The Little Hawk
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no place like home
An Amish family explains life as they know it in Kalona, Iowa.
PREVIEW
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preparing for pregnancy By Caroline Brown
One seventeen-year-old girl shares what it’s like to be expecting a child while society expects something different.
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somebody’s watching me
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leaps and bounds
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no place like home
2 Little Hawk Feature Magazine
By Caroline Brown & Innes Hicsasmaz
In the age of the Internet and social media, is privacy a thing of the past?
By Ayla Canin & Sonali Durham
Why some students choose to get ahead in school— and what happens after.
By Sarah Smith & Nova Meurice
An Amish family explains life as they know it in Kalona, Iowa.
COVER PHOTOS BY SARAH SMITH
An Apple a Day FOOD
By Ayla Canin
Apple season is upon us, and as the weather cools off, Wilson’s Orchard is heating up. Whether you prefer to buy their already-made treats or want to pick apples and cook up your own goodies, it’s a great place to spend an afternoon sampling apple varieties and enjoying the scenic landscape. If you aren’t sure what to make with your extra apples, you can try out one of these apple-tizing recipes!
Gruyere and Apple Tarts ingredients 2 tbsp. vegetable oil 1 large white onion 4 oz baby bella mushrooms 1 ½ Granny Smith apples 2 tbsp. butter 1 tsp. granulated sugar 1 ½ oz gruyere, grated 1 tsp. dried thyme 1 egg, beaten 2 boxes of Pillsbury puff pastry
instructions Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Allow puff pastry to thaw on counter. Thinly slice onions and sautee in pan with oil until caramelized, about 20 minutes. Add sliced mushrooms and cook 10 more minutes. Slice apples into small cubes, add butter and granulated sugar to pan, and cook for 10 minutes more. Turn off heat and pour contents of pan into bowl. Add dried thyme, sliced chives, grated gruyere, and salt and pepper to taste. Slice each sheet of pastry into 16 squares and place in rows on nonstick baking sheet. Brush each square with beaten egg. Place tablespoonful of filling on each square, bake for 25 minutes, rotating pans once and switching position on oven racks, and allow to cool briefly before eating.
ABOVE: The finished tarts, mini pies, and apple chips. RIGHT: The pies just before baking; the finished apple and gruyère tarts. PHOTOS BY AYLA CANIN.
Mini Apple Pies
Ingredients 8 c Granny Smith apples, cubed 12 tablespoons of flour 1 ½ c of sugar 4 heaping teaspoons of cinnamon 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg 4 tablespoons of chilled butter, cut into 24 equal portions. 2 boxes of Pillsbury pie crusts Instructions Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Dice 8 cups of apples into ½ inch pieces, and mix diced apples with flour, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Unroll premade pie crust and use a ball jar lid lid to cut out enough circles to fill your muffin pan. Take the crusts and place them inside a muffin pan. Fill the crusts with apple mix and gently push crusts all the way into the corners of the pan. Place a small bit of butter on top of the apple mixture in each pie. Cut ½ inch strips of remaining crust and lay across pies in a weaved crisscross pattern. Pinch edges so the lattice top is secured. Bake for 18-22 minutes, checking occasionally until the tops of the pies are golden brown. Let cool slightly, remove from pan, and enjoy!
Simple Apple Chips Ingredients 4 Honeycrisp apples 2 tbsp. granulated sugar 1 tsp. cinnamon
Instructions Preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Slice apples thinly, getting about 15 slices from each. Place one layer thick on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake for 90 minutes, flip apples, and bake one more hour. Allow to cool in oven overnight, and enjoy!
