This story appeared in The Toiler Times, the student newspaper of Manual Arts High School.

By Carlos Guerrero

What really happens after you die? There are many theories regarding this mysterious event. There is no single answer, just theories. What you believe is up to you. Many people have their beliefs and religions yet theories abound which cannot be ignored. Two of the most known theories are reincarnation and afterlife. Not one of these can be 100% proven. What one believes is subjective.

Reincarnation is when the soul or spirit is brought back into a newborn body after death to live a brand new life. The reincarnated person will grow up again maybe as a different race or a different gender, who knows. Reincarnation is a difficult theory for people to believe possibly because it is hard to believe that everyone one knows now will not even exist after death. People like to believe that when they die they will still be around to watch over their loved ones. If reincarnation is true then watching over loved ones is not possible because no one will have any memory of the life they had lived before. For all one knows this could be our hundredth time being reincarnated we just do not know it.

Afterlife is one of the other theories that is related to God and religion. It is believed that what happens to a person is up to God and depends on one’s actions during one’s lifetime. This one might be easier to believe because it makes people think that they will still be around in spirit with full memory of all things they have experienced. Many people would prefer to believe in this theory because it’s easier to believe that when one dies the spirit will still be around. Philosophically it doesn’t matter whether you live or die because in the end one never existed because those who cared about one and knew one will be dead as well. So ultimately one’s life will not have mattered, a difficult thought to digest.

“There is nothing to be feared in death; it matters not a scrap whether one might ever have been born at all, when death that is immortal has taken over our mortal life.” This is a quote by Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher. This supports the philosophical theory that it will not matter whether one lives or dies. In the end one never existed at all.

This story appeared in The Toiler Times, the student newspaper of Manual Arts High School.

By Juanita Yat

What’s wrong with Manual Arts High School they ask?” Well to start off with you have students thinking it is okay to come to school buzzed and half asleep. Students tend to sleep late or not at all, also they think it is okay to sleep during their teacher’s lecture. Students must understand that by not sleeping it causes them not to work as well in school. This is only the beginning.

You have teachers that prefer being on their phones or reading the newspaper to teaching their students. You also have teachers thinking that just because a group of students don’t want to learn they aren’t going to teach.

Then you have the class clowns that don’t know when it is time to joke around and when it’s time to focus. Class clowns sometimes are the life of the classroom, but there are times to play around and act goofy and there times to focus on school work. I honestly think that teachers should take action towards these students.

You have students coming late; most of the times these students are the ones behind. Also, some students come to school without supplies; these are the students that arrive to school without any sort of backpack.

Constantly teachers have a problem with students not finishing their work because they are on their phones, iPods, and talking. Students not only do not pay attention, but sometimes their phones go off in class.

Many students that don’t do their work tend to bring another person down with them. These problems are not fair to the students who actually come to school to learn and to get their education.

Then you also have the dean’s office picking up students 30 minutes before third period even ends. Let’s not forget about when students are entering the Manual Arts gates they have the staff looking at them like they are convicts. The dean’s office tends to send students home or keep them in their “jail” all day. They trip about the dumbest things that make students not want to come to school or to switch schools, so we lose a lot of smart students. As a result when it comes to the CAHSEE students don’t take the test seriously or don’t even bother to show up.

All students have the ability to pass the CAHSEE exam the first time around, but instead we have students in their senior year who haven’t even passed. Not only does this affect our students during testing, it affects our school.

So when parents ask their students what they have learned, they don’t have any idea what to say. This makes me feel that the Manual Arts family should try a little bit harder and maybe someday all these problems will change.

This story appeared in The Toiler Times, the student newspaper of Manual Arts High School.

By Jovana Urrutia

This month’s choice for the teacher of the month is Mr. Solis, a World History teacher. Mr. Solis is a dedicated teacher who wants changes for students to change their lives with education.

I met him in September 2010 when I took his class intersession to make up World History. From the start, I knew I was going to learn a lot from him, and I did.

One question I asked him was, “What inspires you to teach high school students?” He responded he wanted to be a football coach but then he decided to be a history teacher and to teach students to motivate their minds.

Mr. Solis wants every student to have a better education then he did. The reason why he says this is that doesn’t want them to go through what he went through. He grew up in East Los Angeles where there is violence, gangs, drugs, and death. When he was in high school, he was with the wrong people and did stuff that he wasn’t supposed to do. Then he finished high school and college and now he is a teacher. Mr. Solis inspired me when I had him for a class he said to me and the other students in his class. “Go to college don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. Prove them wrong.”

Since that day I knew that I can go to college and be successful in my life and follow my dreams. Mr. Solis went through the same thing when he was in high school and he told me that people doubted that he would go to college and he proved them wrong he went to college got a degree.

I would like to thank Mr. Solis for telling me that I can go to college and never give up my dreams.

This story appeared in The Toiler Times, the student newspaper of Manual Arts High School.

By Juanita Yat

Many teachers see it happen and don’t do anything to stop it, sometimes teachers laugh as well. Bullying is not a laughing matter: many students keep bullying alive by laughing at the jokes, name calling and literally hitting or pushing. Bullies tend to pick on people they consider as “nerds.” I’ll just have you know that someday the people that you call nerds might end up being who you call boss.

Its fact that bully victim can be traumatized for many years, they lose all self confidence while still getting attacked. Some bully victims are pushed to their limits while others try to push back, others start building hatred towards themselves are mostly likely to hurt themselves in the long run.

Verbal bullying is the most common use today this includes name-calling, offensive remarks or consistently making the joke about them. Here at Manual Art you hear peers call each other names. You hear students making fun of others for the way they look or for some other dumb reason. Here at school we have a lot of immature little kids. It’s not only students to students it’s also students to teachers, teachers to students, or staff to students.

In our lovely school you frequently see students pushing and hitting each other. This leads to fighting and other big problems that sometimes are taken after school.

You also have bullying among ladies. This is mostly known as being “two faced,” including spreading of false rumors or talking “nasty” behind each other’s back. Bullying tends to pick on who are considered outcasts, misfits, or losers that get crappy remarks from what is known as the “cool kids.”

When bullies tend to cause intimidation its mostly verbal and when they tend to cast a threat, it is with the purpose of making their victims give in to their orders and demands. Many girls here and anywhere tend to talk about the people they hang around with. These types of girls are the ones that tend to start the fighting between their own friends. Here at school we have a lot of “back stabbers.”

Bullying is very commonly seen on internet chatting sites such as MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, Formspring, text messages, and private phone calls. It also involves destroying or smearing the victim’s reputation on blogs, postings and also through texting etc.

Here at Manual Arts we have problems with burn books and blogs. Many people have been hurt and talked about and have had their pictures posted. Unfortunately, the dean continues to fail to do anything about the problem. Eventually, it blew over because students were taking matters into their own hands, so people that were responsible for the burn book took it down.

In my opinion, Manual Arts staff, deans, and teachers do not really take bullying seriously. Little do they know the effect that it has on students and their education. Teachers sometimes witness a student getting picked on by another student and they don’t bring the student to attention. This sends a message to bullies that it’s okay to pick on other students since no one ever does anything to stop it. In school there is no kind of punishment for bullying. I actually know some kids that get called names; like Mr. Potato head, fat, nerds, fatty, fags, Barney…there are a lot of names. Bullying is not okay and you should treat people the way you want to be treated.

The best way to stop bullying is to never let it start at all. So if you or anyone is getting bullied let them know it’s time to let someone know. It’s not called snitching if someone is getting hurt. Little by little we can stop bullying.