Bibliography:

"Language Positions." Central Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, 21 Apr. 2007. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

This source is from the Central Intelligence Agency and it shows what positions they need filled that have to do with foreign languages. They need people who can speak and understand other languages, particularly the ones that they use while under security breaches. On this site they are explaining the different language programs they have to train their employees with or programs that their employees use to sharpen their language skills with. I can use this as a source because this source shows that there is a huge demand for jobs using other languages. This can be used as an incentive for the students now, because it means that if they are proficient in the language that they are learning, a job can almost be guaranteed.

Dounay, Jennifer. "High School Graduation Requirements: Foreign Language." 50-State Comparison. Education Commission of the States, 23 Mar. 2007. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

This source is from the education commission of the states and it is a list of the states and their requirements of foreign language education for the students to graduate. The list includes how many credits each state requires the students to have. This source is helpful to me because it shows how many states have implemented foreign language education. This shows students that they are the not the only ones learning a new language. Also it’s sad because there aren’t that many states that require language credits to graduate and this provides proof that we need to have more states have requirements.

Duncan, Arne. "Education and Language Gap." Foreign Language Summit. University of Maryland, Washington D.C. 8 Dec. 2010. U.S. Department of Education. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

This is a speech that the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, made at the Foreign Language Summit that the CIA director called for in 2010. In the speech he talks about how the U.S. is falling behind other countries in the foreign language education. He wants to bridge the language gap that the U.S. is experiencing. This helps me because this is an important figure in the education world who is speaking out about how we have to fix the education system around foreign language. This shows that people actually care about having foreign language education in schools and that they want to fix the problem that no one is requiring language credits for graduating high school students.

Franzén, Carl G. F. “Foreign Language Teaching in the High Schools of Iowa”. The School Review 29.8 (1921): 610–616. Web...

This source is a book that was written about the foreign language teaching in the high schools of Iowa. They had a program that taught high schoolers Latin, Spanish, French, and Norse. This book is a report on how the schools taught the languages and what schools offered what languages. It also noted the successfulness of the language classes and how the class sizes didn’t differ from language to language. This source will help me because it shows that the practice of learning different languages happened early in this century. It proves that students in high school actually want to learn languages and that they would excel in language programs put in schools.

Hancock, Charles R. "Alternative Assessment and Second Language Study: What and Why?" Alternative Assessment and Second Language Study: What and Why? (1994): n. pag. Digests. Center for Applied Linguistics. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

This source is talking about a different way for the people who are studying a second language to take tests because our education system is not the greatest at the moment. When you add in a second language to the testing system, the students tend to do worse. This can create problems in the student’s minds and make them want to hate the language. This is problem that only seems to appear in the U.S. education system. This source helps me because it shows that students have an unhealthy relationship with the language and then it makes them not want to study the language anymore.

Kibler, Amanda, and Sandy Philipose. "What the Research Shows." American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, n.d. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

This source is a website that has lists of why teaching foreign languages in schools are good for the students. One of the reasons that foreign language education is helpful is because the student’s academic achievement improves in areas other than the foreign language education course. Also some researchers believe that learning another language also provides cognitive benefits. This source can help me because it is a list of the sources that I can use for proving a certain point about why learning a language is beneficial for students. If there is a certain point that people would argue against learning a second language, I can point them to this page. Or if students feel as if learning a second language is not important to them, I can show them all the research and benefits.

Panetta, Leon E. "Foreign Language Education: If 'Scandalous' in the 20th Century, What Will It Be in the 21st Century?" Foreign Language Summit. University of Maryland, Washington D.C. 8 Dec. 2010. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

This is another speech from the foreign language summit, this one made by the CIA director. In the speech he says that the U.S. has a weak foreign language policy and that there are plenty of other countries that are better than us. He wants to put programs in all grades in school, which should help the children with learning languages but also with learning about cultures. He talks about the history of foreign language education and about how it fell through with the World Wars. This source is very helpful to me because he touches on everything that I want people to know about foreign language education. This source explains some of the history and what went wrong and how we can fix it to make a better tomorrow for the students of today.

Payne, William Morton. “Modern Language Teaching in Secondary Schools”. The School Review 2.2 (1894): 74–82. Web...

This report was published in 1894 about the teaching of other languages in high schools. The author writes about certain ways that they can improve their programs because they aren’t very good. The report also talks about how learning a language in high school can be the best education a man can get because they are learning other men’s languages. This can still apply to today’s students because their peers may have a first language that is not English. This research helps me because it shows that people before today, have taken a second language and had it help their lives and careers.

Rhodes, Nancy C., and Ingrid Pufahl. Foreign Language Teaching in the U.S. Schools. Rep. N.p.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 2009. Print.

This source is an executive summary of a report that the Center for Applied Linguistics produces about a national survey that researches the programs and the enrollment of foreign language education in primary and secondary schools. The data that they include in the report is all about the how much instruction the children receive, the languages that are offered, immersion schools, and how much time is actually spent speaking the language. This report is very helpful for me because it shows what schools are doing to make sure that the children are getting the best foreign language education and it suggests what schools can do better. This shows that lots of schools are trying to implement foreign language education and that the students are receiving the instruction well.

Tucker, G. Richard. "A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education." A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1999): n. pag. Digests. Center for Applied Linguistics. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

This is an extra scene of what I imagined happened in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road...

