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Hey again! My name is Adlynn Gonzalez and this is my second blog about Literacy In Philadelphia. For my first blog, I introduced this topic and talked about how many kids in Philadelphia aren’t up to par when it comes to their reading scores. I just recently found out that in 2012 there was a decline in PSSA reading scores, and that Philadelphia’s NAEP scores lag far behind other cities. Just 19% of Philadelphia’s children scored proficient or above on the PSSA’s and that’s extremely low compared to other cities.

For our You And The World project we were required to do some original research. For my original research I did field observation. I went to Boy’s Latin Middle School (6th graders) and observed 4-5 English classes and interviewed a few of the students. Before interviewing a couple of the students, I just merely observed the class; and since it was a make-up work day in that English class, I observed the students that didn’t have to make up work. There was a TED talk video playing for the kids to watch, but others did not watch. I noticed that some of the ones that weren’t watching were reading books of their interest, others were goofing off. That’s when I decided to interview some of the kids. I asked them simple questions like “what’s your favorite book?”, “do you like to read?”, “on a scale of 1-10, how much do you like reading?”, etc. Then I asked them “what do they think of people who don’t care about reading”, “ when kids end up not liking to read, what do you think is the issue”, etc. The answers I got were surprising. One kid blamed kids not liking reading on technology, which is one factor I have not thought of before. While doing the field observation and interviewing the kids, it kind of opened up my eyes a bit to see what these kids are thinking. (Transcript below)

After meeting those kids and interviewing them, I now want to know more about what that one kid said about technology being a reason for kids not wanting to read. Also I want to know what else they think about PSSAs because most of them said that it wasn’t stressful, but they feel the need to exceed expectations. While doing some online research, I read about how students more male than female dropped out because they struggled with reading and felt inadequate in class, and that standardized tests were stressful, and not in a good way.  I also asked their teacher a few questions and he thought that PSSAs put good stress on the students. He is also really enthusiastic about reading.

Last but not least, I wanted to talk about my Agent of Change. In our You And The World project, we are required to be an Agent of Change and I wanted to possibly help out a reading organization. Like the Eagles Mobile club, or the Phillies Be  Phanatic About Reading program, or even the Reading Olympics (which I was a member of). All I want to do is promote why reading is important, how it can be fun, and lastly how it benefits you in the long run.

Well, that’s it for now, but make sure to stay tuned for Blog #3 where I actually talk about what I eventually did for my Agent of Change, and what other information I found out about this topic.

Links:

Philadelphia’s Test Scores

Philadelphia’s Scores Drop

Be A Phanatic About Reading

Transcript

 Hello, again people. As, you may know my name is Husain Kegler. In my last blog I was talking about the basic point of animal abuse. And, how it may affect children in away. I hope that inspired some or most people to look into animal abuse and how they can help animals, helping others, even volunteering. For, my new blog I will be doing the same thing but this time I will be doing field observation. I will be doing this by calling an Operation AVA . I will be asking a associate or employee these questions: ( answers below questions )

1. How well do you like animals?

2. Has animals ever affected your life? katie@operationava.org

3. How safe do you feel around a animal that was abused?

4. Do you have a animal at home, if so how many hours do you spend with your animal?

5. Have you ever been a suspect of animal abuse?

6. Have you ever been a victim of abuse?

7. Have you ever been critically hurt by a animal?

8. If you could change the world for all animals how would you do so?

9. Have you ever thought about abusing an animal?

10. For future references about animal abuse, what advice to stop animal abuse would you like to give to the youth?

11. What kinds of brutality have u seen?

12. What was the most shocking/painful thing to see?

13. Out of cats and dogs which animal do u see more abused, cats or dogs?

14. Do you think it's likely for an animal that was already abused will get abused again when it gets adopted by a new owner?

15. How much time do you think you spend helping out animals?

1. I love animals! I grew up with all kinds of animals (dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, fish, etc.) and love working with them.

2. Animals have always affected my life in a positive way - I think animals can have a positive influence on most people's lives.

3. Every animal is different, but interacting with one that has been abused is something that should be done carefully and slowly. If you're patient, careful, and willing to understand them, there isn't much reason to be afraid.

4. I have two cats at home - I spend most of my time at home when I'm not at work, so we hang out for hours and hours.

5. No.

6. No

7. A horse stepped on my foot and broke my little toe once, but that was an accident. Other than that, no.

8. I would like animal abuse to have more legal consequences than it currently does. There should also probably be restrictions on breeding animals - so many end up in shelters or on the street.

9. No.

10. If anyone ever witnesses animal abuse, they can call the Animal Cruelty Hotline,  1-866-601-7722 to report it to the SPCA.

11. I have been lucky enough not to have witnessed much animal cruelty.

12. We often get dogs in the shelter that have clearly not been treated right. Many come to us as strays but have clearly lived with humans before. They are often underweight, nervous, and sometimes have clearly been used for breeding.

13. Probably dogs, simply because we have more of them here at Operation Ava. Philadelphia has a serious stray cat problem, so often the cats I see have just come off of the streets - sometimes they have never lived in homes with people before.

14. No, definitely not. Especially with our adoption process we screen the applicants before they are allowed to take animals home. We check vet references, personal references, and talk extensively with potential adopters.

15. Since I work at Operation Ava full time, I spend at least 40 hours a week trying to help animals. Outside of work I also try to help anyone who comes across an animal that needs help and point them in the right direction.