september 25, 2015
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preparing for parenthood One seventeen-year-old girl shares what it’s like to be expecting a child while society expects something different. By Caroline Brown
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even months ago, want to keep the baby, I will give Chandler Hamm ‘16 you the money, and if you do, I sat in the Iowa City will support you.’ And that was Family Practice clinic just awesome to hear from somewith her mother at an one because I was totally freaking appointment to switch out,” she said. “But he’s really exto a new form of birth control. cited now. I think he’s getting to After routine testing and checkthe point where he’s like, ‘Okay, I ups, the nurse entered the room can do this.’” and asked her mother to step Hamm has already devised outside. The nurse shut the door a plan to balance parenting and and told Hamm that she was her education. Right now she is pregnant. only taking morning classes (first “I noticed right away that through fourth hour), and works there were changes in my body at Little Angels Child Care Cenabout a week after, and I just ter, which has provided her with kind of brushed it off. But when experience working with chilthe nurse told me, I was just dren. shocked. I didn’t know what to “After I have the baby, I will say,” Hamm said. “I wasn’t even take two weeks off of school, but gonna tell my mom, but then the if I feel like I need more time, I nurse encouraged me to bring will take more off. And I’m probher back in because she already ably goning to take about four knew something wasn’t right. weeks off of work. My mom is So then the doctor told her, and going to take two weeks of vamy mom had the same reaction I cation time when I go back to did: just shocked.” school, and then after that [the Hamm found that after talkbaby] will be big enough to take ing to her mom, her decision to the daycare,” Hamm said. “So to keep the baby wasn’t quite as I will take her to daycare in the hard as she thought it would be. mornings when I am ready, then “She said either we could get I will come to school, and then go an abortion, and we wouldn’t to work and take her home with tell anybody about it ever, or we me.” could keep the baby, and that Once she graduates high it was totally up to me,” Hamm school, Hamm plans to take onsaid. “So I drove home and I line college courses and is aiming thought about it. As I was drivto become a social networker. ing I hit a bump in the road, and She is aiming to make her college Hamm and her family already have a nursery room set up for the baby, who is I got scared that the baby wasn’t experience, and the rest of her due in October. PHOTOS BY CAROLINE BROWN. okay. I just thought to myself, if young adult life, as normal as posI’m scared already that she (at the sible. For her, the best way to do time, it) is hurt, I think I have to “I thought I was gonna feel singled out, but that is by continuing to stay posikeep this baby.” everyone has been great, so I haven’t really felt tive and looking forward to future experiences That gut reaction was what triggered Hamm’s that way,” Hamm said. “Other kids seem to be with her daughter. decision, but she also thought long and hard excited. People that I thought were going to be “There’s no point in being negative, and this about what was right for her before deciding to rude were actually really positive. They’ll tell me, whole experience has been a cooler feeling than keep the baby. ‘I can’t wait to meet the baby!’ But there have you would think,” she said. “Even though it’s a “I respect other people’s beliefs. If you want been some younger kids, [and] you can kind of young age to be having a baby, there are still a lot to get an abortion, it’s your body. You do what see it in their faces like they’re wondering, ‘Is of positives to it. Further down the road, I’ll be you want. But for me, that’s not something I that girl pregnant?”’ able to do more with her [because I am] a young would be able to handle. I would just feel too Although Hamm has had a relatively positive mom.” bad. And I know that mentally I just would not experience so far, there is still a negative connoKnowing first-hand how stressful it can be, be able to do adoption because I already love her tation associated with teen pregnancy. In a few Hamm hopes that all other mothers, mothersso much, and she’s still in my belly.” instances, the people she’s told haven’t been sure to-be, or girls deciding whether or not they can Even after the initial shock was over, Hamm how to react because of her age. handle being a teenage mother surround themstill had to break the news to her friends and “When I hear negative things, it’s frustrating. selves with people that are loving and supportfamily. However, her mom’s support made it One of my good friends was kind of negative ive. much easier. about it in the beginning, and I just don’t think “There are some girls that have the support “With friends, I just kind of came out and that’s fair. It’s my life and I have the support and and there are some girls that don’t. With the supsaid it, and they were all really supportive. But I’m positive about it and I’m happy,” she said. port, it is easier to stay positive. I mean, all you my family is where my mom really stepped in, “Life is hard with or without a baby, so I don’t have to do either way is stay positive and make a and she was just great. She was amazing. She like negativity in general. But I know I can do decision that you know is right for you, whether did it all for me,” Hamm said. “She told my dad, it, and I’m excited to prove that negative side that’s adoption, abortion, or keeping the baby,” she told my brothers, and then they were all re- wrong.” she said. “Talk to somebody about it that you ally supportive right away. My dad was excited, Another big source of support for Hamm has know you can trust, and don’t let anybody else which is not what you would expect from a dad. been Noah, the father of her baby. He works in tell you what to do. It’s your decision, and you I had no idea what to expect, but my mom just Cedar Rapids, but he and Hamm are able to see need to make it. Not your mom or your best kind of took over.” each other fairly regularly. friend. Just do it and stick with it.” She has also received more positive reactions “He’s been really supportive since the beginHamm is now about 35 weeks pregnant, and at school than she expected. ning. When I first told him he said, ‘If you don’t is expecting her daughter on October 27th, 2015.
