week4

Deadly Secret
By Chloe Fairbanks
Main Street Middle School, Grade 7

Weapons. What comes to your mind when you hear that word? Guns? Spears? Bombs? I’m not surprised. I think of those, too. But what no one ever realizes is that there are other, more subtle weapons. Words, glances, secrets. Secrets that destroy and condemn, secrets that hurt and abuse, secrets like the one I carry.

Suicide, he tells me. Don’t tell anyone, please. And what a secret. I trust you, he tells me. And so my secret becomes a weapon.

To tell or not? To tell, and save the life of one I care about? Or not to tell, to never again see that smile, hear that laugh, talk to that friend. To see his parents, walking through life, shadows of what they were, the empty shells where people once lived.

How can I keep this secret? How can I not? Why is it I who must bear this, this weapon? Why is it so unfair?

By Eman Hayyat
Middlebury Union High School,Grade 10

Those who don’t understand Arabic or the culture say we are bad people. Those who listen to the news and watch the destruction assume we are terrorists. The walls come crumbling down and so do our lives. They see the dark skin, the dark hair, and the dark eyes and think we are monsters.

By Noah S. Gray
Woodstock Union High School, Grade 10

It is election day and all the flags are flying. People are walking toward the Town Hall with intent, purposeful expressions on their faces, determined to help elect the person they believe will best serve and protect their country.

Shadows
Benjamin Pruitt, a junior at Champlain Valley Union High School, took this photo because he was intrigued with the way the shadows played against the sand. This is not, by the way, a scene taken in Vermont; it is Hawaii. For another photo by Ben, click here and here and here.

By Ed Darling
South Burlington High School, English teacher

I wish that as a high-school student I’d been assigned to write a reporter-at-large piece. That would have given me an opportunity to choose some place of business or other enterprise in my community to visit, write a report about it and make my report available for others to read. Many of my readers would have learned something from my report that they didn’t know, and a project like that would have enhanced my confidence as a writer.

This is an example of reporter-at-large writing techniques.
By Paul Mercurio

Have you ever gone more than a day without eating? Nobody wants to go without eating, and fortunately here in America most of us don't have to. There is plenty of food here in Burlington, and there are generous people who donate some to the poor. However, on Saturdays the Food Shelf and the Salvation Army have always been closed, and hungry people have been left without options.