February is Black History Monthy

by Justin (grade 5)

Every February, we celebrate African-American History Month to remind ourselves of the achievements of hard working African-Americans who wanted freedom more than anything. Many African-Americans had ideas about being a civil rights activists and here are just three of the most famous ones and one who was not planning to be an activist, but is remembered as one.

Probably the first person to pop into people's heads is Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr was born in 1929, he attended Georgia schools, but was segregated  from white kids just because he was African-American. After graduating from college, there were protesting everywhere for civil rights across the U.S.. King wanted to improve the protesting when they were protesting about civil rights. So to try to improve it, he gave his “ I have a dream” speech at Lincoln's Memorial at Washington D.C  in 1963. This speech as planned, improved the protesting and also stopped segregation in a lot of cities and states in the U.S. He also won a Nobel Peace Prize. Sadly, Martin was assassinated in 1968 by James Earl Ray, a criminal and a white supremacist protester.

But Martin Luther King Jr was not the only civil rights leader to be assassinated. Another civil rights activist was Malcolm X.

Malcolm X was born in 1925, nicknamed “Malcolm Little.” In 1946, Malcolm and his friend were convinced of burglary charges and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

After being released from prison, he became a key spokesman in the civil rights movement. In 1965, a group of men ganged up on him and killed him. Over 15,000 people attended his funeral.

But the most unlikely person to be famous and remembered was Rosa Parks, and it all started on a bus in Alabama in 1955. A bus driver asked for her to get out of her seat  for a white person, but she refused to, so they decided to arrest her. This caused outrage and the civil rights movement to be stronger.

Many achievements of African-Americans were for civil rights and freedom. But also, endurance and perseverance since they have been through a lot, like slavery and trials for crimes they did not do.

A question remains, why is this holiday so important?

First, African-Americans are a very important part in history for their influence and standing up for themselves. And second, their culture has endured many tragedies and it is a good to reflect on their strength and endurance each year.

Everyday today, African-Americans still face racism, but many grow stronger and endure from it.

Photo credits: 
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/history/martin-luther-king-jr/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/01/how-history-got-the-rosa-parks-story-wrong/?utm_term=.3ec3f44370cb

The Best February 14th Ever!

By Emily (grade 5)

This year, on Valentine’s day, everyone was SUPER excited. They couldn’t wait to hand out all their valentines, and tried to give them all out on the bus! All the valentines had a lot of thought put into them and everyone was very grateful. To celebrate Valentine’s day, we played a super fun game in morning meeting, called “Honey I Love You."

You had to walk over to someone and try to make them smile or laugh, by saying "honey, I love you." But if they smiled, they had to be in the middle. After a few rounds of that, everyone was bummed that we couldn’t play anymore, and we had to start class. However, everyone did get the chance to do something really fun in math class. We got to choose between various things to do, like these awesome connect-the-dot math sheets, origami, difficult math problems and cutting out paper hearts.

The lower graders made bags for everyone to put their valentines into, and they would leave them on their desks so people could come and drop them in. After an amazing recess, we went inside to Mr. B’s classroom. (Mr. Sharp teaches in there on Tuesdays and Thursdays.) He let us have one piece of our candy during snack time. Everyone took a while to finish theirs.

Shortly after, he assigned everyone to their journalism article. Now I’m writing about the amazing day we had on February 14th! Everyone struggled trying not to eat all their candy at once. (Some kids may have had another piece on the bus. But you didn’t hear that from me.)
Needless to say, everyone loved all their valentines and had a great time. We may not have had a big celebration, but it was still a very fun valentine’s day. I think everyone got lucky that we didn’t have to do our independent math problems that day, and we could choose some fun math-related activities to do instead. The game we played in morning meeting was also very fun, and I hope we play it again next year. Valentine’s day this year has been awesome; especially for my first year at Black Butte School. I hope next year isn’t any different! I love Valentine’s day.