Short Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Young Goodman Brown" link

"Rappaccini's Daughter" link

Voter Education Service Learning Project

Introduction

For this assignment, you will be serving the city in which you live by helping educate registered voters about upcoming general elections.  In order to educate others, you will first need to educate yourself.  This project will be completed in three steps: Research, Educate Others, Reflect.

The reflection paper for this project is due on Tuesday, October 25 (the day after we return from Fall Break).  Please submit your reflection paper by Googledocs.

Research

Research the following information.   Take notes to help you as you prepare to educate voters about the upcoming elections.

A.      Find your parent/guardian’s voting precinct, voting location, and voting times.

B.      What issues have been recently debated by the city council and/or by candidates? You should look for specific issues in the following areas:

a.       Taxes

b.      Zoning

c.       Services (waste, utilities, parks and recreation, snow removal, education, etc.)

d.      Safety & Law Enforcement

e.      Local ordinances (noise, loitering, etc.)

C.      Select a specific race and learn about both candidates.  Do two of the following to learn about the candidates:

a.       Conduct a brief phone interview of both candidates

b.      Talk to the candidates’ election committees

c.       Review brochures

d.      View the candidates’ websites

D.      Briefly compare and contrast the stances of both candidates on one of the major issues.

E.       Identify reasons people give for not voting

F.       Identify reasons people give for voting

Educate Others

You will first practice your presentation with your own parent(s)/guardian(s). With your parent, complete the steps below.  Then have your parent approve the list of adults you plan to visit/educate.

List Interviewees Below (Must be of voting age, live in the same voting precinct as you, and be from 5 different households)

Name                                                                              Phone Number                              Initials

__________________________________                     ________________________   _____
__________________________________                     ________________________   _____
__________________________________                     ________________________   _____
__________________________________                     ________________________   _____
__________________________________                     ________________________   _____

Parent Signature____________________________________________

During the Interview:

1.       Before sharing information with your interviewee, ask these survey questions.  Write down the answers to these questions.  Simple yes/no answers are acceptable.  If the interviewees wants to provide additional comments, write down a very brief summary of the comments.  After the interview, RECORD the responses to the survey questions in the class Googledoc spreadsheet.

1.       Do you know where to vote during the upcoming city election?

2.       Do you know what day to vote during the upcoming city election?

3.       Are you going to vote in the upcoming city election?

4.       Do you know the candidates for the upcoming city election?

2.       Educate your interviewee by doing several of the following:

1.       Share some statistics about how many people attend city elections.

2.       Share some statistics about the number of votes separating the winners from the losers in recent city elections.

3.       Discuss some of the ways city governments influence our day-to-day lives.

4.       Discuss the specific issues for your city that you researched.

5.       Share what you have learned about the candidates for the specific race you investigated.

6.       Give your interviewee a handout indicating where he/she can find more information about candidates and city issues.

Reflect

Write a reflection paper on your experience.  Your reflection should be 300-400 words and in MLA format.

1.       What was your first impression of the candidates? Which candidate would you vote for and why?

2.       Do you think the issues the candidates are dealing with are even important?

3.       What did you learn about people of voting age?

4.       How do you think this project will influence you when you turn 18 and can vote?

a.       Is voter apathy a problem?

b.      Does voting make a difference?

c.       Are there other reasons to vote besides changing the outcome of an election?

cosmogony

Gruff

by Bradley

    It all started with a person named Gruff. He saw that there was nothing so he decided to make something so he wouldn’t be bored.
    He didn’t know how to make water though. So he cried because he couldn’t make water and also because of his boredom. Then he stopped crying and saw that his tears had made water. He decided to call this water Ocean.

He was satisfied with the Ocean for a while then became weary of it. “How can I make this better?” he thought. So he decided to make creatures to inhabit the water. He named these creatures fish.

He was satisfied of his achievements for a short period of time, but quickly got bored. So he came to the conclusion that he should make creatures that lived out of the water. “How would they survive?” he asked himself. Then, he decided to give these creatures wings and he called them birds. “They have no place to rest,” decided Gruff. So he decided to make land.

These creatures couldn’t see, so he made a bright light, which was called day and lesser lights, which were the moon and her stars.

He was satisfied for awhile. Then he got lonely so he decided to create a woman to inhabit the land. After she was created he saw that she had no food for nourishment. So he created the trees that bear fruit and animals with their meat and every other thing that the women would need to survive.

He saw what he accomplished and was pleased. Then he saw that the women was lonely so he went down from the sky to join her and they became the mother and father of all children.

Cosmology

by Camille

            From whence we came is but a silly question. We humans have always been here on Earth. However, our country is rather new as our country is only 5,000 years old. Older countries have been around for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. There are a few countries that are still around from a million years ago.