I was happy to see the results of my questions and how quickly the employee responded back. This was a great field observation because I got to see or hear what happens in the Operation Ava animal center.

Will (Guillermo) Amari

Señorita Manuel

Q3

Once iconos del rock para celebrar el 60 aniversario de la Fender Stratocaster

En el año de deci nueve sesenta nueve la música de roca era muy fuerte y eléctrico. Gracias por la artistas como Jimi Hendrix por sus Fender Stratocaster de blanco. Gracias por el escena de Woodstock, el Stratocaster era muy popular. En el manos de Frank Zappa y Buddy Holly, por sesenta años el Fender Stratocaster era el instrumento mejor por música.

Cuando Roca y rol era nuevo, Buddy Holly hizo el guitarra icónico en el memorables Ed Sullivan Show en el año de 1957. Frank Zappa es más entonces y loco escritor una canción. Él y sus banda, La Madres de Invención son hizo famoso por ellos eléctrico sonido. ¡Y ellos juegue con un Strat! Escucha y entender, el sonido es excelente.

Más tarde  Kurt Cobain, el autor de Smells Like Teen Spirit y su banda Nirvana inventar Grunge o Seattle Sonido. Cuando él juegue el Fender Stratocaster, todos los mundo cambió. Grandes bandas practican su  roca con un Stratocaster. Otras personas que juegue el guitarra incluso Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Jeff Beck y Guillermo Amari.  

Para mí, el Stratocaster es el mejor guitarra. El Stratocaster tienes muchas colores, por ejemplo blanca, negro, rojo y azul. Es tiene bien tendencia. Yo leí este artículo porque yo jugué un stratocaster. Yo practica todos los noche.  

Palabras: 205

http://www.abc.es/cultura/musica/20140225/abci-guitarras-stratocaster-201402201732_11.html

What Is The Fur Industry?

In my previous post I talked about mostly statistics of the Fur Industry, but I never really said what it is. In this post I hope to give you a better explanation of what the Fur Industry is:

Fur Industry/Fur Trade/Fur Exchange:

The trade or selling of any kind of fur from any kind of animal.

The Fur Industry was originally called the Fur Trade which began about 300 years ago, in the early days of the country when it actually helped established the country. The Indians traded fur from animals such as beaver (which the Europeans made their hats out of) for tools and weapons. As the 1500’s came about, Europe began to develop a certain fondness for fur, this led to the Indians searching for other sources of fur which include fox, otter and mink. When Samuel de Champlain set up a fur post in Quebec, Canada, it became the “hub” for the fur trade in North America.

A recent survey that I set up was sent to my peers to measure the amount that people knew about the fur industry. The chart to the left shows that the majority of people I asked knew what the Fur Industry. But when I asked if anyone wanted of owned fur items, the responses became a little more mixed. This graph shows the responses when I asked if anyone owned fur items, as you can see more than half of the people weren't even aware if they owned something with fur.

Since I interviewed teens, this helps show me how their thoughts on fur trade may evolve as they grow older and learn more about the topic. My understanding is that enough people aren’t aware of my topic and need to be informed about it. My opinion about the Fur Industry is that although it helped develop our country, has gone too far. Due to over-hunting many animals have been hunted to endangerment or even extinction. One of these was the Caspian Tiger (to the left.) They went extinct due to mass extermination by the Russian government when they wanted the land that the tigers lived on in the cotton fields, the last of the tigers were hunted for their fur by trophy hunters. On the right is a picture of Benjamin, the last Tasmanian Tiger who died in 1938 in a zoo. They were blamed and killed by many farmers for eating their livestock, which was actually encouraged, and Van Dieman’s Land Company (a textile company) helped destroy the rest of their population.

After all this I am still curious as to how the governments (of different places) decides when “enough is enough” when animals are becoming endangered due to the fur industry and even other problems like pollution, hunting, habitat destruction, etc. I also want to know what plans are being created and are already in motion to protect the animals facing all of these problems.

For my next blog post I am going to be informing my peers at school and through social media resources (Facebook, Twitter) about the Fur Trade.

Here is my bibliography.

Synthetic Hope

Welcome back!  As part of You and the World, we are working to become agents of change making the world a better place. As you may remember, we are exploring the protection and pollution of aquatic environments.  

We Are In A Bit of Trouble

In my last blog entry, I talked to you about our oceans, lakes, marshes, rivers and streams and how our waste was affecting them.

I was exploring if the future might be as dark as we once thought.  Can we reverse the damage done to our oceans, or are has the media given us false hope by providing an incomplete picture of the damage already done?

The media is the most common source of information about climate change to the general public. What happens when we are given false hope from our sources of information; specifically the media?

The media does it's best to convey the rapidity in which the aquatic systems of the world are falling apart but it lacks to convey the urgency of the need to change our ways. I'm not implying that the media is lying to us; in fact quite the opposite.  The media is giving us just the facts but a disconnect is created. They don't explain that the floods happening in Florida are directly linked with the melting ice caps. This being so they also seem to breath a false hope into the matter of climate change, as not to scare the public.  I will be not be delivering any false hope

A look at media coverage on Climate change

picture provided by CSTPR

Knowledge is Power

The more we know the better off we are. Today, I want to talk to you about what I have found through my original research.  Surprisingly, a survey that was administered to a peer group of twenty has shown that we may not be as naive as I may have suspected.

