I watched this film once a long time ago. My dad told my sister and I that it was one of his favorites and that it was funny. I remember it not being funny. However, I went back and watched it for this extra credit blog post and now, probably five years later, I can see my dad had a point. I really enjoyed this movie because he had a lot of lessons when it came to living life.

I think often times we as people get into a schedule of life. We wake up everyday at a specific time go to work/school, come home, have dinner, do homework/work, go to sleep and repeat again. We get into a “groundhog day” rut. I heard a speech once and it talked about the way we idolize the weekends because those are the days we can do something fun and different. However, after watching this movie, I see now that you only have one life, live each day a little different. The character Phil in the movie, everyday learned something new that he had to fix the next day. We can take that lesson into our every day lives: learn something new for tomorrow.

This movie also captures life during the pandemic. Especially in the beginning when school was cancelled for two weeks, I felt like time did not exist. At first it was nice to have a break from life, but after a couple days of not being able to leave the house, a dream soon turned into a nightmare. I remember getting excited when I had a planned zoom or facetime call with friends or family because it was something different to spice up my day. I mean even now, a year later, I feel like I am in a “groundhog day” rut. I go to classes every day, after classes I go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed. I am going to take the lesson from the movie of doing something different everyday with me into summer and next school year.

Looking at what Jeremy Engels wrote in his reflection, I appreciate his writings on mindfulness. He describes it as getting to know yourself and circumstances. I think it is beneficial to be mindful of yourself and how you feel. I know for myself, I try to push myself so hard with school and extracurriculars that often times I forget about my own health and happiness. This past year with the pandemic, I have worked hard to be more mindful of myself and what I need when overwhelmed with school and activity things. In high school, we would have mindfulness Mondays where every week we would do something different to become more mindful. We would meditate, do yoga, journal, listen to music, one time the school even got therapy dogs to come in and we could go pet the dogs and relax. Mindfulness is very important and that is just another life lesson the movie Groundhog Days teaches us.

This lecture was amazing. After watching the recording of it, I feel moved to go out and make a difference, research more on racial injustice, and fight more for what is right. Ersula Ore did a great job of creating ethos, pathos, and logos with her audience. I was pretty familiar with Sandra Bland’s case, I did a speech on her in high school, but it was very interesting to hear what Ersula had to say on the case. As someone who is white and does not know what is like to live in America as a black person, it was hard to hear what Ersula had to say. When she talked about how it is hard for her to continue to see images of black people dead and how it is scary because she looks like them, that really spoke to me. I wish more people could hear what Ersula had to say. I am a big believer in the fact that in order to help a community, you must listen to the people within that community. So for me being white, listening to Ersula’s experiences, helps give me a better idea of what I can do to help. When she stated that “the way that an individual’s efforts to live is literally criminalized” stood out to me. It was such a powerful statement with so much loaded meaning. Then she went on to talk and define resistance. The way she described and used the word resistance was new to me but it made so much sense. She talks about how a big part of her work was to provide multiple different lenses to the public so that people can see the different types of citizenship and how they manifest. I thought that was interesting and selfless of her. She has put so much time and effort into educating people, it just shows how determined she is to make a difference, it is very inspiring.

The quote she included in the beginning of the lecture: “there is power in looking” also stuck with me. I think many times people who don’t look for the problem can’t help fix the problem, especially when it comes to race. As a white person, it is easy to take advantage of the privledge not to look for the problem, however then there is no power. It reminds me of Trump’s presidency, often times he did not look close enough at an issue or want of the citizens, and so how powerful was he actually?

To conclude, I really enjoyed this lecture and I am happy Penn State put it on. I definitely will be leaving with knowledge and tools I can use to help fight for racial justice. I think of the death of George Floyd. I live 20 minutes from where he died. These acts of injustice are happening in my home community and it is disheartening. With that said, thanks to Ersula, I can go on and start to advocate more for equality for Black people in the United States.

This article really spoke to me because I experienced everything the author wrote about. The whole first semester, I lived in fear. I rarely left my dorm room, I never interacted with new people, I would spend a lot of time outside rather than inside. I did not want to get Covid and I was very serious with my actions so I would not get sick. It upset me though because while I was living in fear many other freshman were living like the pandemic did not exist. I remember the night when the big gathering happened at East. It was the day my roommate and I moved in, we were sitting on the floor of our dorm talking and scrolling through social media when we saw the videos. We both immediately started to cry because we were not even on campus for a full day yet and people were already showing no care for the pandemic. We thought for sure we would be sent home after that. However, we were not and continued to live the next three months in fear.

