SOURCES:

http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/index.html

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=patriot_act


REFLECTION:

I chose this bill mainly because when I first heard about it I was really interested to know how the process of it becoming a law went. I knew it's process was one of the fastest to becoming a law but I really didn't know about the details of the process and thought it would be an interesting bill to research and talk about. When I get different projects I usually transform them into a little movie since that is what I love and it makes the process more fun but for this I wanted to tell a story like if it was a children's book so I kind of found a way to put two and two together making it like a storybook but adding different effects and music to make it kind of like a little film. For the most part this project wasn't to difficult since I was kind of having fun doing it but some of the challenges I faced was probably trying to find a good source to explain some detailed parts of the patriot act since most sources just told the main stuff and it would of made the video way to short so I wanted to make sure I could get some good details so the video/storybook would be better. So finding a good source and then incorporating it into the video/storybook was I think the biggest challenge I faced. If I did this project again I would probably make sure I used my time more efficiently and probably add more to the story like after it became a law as well. When researching the process of an idea becoming a bill and then becoming a law I learned a lot about some of the reasons why it truly takes SO long for a bill to become a law. The idea becoming a bill was a fairly quick process but the process of a bill becoming a law was the long one. When a bill is being introduced and such if just one person says no, depending on how high he/she is in ranking, they will have to pause the bill and review it again in a later meeting. So for this law since at first it wasn't very popular within the committee it was paused and brought up later and then throughout the process there was always someone who would disagree and then slow down the process once again. So one person can really effect the process of a bill becoming a law. I didn't really have any expectations for this law just because I chose it because I wanted to learn more about it so I didn't think about whether it was going to be really hard or really easy. But overall I think the process was kind of in the middle, in a lot of ways it was simple but gathering all the info was difficult at times. But in the end I believe it came out well. 

Reflection

The reasoning for picking the NCLB Act was because I've heard about it before in middle school but never really knew what it was. I wanted to educate myself on what this act was about and how it worked. There were so many things that I knew about but didn't completely know what it was about. For example I remember hearing about AYP which means "Adequate Yearly Progress." All AYP basically means is setting a goal for example get more then 23% of the students in elementary school to score proficient or higher. Usually they use AYP for PSSA's. I decided to do my presentation using a Prezi format because I felt as though it would let me present my information in a very creative way. I also did my prevention in this format because it wouldn't be as the traditional powerpoint or boring.

Some challenges that I ran into during the process of this project was trying to put up the information on the Prezi in a creative and not boring way. Another challenge was trying to upload the Prezi so that it would play on the blog. There was code that needed to embedded into the blog which I found after about fifteen minutes of playing around with Prezi. There aren't many ways I would change my project, but if I had to I would add more pictures. I think that pictures give it a little push, and it wouldn't look so dull.

I researched a lot on why this act was made. I found out that they created this act because they seen a big percent of colored kissed who seemed not to be getting the right education. Basically they wanted all kids to achieve so they created this act and ever since they did they seen the number of kids getting below basic has dropped. The NCLB act wasn't as hard to research since this law was created around 2001 and all the information was available on the internet. 


Sites used for the project

http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/nclb/QandA.html

http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml

http://www.ed.gov/esea/flexibility

http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/no-child-left-behind/

http://www.fldoe.org/nclb/


Pictures

http://www.homeroomteacher.com/images/raisinghands.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Boehner_official_portrait.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:No_Child_Left_Behind_Act.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George-W-Bush.jpeg

http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/nclb/QandA.html
http://prezi.com/aepzytpmrxi9/no-child-left-behind-act/

The constitutional question of this Supreme Court case was the following: “Is Cheryl Perich a minister?” If Cheryl Perich is not a minister then all federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws protect her even if her employer is religious.