In Blog #1, the subject of how the by-products created by modern humans was discussed. Now we move to how much the average human knows about the damage they cause to the environment. For my research, I chose a survey because of its was a casual way to collect information with ease of administration.

To my surprise, my peers were actually much more informed about such subjects than once thought.  Keep in mind that I had very low expectations. I was hoping to find holes in the information that they held and to point out where they were oblivious and where they were well-informed.

The survey results show that most of my peers are fairly aware of their footprint on aquatic environments. Most questions regarded the amount of litter they produced and where it went.

The one area in which people were particularly misinformed was about where their trash goes. Most of the answers were expected: trash cans, landfills, dumpsters. Only one respondent regarded the ocean as a recipient of trash.   The rest were completely unaware of the 6,000 mile long Pacific Garbage Patch. For more information on the garbage patch, click here.

I was particularly interested in their knowledge about endangered animals. I wanted to know if they could name any marine animal on the endangered species list.  The most common response to this question was a member of the whale family. This does say something about which marine animals are favored by the public or at least well known. This also gives insight into why the blue whale is making a population comeback. Through the research I have done, I have been given insight into how knowing really is half the battle, but I am still left with the question, where do we go from here.  Knowledge isn't worth jack if not applied.

(To see survey information, click here.)

Even with the knowledge that my survey has given me, I'm still left with many questions.  One is since my survey was only administered to a small group of high school students, what would my results be if I could have accessed a larger group. I personally think that the results would be much less informed but I'm a bit of a pessimist. I also wonder if by asking the questions in my survey, if I changed the way that my peers look at their impactt on the environment?  I be curious to know if, after they finished the survey, any of them took the time to Google the endangered species list, or took a serious look at where trash ends up?

A Look at Endangered Species

For more information, click here.

I have an exciting way to help make a change in the condition of aquatic environment.  I have decided to organize a river walk along the Schyukill River.  During this walk, trash and recycling will be collected along the banks of the river and disposed of properly.  We will have games & prizes that will motivate and educate participants.

I will also be doing a number of presentations on how humans affect the water around us. Please contact me at xcarroll@scienceleadership.org, If you are interested.

Hello again.  My name is Jason Greene and I am 9th grader at Science Leadership Academy.  In English class we are doing a project called You And The World.  During this project we have to find a issue we are passionate about then go into the world and try to fix it.  My issue is Public Education in the city of Philadelphia.  This is my second blog post.  To read my first blog post click here.  In my first blog post I introduced my issue and how it is one of the biggest problems facing the city today.  I also talked about how there was a lack of funding for public schools.

   

For my original research I decided to do make a online survey.  I wanted to find out if the people taking the survey had special classes while in middle-school.  I also wanted to find out if there were cuts while they were attending the school.  I got lots of good responses back.  Almost all the people who responded said that they went to middle-school in Philadelphia in the past few years.  Most if not all of them said while they were there that the school made cuts that hurt their learning and safety. Some of these positions were Teachers, Counselors, Secretaries and Lunchtime aids.  All of these positions are very important.  If you don't have enough teachers than you have to put more students in each class.  If you don't have any lunchtime aids there will be no one to watch the kids while at lunch.  The results I got really informed me on my issue because now I knew that the budget cuts of the school district just did not affect me but also my friends.

While most of the people who filled out my survey did have special classes like art and music…

Does/Did your middle-school offer...

Art               6  22%

Music/Band  5  19%

Computers   6   22%

Gym            5   19%

Health          5   19%

Over the past few years there have been lots of layoffs.

Over the past few years did your middle-school cut any of these positions?

Guidance counselor	2	15%
Secretary	1	8%
Dean	2	15%
Teachers	5	38%
Lunchtime Aids	3	23%

Now that I got my results I believe even more that this has to change.  The change has to happen now.  It is not fair for kids not to be able to get the best education they can get.  They can not get that without simple things like teachers and counselors.  As I was doing my research I started to wonder how many schools in Philadelphia were shut down and how many students had to be relocated because of that?

The next part of this project is called Agent of Change.  This is when go out into the real world and I go volunteer somewhere and try to have an impact on my issue.  As I said in my last blog post I will be going to my old school, J.S Jenks.  J.S Jenks have been badly hurt by the recent budget cuts.  My sister still goes there and she told me that they don't even have an art teacher anymore, that a dad that used to be an artist now comes in 2 times a week and teacher classes.  When I volunteer at the school I want to help out in a 6th, or 8th grade classroom.  I think I will have a big impact when I come because I the school needs as much as it can get. When I am at the school volunteering I hope to help the teachers in anyway I can if that means making copies or help teach the lesson I will try my best.

     

Seal of J.S Jenks

Stay tuned for part 3!

My bibliography.

Hi! My name is Katarina Backo and I am a ninth grader at Science Leadership Academy. I am doing a project for my English class about an issue that concerns
me, and I have to write three blogs about it. Here is the link to my first blog and this is my second blog in this series. My issue involves play time, and how technology impacts
children’s activity and therefore their lives. I am an artistic, athletic person connected with my family and happy about it. I wish that everybody could have the happiness I have, but I think that wrong use of technology prevents that. Hope you’ll enjoy reading my ideas.

