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How do you learn best? What are your expectations for your 9th grade English teacher?

After two years of learning language arts through technology, the transition to high school will probably be a lot different than what we have experienced this year. There will be a different environment, different classmates, different teachers. In high school, I want to learn through things that I enjoy. I want to learn how to make my writing and reading better. I want to be challenged, because I can handle it. In 9th grade, it won’t be very interesting to go over grammar and roots of different words.

The way I learn best is through technology. Textbooks don’t really hold as much value for me. When I have something that I am familiar with and can enjoy, I can understand it better. Last year, our teacher strove to teach us in a way that we could understand. Even though we were challenged, it made us better in Language Arts. We learned more in depth concepts and didn’t focus on things just like grammar and sentence structure. However, if it turns out that we are just reading and writing, that won’t be too bad.

This semester I read a lot of books. I enjoyed all of them, but one book really caught my eye. It was called Fast Food Nation. The subtitle was intriguing: The Dark Side of the All-American meal.

The whole book discusses what has happened to America as a result of the fast food’s beginning. I found it very interesting that many of the people that started places like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and KFC were school dropouts. Yet today they have multibillion dollar companies that have shaped the U.S.

The book begins by talking about cars. As cars became a more common form of transportation, restaurants began to fit their mobile customer’s needs. Drive in windows soon began to spring up all over the country.

In modern day America, you’re probably satisfied to know that there are people who are happy to be serving you. In the kitchens of these restaurants, there are very strict rules that the employees must follow. Screens dictate orders to the workers, who try and trick you into paying just a few cents more for that jumbo sized order of fries. But some employees can’t handle it. There have been more fast food robberies (some by past employees) then there have been in other stores like 7-11’s.

While reading, I learned that what we eat isn’t always what it seems. Here are some fast fast food facts:

•Fries used to be boiled in beef fat.

•Many of the foods we get, even hamburgers, are artificially flavored.

•Chicken McNuggets used to be made out of chickens who could no longer lay eggs.

•Chicken McNuggets are more fatty than a Big Mac.

•This is kind of gross, but I think it should be included: About 100 years ago, one man fell into a lard making machine and got ground up. Conditions in meatpacking plants today aren’t much better.

•Another gross fact: In a McDonald’s in Colorado Springs, cockroaches got into the milkshake machine and mice urinated on raw burgers.

There were a few other outrageous things I found out. There’s actually a university for McDonald’s employees. Some of the employees only know how to say the names of items on the menu. McDonald’s even created a theme park called McDonaldland. Try and imagine Disneyland with McBurglar and Ronald McDonald. Burger King also made a theme park called the Burger King Kingdom.

After reading this book, my first thought was to NEVER eat fast food again. Reading about all the things they do to our food shocked me. Unfortunately, for some people the effects of fast food are permanent. Eating at many of these restaurants will give you food full of fat and lacking in nutrition. After McDonald’s went overseas, the amount of obese people began to rise.

I think it’s important that people know about this. If you know what’s in food, you know what to do to stay away.