News Article: Mom and child died inside car while dad cleared snow around them

Recently, I was reading this news article about how a mom and her child died inside a car while the dad cleared snow around them.

This incident takes place in New Jersey. A mom and her 1 year old son died in the car while the dad was clearing snow around them due to the heavy blizzard. As the mom and her children, a 1 year old boy and a 3 year old girl tried to huddle for warmth, the dad, a man who was not identified, told them to turn on the engine so that they could on the heater while he was shoveling the excess snow that was piling outside the car. He was shoveling about 20 minutes and when he checked on them, they were all unconscious. 

He then quickly called 911 for help. The ambulance then rushed to the hospital and the mother and her 1 year old son was pronounced dead while her 3 year old daughter was facing serious injuries. 

They were unconscious due to the clogged tail pipe. The tail pipe of the unfortunate families car was clogged with snow and because of that, carbon monoxide managed to seep through the ventilation and got into the car. Carbon monoxide is a colourless, odourless gas that hits quickly with no signs of warning. 

In my opinion, I think it was very unfortunate for this to happen to this family. We should always take safety precautions and make sure that your car is working smoothly as something bad might happen. Instead of staying in the car, the mom and her children should've just stayed in the house until the man finished shoveling the snow before driving off as it would be warmer and much safer. Due to the heavy blizzard, I think that it is advisable if they should just stay home and not go out. I give out my condolences to this family for this tragic accident.

Freedom Writers

Describe how writing in journals (in The Freedom Writers) helps transform the lives of the students. How does writing "free" the students from their pain?

The movie, The Freedom Writers, is about a young teacher, Erin Gruwell who was enthusiastic to start teaching. She is then challenged when she realized that her students self-segregate into racial groups within the classroom. Erin was then determined to gain the students trust on a personal and academic level but she only got to do so with the help of a few people. When she finally gained the trust of the students, she buys them composition books to record their diaries, in which they start to open up and talk about their experiences being abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted. Meanwhile, Erin asks them to write and share their stories in a book form. She then compiles all of their work and named it "The Freedom Writers Diary". Writing helps "free" the students from their pain as they are allowed to express how they feel without being judged. Coming from an unfortunate background, the students spend all their time protecting themselves and the ones they love and all the anger piled inside them will lead to doing bad things. Writing will then help them ease the pain so that they do not resolve to doing bad things.

New Classmate

Classmates are a fellow member of a class. There are 40 students in my class. I would generally describe my classmates as a mirthful bunch. Recently, a boy from another class transferred into my class. He is known to have disciplinary problems that is why he was put into our class. He is known as Zaki. Since it has been 4 months into the school year, everyone has their own bunch of friends that they hang out with. Therefore, it was hard for Zaki to mix around. He is usually really quiet in class and only talks to a few people. I do not know him that well but I would say he is a decent person. I hope he could blend into the crowd and be more involved in the class.