In my previous blog my focus was on balance (“I love technology as well, but I think that everything should be balanced.”-Blog #1). My concern was that nowaday teens will choose to play with technology rather than going outside to play. In the meantime I continued with all my activities and still didn’t notice new teens making use of abundant free teen programs that exist in Philadelphia. Besides working on this project I have had the opportunity and luck to do a research on how technology affects people for my technology class. For my Science Fair Project I have decided to dig deeper into how teens tell time and that helped me understand how I could resolve my issue. Finally my original research opened new questions.

The movie "Digital Nation" I watched in technology class, in my eyes was about the balance I spoke about which is pushed to technology side, meaning that we are forgetting the real world we live in. It also brought a good argument about multitasking and why is it actually bad. People are so crazy about the virtual world that they are losing the sense to tell the difference between virtual and real. Even if you think that you are good at multitasking it is wrong because multitasking makes you lose your focus.

I have also studied the term "digital native" (CNN article defines this term more closely) - a person born when digital technology was around, so they can learn about technology at the age they learn how to speak. That is exactly what today's teens are, and that is where my issue starts, growing up as technology grows. This is not necessarily bad, technology is meant to enhance our lives, but yet again I see the need for balance.

Working on my Science Fair Project I have unexpectedly run into one possible, maybe obvious solution for my issue. For Science Fair Project I wanted to check the saying “time flies when you are having fun”. My experiment was to engage my classmates into activities and see how well they can tell time spent on their activities. I gave a Rubic’s Cube to my friend who is using technology all the time. He was focused on the cube for about 7 minutes and then I stopped him. He wanted to continue, because he was not even close to solving it. When I asked him if he liked solving it, he said he loved it, but he thought that he spent a whole hour trying. His focus was amazing, even though technology is said to ruin the ability to focus and strengthen the wish to multitask. I expected to hear that the time flew for him, but I got the total opposite. As usual, when you get too many results that you didn’t expect, new ideas are born. It might have been obvious from my current point of view, but I didn’t think before that in order to resolve my issue I just have to find the way to get my fellow teens interested in activities that do not include technology.

Having everything sorted out, I wanted to check what activities other teens are involved in. For my original research, I recently made a survey which you can access here. It asked people about technology they use and how much they use it. I also asked about extracurricular activities and sports.

20 people took my survey and 19 of them were teenagers. Everyone is using technology in some way:

Do you have an electronic device?

Every person that filled up my survey said that both, they and their families, have electronic devices. The two most common ones were cell phones and laptops. That is what I expected. However, I found out something that I did not expect and that made me revisit my original hypotheses. I expected to have more people say that they do not play sports and don’t engage in extracurricular activities. That was not the case. 95% of people said that they engage in activities not related to school and technology. Out of those 95%, 50% said that they play sports, while others said that they both play sports and engage in other activities.

Do you play any sports?

Then if people do all these activities, maybe our ways were not ruined with technology, just overwhelmed. Is my sample representative? If yes, is Philadelphia that big that I did not notice that most people play sports and do extracurricular activities? Or did I accidentally get all the people that play sports to take my survey, or maybe the activities I am involved in are not well advertised? I still have to search deeper to find the answer I am looking for.

I can conclude that technology is not something stopping us from being as active as other generations before us. It is only the way we use it to help our way of living. In terms of technology, right now we are stuck between the past and the future.

To read my Annotated Bibliography, please click here.   

Welcome back to my second YATW blog. For those that don't know me my name is Daouda Njie. In our English class we were assigned to choose a cause we thought was important and write about it. For my cause I choose to write about if the school districts were doing everything they could to help kids with Autism prosper. In my first blog post I learned that kids with autism tend to not do so well since they have trouble socializing but classes are offered by the school district to help the children out.

Since my first blog post I have learned that Autism might be hereditary and that once you have had a child with Autism it is 5% more likely your other child will have Autism. Also that if a twin shows signs of autism its a 90% chance that the other twin also has autism. There are therapy sessions for kids with autism some like PRT, VB, DTT, and ABA which stands for applied behavioral analysis.  ABA helps with communication, academic, self care, and more. This is just one of the options but since every child is different the therapy sessions all differ.

Here are some of the recent websites I have looked at:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec04/autism.aspx

http://www.autismspeaks.org/family-services/tool-kits/100-day-kit/treatments-therapies

For my original research I interviewed a student at SLA that has Autism and also a special ed professor from Penn that studies people with autism. The SLA student said that Autism does affect him when it comes to socializing in school but he has gotten better. I also learned that here at SLA they offer him studies skills which allows him to stay focused and get his work done. He also stated that his family supports him by having him take therapy sessions that help him better understand facial expressions and tones.

Here is some of the professor responses from my questions  I thought it was surprising when she told me that when communicating autistic kids speak literal. I can tell this might be a challenge in school because if they are interacting with anyone in school they may not understand how to respond to a person.This interview helped me in my research because she gave more of an image of how autistic kids act.

This research made me see how just because a child has autism doesn't mean they can't get the best of their education. The student I interviewed even said that his autism doesn't affect him that much anymore. It is because of the programs schools offer. The original research also helped me with the understanding of Autism because the interview with the student with autism allowed me to understand just what exactly it feels like to have autism and still communicate and interact with people. It gave me a better feel of some of the challenges they face.

