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A few days after Elizabeth Alexander visited Dalton, my class started writing Amistad poems of our own. My inspiration was from when Elizabeth Alexander reminded us that there were other people on the boat not just Cinque. I was going to do a poem about Cinque but then I decided to make it about a different person that wasn’t actually real but it might of happened to someone on the boat this is my poem:

Taken Captive

Five years ago I was taken from my home, my wife and my children,

Taken captive to be a white man’s slave,

I can still remember my village and my family,

I will never forget them,

To my dying day I will carry an image of them in my head,

If I got to have any wish I would wish to be home, in Africa, happy with my family watching the stars,

The stars that reassure you that you will be fine,

That is not the case,

Right now I am being taken into a ship,

A ship that means friendship and happiness,

It’s called Amistad,

I have been on one ship before,

One when I was first taken,

Will it bring the happiness and joy that someone stuck deep into the roots of it’s name?

Will it be like the other ship?

Dark, and miserable,

Or will it be the kind of ship I have been waiting for where things are better and the wind tells you that you are going home?

I get on the boat and look up at the stars,

I know that someday I will see my family and village again.

In class we are studying Historical Fiction so we each got to pick a historical fiction book. I chose Esperanza rising by Pam Ryan. These are some reasons it is a great book. The opening sentence is wonderful, “our land is alive, Esperanza,” said Papa, taking her hand as they walked through the gentle slopes of the vineyard. And Thee author is very descriptive. If you take in the details you can picture exactly what it looks like. The story of Esperanza is great for people who want a good story about a girl who immigrates to California!

On 2/6/09 Elizabeth Alexander came to the Dalton school to speak about her poetry. The main focus was on her Amistad epic and her book called Ms.Crandall’s School for young women and little misses of color. Ms.Crandall’s School for young women and little misses of color is about a teacher named Ms. Crandle who ran a school for white children and one African American girl asked to attend classes and she said yes. The parents of the white children did not want their children going to that school so they took the children out of the school. Ms. Crandle decided to make the school for African American children.

The parents of the children who used to go to the school were mad so they killed the school cat, poisoned the well, and finally broke the windows and set the school on fire.

The Dalton middle school play Oliver Twist was great! Congratulations to all of the actors whose voices were magnificent. My favorite scenes were when the people who do funerals (Mr. & Mrs. Sowerberry) were singing the song about what your funeral would be like and when they are singing I will scream because it was so funny!

The inauguration of Barack Obama was really touching and inspiring to many,many people in America, the poem that Elizabeth Alexander recited and the inaugural address he gave will be remembered for centuries. One of the quotes from the speech that has stayed inside my head was, “we will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in it’s defense, and those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocence, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us and we will defeat you. For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.” I don’t know why but it stayed with me.

My hopes for the next four years are that the war will be ended, that the economy will be on the road to recovery, and that health care will improve. I also hope that Malia and Sasha are happy at their new school!

About three months ago my class started an oral history project! We were asked to interview an immigrant from a different country and then make the interview into a book. I chose to interview my nanny Joy from Grenada. She left Grenada when she was 32. When she arrived in America she lived with her sister for two years, on the third year she bought an apartment in Brooklyn and that is where she lives now.

First I planned out a good time to do the interview with Joy, after that I interviewed her, then I Transcribed the interview, finally after a few weeks I got to start typing the interview on the Computer, when that was done I printed it out, pasted it into the book and drew the pictures! It took a long time and the process was hard but it was so worth it!

I am so exited about writing my first blog post! To get ready I read a blog from last year, and it gave me an idea of what to write about, for instance they wrote about Alice in Wonderland, forced immigration, The Wizard of Oz etc.etc.etc.. It must be fun because one month she wrote six blog posts! I am now done with my first blog post.