The Hosanna-Tabor case was about a teacher, Cheryl Perich, whose job was to teach secular subjects as well as some religious teaching. At first, she was not hired as a real teacher but after taking education courses she became a qualified teacher. Her job was pretty much the same before and after she became qualified however. Later, Perich began to fall sick from narcolepsy and left the school for medical reasons. When she returned months later, the church told her that her job was unavailable and she could not return. Perich wasn’t having that, so she threatened to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying that the church should have worked with her so that she could keep her job. Instead of scaring them into giving her the job back, it just made it harder for her to get it. The church said that if she sued them then she would no longer be welcome as an employee because they believe that all disputes should be resolved peacefully. They said that she failed to take advantage of an internal procedure, rather than court. However, they never told Perich about this “internal procedure” until after she had mentioned her intent to use the ADA.

            When Justice Ginsburg if it was in the handbook, the church’s representative, Professor Douglas Laycock, completely dodged the question, saying that the handbook was irrelevant. So basically he knew they were wrong. He just didn’t want to admit it so they wouldn’t lose the case.

            I think that Cheryl Perich will win this case primarily because she was not a minister, only a teacher, which means she has all the laws by her side. The church has none except that you cannot sue the church. However, she was not suing the church, she was suing the employers. Also, the church’s story was backwards and there were some questions they refused to answer or tried to dodge because they knew they were wrong. It’s obvious, so they’re going to lose.

Robert Brady and I are pretty different people however we have the same belief when it comes to amnesty day. He was born and raised in Philadelphia while I was born in New York, raised there for a while and then moved to Philadelphia.  He graduated from St. Thomas More High School then later became a carpenter and was soon part of the leadership of the Carpenters’ union. He is still a member of both the Carpenters’ and Teachers’ unions. On January 5, 2011, Congressman Brady was sworn into office for his 8^th term representing the first congressional district of Pennsylvania.

Congressman Brady is very supportive of helping foreign countries. Foreign policies are his biggest interest. Some of the policies he supports are democratic institutions in Pakistan, stopping foreign arms transfers to China, keeping the Cuba travel ban until political prisoners are released, $156 million to IMF for 3^rd-world debt reduction, $15.2 billion for foreign operations, allowing Americans to travel to Cuba, and much more. I find this pretty awesome because it seems as though he is more understand of foreign need than the rest of the congressmen and women. It explains why he is also supportive of another amnesty day.

Robert Brady is very active within the community, as previously stated, he is still a member of both the Carpenter’s and Teacher’s union. He has also improved dogs’ working conditions, shows interest in sports like citizens, speaks out about ways to help demolish poverty and get more people employed, and many other things that benefit us in our community.

            Congressman Brady and I seem quite a like. He seems like the simple thinker that I am as well, and we think of some of the same solutions to problems in our state.

http://www.issues2000.org/PA/Robert_Brady_Foreign_Policy.htm

http://brady.house.gov/

Sources:

Hoffman, Karen. "Grandson's death turns Grove City woman into fighter for safe meat laws ." (2003): 1. Web. 11 Nov. 2011. <http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030604badmeat0604p2.asp>.

. "Speakers." Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Nov 2011. <http://www.foodborneillness.org/speakers.html>.

"Eshoo Introduces 'Kevin's Law' Print E-mail." (2003): n. page. Web. 11 Nov. 2011. <http://eshoo.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=104>.

. "Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction and Enforcement Act of 2003." Food Safety Legislation. N.p., 2003. Web. 2 Nov 2011. <http://www.cspinet.org/foodsafety/meat_poultry_sections.html>.

. "H.R. 3160: Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction and Enforcement Act." govtrack.us. N.p., 2005. Web. 2 Nov 2011. <http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-3160>.