Hello, my name is Gabrielle Kreidie. I am a ninth grader at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you had read my Blog Post #1, I am doing a project on refugees, focusing on Syria. For the past three years, there has been a conflict unfolding, a conflict that has killed nearly half a million people. This conflict is called the Syrian Civil War. The people of Syria have been rebelling against their government controlled by the brutal, President Bashar Al Assad. This has resolved in endless deaths, homes burnt to the ground, small supply of food and water, and a refugee crisis that is scaring everyone.

Since my last blog post, there has been a lot that has changed in Syria. There is now Cases of Polio becoming aware in a country where vaccinations are nearly impossible to receive. The refugee crisis in Syria is NOW the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. Out of all the genocides and wars in the past seventy years, Syria has now made the top of people having to leave their homes than any other. Not only have 2.5 million people become refugees in Syria but an additional six million have become refugees in their own country. This means six million Syrians who have left their homes, either from random attacks or destroyed homes, taking refuge in other places in Syria.

There have been many new articles I have found in the past three months since my last blog post. Check them out on my Annotated Bibliography. Stories have been pulling into the internet as the world starts to get the real sense of the struggle of the Syrian people. I wanted to go deeper though, than what the media portrays. I wanted the complete picture of the Syrian people. That is why I conducted two interviews. One Interview with Marwan Kreidie, a Middle Eastern studies professor at Villanova University and a Lebanese-American, who just so happens to be my father. The other Interview with Chukri Korchid, a Syrian-Ameircan businessman who is head of the Al-Aqsa school. The way these two men described the sickening details of the lives of refugees in Syria and in neighboring countries. The truth came out, and I must say it was not one to be proud of.

Al Assad is a horrible person. I think we can all put that behind us, he is killing his own people and no one from the international community is really stepping up to the plate and helping the horrified Syrians. Surely it does not help that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the strongest ally of Bashar Al Assad’s Regime, which makes the US almost scared to strike Syria. This is what gets me damaged as a US citizen myself. Why is Obama and Congress not striking Syria? I do not know why these politicians believe that watching innocent people die is not our problem. Look I am no patriot, I do NOT believe that the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth- honestly we do horrible stuff all over the world. That’s not the point, however, we are the most powerful country in the world. We have the largest military compared to the next ten largest militaries combined. We have large allies that will stick by us all the time, England, France. We have the power and resources to strike Al Assad’s regime, yet we do not do it. We claim that we promote freedom to all yet we are one of reasons why twenty two million Syrians are in suffering. Just because we are scared doesn’t give us a reason to step out of the picture. As Mr. Korchid said: “We missed out on the opportunity to change it (to end the Civil War in the beginning of the fighting). In Libya we didn’t care if we threw in a missile.”  

As long as the US does not jump in and start helping, the CIA is projecting that this war will go on for another decade. That’s a very long time. I’m disappointed on how the international community is handling this. The United Nations tried to do a conference, in hopes of promoting peace for all sides. That did not turn out so well, and I’ll tell you why. Mr. Kreidie states, ”We (the United States of America) are too eager in playing our regional games there. To solve this conflict we need all people in, we had this peace talk that did not go well. Iran and Hezbollah should we brought in, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia- they are all involved. Iran is supporting AL Assad, Saudi Arabia rebels. This shouldn’t have to be on who is the US enemy or ally- the conflict is in Syria, everyone needs to be involved.” That’s just it, this is not a US issue, we are barely participating yet we want to take control of the conference. Every single person needs to get involved in this conflict. We need everyone to promote peace.

For my next step in this project I have to come up with a way to change this issue, one way or another. Since Syria is halfway across the world for me, I have to think small to help a crisis. I plan on making my own blog promoted in keeping a strong view on Syrian refugees and the Syrian people. As well as getting other humanitarian crisis on alert, including Congo, Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, etc. I will interview all sort of people to get their opinions, to get the truth on what the people are thinking.

I hope the end of this crisis approaches, I hope that people will return home. We need to act as people, we need to get our government completely involved in this crisis. We need our government to listen to us, the people who they should be listening to. We need their attention, before a whole generation of Syrians are ripped apart.  

Welcome readers back to my post! Back in my blog post #1 I spoke about an issue that  interested  me: sex trafficking in India. The definition of human trafficking was stated. Then I researched information on the enslavement of those women and how diseases are spread throughout the southern region of Asia.  Organizations that are involved in ending human trafficking were included at the end of the post.

After continuous months of research I have come across new information that affects the US. directly.  An article on CNN  based  in Savannah,Georgia. They have discovered a sex trafficking ring that has been going around in the city. As a result various people in custody. This horror has shown that sex trafficking occurs everywhere, not just in India. This event should us aware of the dangers and circumstances of our world today. Additionally, information on Ross Kemp -- British “actor-turned to-serious documentary-maker”-- and his journey on discovering the stories behind sex trafficking in different parts of the world. It was shocking to find out how the sex trafficking trade has grown  rapidly. It is estimated that about “100 million people - 10 per cent of the population - and sees girls as young as nine being sold into the sex trade.”

For  my original research I decided conduct an interview via email. I was able to interview someone from the Free the Slaves Foundation.  The results of the interview were successful. Through the interview it was possible for me to obtain updated information as of 2012. See email at the end of article. It is evident that many organizations and foundations are coming together to fight sex trafficking. While sending emails to different foundations it become clear that there were open lines of communication. Through this arduous process each organization that was contacted contributed to the quest to find the answers to my questions. After serious research and information gathered I have come to the conclusion that sex trafficking is a worldwide issue. Currently there are many institutions willing to fight with all legal tools within their reach. Their work is starting to becoming noticeably in all parts of the world, especially those that suffer from poverty.

