More Scheduling Arguments by Brain B.

All of us should seriously consider making P.E. in the 8th grade a requirement, instead of typing, and computers.

Physical education is a favorite activity for many students and not having P.E. in the eighth grade may help students in various ways. Some of these ways maybe helping kids focus in the classroom and enjoy school more than they do.

One way physical education will help children out in the average school day is they have a chance to get their energy out. They only have about 30 minutes of recreation time anyway, and most of it is spent retrieving and consuming lunch.

With P.E. in the eighth grade kids will not be as energetic in the classroom setting and will be able to focus better on their work. Also it makes the average school day more exciting for the average they would be allowed to play with friends or even make new friends.

Another good thing about adding physical education to the eighth grade list of required classes is students will learn further about the principles, of teamwork, and sportsmanship, which they will use extensively in their adult life.

Also another reason for physical education to be required for the eighth grade is it will help kids keep in shape. Without P.E. in the eighth grade many students may not want to play sports or be active, which can lead to many things.

One of them obesity without physical activity kids will gain weight which in the long run can be very unhealthy. Also if they do not exercise, children may become out of shape and may not have a very good chance of making after-school physical activities.


P.E. teaches kids how to exercise safely in a controlled environment so they learn how to exercise properly on their own without injuring themselves. Physical education can be taken as an elective, but very few students take it as it means that a student might give up their elective.

Kids would be giving up things like art, band, orchestra, drama, or other electives?
Those are the reasons that the school board should seriously consider this issue.

They don’t even have to require it for all the schools they could test it and if it works consider the idea for more schools. Adding 8th grade P.E. will help better the learning environment for students in many ways mentally and physically.

Schools should seriously consider this proposal in the near future.

Tim's All Too True Take on Homework

Homework: A JMS Student’s Shocking Reality
by Tim C.

Almost every day, middle school students come home from a lengthy day at school with an excessive amount of work that they must complete. In addition, teachers are using the class time they posses to have their students work on the extensive assignments they issue for class work.
Handouts for students to complete at home tend to be practice work from the daily class work.

Students should be spending around 70 minutes a night on homework. However, some students have to stretch that time into a few hours a night. While this is not consistent for the entire school year, there are periods of time in which this occurs. Some students in classes obviously do not require the homework that becomes tedious for them.


There are other schools in Albuquerque that have a daily schedule that permits students to complete the majority of their homework in the class it was assigned. This is because class periods are longer than those at Jefferson Middle School. Thus the diligent students who finish the class assignments have additional time in the class, which they use to finish the homework.

Aside from extended class periods students can take advantage of the time for lunch.
The lunch period at JMS is 30 minutes long give or take. A longer lunch period would amount to about a full hour in length. If students would not like to have homework when they travel home, they have sufficient time to eat and tackle assignments which they could not complete in a class period. With longer amounts of time in class and at lunch, students could reduce the amount of work they have to worry about, when they arrive home.


We must at least consider the advantages of making drastic changes to school schedules. Students would have time to finish their homework in class and therefore have more time outside of class. With this time, students could participate in practice for sports and/or music lessons, without having to worry about fitting a night’s worth of homework into their schedule.


There may also be positive effects on student attitudes. Without the fear of getting more homework, causing them to dread the next school day students may wish to attend school and possibly even enjoy the day. Students may then be more willing to work in the classroom and socialize with the other students.


In the long-term, students who would not do their homework may eventually see the light and change their motives in the classroom and maybe even themselves altogether. We could also see a decrease in the drop out rate of high school graduates in New Mexico. Students who would otherwise not engage in extracurricular activities may even be compelled to do so.


The proposals above offer ways to improve schooling in New Mexico. Homework is an issue in some schools that must be dealt with.

Daily Trivia

'Tis the time for Thanksgiving, so here is some trivia with a Thanksgiving theme:

You know how Thanksgiving is called "The All American Holiday"? Actually, there are seven more nations that have an official Thanksgiving day. They are: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Korea, Liberia, and Switzerland.

I'm not sure if they all eat turkey, however.......

A Review of Juno by Mia C.

A Movie to Watch with Your Kids

Starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, and Jennifer Garner; Juno has become a hit movie amongst everyone. A satirical piece on a teenage girl becoming pregnant, Ellen Page (who plays Juno) has touched the hearts of millions with her witty, off beat humor. The acting is fantastic, as well as the extraordinary script.
Throughout the movie I was captivated in the plot and laughing hysterically. Every sentence was crafted carefully and stylishly, to keep viewers enthralled for the whole two hours. This movie is just as witty and wonderful as Diablo Cody’s Thank You for Smoking.

