My capstone revolves around the inquiry of how to remove the negative stigma around bugs and other exotic animals. Going hand in hand with that idea, having an understanding of them would bring awareness to the way we treat the world, which ends up actively affecting the animals and us. Then, I realized that it may be due to a lack of exposure from an early age. Personally from a young age, having these fears inflicted upon myself was a roadblock. Only now developing an understanding of these animals, I wish that I would have learned about them earlier. That encourages my goal of reaching out to younger children. Having an interactive game that incorporates fun facts about said animals will hopefully lead it to become a more embracing subject. During the process of creating this game, I tossed many ideas away trying to find a balance between facts and the idea of it being engaging for the kids. Something that I realized is that when a topic is seen as interesting, the likelihood of it being memorized is much higher. This is when the idea of creating a board game for the two kindergarten classes at D. Newlin Fell Elementary School striked me. Researching the topic of the science behind joyful learning, these games will be incorporated into their play area. As the name suggests, doing so will allow them to gain knowledge each time they play the game. Doing this capstone gave me the realization that people are simply afraid of what they are ignorant of.

Introduction

The goals of this paper is to elaborate on the fact that there is uniqueness to all languages. It is not simply a form of communication, but also has a value to people. Whether people do not speak the same languages should not be an automatic barrier and separation between them. In this paper, I am proud of being able to show the progression of how I felt toward my language from the beginning to the end. Although, an area that I would be able to improve on is elaborating more on the idea of language holding a value for people, rather than leaving it vague for the readers to determine.

More Than Words

Teochew. That is the name of one of the languages that I speak. If you have never heard of it, that doesn’t come as a surprise. Frankly, I did not know the name of it until only four years ago, despite it being the first language I spoke. Some may even call Teochew one of the forgotten languages, but does that make it any less important? Looking in a positive light, does this actually make the language unique? Language is not just words, in fact, it is filled with values.

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Gloria Anzaldúa describes the value of she and her family speaking Chicano Spanish, which is a different dialect of “normal” Spanish. She writes ”Chicano Spanish sprang out of the Chicano’s need to identify ourselves as a distinct people. We needed a secret language”. It’s a language that a certain part of her community speaks, and from her perspective, that distinct dialect was made to serve as a special language for themselves.

Relating the idea of a secret language to my own life, I realize that speaking this unfamiliar language, Teochew, springs up plenty of different conversations. Reality is that everyone has a different view and perspective on it.

Starting off, even though I was born in Cambodia, I lived most of my life in Philadelphia, picking up English as my first language. Although, this is a different story for my mother, since she was actually raised there. When I was old enough to enroll in school, I spoke English all the time, since that is the one language that everyone around me is learning and understands. Even if I wanted to speak Teochew, who would be there to understand? It would be pointless to even try. I always thought of my language to be valuable, but it seems different at school.

This is a normal thing that I am used to, but every time my mom calls, I speak her first language. Always hearing English, my peers around me commented on the unfamiliar words that escaped my mouth. “Woah, what are you saying?” “That sounds so cool!” “It sounds so weird!” “Is that your first language?”

Those are just a small part of the collection of responses that I receive when I am heard speaking another language other than English. Although, the responses are usually said with positive intentions. People see it as something unique and are even able to connect it to them speaking a different language at home. That’s where it brings my peers and I to a common similarity, a feeling of mutual appreciation.

Something to keep in mind is that these responses are from people who have never heard of the language that I spoke. Actually speaking Teochew to my family, people who grew up with this language, the responses are almost completely different. I recall a time where I spoke a majority of English, even at home. Having an open ear, I overheard my grandma pointing out a concern to my mom, that maybe I will drop my knowledge on the Teochew language.

To my family, not being able to speak this language is a very inconvenient thing. Since everyone in my family speaks it, they see it as a necessity, not as something unique. It is something normal that I should automatically store in my head. Surely the language is greatly appreciated if they make such an effort to teach it to the future generations, but it makes me wonder if a difference in language separates people. Do people need to change their view on needing to know the same language to be able to connect?