Subsequently at the end of my research my personal interest on sex trafficking has increased for the better. Even though the research done has been focused on India, it is clear that the issue has international repercussions. The questions now are what about the rest of the southern region of Asia? What about other six continents that also affected? The real question is how can I do my part in bringing awareness to this issue. In conclusion for my ¨agent of change"I would like to present a slideshow on the information gathered about the issue so far and share it with my peers.

Annotated Bibliography here .

Hello!  If you remember from blog #1 and by reading the title,  I’m talking about women in the engineering work field and the large difference between the genders.  If you have not read my first blog post, you can view it here.  When I started this project, I researched the reason behind why there aren’t many women in the engineering workfield.  One reason I found was that society puts it into our heads that certain jobs are for a certain gender.  That causes women to feel like jobs in the science work field(which are aimed towards men) aren’t available or offered to them.

“It wasn’t until I was a professional woman mentoring other girls in math and science that I learned that openly liking math and science is unusual for girls,” Marissa Mayer, President and CEO of Yahoo.

For my original research, I made some open ended survey questions but really wanted to see peoples reactions when they answered.  So I asked 14 people my to answer my survey and wrote down their exact words.  Half of the questions were facts about women in the workfield that the people had to respond to with their opinion.  9 of the people surveyed were female and the other 5 were male.  The age range was from 10 to 55 and everyone gave similar answers for the questions/facts.  The first fact I had everyone respond to was, “ 13% of engineers worldwide are women.”  The answers were either something along the lines of “I expected it to be a higher amount” and “that’s not right.”  One person's response was “It’s sort of unfortunate because the sciences overall are not offered to women in a way that they can be involved.”  Another person said “I don’t think women are encouraged in anyway in that direction.”  That goes back to one of the possible reasons for the gender difference I talked about in my first blog post.  

What I’m still curious and confused about is if everyone agrees,  then why is their still biased?  Males and Females in my survey thought that the fact that women don’t get equal pay and are nowhere close to the amount of male engineers in the world is unfair.  “As a father of two daughters I know my girls can do as well as any guy.  To deny someone's full opportunity is wrong,”  was one of the answers.  

I’ve decided for my agent of change piece that I want to make this issue apparent to others, because I feel like the only way to change this problem is for people to know about it.  From my survey results, I saw that many people don’t know who Ada Lovelace is or that 13% of engineers worldwide are women.  Specifically, I’m going to present my project to my advisory.  I plan on making a slideshow that includes the most important details of my project and then seeing what they think about the subject.  I’m also going to find an activity that my class can do after, that allows everyone to be creative.  Be sure to look for my next blog post!

Hello Everyone!

If you read my first blog post you know that my You and the World (YATW) project is about global hunger and poverty. I talked about two organizations who have been trying to reduce the number of families in hunger and poverty. They also encourage people from all around the world to join them in their journey. Although both organizations are using different strategies to accomplish their goal, they won’t give up until the amount of global poverty is decreased. If you’d like to learn more about these organizations, please click on the links below.

Heifer International

UN Millenium Goals

After writing my first blog post, I took a short trip to Ecuador. Every Christmas, my family in Ecuador go up to the mountains where there are lots of poor towns. They bring food, toys, and clothes to give to the families. My family believes that it is better to give people in need something they can use efficiently, something they know that will help them, instead of money. The reason for this is because we don’t know what they will do with the money, they could use the money for something they don’t need.

I went with my family for the first time this year, and the experience was like no other. We drove to five different towns. Toys were given out to the children, clothes were given out to adults and children, and this year we gave out candy and crackers to everyone. Some of the towns were big, and some of the towns were small. There were at least a hundred people in two towns, and there were 20-40 people in other towns. The houses were all hand made with stone or mud, and the schools were all just one room. Each town had a church, and the church in each town, was the largest building.

While researching this topic, I thought I knew everything there was to know about this issue, but nobody will ever know everything about anything. I learned so much from my trip and experience. I got to meet people who are struggling with poverty. People who try really hard to keep their families healthy. Mothers who would do anything to see a smile on their child's face. There were lots of kids who weren’t attending school when I was there, instead, they were working or taking care of their siblings.

When we arrived, every child in the town would run up to the car and peek inside. They saw the toys and jumped up and down in excitement. Each and every child waited patiently for their toy, and when they got one, they opened it; their patience getting weaker and weaker. And finally, they were able to open that toy, their expressions after that, are indescribable. I’ve never seen somebody so happy, it was amazing! Some parents cried, and others laughed, others just smiled, because their children were smiling. Candy and clothes were given out as well. We made goodie bags that had crackers and candy. The first thing that was eaten (by almost everyone) when the bag was opened, were the crackers, and the candy was saved for later. We made sure everyone got clothes and shoes. Some people didn’t have warm clothes for those unexpected cold days, or an extra pair of dry clothes for the days that rained. We also gave out shoes that could be worn in any weather, most people wore sandals, or worn out shoes.