Juno is not only written well, but has a bite to it that always makes a movie unique and brilliant. What makes this movie so great is the fact that we’re dealing with a serious issue which affects millions of teenagers every year. Yet here is this movie, starring a pregnant teenager who goes through with the pregnancy and gives her child to a woman who desperately wanted to be a mother. However, the movie gives you the feeling that being pregnant didn’t change Juno’s life. It was as if she just kept up her personality and her social life and hanging out with her friends. She didn’t let the fact she was pregnant get in the way of anything.

When the baby was finally born, only then did the impact of her decisions really sink in. Only then do you really realize the importance of being pregnant. It was heart breaking to see Juno cry at the end after giving away her baby to a woman who was ready to have one.

The only thing that I would change is how the movie makers portrayed being a pregnant teen in such a positive light. They romanticized this issue to such a degree, that it actually felt favorable to be a pregnant sixteen years-old. I just hope that this would not influence or encourage teens to become pregnant because of this movie. There were many messages in this movie, but I think one of the strongest was the message of love.

Juno showed that is possible to love someone no matter what they look like. If they are the right person for you; then you have to be forgiving, and love them anyway. For example, Juno’s father loved Juno to pieces, even though she slipped up and got pregnant. To really love someone, you have to love them through all of their hard times, too.

The creators of Juno did a phenomenal job. The acting was superb, the characters were completely endearing and down to earth; the plot was utterly fantastic and the message of love and friendship was strong. I found this movie to be one of the best in 2007.

Letter to The Journal

Letter to Albuquerque Journal

by Claire C.

Being the common theatre go-er that I am had to see at least one play for the passed Halloween. As it turned out, my luck fell rock bottom, considering I chose the seemingly worst play I could've chosen. I landed at UNM, in Rodey theatre, with a program and high expectations.

This happened to be a surprisingly mediocre "abstract" version of Frankenstein. Frankenstein was a short and bald, pot-bellied man whose voice reminded me of a pre-pubescent cartoon character. He was not in the slightest fitting the profile of a pitiable man whose life has been destroyed. The only thing I could bring myself to pity him for, much less any of the other actors and actresses, was for being cast in such a pitiful play. He reminded me of a pervert you'd see laying under bus stop benches.

The play began with several mangy looking women, howling and twitching like a coyotes in the midst of a terrible seizure. This neither intimidated nor scared me. The trauma was that of the poor women's voices! Their screaming hurt my voice just to listen. These actresses obviously had no experience in theatre screaming, and I'm positive they'd lost their voices by the end of the run.

Then there was a deluge of feverish scenes consisting of actresses who were sometimes dead, and sometimes not, but always the same character. I was completely unable to discern the plot of the story and would have been completely lost if I had not already known the plot of the story.

Frankenstein's sister, Elizabeth, scared me deeply. Not for her character, but for her real-life sanity. This woman belonged in an interpretative dance studio, and not a college theatre. She was constantly dancing, making it extremely hard to concentrate on the overly dramatic lines the two were constantly spewing out of their mouths. At one point in time, after bluntly stating that another character in the play wanted to kill her brother, she made a gesture as if she was decapitating him herself. This caused the entire audience to burst into a series of muffled giggles, myself included.

As if this weren't enough, this version of the play was corrupted by amounts of incest between the two. Frankenstein and Elizabeth were to end up married. This aspect threw off my entire perspective on the couple's relationship, which confused me further!

The most perplexing thing in the entire play was the placement of costume designer jobs. I was bewildered by the design of Frankenstein's creation's costume. This was a white spandex jumpsuit. The spandex was obviously too small, and exposing, for the actor. He wore white six-inch platform laced boots that could only remind me of a disco dance. His entrance also caused a sudden eruption of snickering. And during the second act, his second entrance was even more obtuse. His once blank white spandex was covered with jewels and ornate hand made designs. He wore a cape. It can only be described as Liberace. And it was repulsive.

The only useful object in this play was the sound design. It created a relentless pattern in my mind, always setting the mood and reminding me of the intensity of this play. The down side to that is the ever-present 2-platform sounds played in the background. It was always sad music or high-tension music, but there was no calm. No median, and never silence. This left me annoyed and continuously humming the two tunes days after the performance. So, as you can see, the only upside has been canceled out by an equally important down side. The cast and crew managed to ruin every part of this play, be it acting, sound, costume, and plot. I am extremely disturbed that such people can call themselves actors, much less theatre folk, if they can not put on a decent, classic play. Frankenstein is one of the easier plays, and was extremely disturbing to see fail in a college level theatre.