 I was unsure as to which Bill i should choose or that I was interested in so I choose a bill that I had learned about in a previous class. I choose to present it in a movie format because originally i wanted to make a video but I ended up making a Keynote for it and exporting it in the form of a movie. I felt that i would be able to get more information in my presentation this way. One of the only parts of this presentation that was somewhat difficult was finding more information to go with what I already knew. This is an older bill that doesn't seem to be coming back anytime soon. As a result the information concerning it was a little harder to find. If I had to do this over I would most likely have made a straight video most likely acting it out, it wold have been awesome. I researched major events in the years before or during the year of the creation of the bill. The process for actually finding the information overall was a bit harder than I thought it would be because i had to go to so many different places to know or understand what was happening 

ENJOY!
Reflection

I chose the "No Child Left Behind Act" because it was one of the few acts that was actually familiar to me. I was reading through the lists and nothing was standing out to me until I saw this. I quickly read about it and realized this is what I want to write about. It is an extraordinary bill that involves everyone. Not everyone learns the same, or at the same speed. No child should be penalized for something they cannot control. They should be encouraged and pushed so that each individual in our Nation has the potential to be an important piece to the puzzle. Speaking of puzzle, I was not sure how to present my information. I wanted a way in which it will be easy to understand what I am explaining. I first decided on gathering together puzzle pieces and showing the entire process, but I wanted something more interesting, something that I will be able to show more than a timeline. A PREZI it was, which I might add is extremely informative, colorful and grabs the viewers attention. I have worked with prezis in the past so I was already familiar with the format, which made the project a little bit easier. However, some aspects were not as easy. It was challenging coming up with the correct information. I was not finding false information, but I could not find enough information. I was looking for timelines and could not find any. The timeline format that I have in my presentation, I put together. I spent a lot of time reading and making sure I was understanding the whole process. The law was not thought of out of thin air. It began almost 50 years prior to when President Bush signed it. Besides that, I did not encounter many problems within my project. Since I did not have to overcome that may problems, I would not change my process, nor my final product. I am very pleased with the outcome. If I had to change it, I would probably make a video. It is a little more interactive and consist of more than just a bunch of information being thrown at you. Since this law was just a reauthorized version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, it did not tell much about about the process from becoming a bill to a law. I just found out about how President Bush wanted to express his opinions on the education system. These are the children of the future. They have to be educated and be pushed to overcome any obstacle thrown their way and being able to showcase all of that through my project was not as hard as I thought it would be. I had to take in a lot of information and back track nearly 50 years to the core of the whole idea. I am glad I did, and I learned about the past, present and future of the children in our society.

Sources

http://cerdahdz.webs.com/legislationtimeline.htm
http://www.msdwc.k12.in.us/msd/NCLB/Key%20Provisions.htm
http://prezi.com/vvr1emxbrh8r/edit/#0_27345167
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2009/01/20090108-2.html
https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/viewer?a=v&q=cache:_h84J__bJ6YJ:minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/28772/McGuireSpring08.doc?sequence%3D1+how+did+the+no+child+left+behind+act+become+a+bill&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj8GYOX9_Ro0ukLyoyd2wECMqnhv3FqUdF0bsFrcHh71N3a6kEUAIeD9Y99cz5Q0TJJFVarwrhsNtd6uyS1sMEgrQ09I-xFwEtcA1P2H4jpk_VJm7SjBvZWBdmJKsGn3AYJqCNR&sig=AHIEtbRHed0h4KU-VoD_4j5CyDqYeJitFQ
http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html
http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/html/special/ESEA_main.htm
www.rinolist.org
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/index.html
http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/no-child-left-behind/
http://www.fldoe.org/NCLB/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/nochild/nclb.html

It messed up a bit but here you go

View my benchmark here.

Sources:
"A New View of Society" by Robert Owen
http://www.skeptically.org/literaryworksofjk/id1.html
"The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era" by Micheline Ishay
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html
http://www.archive.org/details/ReportOfTheAnnualSessionsOfTheFederationOfOrganizedTradesAndLabor
National Child Labor Committee Collection
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=59
http://www.nationalchildlabor.org/history.html
http://www.lawnix.com/cases/hammer-dagenhart.html
"Federal income tax, war-profits and excess-profits taxes" by George Edwin Holmeshttp://www.oyez.org/cases/1901-1939/1921/1921_657
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAchild.htm
http://www.shrm.org/LegalIssues/FederalResources/FederalStatutesRegulationsandGuidanc/Pages/Walsh-HealyActof1936.aspx
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_laws.html