Before, they lived with two men and one woman with a child. They took shifts watching for the roadrats. Rumors passed around about people who left the town at night for food or water. Some heard their screams, others heard the chopping. He held her close every night. He could feel the child kicking her skin. Translucent and full, like the moon they would never see again.

The men proposed to move to the next town. They left in the day a week later. The two men held the weapons in the front of the group. The first night was cold. He fell asleep with his pistol beside him and the child between her and him.

He awoke to leaves rustling a few yards away. The two men stood by the woman whose mouth was stuffed with a dirty rag. Her child was limp in between her spread legs. One man leaned down to whisper to her and the other unzipped his pants. She began to sob. He fired once and then twice. Two florid splotches appeared on their heads as they fell.

He untied her hands and feet while her limbs shook. The brains of the child were spread on the ground.

They told me they were going to cook my baby.

He didn’t notice the knife until her hand flashed towards her heart. The color of her face drained onto her clothes. They left the bodies and walked back to town.

For my piece, I chose the quote that stuck with me after I had finished the book. I really like this quote because it really has some connection to the book’s essential questions. The quote is found on page 10 when the boy and the man pass some dead bodies. The boy doesn’t seem to be fazed when he sees the bodies but the man comments on how things stick in your head and the boy points out that the man forgets things. The man replies with “Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” I thought that this was an interesting quote because it seems as if it had been told to the man by someone else before and I wanted to write about the situation that he would have been in.

I chose to write about cannibalism and morals because that was a huge part of staying the good guys for the boy. Every time they saw evidence of cannibalism, the boy would ask the man if they were going to stay the good guys. The man must have had an experience where he decided that he would never be a cannibal but early enough that the boy wouldn’t have remembered it. If the boy would have remembered a time where they were close to becoming the bad guys, I don’t think that he would have been as innocent as he was portrayed in the book. Some of the essential questions that I thought about in my brainstorm were, “Where do morals come from?” and “Who or what do you live for if there is nothing left?” These fit into my piece because this would be one of the moments that probably would have shaped the man’s morals and then in time, the boy’s morals. The woman in the piece (not the mother of the boy), kills herself in the end because her son is dead. This shows that she was only surviving and living because of her son.

The Parent Trap (1998) is about two girls, Hallie and Annie, who go to a camp and find out that they are twins, but separated after birth, one living with their mom and one living with their dad. When their camp is over they switch places in an effort to try to get their mom and dad back together, so they can all live together. When Annie goes back with their dad, she finds out that their dad picked up a summer girlfriend named Meredith and that they are planning on getting married later on in the summer. Meredith is 10 years younger than their dad and immediately, Annie doesn’t like her. In The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio is up for the challenge of marrying Katherine, a daughter of a wealthy man because of the dowry that goes along with Katherine. Marrying Katherine is perceived as a challenge because she is someone who is grumpy and not well liked. These two stories show that society’s values around courtship and marriage have not changed because both suitors are in the relationship for the money.

In Taming of the Shrew, everyone thinks that Petruchio is a little crazy when he says that he would be willing to marry Katherine. Petruchio just really wants the dowry from Katherine.

“Then tell me, if I get your daughter’s love, What dowry shall I have with her to wife?” - page 83 (Act 2. Scene 1)

In this scene Petruchio is talking to Baptista, Katherine’s father and Hortensio, a suitor for Katherine’s sister. Hortensio was surprised and confused as to why Petruchio would want to marry someone as crazy and ill-tempered as Katherine. When Petruchio mentions that he has a wealthy background, he also mentions Katherine’s dowry to Baptista. The dowry was either a piece of land or money or both that the father would give to the husband to ensure that he would stay with the wife. Petruchio only really thinks about marrying Katherine because of the money involved with her.

In The Parent Trap, Meredith pretends to be nice and sweet but Annie and Hallie can see right through her act. She wants to marry their dad because he has so much money.

In this scene, Meredith is meeting Annie for the first time. Annie already knows some rumors about why Meredith, age 26, is marrying their dad, who is at least 20 years older than her. The rumors are saying that she just wants the money that goes with the winery that Annie’s dad owns. Meredith is slightly nervous because Annie seems like an obstacle in the way of her and the money. Meredith already has lots of money being a publicist but she has want to always have more, enforcing the idea that more is always better. In this way, she is alike to Petruchio because they are both in the relationship for money even though they have already have a good amount from their families.

“And to conclude, we have ‘greed so well together That upon Sunday is the wedding day.” - page 97 (Act 2, Scene 1)

In this scene, Petruchio has finished talking to Katherine and has told her father that they are ready to be married because Katherine loves him. Katherine, in fact, does not love him or even slightly like him, so Petruchio is flat out lying to Baptista so he can get the dowry and money quicker. At this point in the play, some people believe that he has forgotten about the money and only thinks of Katherine as a challenge to overcome by annoying her. Petruchio must have some concern about the dowry still, because it is a large amount of money and land.

In this scene, Annie confronts Meredith about her intentions of marrying her father. Meredith gets defensive and mean but doesn’t deny the rumor that she is marrying for money. Meredith sees the girls as a roadblock in front of her money, so she tries hard to get rid of them. She is lying to their father that she likes them and that she would be a good stepmother for them. Petruchio lies to Katherine’s father about how he got her to love him, so that Petruchio could get the dowry. Later on in the movie, Meredith mentions to her father about how much money her boyfriend has and how in love with the money she is. This reminds the audience how driven she is for the money and how much she wants to have more and more.