september 25, 2015 5
i always feel like somebody’s watching me In the age of the Internet and social media, is privacy a thing of the past? By Caroline Brown & Innes Hicsasmaz
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PHOTO BY CAROLINE BROWN
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he never felt like she was in danger. He had been in her class in elementary school. He showered her with attention and compliments, which she thought was normal. He didn’t seem creepy; if anything, he was a source of entertainment for her and her friends. For the past two years, Lisa* has had a stalker. “At first I just thought it was kinda funny. In our sixth grade yearbook he wrote, ‘My favorite thing to do at Longfellow is talk to Lisa.’ All of my friends thought it was really funny, and at the time I did too,” she said. “But then it turned into a bigger thing than I thought it was.” After multiple moves, Johnny* seemed to just disappear, and Lisa soon forgot about him. Then, late last winter at a City High basketball game, someone familiar appeared in the student section. “All of a sudden I turned around and he was right there. Right next to me,” she said. “I hardly recognized him because he looked so different from elementary school. He told me that he missed me, but I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter, that he was just a friend from elementary school.” Soon after, Lisa began to receive love letters and strange phone calls from Johnny. He would profess his feelings for her and would get angry when she didn’t reciprocate. “He would tell me he loved me, he’d say ‘You’re so beautiful,’ and that I was the one for him, and he would always bring up that I told him I loved him in elementary school, even though I never said that,” Lisa said. “And then he would start cussing me out and getting mad. I always felt like there was the potential to be in danger if he tried to come find me, but he never really threatened me besides telling me he hated me when I didn’t say I loved him back.” Lisa’s is not a rare case; According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, the majority of stalkers know their victims, “ I guess he felt like we had something even though we never did, it was elementary school it meant nothing. I never even liked him I just thought it was funny that he liked me so much,” Lisa said. Even when he was angry,
*names have been changed to protect privacy
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Johnny kept calling Lisa. But the calls weren’t directly from him; they were from a corrections officer at a juvenile detention facility. “I don’t know why he was in juvie. He was just calling me from jail one day,” she said. “He would say, ‘When I get out of here I wanna come see you, I wanna be with you,’ and ‘I miss your long dark hair. Did you cut it?’” Many cyberstalkers are mentally ill or unstable, but that isn’t always the case. Some of them just want to get something out of the victim. Johnny believed that he had a special relationship with Lisa, and he simply wanted reassurance of that. “I guess he felt like we had something even though we never did,” Lisa said. “It was elementary school; it meant nothing. I never liked him. I just thought it was funny that he liked me so much.” When Lisa failed to give him what he was looking for, Johnny increased his his stalking and began to use social media to track her down. “I didn’t get any letters for a while, but he would always try to friend me on Facebook,” she said. “He made multiple accounts trying to contact me, but I would block them every time.” At first, Lisa chose not to say anything to her parents about Johnny, hoping that it was just a phase. But he was simply taking advantage of the access that social media granted. Cyberstalking has become one of the most common forms of stalking, with 1 in 4 victims experiencing some type
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of cyberstalking (John Carroll University). As things continued to escalate, Lisa decided to tell her parents. “They were like, ‘Who is this guy?’ And I told them it was Johnny from elementary school,” she said. “They told me that it wasn’t normal and if I got any more letters we needed to do something.”
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ccording to the group Working to Halt Online Abuse, 76% of cyberstalking cases escalate, with 25% leading to threats of physical violence. Lisa decided to deal with her stalker before it got that far. This past summer, her mother contacted
Even though the stalking has ended, the experience has stayed with Lisa. At times she finds herself paranoid that he might still be looking for her. “There’s this one episode of Criminal Minds about this girl who is being stalked, and that freaked me out a little bit,” she said. “But thankfully he never came and tried to find me. I was kind of nervous that he might actually show up at my door one day.” In addition to looking over her shoulder more often, Lisa is also more cautious about how she uses social media. Networks like Facebook and Twitter have millions of users, which means all of their personal information is readily available for anyone who’s willing to look. Every online account or service asks for seemingly harmless information: a name, an email address. But even this is enough for the Internet to work its magic- it looks through a INFOGRAPHIC BY INNES HICSASMAZ person’s online history, finds their someinterests, needs, and wants, and one in the police department, who then personalizes their online exwas able to convince Johnny that perience to fit their findings. While he needed to stop contacting her. this is handy as a consumer, as a “I just wanted it to stop imprivate citizen it seems a little invamediately because I knew that if sive. These days, online privacy is it continued when I was older, it increasingly a thing of the past. could really become a problem,” “I keep everything private on Lisa said. “I’m just glad I dealt social media, and I go through the with it.” people who want to follow me. If Fortunately, confrontation I don’t know them, I block them,” from an officer was enough. Lisa Lisa said. “I definitely think it is hasn’t had any further issues with easier to stalk people because you Johnny. can really find anything on the “The police said that usually Internet.” when it’s kids that are stalking, they will stop after authority steps in,” she said. “So it hasn’t been a problem since then.”
leaps and bounds
By Ayla Canin & Sonali Durham
Why some students choose to get ahead in school—and what happens after.
