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Presenting On
May 25th, at Avondale High School's Honors Night, Mr. Kenyada's
Neighborhood presented the awards for its third annual essay contest.
Eleven area high schools were invited to submitted entries to the
contest, but this year only Avondale responded with their usual
enthusiasm. The importance of the occasion was further illuminated by
the fact that this was to be the last MKN county-wide essay contest. It
was altogether fitting, then, that Avondale HS was the setting of choice
because, of the 29 awards presented in connection with our three
contests, over half of them (16) were presented to students of this
prestigious high school. Shani Franklin, a very gifted 11th grader walked away with First Place honors, while Jonathan Chum won 2nd Place and Farhana Sobhan won 3rd Place in our contest, but she cleaned up in several other categories. Our 1st Place winner also copped the First Place in another essay contest - Coca Cola's "Share The Dream," where she won a $10,000 scholarship fund. Additional recognition was given the faculty of Avondale, with the English Department receiving a Certificate of Appreciation for their part in making Avondale the most successful school in our contests over the years. And English teacher Chris Kern was the recipient of one of our Good Neighbor Awards. The President's Award was then presented to Principal JoAnn Williams-West in recognition of the quality of the essays submitted by Avondale. MKN looks forward to continuing our relationship with Avondale HS in some capacity over the years, inspired by the students, parents, teachers and administrators of this wonderful school. They are truly "the best and the brightest." FIRST PLACE | SECOND PLACE | THIRD PLACE
1st Place
First
Place winner, Shani Franklin (r)
Computer
Technology in Prison Rehabilitation
If you do
not teach a man, will he not on his own educate himself by his
surroundings? If you deny him the very means of education, do you not
expect him to become anything but a common thief and drug peddler? If
you remain silent towards a society that says "Freedom for
all" but means "education for the rich, and for the
white". You let a
man be born in a war zone, where night means bullets and school means
nothing. You teach this man of one thing, survival, putting the barest
of utensils in his hands. You give him teachers, underpaid, overworked,
who can do very little, and then you wonder why he drops out? He will
drop out because there is only one thing that will help him now,
learning to survive. His survival does not see the end, no one has told
him of college, they have spoken only of dead end careers. For him, life
is "go to school, go home, and try to live or leave, sleep during
the day, make your money at night". For him there is no choice. Then he is
caught. He is 17 with a fourth grade reading level. After he is
released, what can he do? Too old, or embarrassed to go back to school,
he tries to get a job. Unfortunately, he lacks the skills for anything
but low paying menial jobs. Mere is no rainbow. Can we
change that? Teach that man a skill. Teach him in a field that so
desperately lacks bodies, it will hire him criminal record and all.
Teach him computers. Take this young man to a lab and tell him how to
start up, to reboot, to fix computers, and to know them. Teach this man,
and he will never revert. It is said that if a man gets a high school degree, he is 50% less likely to return to jail. If he earns a college diploma, he is virtually unlikely to ever see a jail cell again. These men
return to the lifestyles they have known. How can you not "feed a
man" and then scold him when he takes your food? Is he not hungry?
Have you not starved him and then punished him? Who is really to blame? Teach this
man a skill. A caged bird will only fly back into its cage once let out;
just like a person who will go back to only what he knows, after he is
also released. The one thing you cannot take from him is his education. Blacks are behind in the information age. Our wonderful economy is prospering without us and if we do not respond to the ever-changing economy, it will leave us behind. Man yearns to be taught he wants a better way out. He does not want to dodge bullets and he does not want to poison his own people. Teach him, train him, and you will see him in jail again, except this time, he is not in chains, but spreading his newly acquired computer knowledge to his people, so they may better themselves through his example. Bibliography |
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FIRST PLACE | SECOND PLACE | THIRD PLACE
2nd Place
The sister
of 2nd Place winner, How
can computers and computer technology be used Education Computers
are becoming more of a tool for researching than just for
entertainment. Computers have been used in the classroom for easily
manipulating charts and graphs and for demonstrating simulations. African
Americans have been ignored when it comes to computers. Living in a
majority black neighborhood, there are absolutely no computer stores
anywhere. You can rarely find a decent computer at the local pawnshop.
The stores that do have computers, do not target only computers
therefore, the prices are generally higher than a store that does. For
example, Office Depot is a 15-minute drive along Memorial Dr. from
where I live. You would find decent computers, but the price of the
computer system is above average. Now, comparing this with CompUSA at
west end Perimeter Mall or on Highway 41 in Cobb, you would find more
varieties of computer systems, for a much more cheaper price. My
community has suffered greatly with this problem. The technology in
computers can help boost so much knowledge into
our minds. We would understand more of what is out there,
beyond the limits of the city. I have
learned a lot about computer technology and how it can change the
lives of Africans from a person who works for a company called Tido
Tech International or TTI. Currently, this new start-up company owned
by the IT (Information Technology) professor at Clark Atlanta
University and a person with a computer science major, plan to bring
computers to countries in Africa. where they have no knowledge of
computers. This is the first step in bringing technology into Africa. After talking with them about what the company will achieve, they explained that they want to bring IT jobs and education into the many parts of Africa. Their first major event will include famous keynote speakers such as Bill Gates and the IT professor from Clark Atlanta. This event will attract many of the African nations together, to bond and build a computer foundation in Africa. The event will educate African
Americans who will attend and will improve the quality and education
system that many African Americans face today. Computers will not die
out, but get stronger. African Americans must step out of the pit into
the light of the rest of the world and see what opportunity waits for
them through computers. Bibliography
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FIRST PLACE | SECOND PLACE | THIRD PLACE
3rd Place
Farhana
Sobhan accepts her
How
can computers and computer technology be used Teen
Pregnancy Prevention
Teen
Pregnancy is one of the worst curses of today's world. Another curse is
people who are still not aware of today's advanced technology and
computers. This is the year 2000. This world is on the verge of stepping
into a new century! Therefore, it's very important to spread the idea of
advanced technology and computers to those African Americans who are still
not aware of that fact. A person with an access to a computer has a lot of
advantages and greater chances of being successful in the future. Computers
and computer technology can be used as a tool to help African Americans
improve their quality of life in the area of "Teen Pregnancy".