Petruchio seems like a better person because eventually he forgets the idea of the money that Katherine comes with, or so it seems. He then moves on to the goal of taming Katherine by giving her an ultimatum; agree with everything he says or she won’t be well fed. Since Petruchio is stuck with Katherine, after marrying her for the money, he has to figure out a way to live with her and make her tame. Meredith, at the end of the movie, gives the girls’ father an ultimatum; herself or the girls. She gets so fed up with the girls’ antics and tricks that she is willing to give up the large amount of money that their father has for some peace. In both of the stories, the greedy character has to overcome some obstacles or roadblocks that are in the way of the money that they want. In the end, Petruchio gets the money along with the woman, but Meredith doesn’t succeed. In Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio is willing to live with a bitter woman for money and in The Parent Trap, Meredith is willing to marry a man that she doesn’t particularly love for money. This shows that society’s view on marriage and courtship is that people will marry for money, no matter what they have to deal with on the road to money.

Sources:

Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square, 1992. Print.

The Parent Trap. Dir. Nancy Meyers. Prod. Charles Shyer. Buena Vista Pictures, 1998. DVD.

Analytical Essay:

People experience death everyday. A family member could die of cancer, a family pet could pass away or soldiers could kill or watch their friends get killed. In the book, “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, people are affected by their changing world everyday because they are in a war. One of the biggest changes that affects them would be death. Since there are so many different people in the war, reactions to death would differ from person to person. The relationship of the changing world and the self can be different according to how they deal with strong emotions.

Azar was one of the first characters in the book that stood out as someone who wasn’t really the nicest guy in the platoon. He blew up a puppy, made jokes about people when they died and always had something snarky to say. When the main character, Tim O’Brien killed is first man, Azar was one of the first people to comment on it. “Oh man, you fuckin’ trashed the fucker” Azar said. “You scrambled his sorry-self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like Shredded Fuckin’ Wheat.” (pg. 125) Azar needed to deal with death in a way that wouldn’t affect himself directly. He did this by making jokes about the dead and he didn’t try to comfort the person who was shocked by the death. In the quote above, he talks to O’Brien in a way that shows that he is tough and that death doesn’t affect him. He doesn’t know how else to deal with the fact that someone was blown up in front of him. He doesn’t have a filter, so he says whatever comes to mind. Since he has gotten to war, his world has been changing with every death that Azar sees. He has created a person who says that he isn’t fazed by death so that he seems tough, like society’s image of a soldier should be.

When O’Brien killed the man, it was his first experience with death that he had caused. He fills up two chapters talking about how the body looked and what people were saying to him. He also made up a narrative about the man that he killed. He imagined the dead man’s education and his family and his personality. “He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics. At night, lying on his mat, he could not picture himself doing these brave things his father had done, or his uncles, or the heroes of the stories.” (pg. 125) O’Brien can’t stop replaying the scene of the death over in his head after it’s happened. All he can do is stare at the body and repeat the details over and over again. To cope with the death, he makes up a story about the body. Some people would think that this is a bad idea because then O’Brien would be seeing him as someone who is equal to him with a life and with people who cared about him, which would then make O’Brien have grief and empathy for the person he just killed. O’Brien would want to distance himself from the person, not see the person as someone just like him. In the book he never explains why he does it or if it makes him feel better. In O’Brien’s changing world, he is someone who kills people and that makes him feel guilty and sad.

Death of a real person isn’t the only death that someone in war can see. In one chapter, a man is telling a story about how one soldier was able to arrange his girlfriend to come to Vietnam. No one had ever done it before so people weren’t sure what to expect. The girlfriend’s name was Mary Anne and everybody loved her when she got to camp. The only problem was that she wanted to be in the war. She was taken by the war and she would go on midnight stake-outs with the men. “Vietnam made her glow in the dark. She wanted more, she wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and after a time the wanting became needing, which turned then to craving.” (pg 114) Mary Anne became so interested in the war that a part of her old self died. She didn’t think that she would ever be able to go back to America after what she’d experienced in Vietnam. This is because she came into the war innocent and since the war was such a shock and adrenaline producing, she wanted to stay forever in the war. Before the war she was someone who wore headbands and cotton shorts but after the war she was someone who wore a human tongue necklace and went around barefoot. Her way of dealing with the war and shock of death is by becoming a completely different person.

In an interview, Tim O’Brien talks about how he noticed different people coping with the changes in their world. He said that a way that was commonly used was imagination. “Imagination is important in a couple of ways. One way is as a psychological means of escape. If you can lose yourself in a fantasy, then you're no longer trapped in the horror of, say, Vietnam. You're back home with your girlfriend, eating a nice dinner at the Ritz instead of C-rations.” Throughout the whole book, people have to create a fantasy so that they can deal with death and war. He said this because he wanted to confirm that this a feeling that can happen with the war. He is saying that by pretending that you are in a fantasy world can help you deal with the war and the deaths that happen in the war. Without a way of coping, war can be stressful and quite possibly the worst event in someone’s life.

In war, people’s lives are changing and almost all of the people need a way to deal with the changes. People have to figure out what works best for them and sometimes they don’t even realize that they are finding a way of dealing with their problems. Because of these changes in someone’s world, they react in whatever way they can cope with the changes.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

-Sawyer, Scott. "In the Name of Love: An Interview With Tim O'Brien." Mars Hill Review. Winter/Spring 1996. Web. October 20 2009.

