge but I was wrong. Even in our own school library there are books restricted from the younger kids. Apparently, there IS a permission form that parents can sign allowing their child to read “eighth grade only” books. (The librarians, however, obviously don’t want kids to do that because they conveniently neglected to mention that when I expressed interest in reading said books.)
    So anyway, I was interested that so many books have been banned or at least challenged so I went home and researched a bit more on the subject. What I found, and assuming all my sources were accurate, was a long list of books that were once banned that now have been said to “shape america.” For instance, To Kill A Mockingbird has had lots of controversy because some people believe to be degrading and “promotes white supremacy” while others believe it to be a great novel, especially for teens. What’s interesting is that To Kill a Mockingbird is required reading in many schools.
    A couple other shocking titles of once banned books are The Diary Of A Young Girl (Anne Frank), Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe), Where The Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendack) and Where’s Waldo-becasue their was an inappropriate picture. I showed my parents and they were shocked too.
    I have to assume that the people who wanted to ban these books didn’t see their actions as breaking the First Amendment. I have to believe that it was a misguided attempt to protect our citizens. What these people didn’t realize, however, was that sheltering citizens from the bad in the world doesn’t stop “bad things” from happening. Denying access to knowledge of any kind is a cruel form of denying people liberty. Also without knowledge how do we, as people, form opinions? And how can we improve our government.
    In multiple science fiction and dystopian novels that I have read, forbidden literature is a recurring theme. In many of these stories the governments (which are always evil in Sci-Fi) have realized that by influencing what people read you influence how they think. Denying others novels is a never failing way to give yourself power. While our government was only trying to shelter people from the darker side of human nature, I believe it is essential for everyone to understand how people hate and use vulgar language, etc. Studying history is the best way to keep history from repeating itself, and I feel like our government is preventing that by banning these books.

    This are the links to the sites I looked at:

    http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica

    http://www.neatorama.com/2011/09/29/12-books-that-have-ironically-been-banned-in-the-u-s/

18. Allie,
    Did you look in the livebinder? All handouts/slideshow/videos etc. are located in our livebinders.

19. Dear Ms. D,

    i was absent today and cannot find the bill of rights slide show on here. where would it be? thanks,
    Allie