Sorry For the Downtime, We've Been Busy

Mr. Scot made us install Microsoft Office on all these laptops because he is evil and controlled by the Microsoft Corporation to do the bidding of the ultimate evil....Bill Gates. So we haven't been able to post to this blog for almost a week now.

We feel bad about that, but not as bad as Mr. Scot does. He feels so bad he is typing this post to tell you how bad he feels, and that he also feels bad for saying that Bill Gates is the ultimate evil, especially since we know that he is only assistant to the ultimate evil, and a lowly assistant at that. And Microsoft Office is a lovely product and now Jefferson has a site license for it, so we really need to stop slamming it and how awful it is and how it's really awful that the whole world is seemingly in thrall to this buggy, RAM-hogging software program.

So we're stopping. No more Microsoft bashing here. And Bill Gates really isn't even an assistant to the ultimate evil. Angelina Jolie doesn't need an assistant.

We kid, of course. We're joking. What a bunch of kidders we are. But we're not kidding when we say we're going to start posting plenty of new "lit blog" pieces in upcoming days, especially now that evil Mr. Scot has assigned a "creative writing" assignment that has led to several great students writing some really great short pieces on subjects ranging from penguin attacks to meditation.

Look for those in upcoming days. And again, we're sorry. Especially Mr. Scot.

Post Baby Post!

Hello Jefferson students if you find some thing you think is cool or funny or might just be good on the blog please send it to jettrailsjms@gmail.com.

The Painter, post 2 by Mia

Th rain drummed outside. Cool and calming, a never ending symphony of tiny, water droplets fell onto already wet pavement. The air was tangy and delicious with rain. I closed my eyes. I was so exhausted, but even now I felt a dull happiness. My painting of Ocean hung on the wall, my latest break through in my path of art discovery. She look tranquil and beautiful. It reminded me a bit of the paintings in Italy, though not nearly as good. My breathed deeply, feeling the muscles of my flex and relax with every breath.
The phone rang shrilly and annoyingly. I waited to see if anyone would pick it up, but of course, my mom was waiting for me to pick it up. Therefore, I had no choice. I ran into the living room, full of it's colorful chairs and oddities.
"Hello?"
"Hey, it's me."
"Oh, hey Mandi."
"Hey, can I come over?"
"Ummmm...Sure. I think."
"Okay, good. I'm in your driveway."
I sighed. "Do you always drive somewhere before you ask if it's okay if you come?"
"Totally. See you in a sec."
I hung up. "Mom! Is it okay if Mandi comes over?"
I waited fro the response. "YEAH!" My mom shouted back. She was deep in architectural thought. "Is she here?" My mom asked.
"She's Mandi, of course she's already here."
"That girl needs to learn how to--"
But just then, the door burst open to reveal a completely different Mandi than the one I had known.

Progress Reports

Well hello, progress reports are coming out soon and you know what that means, miss prints^-^. Every single time we get cards saying report card and then we get freaked out and then people say no it is just a progress report. What is wrong with the system even when we get report cards they say progress reports. I personally think that it is a conspiracy to see if we notice thing so that the administration can take control of our minds. And I have proof, the text books we have are dull and tedious which, in turn makes us dull and tedious. When we have become so compliant with everything the administration will rule the earth. But remember this is just a theory. Hope you got good grades and see you later Jets.

A Review of a Review by Mia

The Phantom of the Opera is the tragic tale of a love triangle taking place in the center of France, in the Paris Opera House. This book leaves the reader just wanting to read more as the story progress and develops into the classic tale of love, reality and illusion that has captured the hearts of readers since 1911.

This book has been qualified as a A-list book because of the fact it has captured hundreds, maybe millions, of people's hearts, not to mention the movies that have been made out of it. This simple telling of a tragic love triangle has caught the valuable attention of the public and has stayed alive due to the fact that it had good details about life and not have happened just then, but still happens today and will always happen until humans go extinct.

Everyone will feel love, despair, and cheated on at some point of their lives....

The report is much longer, but I have graciously cut out the other three pages. This is one of the best book reviews I have ever read. It is not only in a sense poetic, but really makes you want to grab a copy of The Phantom of the Opera RIGHT NOW. I have never read the book, but I have seen the latest movie remake of the book. I really dislike the movie of the "Phantom of the Opera".