Dr. Seuss is one of the most well known children’s books writers of all time. His unrealistic but imaginative drawings can be noticed anywhere and his rhymes can even stick with people through adulthood. Children ask for these books over and over again, until they can “read” the book by themselves. They memorize the rhymes and stare at the pictures until they are ingrained into their minds. Dr. Seuss books are a good way for children to open up their imagination and learn through their imagination.

According to Dr. Howard Gardner, there are multiple ways for children to learn, or anybody for that matter. There are eight different intelligences in the brain and one or two of them are the most prominent while people are working or learning. For example, if someone absent-mindedly taps on the table while listening to a lecture, they most likely have a prominent Musical Intelligence. Or if someone would rather look at charts than reading directions to learn something, they would most likely have a prominent Spatial Intelligence. A child might need a teacher to tell them exactly what to do rather than watch how to do it. This child would most likely have a Linguistic intelligence. Dr. Seuss books can play up to Spatial, Musical and Linguistic Intelligences which would all help the child learn better in a classroom when the teacher lets their imaginations run wild. These intelligences focus in on the rhymes and the illustrations that are in Dr. Seuss books. Overall these three intelligences are in everybody and so when they are more prominent, Dr. Seuss’ books will help the children’s imaginations loose and they can learn better using their intelligences.

Dr. Seuss’ books help children’s imaginations open up with his rhymes because he makes new words that kids haven’t heard before to make rhymes work. Rhymes also help a child learn phonics and reading skills. (https://suite.io/karen-whiting/3wc22bm) With Dr. Seuss, books children are learning how to form sounds in their mouths and they are learning when to use these sounds in a sentence. For example, when someone asks a question, the end of the sentence usually gets a little bit higher than the rest of the sentence. Without this subtle lift, questions would sound so different. Children learn by saying rhymes or listening to rhymes that when someone asks a question, their voice goes up. All of this is important to children, especially when someone reads out loud to them from a Dr. Seuss book, their little brains will have so much new information and so much to copy and learn from. They will learn how to imagine different places and things with the words that Dr. Seuss gives them and with these hard words, they can also learn how different letters make different sounds.

Illustrations in other picture books are usually meant to provide setting and characters to the story. Dr. Seuss’ books do that as well but these illustrations let the child think of something out of this world because the illustrations are so unrealistic and nothing like the world that the child knows. For example, in The Lorax, the setting is similar to the real world but there are trees with tufts of hair on the tops and the Lorax looks like a naked toe with a large mustache. Children have such great imagination that they don’t see a naked toe but a trustworthy man and a great place to live. Illustrations can also relate all of their imagination back to words in the book. According to RIF (Reading is Fundamental), which is a literacy non-profit based in America that gives children the chance to read and learn, children use illustrations to help them understand the meaning of a word when they don’t know. For example if the book says that a Lorax is sitting in a tree and the child doesn’t know what a Lorax is, they immediately look over at the picture to find the creature that sits in the tree. Pictures are often dismissed from books as the reader matures but they are still important in every book, for every reader to imagine a new world.

Dr. Seuss’ books were popular when they came out because of the wild illustrations and because of the crazy names he gave his characters. Children today still read his books as a way for their imagination to run free but also to learn about phonetics and important reading skills. Adults still remember rhymes from his books and illustrations, picking out “Dr. Seuss trees” in different landscapes. Dr. Seuss can now be named a teacher because every child who reads or looks at his books, is learning from the best.

Works Cited:

https://www.earlymoments.com/Promoting-Literacy-and-a-Love-of-Reading/Why-Reading-to-Children-is-Important/

"10 Reasons Why You Should Read to Your Kids." Early Moments. Sandivk Publishing, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2014

http://school.familyeducation.com/multiple-intelligences/learning-style/linguistics/66376.html?detoured=1

"Learning Style: Linguistic." Linguistic Gifts and Talents. Pearson Education, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2014.

http://www.nea.org/grants/facts-about-childrens-literacy.html

"Facts about Children's Literacy." Rss. National Education Association, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2014.

http://www.rif.org/us/literacy-resources/articles/getting-the-most-out-of-picture-books.htm

"Getting the Most Out of Picture Books." Reading Is Fundamental. Reading Is Fundamental, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2014.

https://suite.io/karen-whiting/3wc22bm

Whiting, Karen. "How Rhymes Help Children Learn." Suite. N.p., 10 July 2010. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.

I, Chester Hayes, don’t usually look like this. I usually have rosy cheeks and a skip in my step but today, I walk flat-footed and without my cheery smile. I am walking towards my doom, the town hall. Everyone in town knows that I am meeting with the head council but nobody is quite sure why. They aren’t supposed to gossip but everybody does. This is one of the rules that they are more lenient about. The other rules need to be followed all the time, no exceptions, as it is posted everywhere in town.

As I get closer to the now looming building, I realize that I need to walk a little faster or else I won’t get there on time. Time is a big deal for the head council because they have tons of other meetings that have topics that are all way more important than a little rule-breaking from a young boy like me. Yes, I am a rule-breaker. Bam, mark me with a large red stamp across my forehead, it’s not like nobody knows. Everybody knows that I have done something wrong and they all know that I am probably going to be gone forever.