One day, we saw two girls playing cards outside on the lawn of west. We walked up to them and asked if we could play too, trying to make friends. We played cards for hours. Two days later one of the girls messaged us to tell us she tested positive for Covid. Terrified, my roommate and I left campus and stayed in the basement of her house in Harrisburg for a week until we got our off campus negative test results back. As an out of state student, I was scared to stay in an isolation room alone, so I was very grateful that my roommate took me with her. Again, it was very frustrating doing what we could to control our actions and yet, other students ruining it for us.

The image from the article of Kaleigh Quinnan spoke to me the most. It shows just how depressed we as students got having to stay in our dorm rooms alone. For me, it shows the exhaustion I experienced from worrying about Covid and the actions of my fellow students. I literally would spend hours in my dorm, some days I would not even go outside. This picture captures everything I felt while living on campus. All the pictures of students wearing masks also spoke to me. These images made me realize that I had only seen very few faces while on campus. It is disturbing to know that everyone you walked by, all you saw were their eyes, you have no idea what they actually look like. Same thing with Zoom classes. You see people’s faces but you do not know how tall they are or what their personalities are like. For me, Zoom classes were very difficult for me for that reason- the lack of creation of connections.

Overall this article was very touching and captures what life on Penn State campus was like during the pandemic.

For my E-portfolio, I have decided to use Wix as my platform. I chose Wix because from the comparison articles I had read, Wix sounds like the easiest platform to use. I am not great with technology, so the easier to navigate the better. I also used Wix my freshman year of high school for a project, so I am hopping that I will remember a little bit on how to use Wix for this project.

I am still brainstorming ideas for my E-portfolio. I think however I want my purpose to be for future job and internship applications. This would make my audience future employers. I have three ideas for themes.

The first idea is Spanish and my journey in becoming bilingual. With this I can include pieces I have wrote for Spanish courses, my civic issue blogs on national language policy, and my passion blogs from my trips to Spain and Guatemala.

The second idea I have is travel and cultures. Again I can use a couple of my RCL and passion blogs for artifacts, as well as pictures from trips and videos from trips.

My last idea is more broad but I feel like would exemplify more of who I am as a person. The theme would be who is Lily Pershica. I would break it down to three categories like many of the examples had- a speaker, an advocate, an explorer. I can then use speeches from RCL or even from last year when I did competitive speech I have a recordings of my national qualifying speeches. I can also use my RCL blogs for my advocacy page, as well as papers I have written for philosophy and political science courses this year. Then I can use my travel blogs for my third topic.

Again I am still brainstorming, let me know your thoughts on my ideas!

For my advocacy project, I have two main ideas. My first idea is a speech, I am leaning towards this one since I have a background in and passion for public speaking. My second idea is a video. I think this could be powerful. I could ask people who know another language, to say the same word in their language to kind of show the idea of being bilingual. Either way my audience will be professionals in education and policy makers, arguing the need for world language education policies. I also think students can potentially be an audience as well because this is advocating learning a second language.

I think that “Photographer as Witness” is a piece of advocacy. This is because it is bringing awareness to an issue that is often not spoken about and telling the “true” story of a couple that that had a relationship with domestic violence. It also shows the audience that a relationship can start fine with both parties happy and end up not being like that in the end. This is an important piece of advocation because it educates and informs the audience on signs of domestic violence. I think it is ethical according to the Ethics Keywords because it is true information and it is not withholding information that can upset someone.

This is extremely rough! Still finding research and working on the bibliography but here is a little something to start!

Lily Pershica

Speaking Beyond America:

IMPLEMENTING A NATIONAL WORLD LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICY AND ELIMINATING ENGLISH-ONLY POLICIES

Introduction

Unlike many countries, the United States does not have a national foreign language education policy in place. The lack of policy is largely due to the fact that not everyone holds the belief that learning a second language is necessary especially with the rise of political conflict with immigration and the idea of patriotism. ¹ However, it has been proven that learning a second language is beneficial in many different aspects. Cognitively, being bilingual creates positive changes in neurological processes and structures. Being able to speak more than one language activates different parts of the brain and increases functionality of those areas. Knowing a second language also improves one’s ability to learn as they are able to process information the quicker and easier rate. Lastly, knowing a second language can protect someone from age related disease, keeping their brain functioning at a high-level longer than someone who is monolingual. ² In addition to the cognitive benefits, there are also the obvious social benefits of knowing more than one language: being able to communicate with more people, experience more cultures, and more job and travel opportunities. ³