PHOTO BY CAROLINE BROWN
september 25, 2015 9
ike VCRs, landlines, and boomboxes, the practice of having academically gifted children skip a grade (or several) is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Some students, however, choose to buck this trend. Myles Young ‘16, a sixteen-year-old senior, is one of them. “I was really excited about the idea [of skipping a grade] because I wanted to look really smart,” he said. “My parents were more hesitant because they were afraid I was going to lose friends.” Concern about the impact skipping a grade might have on a child’s social life is one reason parents might choose not to have their kid move ahead, even if they are academically ready. A Nation Deceived, Volume 1, an overview of research on academic acceleration from The Acceleration Institute, offers advice to that effect in its introduction: “There are at least 18 different types of acceleration and parents and educators may find that while one type is a good match for their child, another is not. For example, students who skip grades need emotional maturity as well as academic ability in order to be successful.” Perhaps because of cautions like this, parents and educators usually work together to determine the best plan for a particular child. Only a few decades ago, when University of Iowa professor Gigi Durham was in elementary school, the situation was different. “I remember being completely surprised and not sure what was happening exactly because, you know, I was perfectly happy in the second grade,” she said of her experience skipping a grade. “I do remember the principal calling me to his office, and that scared me. The only reason people got called to the principal’s office was if they were in trouble, so I was very intimidated by the principal. I remember going into his office, and then he told me I would now be in a different class and [I was] just taken to the third grade classroom. At the time, I think it was all very surprising and disorienting.” Although Young, who skipped fifth grade, and Eleanor Mildenstein ‘17, who skipped second, both recall doing very little to prepare for the transition of skipping a grade, they describe their experiences as being smooth, socially and academically. “It was kind of something that didn’t really seem weird or out-of-place to me,” Mildenstein
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said. “I just thought, ‘Oh, that’s cool. Okay.’” Mildenstein recalls the other children in her elementary school accepting her academic jump fairly easily. “I remember in elementary school we had to line up in our grades to go inside, and everybody was [asking], ‘Why are you in this line? Did you skip a grade?’ And I said yes, and that was that,” she said. Young remembers his situation being similar to Mildenstein’s. “It was pretty much the same as the year before,” he said. “It wasn’t too difficult. People were pretty nice about it, and I didn’t get pushed into lockers or anything.” For Durham, who skipped both second and fifth grade, the transition was much more difficult. “Intellectually, it was probably a good thing for me and I did extremely well in school, so on the academic side it was very successful and it was probably the right thing to do. But I think socially it was a little bit more problematic for me,” she said. “The first time, I was a year younger than everyone else. Some of them were actually more than a year older than me because we had a few students in there who were kept back and things like that. So I tended to be very… I became, you know, more submissive, and I was bullied to some extent because I was not developmentally at the same stage as other kids in the class. That became worse after I skipped two grades because I was two years or more younger than other people.” Even after a few years in classes with people two or more
“I think people think that just because I skipped a grade I’m a super-genius. I’m not dumb, but I’m not a genius either.” eleanor mildenstein
years her senior, Durham continued to feel socially out of place. “By the time we got into high school, and I was two years younger than everyone else, the girls especially were moving through a whole different phase of life, not only physically, but I think also sort of their interests,” she said. “They were getting more interested in boys and those kinds of things, and I was still, you know, a kid, climbing trees and stomping in mud puddles and things. So it put me out of phase with my peers in a way that I think wasn’t socially helpful or good for me particularly.” Although Young says he did not encounter any bullying because of his age and grade, he has dealt with social problems one step removed, in the form of stereotypes and assumptions that people hold about students who skip grades. “[One stereotype is] that the people who skip [grades] are super antisocial,” he said. “Granted, in this case it’s pretty true, but people usually are pretty socially apt, even if they do skip a grade.” Mildenstein also recalls dealing with misperceptions about what she and other accelerated students are like. “I think people think that just because I skipped a grade I’m a super-genius. I’m not dumb, but I’m not a genius either,” she said. “Also, sometimes people ask me, ‘What grade are you supposed to be in?’ It just bugs me so much because if I wasn’t supposed to be in eleventh grade, I wouldn’t be in eleventh grade.” Durham, like Mildenstein, believes that her teachers made the right choice academically, although for her the social implications were different. “I probably would have gotten bored if they had left me in the grades that I was in,” she said. “[But] I actually do think I missed out on having just a more secure social life and being able to bond with my peers in ways that weren’t fraught with anxiety.” In terms of their progress at school, Young, Mildenstein, and Durham all believe that they benefited from skipping a grade. But outside the classroom, all faced setbacks and difficulties that their peers who did not skip