Every year more than four out if ten young women gets pregnant at least
once, before they turn twenty. That is almost 1 million! Even though the
teenage birth rates dropped 21 percent between 1991 and 1996, their rate
still remains higher than any other group, accept for Hispanics. Teen
pregnancy should be prevented as 2000 follows to the new century.
Computers have been used and can be used, as a major source to help
prevent pregnancy. There are several websites on the internet which advises
teenagers what to do, thus it gives reasons why teenagers shouldn't get
pregnant so early, they provide genuine facts about the dangers of
pregnancy, they teach how to cope with peer pressure and every information
that a teenager should know before she makes up her mind. Surprisingly
78% of pregnancies of 15-19 year old teen girls are not planned. That
means that, teenagers don't don't have the strong self-esteem to stand up
for themselves. "The National Campaign to Prevent Teen
Pregnancy" believes that teens have sex because their boyfriends want
them to, therefore there's a serious lack of strong self-esteem among the
teenagers. There are several websites that teach how to build strong self-esteem
and give advice on what they should or should not do, and what precautions
they can take. There are several web pages which are voices of those who
share their stories or others' stories with the common theme that:
"Getting pregnant during your teenage years is a big mistake, and the
only reason they share their stories is because they don't want others to
make the same mistake they did." Computers
can make a difference in an African American teen's life if they have an
access to them. Having a computer keeps teens updated with news; new
technologies and it can provide teenage girl with things they need to
know. A teenage girl might change her mind when she finds out the dangers
of having sex or the ultimate results. As more African Americans hear the
word of computers and advanced technology, it'll take them closer to the
ultimate solution of improving African communities and bring down the
curses against African Americans. In the new century African Americans who
know how to operate a computer will have a better chance to live
prosperously in this advanced world of computers and technology.
"Computer," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993‑1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. FIRST PLACE | SECOND PLACE | THIRD PLACE
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Kristen Danielle Collins 4th Place Kimberly Anderson 5th Place Shanna Le'VeraTerry 6th Place Talia Simon 7th Place Chermika Giles 8th Place All of our runners-up
received computer software package that included |
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FIRST PLACE | SECOND PLACE | THIRD PLACE
Shani
A. Franklin's winning entry in
The Making of a New Tomorrow:
The roar of the fire that raged inside the school building was nothing
compared to the flood of hatred that fed the fire. The dark-faced people
stood outside to watch their school being burned. The few books with
their limited resources, the little they had, would all be merely
memories by morning. They ran to put the fire out, but it was too late.
The schoolhouse, like the cross outside it, had been doused with
kerosene and lit. Their books may have burned, but their hopes and
prayers rose to the sky. The phoenix lay dead among the ruins:
A seed was planted that very day. It was a prayer in the hopes that
maybe children would be able to go to school together. A hope that
mixing races was just as beautiful as the mixture of colors in the sky
at dusk. Isn’t it true that the setting of an old sun gives rise to
the new? This prayer that they lifted to the sky was in hope that no one
would ever see a crucifix lit up with flames of intolerance and
ignorance. That the only flame burning bright would be the candle of
gentility. Would there ever be a time where the faces of a classroom
looked more like a colorful splatter painting, where orange, brown,
green, white and yellow would all intertwine? The phoenix awakens: In the late '60s, it was a time where the races
could go to school together but were as far apart as the oceans,
separated by thousands of miles of land masses. They world mix in the
classroom. by seating chart but ate with the colors familiar to them.
They may have known of each other, but they never thought to know about
each other. The phoenix is in flight: The trio of Shama, Monika and I hopped on the
bus after spending three hours researching term papers in the library.
We quietly slid into our seats, and it was at that moment that I got a
real chance to look at “us.” There
I was, a black female with many generations in this country. Next to me
sat Shama, an Asian female dark eyes who was first generation American,
and a Polish girl, Monika, with beautiful blue eyes who had recently
immigrated to this country. We may all be different, but we are all the
same. We all hate supermodels, we cry
at “Titanic," and we all realize how lucky we are to be able to
be history in the making. The vision Martin Luther King saw of children
integrating and playing together is finally a reality. If
we want to promote togetherness, we must teach our children that
friendship bridges gaps and that true beauty is on the inside. If we
turn them away from hate, blame and ignorance, they can see an
optimistic world of tomorrow. And if we protect the innocent thoughts of
our children, we can arm them with the one thing that can truly conquer
malevolence, charity. For
the greatest and truest adage of all is that “Love conquers all."
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