Letter to the coach who is neglecting his duties

January 19th, 2010

834 Silly Street
Outofmymindville, British Columbia
Canada, VRY CRZ


Mr. Kleats
High School Gym Teacher
Central High School 123 Main Street
Sportstown, British Columbia
Canada, V2A 1W3

Dear Mr. Kleats:

I am the father of Michael Snaufalophigous and I have a few concerns I would like to bring to your attention. While I am aware that you are most likely incredibly busy, I would greatly appreciate it if you look over my list of concerns.

After attending several practices I feel that if you arrived more often on time it would benefit the students, for example, it would keep the students and players from simply approaching practice as something to arrive late to or not at all, as children of this age need guidance and people to look up to, especially their teachers.

Also, while I realize that it is hard to manage so many players, it would be a very good lesson to the students if you managed to keep the practices and games a little more organized. Perhaps when in practices instead of simply letting the students choose their own partner for warm up and practice, it would be better to let the students get a feel for their whole team and learn how to rely on each other a little more.

Another important matter is the fact that several players receive very little play time.While I know that it is hard to give all players game time, the students who always attend practices and games should be rewarded with time in games.

My final concern is your approach to encouraging students to following rules. While I know that it is difficult to get students to follow instructions and obey the rules that you set in place, yelling and using coarse language will not work, if you take a calmer approach to it the players would be more obligated to oblige the structure you want in your class.

I am aware that you have many things to deal with, and appreciate the time you have taken out of your busy schedule to read over my list of concerns. I hope you look over my list of concerns and send back a response soon.

Sincerely yours,



Dr. Snaufalophigous

Synthesis Essay

"The Most Powerful Question a Parent Can Ask..." by Neil Millar
"Be-ers and Doers" by Budge Wilson
Which parent shows the most respectful approach to parenting their children
mother in "The Most Powerful Question a Parent Can Ask..." shows more respect
mother in "Be-ers and Doers" is a monster
mother in "The Most Powerful Question A Parent Can Ask..." has a calmer, more adaptable approach to parenting, also has reasonable expectations and only wants children who are self-reliant and respectful of others.
mother in "Be-ers and Doers" tries to simply "fix" her son immediately, setting no goals just to get it done, she also expects more than her child can do, let alone want to do, she also is trying for a "perfect" child, in her mind, something that is impossible if the child's personality and behaviour is the opposite of the parent's expectation.

In "The Most Powerful Question A parent Can Ask..." by Neil Millar and "Be-ers and Doers" Budge Wilson, two mothers try to make their children more active members of society. But, the real question is, which parent showed the most respect to their child while they were parenting? Which parent was more willing to work with their child, instead of just against them?
In "Be-ers and Doers", by Budge Wilson, the mother is trying to force her son to become a "doer"(someone who tries to do everything and get it done), even though he takes after his father as a "be-er"(someone who is fine with just letting things happen and deal with problems when they present themselves). The son, Albert, is more than happy to simply enjoy a little lounging and let things happen, but his mother decided he had to be a "perfect son" to her. Throughout the short story whenever Albert does something she sees as lazy she instantly snaps, threatening that hes "gonna be in deep trouble" if he doesn't "pull up [his] socks", and whenever she is criticized for getting angry she simply says "[she] loves him alot", making it all better, in her eyes. This type of parenting is obviously not respectful to the child in anyway at all, and the outcome is obvious even before it plays out in the story, when Albert shows if he needs to be a "doer" he can be, and his mother says she is "proud of [him]", but Albert replies back that "[she] ain't proud o' [him], [shes] jest proud o' what [she] wanted [him] t'be", proving that the mother's approach to parenting was not only disrespectful to the child, but led to a falling out between the parent and child.
On the other side of the spectrum, the mother in "The Most Powerful Question A Parent Can Ask..." works with her children, working them into responsibility, little by little over their childhood. The mother in the story is not a mother who "Collect[s] the towels on the bathroom floor" or "pick[s] up their [child's] dirty underwear from under the bed.", she is a mother who lets her children be self-reliant. She also respects her children by "First nutur[ing], then educate" and as soon as the children are ready, "hand over responsibility for their well-being to them", which is the only way for a child to grow and become a "confident, well-rounded, respectful kid[...]". The outcome of these children are as obvious as the outcome of the story "Be-ers and Doers" except the outcome is the opposite, when the children grow up, become well-rounded human beings, and are able to take care of themselves, they will respect and thank their parent for the help they gave them in becoming a productive person.
Needless to say, everyone has a different outlook on parenting, and a different upbringing, but some ways are more respectful then others, and, by contrasting "The Most Powerful Question a Parent Can Ask..." by Neil Millar, and "Be-ers and Doers" by Budge Wilson, it is easy enough to see the appropriate way to raise a child. So when it comes down to it, don't yell at a child for a bad grade, encourage them and help them find more time for studying, don't force a child to do more work than they should have to do in hopes of making them more productive, moderate the amount of work you give them so they can get it done and become self-reliant, and most importantly, don't force a child to be something that they are not, because they will do something worse than not listen to you, they won't respect you.