“We had so many different parents offer their opinion, whether we asked for it or not. Everybody felt the need to kind of chime in on what was going on, but it was a very personal family decision.” michelle galvin
a grade avoided. For example, although Mildenstein is a junior, at fifteen she is still too young to have her driver’s license, unlike most of her friends. “Sometimes people have the misconception that I’m less mature because I’m a year younger,” she said. “But my age doesn’t equal my maturity. I mean, I’m probably not the most mature person in eleventh grade, but it’s not because I’m fifteen.” Young also found that being younger has detracted from some extracurricular experiences. “The most difficult part would have been probably just catching up in band and catching up in sports,” he said. “I was behind some people physically.” Although both Young and Mildenstein consider their grade jump to be a positive choice, they don’t often choose to tell their peers about it. “For me, it’s a weird thing to bring up, and it sounds like I’m bragging or something,” Mildenstein said. “I don’t want it to be like that. I just want to be a normal eleventh grader.” From the perspective of a parent, the possibility of future difficulties can be concerning. For Michelle Galvin, mother to Mildenstein, however, the problems her daughter might face if she did not skip a grade outweighed any other obstacles. “I don’t want to say that [Eleanor] is brighter than everybody else, but she was a very early reader, and just everything we would put in front of her, whether it was, you know, reading, writing, math -- she was going through these things very quickly,” Galvin said. “We thought at some point it would plateau, but she was just working at a much faster pace, and it was also in all of her subjects. One of the concerns that I had was that when she did get to reach something that she didn’t know, that she was learning for the first time and would be difficult, she wouldn’t know how to handle that. I didn’t want her, when she
got into high school and got into an upper level math class that was really challenging, to have that frustration because she had never had to work through something before.” As a parent, Galvin faced social consequences for the choice her family made in having Mildenstein skip a grade. “We had so many different parents offer their opinion, whether we asked for it or not,” she said. “Many of them told us that they thought we were making a mistake. It was all kinds of opinions that we never asked for. Everybody felt the need to kind of chime in on what was going on, but it was a very personal family decision.” One answer on the Parent Q & A section of The Acceleration Institute’s website suggests that “the younger the student is when accelerated, the easier the adjustment.” In keeping with this model, Young, Mildenstein, and Durham were all identified early for their academic talent. In Young’s case, an employee of the Belin-Blank Center recommended that he skip a grade. Years later, he says he’s glad he followed that advice. “I think it was good for me in the long run,” he said. “Mostly it just makes me look better on resumes, but I got to do some stuff faster, and my classes were a little more engaging.” Overall, skipping a grade went well for Mildenstein and Young, but less so for Durham. The pros and cons of taking that step continue to be researched and debated by experts. One thing they tend to agree on is that it’s not the right choice for everyone. As someone who’s been through the process of moving ahead in school, Young has advice for anyone currently considering it. “I would tell them it depends on whether they have a lot of friends that they’re close to,” he said. “And how much they value sports and extracurriculars versus their education.”
Durham has had time to reflect on how her academic path as a child affected her adult life. Her conclusion? “If it were up to me and I had to do it over, I think that I would have just stayed in the second grade with my friends and just done everything the normal way on the normal schedule,” she said. Although she doesn’t remember skipping a grade with much clarity -- or perhaps because of that fact -- Mildenstein has no doubts about her choice to move from first grade straight into third. “I feel like there are so many experiences that I would have missed out on had I not skipped a grade. All the teams that I’ve been on, camps that I’ve done… I wouldn’t have done them with the same people,” she said. “Everything would have been so different, I think.”
september 25, 2015 11
no place like home An Amish family explains life as they know it in Kalona, Iowa. By Nova Meurice & Sarah Smith
The Miller children and friends often play neighborhood games of baseball in this nearby field. PHOTO BY SARAH SMITH.