The traditional discourse on the United States language policy has been framed in a way to give a either-or-choice to schools between English and world languages. With this way of framing the education, students and schools with a high minority population suffered. This way of teaching language in the United States goes back to the native American boarding schools where English was the forced language of education. Throughout World War I and the early 1920s, English-only policies were implemented for German students. During the 60s and 70s, there was support for the implementation of world languages in schools; but since the 90s English-only policies reversed the progress made and now 28 states have an English-only policy. Only teaching English, not only ignores linguistic resources in minority communities, but also negatively affects the education students receive and their sense of identity. ⁴

Learning a second language has many benefits and opens up many potential future opportunities for students. The decline in language education and lack of a national policy in the United States will only harm students and the education they will receive. The United States needs to create a national world language policy for K-12, promoting the idea of being bilingual, because world languages are just as important as other key curricular that already have national policies implemented.

Current World Language Education in the United States

Currently in the United States there is a divide in World Language Education. Roughly half of the states welcome the education of world languages, but the other half run on a strict English-only policy. ⁵   The United States is an outlier when it comes to language education in the world. About 142 countries have a language learning policy, where students start learning a second language as early as grade school. The United States falls in the 41 states that do not have a mandatory policy. ⁶ A national Education policy does not exist in the United States, it is up to states and schools on how they want to address World language education. Since the 1990s, the number of schools that have been implementing language policies have only decreased. ⁷ The two United States policies that allow schools to place language requirements are the “Every Student Succeeds Act” and the “Higher Education Act”. These acts, although not directed toward language education, give schools the option to use money to improve language education and give schools the power to create language education requirements. However, why use that money for language learning when the school could also use the money for sports programs or new technology. This is a dilemma that is causing lower language learning opportunities in the United States. Schools are using the funding, the only funding the state gives for language education, for new technology. ⁸

Concerns for Future

The Prescence of world language education in schools has been disappearing over the years. This is supported by the fact that roughly 20% of students across the United States at some point in their K-12 education have studied a world language. Only about 7.5% of college students study a second language. ⁹ This is very concerning because that percentage is the equivalence to the future American global minds; the people who can communicate and understand outside of the United States. What does that say about the future of United States’ political relationships with other countries and corporation growth. Although that is a big concern, another concern is the amount of world language teachers. There is currently a shortage of qualified world language teachers. The Department of Education has come out and said that the student loans of teachers who can teach a world language will be paid off as well as a high salary; that is how desperate the United States is when it comes to world language education. ¹⁰

The Challenges of Implementation

Still looking for good research for this, but the bullets below are what seem to be main themes and what I will probably talk about.

• Views on immigration and patriotism
• Teacher shortage
• Is it unconstitutional to force students to learn another language?
• Split between liberal and conservative views

What Students Want

Found a really interesting book at the local library (virtually) about this, picking it up later today!

Moving Forward

Taking Steps Towards a Policy

According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences “state and federal policy-makers could develop more informed educational and curricular goals for language learning” if they simply collected data. If “data were collected at scheduled intervals, allowing for closer monitoring of total enrollment and the distribution of enrollment among languages and grade levels; and/or collection were standardized across states to provide a greater understanding of the state of language learning across the nation”. Simple data collection could give the government an idea of how many students would be learning what language and how many teachers are qualified to teach those languages. Data would also uncover how much money is needed for the government to provide assistance to language education. If creating a language education policy is as simply as collecting data, why have we not implemented one yet? That is the question that has long been asked and why so many people, students, and educators are frustrated with the United States government.

The Future with a Policy

If a policy were to be implemented, the future would be a lot brighter. Students would be more globally aware and knowledgeable and the United States’ international relations would only be strengthened because of it. (Still finding research)

Conclusion

Students deserve the best education possible and when it comes to world languages, the only way to make sure it is the best is a national policy. As rates related to world language education continue to decrease, the need for a policy increase. There are so many benefits for learning another language and having national support of those benefits would greatly increase the value of education students receive. It is time that America steps into a global mindset and starts speaking beyond America.