I will never completely understand this issue, no matter how much I try to. I don’t know how it feels to be in their situation. As much as want to understand, I can’t, but that doesn’t stop me from helping. Poverty and hunger are global issues, which means people from all around the world should be helping to decrease it. Join an organization, or start your own organization, or even help out at a soup kitchen. Every little thing matters, every little step is one step closer to help decrease poverty. What really leaves me wondering though is, does there have to be a goal? For example the UN has a goal to decrease poverty by half from 1990 to 2015. Will they stop there though, or will they keep on going. Poverty and hunger can’t go away just like that. Awareness of this issue has to be brought to the attention, people have to keep on helping because there will always be something to do.

Not only will I keep on helping, but I will be sure to bring awareness to this issue. I am going to create a presentation for my classmates and explain to them what I’ve been doing these past couple weeks. I’m going to show them what I got to see during my trip, and I’m going to explain what I did, and what they can do to help.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for my next post!

Fieldwork Photos

Hi. My name is Isabel Medlock. Earlier this school year our class started a project called You and the World. Each of us chose an issue, researched it and then wrote a blog post about it.  Here is the link to my first post.  The issue I chose is the stigma of mental illness, the negative way people perceive mental illness and those affected by it. In my first blog post I talked about people’s opinions on mental illness, the discrimination that those with affected by it face, and the fact that the mentally ill don’t seek the help they need because of the stigma.  Since then, I have researched my topic online further and also conducted an interview with a mental health professional.

Recently, I have learned about the Mental Health Parity, which requires health insurance providers to give the same benefits, financial requirements, and limitations as those that apply to physical health benefits. I also researched discrimination against people with a mental illness in other parts of the world. For example, in Lithuania people with mental health problems are not allowed to own a home. In some parts of Korea people with mental health problems are not allowed to enter a swimming pool. I also learned that about 75% of Americans and Europeans with a mental illness don’t receive treatment. 

This is an image that provides information about how different places in the world have rules that stigmatize people with mental illnesses.

For my original research I interviewed Dr. William Fox, a psychiatrist. One important thing I took away from the interview was how people are affected by the stigma. It limits their ability to get help because of “lack of awareness —often willful, lack of effective treatments/options, and lack of access.” Sometimes they are unaware of their condition and in other cases they don’t want to believe that they have a problem. Also people lose health insurance coverage, employment and relationships. I also learned about the Kübler-Ross 5 stages of grief and how it also relates to how people cope with mental illness. The five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When people find out that they have a mental illness they don’t want to believe so they are in denial. Next, they are angry about having a mental illness. Then they try bargaining with the doctor to get them to fix their problem. Next is depression which “is both a stage and diagnosis, but often people have " secondary depression" about having another psychiatric issue.” Last is acceptance, which is not the resolution of their illness but coming to terms with their situation. Stigma is causing people with mental illness to act so ashamed about having a mental issue. I think that it’s terrible that people get secondary depression just because they have a psychiatric issue. This interview helped me understand what people with mental illnesses go through, how the stigma affects them and what people can do to help.

After analyzing the information I've read online and conducting the interview I have gained some new insights on the many issues that people with mental illnesses face. Reading about the Mental Health Parity made me realize that some things are getting better for people with mental illnesses.  Although some things are getting better there is still a long way to go until the people with mental illness aren't stigmatized and don’t have to face prejudice and discrimination. I reviewed some more statistics that reaffirmed what I already knew about the stigma of mental illness and how it prevents people from getting help. For example, only 25% of Americans and Europeans get treatment for their mental illnesses. All the new information made me realize that this issue is worse than I imagined it to be when I began working on this project.

This image provides information about people with mental illnesses and whether or not they are violent.

Now that I’ve learned more about the stigma of mental illness I’ve realized that it is a much bigger issue than I originally thought. It is unfortunate that people aren’t able to receive the help they need because of society's negative view on mental illness. And because they can get help some people are driven to commit suicide. If there wasn’t so much stigma associated with mental illness there would be less people committing suicide and so many people would have better lives. It is also unfortunate that the mentally ill are so misunderstood, which the image above shows. People see the mentally ill as violent criminals when in fact they are usually the victims of crimes. This is another way stigma affects the mentally ill. I also feel ashamed of our society and of myself. Before I started this project I didn't know anything about mental health stigma and I believed the stereotypes about people with mental illness. I never considered how those with mental illness felt or were affected by those who didn't understand or even know what they were going through.  It’s extremely important that people start raising more awareness of this issue so there is no more stigma.

The image on the left is a poster that is meant to help fight stigma. The image on the right is from a magazine that wrote an article about how violent people with mental illnesses are.

Even after learning more about the stigma of mental illness I still have several more questions. When and why did people start feeling so negatively towards mental illness and those affected by it? How were those with mental illness treated in the past? What were the conditions in mental asylums in the past? What are the conditions in mental asylums now? As I keep on researching my topic I hope to find the answers to these questions and also to find ways I can help.

As part of our project we have to do something to help solve the issue and be an “Agent of Change”. Since I can’t really volunteer somewhere and do something meaningful, I’m going to spread awareness of the issue. One way I hope to do that is by discussing this issue with my advisory so they can learn about it and hopefully teach others about it.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to read my next blog post!

Annotated Bibliography

Here is the link to the entire interview.

Articles about this issue: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natasha-tracy/mental-illness_b_4761908.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-fader/stigma-mental-illness_b_4680835.html

Hello it’s me again, Niah Lombo and I am back for round two of my YATW issue. In my blog post #1 , I talked about my issue which was the shortage of donors for African American, Hispanics, and mixed people. Since then I have found more stories of people with cancer looking for donors with one and a million chance of finding one. Lewis Dyche was diagnosed with leukaemia  and after a global search he finds his one in a million bone marrow donor. To read more about his story click here.  