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It took Megan Miller fifteen minutes to walk home from school each day. In ninetydegree heat, she would trek the sides of gravel roads in her long-sleeved cotton dress. For many students, coming home after school is a period for them to unwind. For Megan, approaching her farm means that her work day is just getting started. “The two things we try and teach our children, besides Jesus came here to die for our sins, is a good work ethic and common sense,” Warren Miller said. “We make sure they have fun too, but at the same time we’re trying to teach them to work young.” Tucked in between the southern country roads of Kalona, Iowa, resides a modest thirty-acre family farm owned by Warren and Ila Miller and their eight children. Living an agrarian lifestyle is not unusual, especially from a state known for its crop production. However, the Millers live in a city with a reputation of its own: Kalona is Iowa’s oldest and best-known Amish settlement. The Amish are a group of christians who came to the United States in the 18th century to avoid persecution in Switzerland. They are anabaptist, which means that they are not baptized until they officially join the church in adulthood. Additionally, they live by a set of rules called Ordnung, which guide their clothing, technology use, and behavior. Although every family member is raised Amish, and therefore without many modern technologies, both parents stress that they are not excessively different from what outsiders are lead to believe.
Megan, the Millers’ the 19-yearold daughter, enjoys many hobbies popular with girls her age, like volleyball and spending time outdoors. “We like to go camping,” Megan said. “That’s about one of my favorite things to do. Somebody Amish owns the land; it has timber and a big pond. We camp in tents, but some people just like to sleep outside under the stars.” Ila, the mother of the family, has her own favorite pastimes. “We break horses, and we have a half mile track in our hay field or corn field. [My daughters] like to walk out their with friends. It’s away from the road,” she said. “Sometimes, when I want to be alone, I like to go out there. It’s relaxing.” Although the Millers enjoy relaxing and spending time together, they put most of their energy each day into work. “Normally [our oldest son] is doing carpenter work and comes home in the morning and evening. We don’t see much of him,” Ila said. “Our second, Megan, has a part time job down at the lunch room working in the kitchen and cooking food. Otherwise, she’s pretty well at home. She might help here and there if some other person needs help. That’s where my next daughter is right now, Monica. That’s what she did all summer, she helped out at our neighbors.” Although historically most Amish men have worked as farm-
ers, today the majority have chosen to work in carpentry. Others are employed as farmers, wood workers, or cabinet makers. Young women have opportunities in baking, teaching, or working at a local hen house. Typically, these will be part time jobs, with the rest of their hours spent assisting with chores at home. “Boys around here wouldn’t want to work in restaurants,” Ila said. “Mainly their jobs are higher income than girls, which is what we need because they are going to be the leadership in the family. It’s just that the boys, well, they need to make a living for the family. We’re [girls] not responsible for making a living.” While most occupations are
“OF COURSE OUR GIRLS DO A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING; THEY’LL CATCH A CHICKEN,” WARREN SAID. “THEY’LL DO ANYTHING. IT’S RIDICULOUS.” WARREN MILLER
fairly gender-segregated, Megan doesn’t feel limited in her job options. “I wouldn’t really want to be a carpenter,” she said. “It’d be fun for about a week, but I wouldn’t want to do it everyday.” Most women do a variety of jobs, both on and off the farm. “Of course our girls do a little bit of everything; they’ll catch a chicken,” Warren said. “They’ll do anything. It’s ridiculous.” Ila and Warren’s remaining five children, ranging in ages from six to 12, all go to the same one room school about half a mile away from their farm. After the eighth grade, Amish children stop going to school and begin working either at home with their parents or part time at a small business. “[School] was fun,” Megan said. “We have ten different schools in the community, so I only had two boys in my class. It was fun there, but once you’re out you don’t wish to go back.” Monica Miller, at 17, two years Megan’s junior, was in a class with only seven other students, which had decreased to four by her eighth grade year. Since graduation she has had a job caring for a neighbor’s five children. “I wouldn’t want to go to college,” Monica said. “Once we’re out of school, we’re just glad to be out.” Megan and Monica’s lack of interest in pursuing additional schooling is not uncommon for young people in their community. “I personally only know of one that took high school through the mail. Our neighbor does a lot of electronic work--he fixes basically every electronic thing you take into him--he took extra schooling through the mail, but he didn’t actually go to college,” Warren said. “They’ll go to more school if it’s some particular job that they want. But as a general rule, there sure isn’t a lot of that.” Generally, Amish children stop their education after eighth grade because the vocational education they’ll need for jobs is available through the community. Amish parents will teach their children the skills that will serve them in future occupations specific to their lifestyle. Ila believes this system works better for her daughters, who were too confined in a classroom. “When they’re out of school in eighth grade, or age 14, they’re at home with their parents. Kids learn a lot just from that,” Ila said. “The