Maturity

Certain experiences mark the beginning of maturity. An easy thing to say, but to truly understand what it takes to grow up it takes more than just a little bit of asking because, as the phrase as stated above says it is experiences that people grow from.
One very predominant experience that everyone goes through but that most people generally ignore as an experience is the struggle with addiction. Any addiction, from drugs to video games, everyone struggles with an addiction that one grows from when they truly overcome it and control it. But it is more than just that, when someone is presented with an option to do something addictive they grow as well, just not in the way desired by main stream society. I myself have experienced one such of these instances, a few years ago when I lived in a different city. Where I was living at the time many students succumbed to the vices of drugs, alcohol, and crime, and when I was presented with the option to join in the world itself seemed to stand still for only a moment, when I decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. When the person standing next to me tried getting me to take a line of cocaine I refused and left. I was shunned for it because but I stood my ground and have grown from it since, truly glad of my decision.
But their is more evidence than just experiences you hear from people you know, history has many examples where people grow through what they experience. One such example would be that of Winston Churchill the British Prime Minister during World War II. Churchill was trying his best to turn the war in the favour of the Allied forces, but during this time Nazi Germany was at its strongest. Churchill went to America in hopes of negotiating the Americans into joining the war instead of just supporting the Allies. When Winston Churchill suffered from failing health, including a heart attack, pneumonia, and being hit by a taxi, Churchill went on after all that to rally the British people. But i was not simply out of sheer determination, it was out the the fact that Churchill knew that he had to unite the people if they were to defeat the Third Reich, something that Churchill was instrumental in doing.
In the end, every person who truly wants to mature needs to have experience, because maturity and experience our perpendicular to each other. Things we all face, and things that are left to the responsibility of a certain few, either way those experiences help to make everyone grow.

The Christmas Turkey

"Get out of the kitchen, the turkey is on fire!", a phrase far to often spoken when it comes to Christmas dinner and the mishaps surrounding it, but that is what makes it humorous, because at one time or another everyone has, or will be, in a predicament involving a turkey and Christmas. In Stuart Maclean's short story "Dave Cooks the Turkey" the use of his humour surrounds relatable situations. In the story Dave's wife Morley wants to enjoy a Christmas without her having to do everything and so when Morley asks Dave if he can cook the turkey " I can do that," is what he says, not fully understanding what he has gotten himself into and when Christmas eve comes round, he has forgotten to do the one thing that was more important than cooking the turkey, buying it. From here Dave's situation only deteriorates which leads to a funny, relatable situation, the type of humour that Stuart Maclean thrives at. This type of humour is very strong due to the fact it is so easy to compare your own life to and makes people chuckle not only at the situation but at themselves for being in their own such predicaments. For instance, when Dave is forced to try and find a turkey "At 4:00 a.m., with the help of a taxi driver named Mohamed," It is a situation that not only adds humour from the relatable situation, but simply the ridiculous premise of the entire thing. Another way Maclean adds humour is by having Dave continually blunder his way through his predicament because he has had to much to drink, like when he is talking to his neighbor Jim at the place he is trying to get the turkey cooked because he can't cook it at his own house and he says " Turkey and the kids are at the Food Bank, I brought Morley here so they could cook her for me" a simple blunder but with hilarious results. But, the best type of humour Maclean uses is at the very end, when Jim, the man who Dave had talked to at the place he was getting the turkey cooked, was invited in for a drink by Morley, leading to what was obviously more than just a little bit awkward. With such a wide variety of humour at his disposal Stuart Maclean is a true maestro of comedy, due to the fact he can so easily weave such hilarious events.