Obviously, being able to speak the same language as the person that you are talking to allows more room for conversation. Although, the thing is that if people hear that you speak a different language, sometimes they quickly give up and do not try to talk.

Anzaldúa also points out that poeple will in fact separate due to language barriers: “And because we internalize how our language has been used against us by the dominant culture, we use our language differences against each other”.

Actually, knowing this unpopular language is something that I am grateful for. Originally when I was younger, I had this little feeling of embarrassment tingling in the back of my mind when I would be heard speaking a different language. Although now, I am proud that I am able to speak something that makes me feel comfortable. Whether around people who understand or even people who do not, this language will always hold a meaningful value to me.

Works Cited

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands = La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999. Print.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Imagine that you are in a school or workplace. Suddenly, a fight takes place and someone goes to break it up. Then what? Where would the people who participated in the fight go?  Your immediate thought may be that they would be brought to talk to a person in a high position of authority. Afterward, a meeting with the teachers or other workers would happen. During these meetings, usually what occurs is a discussion of what happened, the consequences, and what to do to prevent it. People would run to a meeting in hopes to resolve what has happened. This shows that humans think the best way to solve conflict is in groups because a voice and opinion from everyone could be shared and contrasted.

The book “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding is about a group of boys who survived a plane crash and landed on an island. Two boys named Sam and Eric discovered a dead corpse which they described to be a beast. They ran to tell the chief, Ralph, about what they saw. Their distress resulted in a meeting called by Ralph. “They (Sam and Eric) became motionless, gripped in each other’s arms. ‘We saw the beast.’ Ralph peered cautiously around him. ‘Call them to an assembly,’ said Ralph” (98-99). This portrays that immediately after Sam and Eric told Ralph about the problem that they encountered, Ralph wanted to gather the group to make everyone aware of what was happening. So, do meetings always resolve problems? Meetings can sometimes lead to solutions, but in other cases, it just ends up right back to where it started. Whether or not it is solved, having a meeting always makes people aware and feel supported. So, from that quote, I could tell that even though they’re not completely sure what to do, what’s important for them to tell everyone.

Since harsh situations are inevitable to avoid, President Obama would too, have to find a way to discuss things. Although, bad situations do not only have to be ones caused by people, they can to be ones that are caused by nature. For example, when Hurricane Sandy came and destroyed many homes, something had to be done. Where will these families live? Who will pay for the damage? Many more questions will spiral back to back after those. With a need of ideas, President Obama would have to gather a group of people to a meeting in order to discuss what the best thing to do would be. In an article from the White House, it stated, “President Obama and his cabinet discuss ongoing response and recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy and making sure that taxes don’t go up on middle-class families.” Even though the situation is very large and difficult to resolve, just hearing about what everyone’s opinion about the situation is would serve as a sense of support, being the best way to counter the situation.

Similar to the situation of gathering a group of people, in the beginning of the book, the boys wanted to choose a leader of their group. ”’We’re having a meeting. Come and join in. Let’s have a vote. Vote for the chief’ said Ralph” (20-22). From that, we could see that just because someone thought that there should be a leader, one wasn’t randomly chosen by one person. Instead, Ralph called a group meeting to discuss and choose who would be the best fit. So, many situations require a meeting to happen, especially ones where a choice would have to be made. This could connect to the situation with Obama and his cabinet discussing what to do after Hurricane Sandy because they were in a troubling situation. This scene in the book is similar because everyone shares the same confusion of the question, who should be the leader? The question would have to be answered by gathering everyone and asking for their opinions to finally make that choice.

Even if there is not a conflict, the purpose of a meeting is to also give support. To pinpoint onto one situation, there is a whole website created by teachers who are trying to share a good classroom practice. They would call it a classroom circle where all of the students would sit and have a conversation. Even though there was no problem, having this would decrease the chance of one happening. According to the website, having daily classroom meetings would “promote community, acceptance, and belonging in a safe environment the works at strengthening relationships and repairing them”. What the teacher is saying is that this would make everyone feel more comfortable and more open to talking to one another. So, from that I could imply that they think the best way to resolve and prevent problems are to speak in a group to hear everyone’s opinion.