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boys follow Dad, and the girls do what I do: they learn how to sew and cook and bake and can and garden. Sometimes I think I can’t almost teach them everything by the time they’re 21.” Like teachers, the Miller parents have conceived several lesson plans designed to test their children on responsibility and work ethic. Currently their youngest son is working on an assignment to that end: taking care of the family’s flock of chickens. “We know how little boys are: For the first week it’s all fun and great and then two weeks later it’s, ‘Oh I have go do the chickens,’” Warren said. “I’ll have to go after him and teach him to do his chickens, and then you go play. We try to teach our children to get their work done, and then go play. Get it done. And it’s not always that easy, they’re all different. Some of them are much easier to teach than others.” Because Amish children don’t move out of their parents’ house until they’re 21, the older Miller children help teach the younger ones. Because of that, Warren and Ila have found that their youngest children accelerated faster both in learning responsibility and a new language. Each child is ini-
tially raised learning Pennsylvania Dutch, a variant of West Central German, before learning English. Their youngest daughter, Marcia, is already bilingual, although she has not yet begun her first year of school. “We spend a lot less time teaching the last three how to work than the first three,” Warren said. “It’s because they go with their older brother and sister and they learn how [to do things]. It’s amazing what the little ones learn from the older ones.” Although he works hard to educate his kids, Warren has found that his children have also learned traits that can’t be taught, but rather influenced by the environment they were raised in. Warren’s brother, who was raised Amish, ended up leaving the faith before he was baptised. His four children often visit the Miller family in the summer, and Warren sees the differences in the children’s behavior as a reflection of their living environment. “They’ll come here, grab their iPod and whatever, and sit on the couch all day and do nothing,” Warren said of his brother’s children “And my three will say, ‘This is boring.’ They’ll be out climbing a tree, building a treehouse or a robbing a sparrow nest or chasing a
rabbit. It’s a different world.” Although the Amish don’t always have a definite rule for what technology is and isn’t allowed, they typically use it more sparingly than non-Amish communities might. For instance, they don’t use cars or rubber wheels in order to keep their farms at a manageable size. “It’s to keep us from going down the road and renting ground 10 miles away and trying to farm five to six hundred acres. That’s what it’s for, it’s not because we don’t believe in tires or whatever. It’s just simply to keep the people at home and keep them smaller. We try to keep each other smaller so we can help each other if there is a big financial problem in the future. Although they recognize the potential uses of farm machinery, the Millers generally see no benefit in using recreational technology. “Our rules are no radio, no television, no cameras,” Warren said. “We’re not supposed to use the Internet or Facebook. I guess we don’t have any so we don’t use it.” While the Amish reject some fixtures of technology in modern life, some do have small phone shacks where they collect voicemails and make calls. “They are little buildings dotted
The Millers get many of their clothes from a center in Indiana that distributes Amish clothing to families across the country. PHOTO BY SARAH SMITH.
14 Little Hawk Feature Magazine
“WHAT WE CALL DATING IS WHEN A BOY TAKES A GIRL HOME AFTER YOUTH CHOIR AT NIGHT.” ILA MILLER
here and there across the community,” Ila said. “We have one down the road from us which is not far for us to get our calls.” Although the Miller family uses their phone booth, they don’t condone the use of cell phones. They believe that smartphones are the piece of technology that are most commonly abused by young people. “I know there’s a temptation in it for some young boys. Especially the cell phones,” Ila said. “They have cell phones and, well, they are human just like you and I.” In addition to avoiding cell phones, the community has specific guidelines for young people to prevent situations where inappropriate behavior might occur. “We have our set of rules that are the guidelines to go by, and it makes it easier for everyone and the church if they all go by that,” Ila said. “Of course, there are some that don’t always quite follow them, but a majority do.” Among the rules are codes about clothing and appearance. In the Amish community of Kalona, women are expected to wear modest dresses in plain colors and hair coverings, while the men wear solid colored shirts with dark pants, shoes and hats. The Amish use their simple clothing as a means of preventing vanity and emphasizing the importance of humility. “Sometimes I can tell in my girls that they want something a little prettier,” Ila said. “It can be a challenge sometimes.” The standards in Kalona are relatively lax compared to those of other, more orthodox Amish communities.