I chose to do a project on child labor laws, because as a 16-year-old, few laws have a bigger impact on me personally.  I think it's incredibly important to keep kids from neglecting schoolwork and personal growth in order to pursue money, especially now that popular movies and TV shows like Gossip Girl make it seem like it's normal for teenagers to live their lives completely independent of any adults.
I chose to present my project as a timeline because child labor laws didn't simply "happen" as a single event.  There were many events over numerous decades that led up to the anti-child labor legislation that we have today.  It would have been difficult to convey these in any other format without getting too complicated.
The biggest challenge in this project was actually just finding a way to make a timeline.  I went through seven online timeline-making sites, not counting Prezi, before I found Dipity.com.  It allows for some minimal formatting, it doesn't have absurdly low character limits, it allows for but doesn't require a start AND end date, it doesn't demand that I know the exact second of every event (looking at you, tiki-toki.com), it says I can use images and actually DOES let me use images, and it doesn't limit me to NINE events.  Unfortunately, Dipity is often slow and buggy.  At the moment, the whole site is down.
If I could do the whole project again, I would add more information about what happened after the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, such as data on literacy levels and income.  I might even include information about people who currently oppose child labor laws.  Utah Senator Mike Lee, for example, calls child labor laws "unconstitutional."
I was actually surprised at how easy it was to find helpful information on child labor laws.  Often, when I research a topic, every source tells me the same thing.  However, the history of child labor laws is so complicated that I found new details everywhere.  It also helped that the National Child Labor Committee commissioned thousands of photos of child labor, since it provided me with fantastic primary sources.

       I chose the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 because I wanted to get deeper into the process of how they signed the bill into a law. I'm surprised they even made the bill. You would think that since the country was run by a bunch of prejudice men, minorities would never have civil rights and there would be nothing that they could do about it because they don't run anything. Minorities were completely powerless in the government yet they still got what they wanted.
      I chose to create a powerpoint presentation as a last resort. I initially wanted to create a video using iMovie but it seems as though my computer has some new version that it much more confusing than the original. I didn't start my project early enough to ask for help or play around with it until I knew how to work it. I feel that podcasts are just as boring as powerpoint presentations but take much more work just to get the same reaction; boredom. I don't do well with Prezi either. It just gets messy when I use it and it drives me crazy. I felt like my only option was a powerpoint so that's what I decided to do.
      The only challenge I had other than figuring out a way to present my information was finding the information. In Google I would type in "Civil Rights Bill of 1964" and get information about civil rights movements and the march on Washington that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led. It was good information to use in my project, but it only filled up a tiny part of my project. What I really needed to find was the process from a bill to a law. Then after getting help I found that I needed to type in "Civil Rights Bill of 1964 congressional debate" to get everything I needed to complete the project.
      If I had to do the project over again, I would definitely create a video. I had a lot of ideas in my mind about how to make the video that would make it interesting. To do this I would have to start the project early. iMovie is tricky so having a lot of time would be necessary to complete the video properly. I would also do more research for my topic. I felt like there were some things that were missing from my project. It seemed too straight forward for there not to be anything else to it. However, like I said, I started the project late so I could only research for so long.
      What the research and investigation told me about the creation process from idea to bill to law was that the only reasons they passed the bill as a law was just to shut the minorities up and get their votes. The nicer they were to the minorities, the greater chance they had of being reelected. That's really all it was about. I think if President Johnson did not sign that bill into a law he would have been a half-term president. One of the people who "supported" the bill was only worried about votes. Plus it seemed as though minorities were becoming more rebellious leading marches, protesting, and boycotting. It would scare me if I was a white person walking down the street looking at angry black people. I would feel like I'm in danger. Passing the bill as a law would calm them down.
      The process of passing the bill was actually just as I expected it to be. Of course there were going to be congressmen who totally disagreed and there were going to be some that were a little bit more understanding and would vote for the bill. I expected people to try and talk the bill down to death in a filibuster. I'm not surprised at all at how the process went.