There was a kid about eight years ago who also walked the same road I did. Nobody ever found out what he did but they knew that something went terribly wrong. He went to talk to the head council and he was never seen again. His family was devastated and they wanted to leave but the gates didn’t open for them. The head council knew that once they left they would never come back and if they left everyone else would want to leave too.

That’s the problem with this town. Nobody knows what is out beyond the gates. Curiosity is natural instincts to human and that is how I got in trouble. I am surprised that no one else has tried to see what could be beyond the gates. I didn’t literally climb over the gates but it was close.

We all have computers in our houses as it is the way we receive mail and the newspaper. My grandmother says that the newspaper used to be on paper like the old book she keeps on her bedside table and that the mail would take a week to get from one house to another. The head council decided to save the trees and paper and do everything electronically. This was before my grandmother was married.

On the computers, we have access to the internet but no social websites. The head council cut us off from the world. I decided that I wanted to know why they make us blocked off from the rest of the world. I worked on hacking the computer so that I could know what was going on in the rest of the world. I was simply curious about the outside world.

Now, I come to a stop in front the large door and gaze all the way up to the intricate gargoyles and angels that are intertwined with the roof. The entrance is grand, like a town hall’s should be, with green and gold swirls on the door and a stone angel above the steps, watching over you. I open the door and I come to a desk with a woman sitting at it.  “Hello, do you have an appointment today?”

I realize that she is speaking to me and I finish gazing around the room before I answer. “Hi, yes, I believe I do have an appointment. My name is Chester Hayes, I am here to see the town council.”

I wait for the look of shock to appear on her face because this short polite boy can’t possibly be the one. It never appears. She glances down to her book of appointments and runs her finger down the side.

“Wow, just on time I see. Very good. The town council will be appreciative. You may sit over there and I’ll call in to tell them you are here.” She motions to emerald and gold couches and chairs across the hallway.

As I sit down, she presses an intercom and speaks into it. She talks in a low voice so I can’t exactly tell what she is saying. I’m sure it is something about me but I don’t really mind. People have been talking all about me and everybody knows about it. No one tries to give stares or looks but I catch them doing it all the time.

I had a few friends before the whole ordeal but they aren’t allowed to talk to me anymore because the town council is afraid that I will spread around whatever I found about the outside world. The town council contacted me right after they found out about my bad hacking job and told me that I couldn’t leave my house and I couldn’t talk to anybody except for my family. Which was easy because nobody wanted to talk to me after they found out what happened. My family wasn’t very happy with me, so there wasn’t much talking on that part either.

I hear my name being called and I gather my thoughts. I have no idea what to expect the town council to say but I know it will be bad. The secretary points to the first door on my left. I give her a small smile of thanks and she smiles back before returning to her work. I stand up and make my way over to the door. I don’t have much time to think about what I will say because the door opens for me right as I step in front of it.

I lean back in surprise as the door swings open and I realize that now everyone in the room is looking at me. The room is completely white with one large window looking out over the town’s park and a table taking up most of the room. All of the chairs are taken up by men in dark suits but one is left empty for me.

The man at the head of the table closest to the door motions for me to sit down. Everybody watches me as I slowly walk over to my seat. Once I’m sitting down, the man at the head of the table begins to talk. “Chester Hayes, correct?”

I try to mumble out an answer but all I can do is nod my head. I didn’t think that I would become that scared in front of the town council but hearing the man’s voice makes my stomach churn. “You know what you have done, there is no need to go over it, I assume?”

The rest of the men all nod their heads and turn to look at me. I nod my head again, with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“The council here have been having a hard time trying to decide what we should do with you. Before we give you your verdict, we would like you to tell us what your motives were and what you hoped to accomplish with this.” The man leaned back and looked at me to start talking.

“Well, um, you see...” I stutter along, hoping for words to come that make sense. They all lean back and continue to watch me fumble with my words.

“I was reading in the library about the countries of the old world and I wanted to know more about what was past the gates. The librarian wasn’t much help when I asked her about the old world and how we came to be. She gave me more book references but that was about it. I knew that my computer could help me because I read in the book that the people in the old world could look up anything and everything on their computer and get answers. So I tried but I couldn’t get past the firewall, I think that is what it is called, to search for these old countries. There was a book about computers at the library and I read all about hacking in that book and looked for more but I couldn’t find anything else about computers. I decided to use what I had and hack the computer system so that I could search for the old countries. I know that it is a bad idea now but I just wanted to know what was out there and why we can’t see it.” I pause to take a breath and let what I just said sink into the councilmen’s heads.

The man at the head of the table leans forward and steeples his hands on the table. “Chester, you know that you have violated one of the rules in the guidebook. This is usually met with the punishment of expulsion from the town limits.”

As soon as he says it I know, but I’m not ready for it. My head is spinning with questions about everything and my stomach is turning even more than before.

“But we have a compromise for you. You don’t have to leave but you have to live in the town hall and take classes with other curious individuals about the outside world.”

I slowly look up in surprise. “Take classes? Like school?”

“Yes, classes about advertising and how it affects the outside world. We will be telling everyone that you have been expelled from the community so then no one will get suspicious.”

“Even my parents?”  

“Unfortunately, yes. If too many people find out they will get curious and then what is the point of us closing off the town? Anyway you will be starting classes right after this meeting.”