“We are, in some ways, a little more liberal as far as dress, tractors, and things like that. If you go to some communities, they strictly farm with horses. They have way stricter dress codes than we do,” Warren said. “It’s very sad, there is a lot more immorality in some of those really little communities. Most of them communities, a lot of those kids will get sick and fed up, then leave, then end up in drugs or you name it.” Many of the stricter Amish communities also have a different take on the tradition of Rumspringa, a rite of passage whose name comes from the German words for ‘running around.’ In those communities, Rumspringa is a period of several years, often from the ages of 16 through 18, where rules for youth are relaxed as they are allowed to experiment with the outside world. At the end of their Rumspringa, young people get to decide whether or not they would like to be baptized and commit to Amish life. In Kalona, where rules are more relaxed in general, it means that they join a youth group of about 300 and participate in activities such as volleyball, camping and singing. “The difference in [the meaning of Rumspringa] could really vary whether you’re in Holmes County, Pennsylvania, Iowa, or Minnesota,” Warren said. “It is very broad.” Before Kalona teenagers join
“THE ONLY REASON THAT WE LIVE THE WAY WE DO IS THAT WE FEEL THAT, ESPECIALLY FOR OUR YOUNG ONES, THERE IS A LOT LESS TEMPTATION LIVING THIS WAY.” WARREN MILLER
the youth group, they must be baptized, usually soon after their sixteenth birthday. Baptism is considered an important step in the Amish church because it is a promise to follow the religion permanently. “Another thing I’m looking forward to this Sunday is [Monica] getting baptized,” Ila said. “That’s probably the most important thing in life, because it means that they want to follow Christ.” Nearly all Amish teenagers in Kalona get baptized and stay with the Amish community, with only a person or two leaving every few years. But according to the Millers, even in communities in Indiana or Pennsylvania with more extreme rules, most young people opt to stay Amish. “In Indiana, when they’re 16, they’re on their own,” Ila said. “They might get a car, and go do whatever meets their eye. Then later, they meet with an Amish girl and settle down and go back to the Amish again. It’s a very normal thing out there, but here it isn’t.” In Kalona, many teenagers begin dating when they are introduced to others within their church. “People usually do have relationships before marriage,” Ila said. “What we call dating is when a boy takes a girl home after youth choir at night.” Warren and Ila have seen a cultural shift in marriage since their wedding. Currently, it is popular for young people to get married around age 24, which a few years later than they had their ceremony. Although this gap may sound insignificant, the time allows for young people to live independently before starting a family of their own. “I’d say, when we got married, it was 21 [years old],” Ila said. “Now it seems they’re older. It’s changing.” However, one tradition has remained: the engagement process. “We don’t get engaged like you guys do. We get engaged for three and a half weeks and then get married,” Ila said. “That’s how our lifestyle is. We keep it a secret until about a month [before], when they announce it in church. The groom goes to the bride’s home until the day of the wedding and helps out there because there’s a lot of work to be done.” Amish weddings are usually large events with a few hundred people in attendance. In order to entertain, cook for, and serve all of the guests, couples getting married often rely on the help of friends and
The Millers share a phone booth with their neighbors. Each family gets one day a week to collect their voice mails and make calls. PHOTO BY SARAH SMITH.
extended family. The process takes a lot of work, but in the tight-knit Kalona community of about 2,000, turning to friends and neighbors for support is standard practice. “We all help each other. Say we had a hospital bill. We don’t have insurance, so [our community] would all help us with the load,” Ila said. “We all donate and just help each other pay the bill.” The dynamic shifts, however, outside of the community. While Warren has never been confronted or mistreated, he often feels like an outsider once he leaves Kalona. “Sometimes I feel like we get too much respect. When I travel, I feel better when everybody doesn’t step back and look at you like you’re something queer,” Warren said. “Once in a while you get some disrespect, but not badly. Like once in a while you get some kid who will
cut you off at a corner or do something stupid, but it’s a kid. And the thing is, I don’t think it would have made a difference whether you were Amish in a buggy or an old lady in a car. He probably would have done the same thing.” The Millers don’t judge or condemn people of other religions or lifestyles. Instead, they believe that their own lives are made easier by guidelines and rules. “The only reason that we live the way we do is that we feel that, especially for our young ones, there is a lot less temptation living this way,” Warren sad. “They can’t just jump in a car and run off and do this or whatever, most of the time. You’re limited with a buggy for what you do.”
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LITTLE HAWK FEATURE MAGAZINE