In fact, I don't like the whole idea of a young dancer and singer being hypnotized by a phantom who lives under a opera and then who leaves him for her childhood love. But after reading this report by a student who wants to remain anonymous, I actually wanted to give The Phantom of the Opera a second chance. That is sign of a powerful piece of writing. This type of power is what people strive to get across, and rarely do. So well done, student X!

Mia

A Review of a Beowulf Review

Beowulf is a book written sometime in the seventh century and the tenth century A.D. The original poem was written in old English , or Anglo-Saxon. I think Beowulf is an A-list book for two reasons. First the book is about 1,000 years old. It has been described as being the beginning of English poetry.

Second Beowulf is the 'epic poem of England.' Two man eating monsters are killed, as well as a dragon, all by the hero of the story. I think in a way that the hero of the story, Beowulf, is a little bit of a 'superhero' type. The land of the Southern Danes has been under threat from a man eating monster named Grendel. For many years, the king, Hrothgar, has been under torment from this monster, and nobody seems to be able to kill I, though the book never mentions anyone trying. Then from over the sea, from the land of Geats ( modern day Southern Sweden,) comes a mighty warrior.

He singlehandedly kills Grendel (without the use of weapons), and even Grendel's mother....

Student "X" does a good job telling us about the story, but I feel like I am hearing a summary of the book. I don't know what they liked about it that is not plot other than the reasons that they gave to justify it being an A-list book. But other than that this was a great review and I do admit that this is not the whole review. I also acknowledge that it is easier to be cynical than it is to like something, as Mr. Scot has stated.

Did You See The Post Before This One?!?

You should really read the short fiction piece posted below. I'm a Literature teacher, and I know what I'm talking about. In fact, not only should you read it, but you should consider sending in a piece of your own, oh Jefferson MS student.

You never know if a "famous literary agent" might be reading this blog. A "famous agent" with a checkbook, armed and ready to sign hot, new authors. Really. It could happen.

Scot Key
Literary "Blog" Manager Emeritus (a self-created title)

The Painter by Mia

I blew gently in the smeared powder on the page. The fine, chalky vibrant color lay think on the page. I backed up to examine what I have done so far. My model is perfect, the light making her fair complexion look creamy and soft.

The blue shirt is bright and fuzzy. It goes so perfectly with her blue eyes. I am a artist, and Ocean, my model, is my one of my best friends. I think when she was born, her parent's saw those big, swimming blue eyes and knew there was no way that their babies name could be anything but Ocean. Because Ocean's eye's were, obviously, the exact shade of the blue the sea.

Ocean's mom was a model, and I guess the photogenic awesomeness of being a model passed onto her incredibly beautiful daughter. I say this from a artist's point of view, of course.
"Are you done yet?" She asked. I felt sorry for her. She's had to sit that way for two hours.

"Photo shoots never take this long."

"That's because this isn't a photo shoot. Real art takes time."

I forgot to mention, Ocean's a model for some famous French magazine, so she goes out of country a lot for her oh so precious photo shoots. Man, with gas prices as high as they are, she's lucky the magazine pays for her to fly out to France. "I'm almost done!" I assured her. She groaned.

I added red highlights to her hair, and cast a slightly blue shadow under her chin, because the light reflects the blue of her shirt upwards. I was glad it was fall, because the fall light is really bright, but cold. In winter, the natural light is too dark and cold to do any really cool paintings. So the spring, fall and summer are the best times to do model drawings; especially in Ocean's case. Her skin had a very warm, spring tone.

I closed my eyes, they burned from looking so hard for so long. My back hurt, despite the ugly but comfortable "croc" shoes. My arms and fingers were covered in pastel dust, so it was impossible not to get anything dirty.

"Okay," I said. "I'm done."

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

Remember, remember the Fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, twas his intent to blow up the King and Parliament. Three score barrels of powder below, poor old England, ready to blow. But by God's providence, he was catch'd with burning candle and flaming match. Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring. Holloa boys, holloa boys, god save the king.

Happy November the fifth to day a man named Guy Fawkes tried to blow up The British Parliament. So every year the people of England burn a of him to celebrate his failure.

Election day

Election day is tomorrow! So, here's a small amount of election trivia:
There was more early voting this year than ALL the voting four years ago. ( That includes early voting and the actual November 4th voting.)
The economy benefits from the campaign because of all the thousands employed making campaign advertisements, signs, and T-shirts.
Make sure to vote!!!!!!