“What about my things from my house? And my clothes?”

“You will be supplied with clothes here and you don’t need any of your stuff anymore.” He turns to the rest of the men and ask if they have anything they would like to add. Nobody says anything. “Alright, well I have other business to attend to and you have to go meet everyone.”

As the words leave his mouth, two burly men stand up and cart me off to the higher floors of the town hall. We come to a stop in front of a door that looks nothing like the rest of the town hall. It is a black door and the whole hallway looks like something out of an office building, not a fancy town hall.

“We’ll wait for you to get changed. Empty all your pockets and get rid of anything else that you might have on. Your clothes are in there along with your shoes.” The men open the door for me and wait for me to step inside.

I nod my head hesitantly and shuffle inside. I imagine this is how someone in prison would feel. We don’t have a prison in town because nobody does anything bad. Except for the rule-breakers like me.

Inside the room there is a single lightbulb that turns on when I walk inside and on the floor there is a pile of white clothes. I don’t have anything in my pockets except for lint so I shed my normal clothes and put on the white jumper, the white socks and the white sneakers.

I open the door and the light shuts off. The men are still standing there talking quietly. They notice my return and chuckle.

“Whew, he looks like an angel in that suit!”

“Don’t worry, you won’t get any whiter than that!”

As we walk along the hallway they explain to me that after our classes are done for the day, we have to do manual labor, usually in the basement with the grease and grime. We turn and walk to another hallway that has one door at the end of it. I must looked worried because they pat me on the back and tell me that there is nothing to be afraid of.

We reach the end of the hall and one of the men swipes his finger across a keypad and the door opens. Inside the door, there are steps going down. The men tell me that at the end of the stairwell there is another door and that door will lead to the dormitories where I will be staying. I start to descend the staircase and I look back up just in time to see one of the men smile and give me a thumbs up.

I reach the door at the bottom of the staircase and calm myself before I open it. I’m not exactly sure what to expect but I know that there is no going back now. If there are people on the other side,  I want to look confident and not scared.

I ready myself and open the door. Nobody is there. It’s another long hallway with doors on one side and windows on the other. I hear children playing and realize that the windows are dug into the ground around the park. In front of me there is a metal gate with a desk and some papers on it behind the gate. I decide to ring the bell because there is no other way of getting in.

The bell dings once and nothing happens. I ring it again, just to be sure that someone hears me. I begin to hear a scuffling sound down the hall but I can’t quite see through the metal gate.

“Oh, you must be the new boy. I am so sorry that I am late. I was coming out to meet you but then someone needed my assistance. Now where are those keys...” A bent over old man walks up the hallway, muttering to himself. He finally finds the keys and opens the door for me.

“I am Charlie, the person who runs everything down here. Welcome, welcome. Now these are the dormitories and farther down is the lunch room and then we have a few recreational rooms farther down. The boys are at classes right now so I’ll show you to your room. Now where are those keys...” Charlie pauses at the second door from the end of the hallway and I get a glance into an open space with a few tables and chairs scattered around and some more unmarked doors.

“Okay, okay, here they are. And here, is your room. Everybody gets their own room because there aren’t many like you around. Now you can get settled in and I’ll be back to check on you later. Alright now.” He turns around and shuts the door behind him.

I am left in a room with a small bed in the corner with a flannel blue blanket. There is a mirror on the wall across from the bed and under that a small dresser for all of my stuff that I don’t have. My feelings are still numb. I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to my parents or the rest of my family and within an hour, my life had changed drastically from above ground to below ground. I have nothing else to do so I crawl into bed and fall asleep.

After a few months of my new life, I was called by Charlie to see him in his office. When I get there, he is sitting down and not talking, something that I have never seen him do. A man in a black suit is sitting in a chair next to him. I faintly recognize him.

“Chester, this is the man who is top of the head council and he has noticed your work in the advertising classes. He wants you to go out into the outside world. You will be going with some of the other boys who have potential like you.” Charlie speaks quietly as if everyone else can hear what he is saying.

“Outside, outside? Like going to the old world countries?” I have never heard of this happening to anybody but it sounds like so much fun.

“Yes. You will be taking extra classes because you need to learn what you will be doing in those countries.” The man in the dark suit stands up as he speaks and offers me pen to sign a contract with. “The only thing is that we need to make sure is that you will be willing to come back to the town. You cannot go off on your own and start a new life in the old world countries. By signing this contract, it will tie you to this town and it will insure that you are saying the right things to the people out there.”

“What exactly am I promoting, sir?” I sign the contract quickly because there is no way that I would pass this up but I realize that I don’t know exactly what I am supposed to be saying to the people.

“Our town. It is time to spread knowledge of our type of community, one without advertisement and without a harmful society that makes everyone think bad about themselves.”

With that, I was whisked away into weeks worth of classes teaching me how to advertise and how to make our town seem liveable. They had me practice on Charlie and the other boys and they all said that they would want to live there. I was convinced that I was a perfect salesman and that everybody would want to start their own community like ours.

Finally it was take-off day. We flew in a helicopter, so no one from town could see us, to all over the world. Everything was going well until we came to a city called Chicago where protestors came to meet us. They must have heard about us from other cities and they thought that our idea was not good at all, for some reason.

Once we finish our presentation and speeches, we allow time for questions from the crowd. Usually the questions are about visit limitations and if they can come check out our town, but this time they were more in depth about us.

