Imagine being accused of witchcraft, knowing deep down that you are not a witch and you know nothing about being one. You just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The feeling these girls must have had would have been terrifying.
It feels like everybody you have known your whole life is looking at you like you’re a horrible person and they can’t believe you are a witch. The look on their faces is awful, you are helpless and you are evil to them now. Either way you look at the situation, you are going to die. The town’s people would do trials on you. You pass them and that means you are not a witch, you fail them and you die. The trials really didn’t make sense though, nobody can really pass them. For example, one trial you get thrown into a river. If you float then you’re a witch. If you were to sink then your innocence was proven. The only problem was, either way if you sink or float your going to die because you are tied up and then thrown in, so it’s not like you can just swim away. The people don’t have time to save you so even if you know your not a witch and can hopefully pass the trial, you still know normally that means your life is about to come to an end. The only good thing that could come out of all of this is that if you did happen to pass it, everybody watching would at least know you’re not a witch. The Salem Witch Trials was a bad situation any way that you look at it. These people didn’t know better or think the way we do now. It is sad to know all these innocent people had to die just because someone thought they were practicing witch craft. I learned a lot reading about these trials, and now looking at it I feel sorry for all the people who died for a mistaken claim.
Everyone shouldn’t automatically be stereotyped or accused of something just because of how they look or act. So even if someone is accused of something, that doesn’t always mean that they are guilty.

Reflection

This nine weeks I have learned that I can do a lot more than I thought or knew about. Our reading journals have helped me a lot too, because instead of just reading the text or the book, I draw images in my mind, and make connections to myself or the outside world. When I read, I notice how sentences are punctuated and other little things that I used to not know about or even notice. I learn to work better as a team member. I work with others and learned to go into deep conversation about a book, or a topic. In our group time, I could make the same connections or see how other people felt about the book we were reading. I hope to learn more things about how to become a better writer by the end of the year.

Lit Circle

Our lit circle brought up some pretty good points. We discussed how we related to the book and our questions. Our drawings were interesting and brought up some discussion. One thing that was interesting to me was how this book reminded me of one I had read in 5th grade by Gary Paulsen, Hatchet. This book talked about a boy who was stranded in the woods because of an airplane crash, and had to find his way to survive. It shows all the ways he had to provide shelter and food, and how to live. The difference is in my book, Touching Spirit Bear, Cole is not appreciative of how the people have already provided for him whereas the kid in Hatchet would have been very thankful to be provided for. He found himself in this time and was very thankful for life, where Cole doesn't seem thankful for anything he's been given and hopefully he will find himself in this time.

Cutting, drugs, alcohol, abuse, not eating enough or eating too much, happen all over the world. In Cut, Patricia McCormick talks about all of these problems and goes into the story behind getting help.
Cut begins with a girl who decides to cut herself to see what the pain would feel like and soon how it wasn’t just pain anymore. It became a habit to make everything happening in her life go away. This is how Callie soon began dealing with her problems; she would react by doing harm to herself. Soon her parents realize she has a problem and needed to get her help by taking her to a rehabilitation center where everybody there had different kinds of problems. Callie sat quietly and refused to get help, sometimes people just don’t want to be helped which made things worse for her.
Things in this world shouldn’t be so difficult that people have to bring pain upon themselves to deal with it. There are rehab centers all over the world that you see celebrities and famous people going to all the time for problems like these. This is what kids and even adults look up to and it shouldn’t be that way. They aren’t being good role models by getting high or drunk or causing harm to themselves.