Growing Up

Certain experiences mark the beginning of maturity.Dark and alone, in the beginning, until one is born and life begins, it starts out with baby steps, literally, until eventually the child is independent, physically at least, but it takes more to properly develop a mind that just a good upbringing. For a mind to properly develop the person needs experience, needs too experience more things that can be written in sentence, in any paragraph, in any essay, but it is easy to show these experiences, if only a few, and so, in this story, a story of how a certain experience helps to properly mature a certain person, one such experience will be described. This starts out the same as true beginning of every story though, with darkness. A single boy, because that is all he could possibly be thought as at the moment, cowers in the middle of a forest. With the wind howling and the sky staring intently on the boy, he begins to search, for options, and for salvation. The boy's name is Gregory, and he is a would-be hermit who had to many chocolate bars when he was younger, a boy who fled from his home due to trouble, the trouble being irrelevant, family or otherwise, all that matters is Greg, alone in an alien place he has never before been and how he is going to survive. Greg trudges through the forest, jumping at the slightest sound as the trees surround him and breath in the wind, their branches forming brittle rib cages, their creaking and aching the life of the forest. With every step another option presents itself, no better, than the last, should he run? Should he Hide? Should he stay? Should he return? None are appealing but they are no better than any other. Greg tries to run, but he realizes that he is only more tired, and more lost. Greg tries to hide, but the only place to hide are the trees and they seem to threaten to rip him apart if he comes to close. He decides that the only option is to stay, where he is, where he is alone, where it is dark.
Suddenly the light bursts through his shut eyelids, Greg gets up realizing he had fallen asleep when he laid down. He had cried before he went to sleep and the dampness still remained, if only barely, on his cheeks. The forest was not any more hospitable in the daytime, and it seemed now as if the trees had faces to accompany the slight movement they got from the slight gusts of wind. Greg didn't want to go back, but he could not stay, he decided. He did not know where he could go, and realized that now that he was alone all he wanted was to go back to those that he still care about, at the very least. Greg tried to return now, his only other option that he wanted to try, but realized that he was hopelessly lost. Greg fall back into a tree, ignoring the branches that seemed to grasp at him, ignoring the continuing chill that seemed to be building inside him, ignoring the taste of bitter hunger in his mouth, and simply fell back unwilling to want to go any farther. He sat back for what seemed to be hours simply wallowing in self pity, until suddenly a smell came. The smell seemed to permeate from somewhere, the smell stuck to him, it grappled itself into his nose, and he seemed to float towards it. Despite being only one day out from everything, he still felt the sharp pains in his stomach, his stomach demanding sustenance.
He followed the smell for an insurmountable amount of time, far to long in the mind of Greg until he found himself at a ring of trees. He saw 4 very dirty men sitting around a fire with a pot in the fire, the source of the maddening smell. The men talked, but Greg could not hear, his skin began to crawl, a shudder went up his spine, and the smell of the food seemed to be replaced by a sense of wrongness emanating from the men. Greg decided running home would be for the best and began to creep away, the freshly fallen leaves covering his exit as he tipped toed over them. The sound of a breaking branch made time freeze, for Greg, for the 4 men, for the forest, for everything. What happened next was could only be described as desperation, as that is all is shown. Greg ran. He ran faster than he had ever ran before and he did not stop because he feared what would happen. The men ran faster. They ran after him as if he was the only thing they had ever been aware of. It went on for what seemed an eternity, every second equating to a year. In the end the men caught him, took him down with a net, its tight constraining grip folding over Greg as if it were the embrace of Death himself, until suddenly everything went black after a sharp flash of pain.
Greg woke up in his home, wrapped inside his bed's blankets. Apparently the men were simply hunters who had gotten lost due to their own ineptitude, but the run had brought all of them close enough to the road that they could hear cars. Greg had smashed his had on a rock when the net hit him. Greg spent the rest of his life looking back on the experience, at the age of 43 he finally got the awareness and experience that his mind had craved for endless years. Greg had finally managed to obtain maturity, not through school, not through family, but through an experience that is something that he could always look back on and realize that not everything is perfect, but it is usually better than living in a forest for the rest of your life.

