Charlotte’s Blog

  Everyone knows that playing sports can be dangerous. People get sports related injuries all the time, but when your actually playing you never think that they could happen to you. Earlier this year, when playing volleyball I managed to separate two of the vertebrae in my spine. The sad thing was that this could have been prevented with a few easy steps. By remembering to thoroughly stretch and keeping core muscles strong, the risk of back injuries becomes greatly reduced. To start, its important to make sure your back muscles are stretched before beginning any physical activity. Often, people are so focused on leg and arm muscles that they forget about back muscles entirely. Every muscle in your body needs to warm up and can be strained during exercise. This is especially important in sports like volleyball, dance, and football where the back is used often. Some useful stretches include knees to chest, lower back rotations, and cat stretches. By stretching, the chance of accident...

  We are able to enter a world seen completely through another’s eyes while reading. Even people that we may think we have nothing in common with. By reading stories through a point of view different from our own, we are able to learn more about the world and gain empathy for others. Earlier this year I read the book The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. The story follows a girl named Starr, an African-American who has to deal with the death of her friend due to police brutality. While I was reading the story, I was never really able to relate to the main character. She had to deal with discrimination and violence because of her race, which I have never experienced. Even though we are around the same age and gender, we don’t have much in common.  However, it’s precisely because me and Starr are so different that it was important for me to read this story. I will never experience the hardships she went through, most people my skin color won’t. This can create a lack of empathy bet...

    Math has never been my best subject. I always felt like I understood the concepts we were learning, but when I actually did the problems I always made simple mistakes. However, one time in fifth grade, my teacher gave me a new way of looking at the equations. Instead of learning the lesson and taking a quiz on it, we were told to make a video explaining the concept as though we were the teacher. Somehow, the act of talking through the problems made them easier for me to understand. I remember making the video and being shocked at how in depth I was able to go about math. By explaining the concept to others, I began to see all the small pieces that made up the big topic. When I thought through the math in my head I never focused on the details, only the big picture. Yet when explaining things to others, the details became necessary for them to be able to understand what I was trying to say. Suddenly, the things my brain tended to skip over were the most important part of wh...