Change

Authors Note: this essay is about change in your life. Look for good text to world connections.

  In the book Touching Spirit Bear the author Ben Mikaelsen shows how different characters change in different ways. Without change for the better in one’s life, the life we may live may not really be worth  living.

Cole is a very rotten person and doesn’t care about anything. The only thing he cares about is himself. He wants everybody to be afraid of him. In the beginning of the book there is not a lot of change. I connected to school life when I read this. In the beginning of school you think you know everything and you don’t want to take any input from teachers but later on in the year you figure out that you need to take input otherwise the 

year won’t go so great.

After Cole went to the justice circle he woke up a little bit. He realized he didn’t want the jail life and he would do anything to not go to jail. The justice circle made a conclusion to send him to an island and that’s when his feelings changed about people. He said to himself “All of this justice circle stuff is a bunch and bull crap. All of these people just want me out of their town. Nobody wants to help.” At times I feel that way too. It’s very disheartening.

When the light bulb turns on for Cole it is when he is on the island after the spirit bear mauls him. All he want to do is live. While laying there, he hears chirping in the trees.  He looks up and sees baby sparrows and it’s mom feeding them. He thought in his head why should those baby sparrows live? They aren’t doing anything for their mom. I wasn’t sure why Ben Mikaelsen put that whole seen in the book but then it hit me. Like in real life the Moms and Dads are suppose to help their children because their children can’t help themselves. When I thought about this I made another connection to school. Teachers are suppose to help you. You don’t have to do anything for them they are just there to help you.

Without change in a book it’s not going to be a good book. Without change in your life it’s not going to be a good life. Ben Mikaelsen Does a wonderful job at incorporating change throughout his book.    

Founding Fathers

Author's Note: this essay is about three questions i would ask our founding fathers. look for the text to world connections.  

Imagine a small room with fifty-five men jammed into it and the sunlight glimmering through the windows. Extravagant red cloth draping down the walls and in the middle of the room a table with seven men on a quest to come up with a document making the United States an independent country. If given a chance to talk to these men I would ask a few questions about different rights people were given and what was the deal with why women were not equal to men.

I would start off by asking why did you say that all men are created equal but yet you still have slaves? In the Revolutionary war time slaves were brought over to of course help and do all the dirty work. The blacks were slaves because the 13 colonies decided that the black weren’t try to free this country like they were so they put the blacks to work.    

My second question would be why couldn’t the women vote until 1917? In the Declaration of Independence it says that all men and created equal but it say nothing about women. The men thought that the women were incapable of making a important decisions. That is also why in the 1900’s women weren’t allowed to get into Harvard and Yale.

The final question would be why weren’t women allowed in congress until 1916? People have found out that men thought that women were less intelligent when it came to making a political decision. Before 1916 when the first women was in congress, a bunch of women would get together and march in front of the white house and protest because women couldn’t vote and none of them were in congress. Most of those women were sent to jail.

If I could ask our founding fathers anything those three questions would be it. If I asked those questions when our founding fathers were making the Declaration of Independence I wonder if the Declaration of Independence would change.     

Cody's Last Breath

Author's Note: This story is about an alternate to the story "Buried Treasure" but this is how i think it should have ended.

Right before Cody was about to melt the hook he thought to himself “Would I want someone to take something a cherish?” and that’s when he changed. He decided to make the long trip back to Clarence’s house and give the hook back. When he got to Clarence’s house he began digging as fast as possible. He started to dig faster and fast because he felt as if someone was watching him. Every once in a while he would feel a light breeze and heard his name being whispered. When he got all the dirt off the coffin he opened it up something was wrong. Clarence’s body was gone. While Cody was staring into the empty coffin he felt the breeze again and along with the breeze and light push and the light push made Cody lose balance and fall head first into the coffin. When he land in the coffin the lid shut right behind him and when he was in the coffin he heard the sound of dirt getting flung on top of the coffin. No one ever saw Cody after that day.    

Reviewing Cole

Author's Note: This story is about how a character can change over time and how the things around him or her can effect how they change.

Character Before Change:

In the book Touching Spirit Bear there is this boy named Cole. He is very violent, he thinks that everybody should be scared of him, he even said “ why isn’t that bear scared of me? Everybody should be scared of me”.  But it’s not all his fault he is like this in the beginning of the story. As a child his dad would get drunk and beat him with a belt and to add on top of that his mom wouldn’t do anything to stop Cole’s dad.

I know that that is horrible and it shouldn’t have happened but Cole shouldn’t have took it out on other thing or other people. For example one night Cole broke into a hardware store and trashed the place. The next day he was bragging about it and this boy Peter ratted him out the next day. Therefore the beat peter up and sent him to the hospital and to rehab and he had preeminent speech problems.

Cole really reminds me as a boy from our school witch his name will not be machined but as a child he was mistreated and things but then he got adopted and he had this very nice family and he got a lot of what he wanted be he was still just very rotten.