A Rise of Stress Relief

A man is sitting, alone in a room, seething with rage at the world for the things he wants and doesn't have, then he suddenly begins to swear, begins as a whisper and turns into a yell, until suddenly the man stops and looks around, he begins to laugh, and forgets his worries because he realizes that they aren't as bad as he thinks and that he just needed to get some relief. As society grows more and more progressively, more and more things will begin to infuriate us, because as a society, we are impatient and want things immediately. Maybe it is a new car, maybe it is a new job, inevitably something will make someone angry, and that is why we have swearing. Swearing is in place as a vocal stress relief, when someone is angry someone is dangerous, but when someone is swearing suddenly all their worries are a little less substantial until they suddenly dissolve in the wake of said person's realization. Society is not in a downfall of morals simply because a few new words are set in place to help relieve stress. When something is lost people get angry because they lost something that was theirs, or because it was taken, and that is why they swear, because when they relieve that experience they are still angry but suddenly it isn't as bad when you can vocalize your anger towards it. If you lose a family member or someone close to you, crying is not always the answer, if you swear all that anger melts away, and when anger leaves so to does the depression that begins to form because you can't let out your anger. If someone is "getting in your face" and won't leave you alone these people aren't always mentally prepared for a quick and witty rebuttal followed by a few swears, easily sending them staggering giving you a chance to end the matter there by simply walking away or getting to the root of the problem, something that couldn't have happened if the aggressor hadn't been calmed down. And so, unto everyone who swears for their own reasons, remember, it is not because people's morals are declining, or because people simply want an excuse to get angry, it is because people need a way to relieve stress, people need a way to vocalize their sadness and anger over something, people need something to defend themselves against the mentally inferior but physically superior.

The Fall of Morals

2 men, sitting in a room, alone, there is no window just a door and 2 men, sitting their waiting, suddenly one man begins to talk, and talk, and talk, when suddenly the other begins to spew hatred in a concentrated dosage of anger towards the annoying man, and then it boils over as they both explode with profanity and they begin to fight. Curse words, foul language, cussing, all of these things are the same and cause the same thing, a decline in the morals of society. As one man swears at another neither gets calmer they only get angrier, as one man continues the other starts until it ends in a fight of words instead of fists. When someone uses foul language to let of some steam so they can calm down, the anger is transferred to the target until finally it explodes within someone and morals are thrown out the window. Suddenly, swearing has become an excuse to get angry at people, because if you can set someone off with words than suddenly it isn't your fault, suddenly the person who threw the first punch is the person who is the one to blame because they can't "Keep their cool" or," stay level-headed". In modern society people no longer have morals opposed to fighting because suddenly they can swear, people no longer have morals opposed to getting angry because suddenly they can just attack someone with words instead of their fists, people forgo their morals and swear so they have an excuse to "get under someone's skin" so they know the satisfaction of bothering someone who isn't the same or holds different beliefs. Society has not lost its morals because swearing is present, society has lost its morals because with swearing it is far too easy to throw away what is important, because swearing is an excuse, because swearing is an addiction and once you do it once and it feels good to make someone else feel terrible you don't want to stop because as long as someone else feels bad at least you aren't, a principle far to many people follow.