   In conclusion, meetings are one of the main automatic responses when it comes to learning what others’ are thinking, discussing a bad situation, finding out what to do next, spreading information, or just to check up on one another. There are many different variations of meetings and it one can take place almost everywhere. Since meetings keep occurring, doesn’t it meant that it is doing something right? The fact that so many people would rely on a group discussion and think of it as a solution, shows that it is seen as one of the best conflict resolving techniques. Just to get a sense of what everyone else is thinking leads up to new ideas.

Works Cited:

• Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Penguin, 2006.

• Slack, Megan. "President Obama Holds a Cabinet Meeting." National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, 28 Apr. 2012. Web.

          https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2012/11/28/president-obama-holds-cabinet-meeting

• Lister, Christopher, and Suzanne Bartel. "Philosophy Of Restorative Practices." Restorative Classroom Practices - Philosophy Of Restorative Practices. N.p., 4 Dec. 2011. Web.    

          https://restorativeclassroomcircles.wikispaces.com/home

Mi nombre es Meymey Seng, un inmigrante en América. Aunque nací en Camboya, me movido a Filadelfia del Sur cuando tenía tres años.  Viviendo en la comunidad es muy significativa por yo porque el papel es para construir mi identidad. Para mi, mi barrio es seguro y puedo hablar con mis vecinos. De hecho, me siento cómodo caminando por mi casa. Sin embargo, como otros barrios, hay partes inseguras. Por otro lado, que me ayuda a aprender a vivir en el mundo real, donde no todo es perfecto. A contar la historia, el nombre de mi barrio es Marconi Plaza. A pesar de que tiene raíces italianas, es diverso.

El arte público no tiene para estar en el lugar más hermoso. El propósito es usar las imágenes a mejorar menos lugares bonitos. La pared es ubicada en Whitman Plaza. La propiedad es el mayor centro comercial en Filadelfia del Sur. La idea de esto fue por la gente que quería reunir el vecindario. Esto funcionó porque mucha gente vino. A causa de esta, hay mucha basura en las calles. Para ayudar además, la mural estarán ubicada en la entrada sucia sería como un mensaje para cuidar el lugar.

Uno de las imágenes es un candado gris y una llave. La cerradura dice contento y la llave dice comunidad en oro. Esta representa la comunidad es la llave de la contento. El oro simbolizar la comunidad es especial. El trabajo en equipo es lo que permite que sucedan cosas buenas.

En fin mi pieza llena el papel del arte público porque tiene un significado profundo y permite a las personas tener sus opiniones sobre él. El diseño pintada por yo es creativo, utilizando objetos como un una analogía de un lugar y un sentimiento. Espero que el mensaje tendrá un significado a la mayoría de la comunidad.

Okay, so it’s 4 p.m. on a school day. I should be going home, I know. But, my best friends Sophia, Emma, and Ava just invited me out!

“It’s just a little white lie,” Sophia said. “Come on, tell your mom that you have a club or something to go to. Just hang out with us for one hour, it’s not like we’re gonna do drugs or anything Mia.”

I wish I could go! With different programs and work to go to, I get home late, even on the weekends. Therefore, there’s not much time that I’m at home and I don’t get much time to hang out with my friends either because of our schedules always clashing.

For some reason, they think that I wanna distance myself from them, or that I’m too busy for them. But that’s not true! In reality, it’s just because I have a strict mom so I can’t really go out as often as I would like to. I don’t blame her, I mean, I’m her youngest child so she’s probably afraid of letting the little bird go. Plus, it’s tough now since it’s the middle of Fall, and daylight savings are kicking in, because everything is getting darker.

I’m basically in a pickle. Nothing I would do could satisfy everyone in the situation. An option could be lying to my mom and hanging out, or not being able to do something outside of school with my friends. It’s like having an angel and a devil on my shoulders. At that very moment, the devil is more persuasive.

So, what am I gonna do?

Oh no, my mom just texted me!

“Honey, where are you?” she questioned.