“How long have you lived in this community?”

“Have you ever lived outside of this community?”

“How you do expect us to believe you?”

“Why is this community better than ours?”

These questions fired out from the crowd and the crowd began to murmur with inquiry. I turned to look at one of the boys to see if he knew what to do. He looked back at me and shrugged his shoulders. We had one of the men in the dark suits along with us, in case we needed his help but he looked as confused as we did.

One girl was on top of another person’s shoulders addressing the crowd with her back towards us. “These men are trying to do what is right in their minds. Nobody should be booing them because of this,” For a moment I thought that she was on our side of the story but then she continued to put us down for having something called biases. “Those people are advertisements themselves, and they are advertising a community free of ads and a harmful society. But they are harming their own society by not having any sense of being different.”

Different, but who needs different, when you can have the same? I have the same ideas as my parents and the same beliefs, so there is no conflict and no arguments. Violence is created by different ideas clashing and making people believe they are better than the others.

We were quickly shuttled off the stage so that a riot wouldn’t break out but I thought about what the girl said the whole ride home in the helicopter. Our town believes that we are better than the other people and that’s why we are advertising. We hide our ads as ideas and beliefs so people can believe them more than they would just believe regular ads.

Their society makes them want more and more things, which doesn’t happen in our community at all. That was the point when they created the town, to make us a separate generation that doesn’t have the consumer gene. The one flaw in that system though is that fact that everybody will then be the same. There are no new products that people want, it’s just the same old brands of clothes and toys and gadgets.

We went back to town to report what had happened and the town council looked a little surprised about the riot in Chicago. They realized that sending us out was probably one of their worst ideas yet because they said that we weren’t prepared enough. I personally don’t think we could have been more prepared. They couldn’t have controlled everyone’s reactions to what we said, and that’s the point of having a conversation with someone. You learn about their side of the story and then they learn about your ideas. Without different ideas in our town, healthy debates like those couldn’t happen and that is why we weren’t prepared.

After a few more years of conflict between the town council, they learned that they couldn’t keep us contained so they let the gates open and us flood out into the world. The world will have many new people who will be eager to learn more about what they missed and what they never knew. The world will never know what hit them.

(Sitting on a bed in a purple bedroom, stands up as if to greet someone)

Percy, s’that you? Hi. Well uh, thanks for coming. I guess-I mean, I'm not sure whatta say. You don't know who I am? Oops, sorry (laughs) Yeah, my name’s Cora. I’m seventeen an’ I live down the block. You should come an’ visit sometime. I know that my moms would enjoy that...they think that I don't have very many friends. But you’re my friend, right? Yess! I, uh, actually wanted to ask you about that, um, well I really like...your-your shirt. It’s my favorite color...green, like toads. (laughs nervously)

Okay, here's the thing. I really like you as a friend but I'm not sure if that’s enough for me. You make me sooo happy every time you’re around but I don't know if I do that happens to you. No no, don't say anything yet and stop moving around. Just sit and listen. I wish that we could become more than just fr-friends. I want to be able to call you an’ not think about what I’m going to say. I would talk to you like a diary, spilling out all of my feelings, good or bad. I want to be able to tell you everything and I want you to be able to do the same with me. I want to fill you up with happiness every time you see me. I want your eyes to be only for me an’ I want you to see me like your favorite stuffed animal, one that you have had forever but one that you will never let go of. I wish that you could fulfill my idea of a happily ever after. I’m a princess after all, but you wouldn't know th-that because you've never even acknowledged my presence before.

You make me crazy and insane. My mind goes sp-spinning whenever I see you. I can’t think str-straight and everything seems upside down. I see things that aren’t even there. I over analyze every move you make, think-thinking that it will mean something if you cough in my direction. Just tell me if it’s true. You know who I am, right? You know my name and you know about my life and you like me...even just as a fr-friend s’okay...Percy? Oh God, this is great...I've confessed my love to you and you just stand there. Are you even here anymore? What the hell just happened? Percy? (looks around) Percy? Stop hiding from me! Percy? Where are you? I don’t understand, you were right here and then you jus-just disappeared...and a toad? The room, the room...it’s making me huurrt...I can’t breath...Percy? What’s happening? Make it stop! Stop stop! Ugh, I should’ve just listened to Mom (mimicking her mom) drugs are bad, very bad for you...why’d we even think of doing this? Licking toads...ugh...been there done that...and never doing it again.

Making Us Different

by Dillon Hershey

Imagine living on an island that is 1.236 square miles with the population being only about 730 people. The only way to get around on the island is by golf cart or by bikes. There are only three cars on the island; the mail truck, the police car and the garbage truck. There is only one fire truck and one ambulance that barely fit down the streets. There are two churches on the island. The average grade size is four kids. The main occupations are on water, like crabbing and conching. Believe it or not, an island like this exists off the coast of Virginia, called Tangier Island. It lies in the Chesapeake Bay close to Smith Island.