Changing:

Cole can be a very rotten person but everybody can change and in the turning part in Touching Sprit Bear that’s exactly what Cole dose in every way possible. The changing starts after Cole gets mauled by the sprit bear. So after he gets mauled he is just laying there in pain and all of a sudden he hears cheeping coming from the tree and he looks up and he sees to baby sparrows. Then he sees their mom bring them back a worm, and he asks himself. Why should their mom bring them food? They don’t do anything for her. And all of a sudden the light bulb turns on and he answered he own question by say “because she cares” and that one thought sparks a whole wild fire of kindness.

He realizes that he need to live to be able to help. After eating a few worms and a little bit of grass he takes a break and just kind of lays there after a few minutes of laying there he passes out from the loss of blood. When he wakes up he is on the a boat headed toward land. He gets sent to the hospital and he recovers somewhat. After getting sent back out to the island Cole invites peter, he declines it the first few times but eventually comes. When peter fist comes to the island peter is very stubborn, he doesn’t want to do much and just wants to stay inside.

After a few days pass Cole finally gets peter to try some different things with him, like going to the pond and rolling the ancestor rock down the hill and dancing around the fire. Peter finally taps into the inner body and soul and figures out what the big picture is and why he is living and after the whole island deal he changes along with Cole both mentally and physically.

This reminds me of football players when they get hurt the a broken leg or a torn hamstring. When they get hurt people start to question if they can make a comeback or if they will always have a lingering pain. Now this doesn’t settle well with the players if they ever get hurt they want to come back better than ever and make a good impression on the critics and I believe that is what Cole has done.

Result in Actions.

Author's note:
This story is about the effect of something in a story, good or bad.

Cause:

Cole kept getting into trouble with the law and had a history of beating people up. One night he had went out and broke into a store and trashed the place. The next day the was bragging about it at school. One of the students had told the polices and the next day Cole beat that student which sent the kid to the hospital and rehab. Everybody in the community wanted Cole off of the streets and in jail. But Garvey and Cole both didn’t want that. For some reason that reminded me of this show call "I (almost) got away with it". In that show there is this 15 year old boy who lives in this very small town with very minimum safety workers (police officers). In the show the boy breaks into cars and houses and various other thing without getting caught.
One night he does get caught but he doesn't go to a remote island he goes strait to jail. I think that would have been Cole's reality if it wasn't for the island.       

Effect:

He was sent to a remote island with little to no human contact for a year. Just him the wild life and his thoughts. They didn’t send him to jail because jail doesn’t help a person at all, it just gets them more mad and unhappy. Where unlike jail a island let's you get in touch with your self and every action effect if you live or not.  

Story changer

Story: the Hunger Game

Conflict

Katniss and Peta are fighting to the death with 12 other districts. Katniss doesn’t know it but Peta likes Katniss a little and Katniss and Peta live in the same district. Katniss finds that out half way through the games, she also liked him back. Katniss has to chose between someone she loves and her own life. This reminds me a lot of war. If one of you fellow soldiers get wounded in war will you go out there and get shot your self, or are you going to let him suffer? It's a hard decision to make, but one has to be made.     

Resolution

Katniss and Peta are the last two people alive and Katniss didn’t want to give up Peta or her own life. So she comes up with an idea for both her and Peta to eat these poisonous berries at the same time so they didn’t have a winner of the Hunger Games . But right before they put the berries in their mouth the head person of the hunger game came on the loud speaker and said that there could be two winners of the hunger games. This reminds me of a lot of different thing. One that comes to mind the fastest is a little kid show that my sister watches. In one episode the family has to take down the tree house that is in their back yard. But the oldest boy (P.j) and the oldest girl (Tedy) decide to rebel and try to keep the tree house. In the end they do get to keep the tree house. 

The Move

Author's Note: this story is about how moving can be a life changing event, for the better or the worse. It just depends on what you do with it.

When your mom and dad say, “We’re thinking about moving”, It can be exciting and a little bit scary. It can be exciting because you get a whole new view and it’s just something different, yet moving can also be scary if you move to a new school or even a new state. Thank goodness for me  when my parents said, “We’re thinking about moving”, but I was staying in the same area. My fear about moving to a new school didn’t come true because  I was just moving to a different house. Moving can be a life changing experience for the good or the bad, it just depends on what you do with it.

The biggest emotion when moving is excitement. The definite most exciting part when moving is when you first step inside the house and you can almost smell the newness. You can’t help but to smile when you get the full tour of the house. In my case it’s hard not to bicker with my sister about which room I want, but as smart as my parents are they told us just to keep our game faces on and wait until the realtor was gone the we could start our little war.

Yes there are a lot of exciting things, but on the other hand there are some scary things. In one case if you move to a new school you have to start a new friendships with new people and that isn’t always the easiest thing to do. In another case if you move let’s say from Wisconsin to somewhere down south where they have accents you could sound funny to them. One thing I think that really is hard about moving to a different state is adapting to the new weather. If you move from Florida to Wisconsin the winters are going to seem like you are in Alaska.

Over all moving is a very fun experience, if your moving 5 minutes away or your moving 5 hours away it’s still fun. Yes it can take a month or 2 to move but it’s worth it in the end. Even if you do move to a new school or a new state you will eventually find someone that wants to be friends with you, it’s bound to happen. Those are the reasons I think move is a life changing experience.