The Earth and the Sun are too big to be formed by hands, so it must be that they were always here too. The Sun is probably just a shiny large rock and the moon looks like a rock when it is all there. Rocks are solid masses that according to its kind are different like the Earth verses the Sun verses the Moon verses the stars. The Sun and Moon dance around the Earth taking turns of exhibiting their light so the other can rest while they recuperate from a tiring work day.

The land and water compete in a battle dance for control over the earth, while humans settle for being the intermediaries being both on land and water. Our animals that are here tend to be complacent with their lot in life while others are temperamental with our liability as humans to eat them. Plants start growing after seeds are planted and to get seeds, they must come from a plant so it is impossible to say if the tree or seed came first if there ever was a first (like the chicken or the egg dilemma.)

There was no beginning and so there is no end like a circle in a way. That is why it is called the circle of life. Earth is the living circle among the heavens.

My Cosmogony

by Vanessa

The Royal Tsar was birthed through the sand particles of diamond dust from a star. It was when he was in existence for 1,000 hours he finally came to his senses and began to think critically. He concluded that he desired to teach a being similar to him his ways of critical thinking, and so he created Socrates. The two chatted for decades, eventually crafting the Socratic Method. Afterward they realized that they couldn’t just float forever, so together with their critical thinking skills they created the earth based on Truth, Honor, and Virtue. They also fabricated five males and five females.

The Royal Tsar elected to make himself the God of this new world, with Socrates as an angel who would watch over and live with these 10 immortals. Only these ten would be granted the gift of everlasting life. Among them was one Karl G. Maeser, who became their leader. Maeser led the people through times of brain freezes and blonde moments. They were fortunate to have him but did not recognize it, and eventually went their own ways after a major political dispute.

Millenniums later, the immortals still wander in seclusion today. Some try to blend in with today’s society, some hide out in the Alps, and some still commit their knowledge to do some actual good in the world. But wherever they are, they each regret leaving their father figure, Karl G. Maeser.  And that was how the world was fashioned.

Three Worlds Collide Test Study Guide

People

Leif Ericson

Queen Isabella

King Ferdinand

Prince Henry “The Navigator”

Columbus

Taino

Aztecs

Cortes

Amerigo Vespucci

Balboa

Coronado

Ponce de Leon

De Soto

Cartier

Cabot

Hudson

Bering

Ribault

Places

Iberian Peninsula

Bering Straight

Bahamas (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti)

Dates

1492 (3 events in Spain)

22,000 years ago (in the Americas)

10,000-5,000 years ago (in the Americas)

3,000 years ago (in the Americas)

Concepts

Triangular trade route

Columbian Exchange

Cosmogony

Treaty of Tordesillas

Castas

Mestizo

Mercantilism

Motives/Roots of Exploration

Renaissance

Crusades

Protestant Reformation

Technological advances

Rise of the merchant class/urban life

Short Essays

1)      What do the cosmogonies studied in class reveal about the worldviews of Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans?  How do they foreshadow the cultural clashes that would follow in history?

2)      How did Spanish colonization impact Native Americans? What were some of the motives of the European colonizers? Use evidence from the movie The Mission to support your responses.

The Creation

by Chelsey

    Once there were millions and millions of blank pieces of paper. There was nothing in the universe, so naturally nothing could be written on them. God was up in heaven gazing sullenly at the paper, and realized that something had to be done. He did what any smart guy would do, and asked his wife. So it was that she made ink, graphite and lead. From these three elements she was able to form pens and pencils.
    God’s wife grabbed five of her children and each was able to write on a page of the paper. The first wrote of the planet, Earth, and of the land and waters. The second wrote of grass, trees, and other nature. The third wrote of animals, both in the ocean and on land. The fourth wrote of berries, fruits, and other natural foods. The fifth wrote of the sun, stars and moon surrounding the Earth.
    God and his wife had two more children, however, and they were unhappy that they weren’t able to participate. The first one thrust two of the other children down to Earth so that they would be stuck there forever. The other child stole some blank pages and wrote of natural disasters and horrible creatures that were vicious and cruel. He wrote of trials and tribulations for his brother and sister.
    The two were proud of what they had done, and told God what a horrible accident it was, and they were sorry to have lost their siblings. God was furious, and blamed his sons and wife for what had occurred, but his wife had an idea. She proposed the idea of letting them live on Earth, but still being able to communicate with them. God agreed and talked with his children of this plan.
    God wrote his two Earth children to become mortal, and to create more children to fill the Earth with their posterity. After a few hundred years they began to miss their children and wished to see them again. So it was that God wrote of death, not as a trial, but merely as a passageway back to heaven. Whenever he missed his children he would write of death upon their name, and the child would return to heaven.