What do I do now? Casually say, hey mom, nothing, I actually lied to you and am hanging out with my friends. I can’t say that because we all know how that sounds.

I tossed my phone over to Ava and told her to respond for me. She told me that I wasn’t going to like what she was gonna say.

I was a bit concerned honestly. Like, what could she say? Oh, she said she would’ve been honest with my mom and simply say that I’m hanging out with her.

Well, in that case, NOPE. I quickly took the phone back because doing that would be equivalent to me asking my mom to be punished. Instead, I just told her that there were a lot of things to discuss at the club meeting today.

I know, lying is bad, and trust me, did I feel horrible. Even though they’re called little white lies, it doesn’t make them okay, but somehow, I just kept allowing them escape my mouth.  

Well, since I already decided to do this, I should just give it my all and not have regrets while hanging out. If I want to feel regretful, that would be something to save for my midnight wonders.

We all decided to go to Chinatown and it was honestly so fun. We explored little shops even though we bought nothing, ate some noodles from Terakawa Ramen, and even got some ice cream because the cold doesn’t bother us. Okay, that’s a lie, it was freezing, but we still ate ice cream! Suddenly, I looked at my phone and boom, it was 5:30 already.

This day was the most I’ve laughed this week, taking the stress from home and school off of my shoulders, temporarily at least. It’s time for me to start heading home, so my friends walked to me the bus stop.

As soon as we got there, I heard a riiiiing riiiiing riiiiing and without even looking at the caller ID, I could already tell that it was my mom summoning me.

“Mia, where are you? Tell your teachers that you can’t stay too long!”

My mind was saying "Uhhh, my teachers wouldn’t keep me this long", but what actually came out of my mouth was,”Oh, hi mom, I’m at the bus stop now. I’ll be home soon!”

Emma smiled at me and shook her head. I said to her, “Oh, the things I do for you guys, but I love you guys anyways.”

Later, I arrived home to a very worried mom. She was just relieved that I made it home alive. You know what, I think the devil’s done his deeds today and the angel wants her part. I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I told my mom to pinky promise to not be mad about what I was going to say next.

She hesitantly stuck out her pinky and as soon our pinkies collided, I blurted out the truth. I could definitely tell she wasn’t happy, but she couldn’t be mad after seeing how happy I was afterwards. She wasn’t as upset as I thought she would be, I guess she understood where I was coming from.

Me llamo Meymey Seng,

Mi familia es de inmigrantes,

Producto de Camboya,

Solo quiero caminar con mi identidad,

Vengo desde muy lejos,

Cansados de estar corriendo.

Veo Americano y Camboyano,

Oigo música e instrumentos.

Saboreo alimentos tradicionales, picantes, dulces, y agrios.

Siento familia y felicidad.

Huelo la naturaleza.

Corro a Angkor Wat,

Mirando a frutas exóticas.

Descansando por el puesto de sol,

Rezando en el templo.

Somos productos de Camboya y China,

Hablamos khmer y teochew e inglés,

La lengua del coraje y del trabajo y la lucha,

Somos Americanos. Somos Camboyanos,

Tenemos comunidad,

Mi familia y yo estamos en la encrucijada,

                                                                 y

Somos completos.

​

Welcome to our rationale about the Macbeth playbill! First of all, my partner is Emily Pugliese and we decided to create a playbill. Why did we choose a playbill out of a board game, a video, and a musical? Well, we decided that a playbill would be the perfect fit to not only introduce our playset and characters, but it also allows us to provide imagery. This would give the readers a better vision of how the scene we chose would be performed. Our understanding of how the directors feel when setting everything up will develop as we have to solve our way through the different tasks. We would be able to choose an advertisement, our actors, how the playset will be, the location of the play, and just intrigue the readers in general.

One of the key decisions that directors would make is choosing the best scene to include in the play. We chose to make this playbill about Act 1, Scene 5. The purpose of this is that in the beginning of the scene, begins one of Lady Macbeth’s most famous soliloquies. Also, this is not something that everything would be choosing to write about. We have thought about writing about the death of King Duncan but it has probably been used too many times and we want to be different.