Tangier Island has been in my life since I was young. My grandmother’s brother flew to Tangier Island one day to get a good seafood meal and ended up bringing back some information about a bed and breakfast there. My grandmother and grandfather went on a short vacation there and really liked it, so they brought the rest of the family along the next time they went to the island. My family started to travel there in the summers, when I was about a year and a half old. Usually we would stay on the island for about four to five days and we would act like tourists. Coming in on the tour boat, renting a golf cart, staying at a bed and breakfast, catching crabs, watching the sunset, going swimming in the frigid water and getting ice cream at Spanky’s. When I was five years old, my grandparents bought a house there and we didn’t go as tourists anymore. We came in on the mailboat, we got our own golf cart, people knew who we were and we had our own house. We were almost like real Islanders*. One thing that separated us from the others though, was their accent. We never picked up on that.

The Watermen* dialect is very different from any other dialect that you will hear. It is often classified as Elizabethian, with a mixture of British and Southern accents. The very first time my family went to island, my dad remembers a boy sitting on the edge of the dock with a bucket of crabs. The boy was about five or six. He saw my dad standing there and he said “Not a very good day for crabbing.”, but it sounded like “Not a verry goood day fer craabin.” My dad had no idea what just came out of his mouth. My grandmother, who spends more time than the rest of us on the island, still can’t understand some of the watermen* when they are talking very fast to each other. Their dialect is hard to explain because it is so odd sounding. For example, when they say the word saturday, it sounds like this: “Sourer-day” while people in Philadelphia say it more like this: “Sat-er-day”. They often stretch out one syllable words containing a long ‘a’ or ‘i’ vowel sound to make the word two syllables. Crab is a word you will hear many times at Tangier because crabbing is one of the main occupations on the island. They make crab into 2 syllables like this, “craa-ab”, enunciating the first syllable. Five and bad are other examples, they would say it: “fy-ave” and “bay-aad”

American Tongues, a documentary about languages in the United States, has a two minute clip about the Tangier dialect. The dialect in the documentary is a very heavy dialect that you don’t hear very much anymore. They have started to modernize their dialect for the tourists. Islanders grew up with having to repeat themselves so that the tourists can understand them. They depend on the tourists because the other occupations besides crabbing, are all tourist based. As the tourists keep coming though, the Islanders start to accommodate their dialect so that the tourists can understand them. I can understand why the Islanders would do this but I think that tourists are having too much effect on the Islanders’ dialect. I’ve noticed that watermen, who work on boats with just people from Tangier Island, have a heavier Watermen accent than people who work on the island and interact with tourists. The dialect is still strong but not as hard to understand.

I went to the island over the summer to help my grandmother with her art classes that she teaches there. I was working with kids from ages five to thirteen. All of their dialects were different probably depending on what their parents’ jobs were. By Wednesday, I found myself thinking in their dialect. I couldn’t say any words out loud in fear of messing up and offending them but in my mind I had a sentence that was formed just listening to the kids talk. During my stay there, I understood most of the sentences that the Islanders said but sometimes it took a little bit longer for me to reply back to them if we were having a conversation.

I think, if I were to stay at Tangier for a longer time, I might pick up on their dialect. I find myself doing that already when I visit my family in Lancaster County. They also have a small dialect that I pick up on and use when I am with them. I think that it would be interesting to see if I stay at Tangier for a month, if I start to talk like one of them too. I don’t think that code-switching is bad because I do all of the time. I just think that all sorts of dialects and accents can be so different and interesting that people should try to preserve their dialects, so we don’t become a system of identical sounding humans.

*Note: There is no specific term for the people living on Tangier, so I used two different terms, Watermen and Islanders. I used Watermen while referring to the dialect and Islanders while talking about the general population of the island. I also used watermen while referring to their occupation. I used a lowercase ‘w’ because it is an occupation.

Works Cited:

American Tongues. Dir. Louis Alvarez. 1988.

Paper Towns is a book that before they die, everyone should read. While it isn’t a book that makes you think, it has good morals and life lessons incorporated into it. It incorporates love and mystery and a good old road trip, with lots of humor.

The book starts off with Quentin Jacobsen, a senior who has been in love with his neighbor since he was little. Margo Roth Speiglman. They grew apart as they grew up so they don’t talk as much anymore. Then one night, out of the blue, Margo knocks on his window and takes him around the same town they live in to pull pranks on people she doesn’t like. The next morning, Q thinks that she will acknowledge him at least in the hallways but he finds out that she is not there. She ran away. Again. Q knows about her runaway stories and she often leaves clues behind, to make it a fun adventure for everyone. Since Q just spent the night with Margo, he believes that she must have left clues for him. She did. He follows her clues to abandoned buildings, pseudovisions, and finally a made-up town in New York. He finds this clue on Graduation Day and of course he has to drag his friends into coming along with him on a 22 hour road trip. When they finally find her, she acts completely different than what they thought that she would. The ending is for you to find out, I won’t spoil it.

I can relate to Q because I find that I think I know people but I don’t really know them. He finds that people have different views of someone but they are completely wrong about that person. I feel like I learned that you shouldn’t be satisfied with just accepting the mask that the person puts up, you should try to look behind it and see if the person needs help with becoming who they are. I also think that a lot of people who seem like they have a great life and a perfect face, can really be wearing a mask and hiding their other self. The weaknesses in this book are very slim but I would hope for John Green to write a sequel or an epilogue because you want to know more after the end of the book. A strength of this book is the way they mark the chapters. In the hours of the road trip, they mark the time by saying 21st hour or 18th hour. Also John Green split up the book into 3 different sections which makes the reader connect different things that they are learning about in the book. Overall this book helped me connect to other people and helped become a better friend.