Student letters: Save the turtles, Save the ocean, Support Ukraine
Mark Snyder’s eighth-grade government students at Shirland School have been studying the meaning of citizenship and its rights, duties and responsibilities.
One of the responsibilities of citizenship is to be engaged in your community.
As a way to put that responsibility into practice and as a culmination of our study, students selected a topic of interest or concern, researched it and wrote a letter to the editor on that topic.
"As their teacher, I often find myself disagreeing with the opinions of my students, and the students often disagree with each other as well," Snyder writes. "Part of responsible citizenship is learning to appreciate the opinions of others civilly, even when those opinions differ from our own."
That’s an important lesson for all of us. Student letters will appear on these pages the next few weeks.
Save the sea turtles
I have a turtle, and I love it. It bothers me to learn how many sea turtles are dying because of plastic waste. Many turtles are dying each year because of pollution, and they need to be protected.
Significant numbers of sea turtles are dying. According to Our World in Data, about 1.2 million of sea turtles are dying each year because of plastic waste.
This is horrible because sea turtles help transport nutrients from the beach to the coral reefs. Turtles mainly die because they think floating plastics are floating jellyfish. Then they choke on the plastic.
Sea turtles need to be safe.
You can help save the sea turtles by donating to SEE Turtle. This organization helps by taking plastic out of the sea turtles habitat. They give the money to different projects trying to help these turtles such as the Eco Mayto project in Mexico.
Eco Mayto is trying to pick up plastic where sea turtles have laid their eggs. You can also save these turtles by going to their habitat and helping clean up those plastics on your own.
If you like turtles, go to your local pet store and pick up a turtle to give it a home.Cole Jackson, Rockton
Student letters: Working age, Baseball injuries, 2020 election
Stop dumping waste in the ocean
I love being outdoors every chance I get, but I have been noticing that the path this world is going down isn’t good.
It is like a ticking bomb. We humans need to stop carelessly dumping garbage into the ocean.
The amount of waste that ends up in the ocean is more and more each year. According to CNN, there is a giant floating mass of trash, called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is now twice the size of Texas.
That is an insane amount of garbage just floating in the ocean, and if we don’t do anything about it, it’s going to get worse. Also, the International Union for Conservation (IUNC) says that around 14 million tons of all plastic ends up in the ocean each year.
That is so much garbage and plastic that ends up in the ocean, and it will keep piling up if we don’t do anything about it.
All of the garbage is affecting animals and humans. The garbage can contaminate seafood and kill marine wildlife. It needs to stop.
What you can do to help is by going to oceancleanup.com and donating to the non-profit organization. The ocean cleanup crew works to clean up oceans and rivers.
If you can’t donate, other things can help. Just as simple as recycling, and limiting one-use objects and switching them with reusable ones.Colton Banker, Shirland
Help Ukraine fight Russia
As a guy who looks at modern conflicts and history, I think we should donate and help Ukraine fight Russia.
This is important because this conflict is just an evil and greed fueled invasion by Putin, and we need to help Ukraine fight Russia’s evil invasion.
It all began when Ukraine left the Soviet Union, and the Soviets left nuclear bombs there after Ukraine declared independence.
After a bit of pressure from the United Nations and a lot from Russia, Ukraine gave up 1700 nuclear weapons under the condition that Ukraine would have good relations with Russia and no invasion.
Russia however violated this agreement in 2014 with them invading Crimea in 2014. Then on Feb 24, 2022 the official full invasion of Ukraine began.
You might say one thing: haven't we sent enough money and supplies to Ukraine? Well, no. Notnecessarily.
The reason Ukraine needs more supplies is because they don't have the necessary tools to be calm and collected to even fight the war.
According to Atlantic council.org, “Ordinary Ukrainians need sleeping bags, thermal underwear, warm socks, generators, and heaters.” This shows that yes we have sent a lot, but we need to send a lot more in order to help Ukraine win this war.
Contact your congressman today to tell them to send help to Ukraine. You can also contact or write a letter to the president.
One final thing you could do is donate to this lovely organization called Nova, Ukraine.
It is a group of people that provides humanitarian aid to Ukraine. It doesn't have to be a big donation, any amount makes a difference.Jakab Shockley, Shirland
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Student letters: Save the turtles, Save the ocean, Support Ukraine