To be able to strongly show the vivid emotions, we would need good actors. After looking and brainstorming past a variety of actors, we decided to choose Johnny Depp as Macbeth and Angelina Jolie as Lady Macbeth. This is not just because they are famous, but because we have watched them in movies and feel as if they would be a great fit for a main role. Aside from Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, there would be a servant walking in, so he would be Louis Tomlinson. Although Louis did not have any professional acting lessons, his personality is silly. Although William Shakespeare did not really describe the servant that walks into Lady Macbeth’s room, we can make a prediction. The servant is probably like the three that Macbeth hired to murder Banquo and Fleance. This means that the servant would be pretty dumb. The clothing for all of these characters consists of dull colors to match the 1700s which is when this play was written. Although, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth wear some gold because they are in royalty.

Acting without a stage is unlikely, so we would have to create a well fitting stage for this scene. First of all, we decided to locate Lady Macbeth in her room as she is reading the letter from Macbeth. This is because a room is a personal space, which is good when reading something written to you from your husband. Onto the second arrangement of the stage, a servant will walk in from the left door and have a quick chat with Lady Macbeth. On the third stage arrangement, the servant exits and Macbeth soon enters. This is where the scene gets heated and Lady Macbeth is questioning Macbeth’s manhood. Lady Macbeth also told Macbeth to act like innocent flower but be the serpent under it.

Those amazing lines about the serpent and the innocent flower, is the inspiration that Emily and I had for our playbill cover. We both feel as if this quote signifies how everything will be in the future. For example, Macbeth will act good but he actually has bad intentions. Also, we did not just choose any flower. We chose a daisy. When researching, we found that a daisy represents purity and innocence while a serpent is evil. This is how Macbeth is trying to act innocent around Duncan but is actually planning to murder him.

The process of creating this playbill was spectacular because we really enjoyed working together and we make a great team! Our communication and collaboration was good, so this project allowed us to excel on this core value. On the first day we immediately created a calendar and a to-do list. We also assigned roles to make it easier for us to keep track of things. Emily would do a lot of the drawing as I would with the writing. Afterwards, we just did each task one by one until everything is completed. We also made sure to check on one another just in case we need any help.

The overall purpose of this entire playbill is to get people excited to come see Act 1, Scene 5. Also, the purpose is to make everyone excited to come see and to show a preview of it. It is to also show who will be the actors and how the stage would look. Hopefully, all of these factors would make people want to see this play!

To make my slide look the way it does, I had to follow the rubric, find some helpful websites, and think back to my ¨Me Magazine¨. Something that influenced my decision making was a website called ¨Slide-share¨ which said to not squeeze everything in the slide. At first, in my mind I had many pictures that I wanted to add but when I read this, I realized that I had to choose the most important pictures that I wanted to use. Another website that has influenced my choice was a website by Stephanie Evergreen where she talks about bleeding pictures to make the image look bigger and more eye catching. This made me enlarge my pictures to go outside of the borderline of the slide. Hopefully, this will make my pictures more eye catching. The third website that I used was a ¨10 Tips For Better Slide Decks¨ website which told me to not include a lot of text. In result to this, I simplified my text by only including a creative title. Another tip I got was from the ¨Presentation Zen¨ website which told me to make my words big and this made me enlarge my title to big fonts. I also made my slide look like a glance media so people can see my slide quickly but still understand what it’s about. I made sure to include a lot of pictures from my ¨Me Magazine¨ because they describe my interests. When I completed everything I used to rubric as a checklist and made sure to complete everything in order to exceed expectations. To conclude, this is why I made the slide look the way it does and the things that has influenced its look.

http://www.slideshare.net/edahn/10-tips-for-making-beautiful-slideshow-presentations-9210564

http://blog.ted.com/10-tips-for-better-slide-decks/

http://stephanieevergreen.com/bleeding-your-presentation/

Soy Liam.

Depende del día, soy

valiente y fuerte.

Casi siempre, me encanta cantar,

bailar y correr con mis amigos.

No soy ni codicioso

ni insano

Yo soy…

¡YO!