Now it’s my turn to do my own original research and I wanted to learn more about Donors, and then I thought who would know more about donors? Doctors! So I schedule an interview with Dr.Carmen Febo. Dr. Carmen Febo is a primary care physician and even though she does not deal directly with Donors, etc. she was a great help with the questions and being able to let me interview her with with the short notice. The interview helped me have a better understanding of the importance of finding a donor, being a donor, and the effects of being a donor.

Interview:

Me: What is your chance of living if you find a match donor?  

Dr. Carmen Febo: If you have deadly disease, like kidney failure, heart failure, or liver failure, your life would depend on finding a donor.  The chances of survival have many determinants that include weather this is a living donor, or a dead donor, how close a match it is, how many other conditions you have, how good a surgical candidate you are, etc.  Many of the conditions are better understood now and we have better medicines to combat infection for example, or rejection.  But, what is true is that without the transplant the patient do not have a chance.

That was one of my questions for Dr. Carmen Febo. This hit me hard as it made me realize that a persons life is in the hands of a stranger, and that stranger has no idea how important they are. Its not their fault if they didn't know but only if they could have gotten tested to see if they could save a life.

Margot was 17-months old when she was diagnosed with two of the rarest cancers. But since her parents are mixed she is having trouble finding a match donor. Click here to read her story.

Robin Roberts (left) is a breast cancer survivor and find her match from her sister.  She was aware that because of her race she would have a hard time finding a match donor. Read more about her story here.

That is it for now, the next time you guys will hear from me is when I do my agent of change. What can I do to make change happened? My plan is to host an event to help raise awareness for my issue and will be hosting fundraisers that will be donated to find the cure for cancer. Also I will be writing a letter to Robin Roberts about my cause and because ABC news is having opportunities for people who wants to make a difference to be featured on the show. I will submit my story and how I want to make a difference, and if anything does happened before my blog post #3 I will let you guys know on here.

Hey! It’s Ebony again. In my last blog post, I talked about how bullying could lead into depression and suicide. If you have not read the blog yet, you should!

I actually have found a couple new information. One of them is statistics of kids being cyberbullied and bullied. However, they are not kids in my community, but kids across the world in the UK. This shows that it’s not only an issue with mine or your community, but it is a worldwide issue. That is another thing that I wanted to prove. Also, it is something that should alarm people of how dangerous and serious bullying is. These are high percentages of kids who have been both been bullied, physically and through social media such as Facebook, twitter, instagram and even through text messaging.

Another part of this research is to get original research. For my original research, I decided to do a survey of kids in 6-12 grade. The reason I chose a variety of grades is because today, most kids are going through it, no matter how young they are. The point I am trying to get is what is the grade that’s being targeted more. Honestly, my main target was younger kids, ranging between 11-14. The problem about doing this survey is that I was not able to get any information about 7th graders but the majority being 6th graders. Although I was not able to get some of the information I wanted, I did get the information that I needed.

Here are some examples of the most important ones:

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The results that surprised me the most is the number of kids that do tell someone about being bullied. Even though more people have not told anyone about it, there’s only a 6% difference.

So far, this is goodbye, but I will be back soon to show you guys my agent of change part! I’m quite excited and hope everything goes well. Doing this part will give me a better understanding of what people go through. Thank you again for reading. If you went ahead and read this instead of the first blog, I suggest you read the other one too. It’ll help for a better understanding. So, click here! Thanks again.

For further information, check out this.

Hello my name is Luke Watson-Sharer. Hopefully you have read my first blog post here First Blog post. I’m writing my second blog on my discovered research. As in the other blog post,  the purpose of You and the World is to make a difference through an issue.  I picked obesity which is a very significant issue in the U.S. and many other countries.  Obesity affects our physical and mental health and therefore our future. Blog 1 discussed the many issues related to obesity in the U.S. and the world.  I decided to do my own study by conducting a survey on my topic. I did two surveys:  one for people with knowledge on the topic and one for anyone. I wanted to know what experts or people with knowledge believed and what anonymous people think about the topic.

Survey 1 This is my first survey. It’s for anyone to answer and you share your opinions and basic things you do. I start by asking the responder if they believe they’re obese, Then I asked why they believe they are or are not obese.  Next, I ask if they made attempts to lose weight.  You can read the other question on the link “Survey 1.”  The responses were interesting.  What interested me was seeing that about 90% said they didn’t believe they were obese but about 70% said they eat sweets a lot. This is interesting because if you  eat a lot  of sugary things you may gain weight.  Many said eating sweets is a bad habit.  Since most said they are not obese, metabolism may be a factor.  Genetics could play a larger role; I will discuss  this later in the blog. Also almost everyone says they don’t workout or  try to  cut calories but of 90% do not believe they are  obese.  This makes me curious. Finally, after seeing my results for survey 1 it seems that obesity could be more genetic  than a result of bad habits. Responses To survey 1

Survey 2 This is my second survey. It’s made for experts or people with knowledge. I asked for only knowledgeable people reply. (I couldn’t control who replied.)  This is so I could learn more about obesity. My first question was probably the hardest question to ask. What do you believe obesity exists? This can be hard because I got many opinionated responses and because it’s a heated topic. Then I asked other questions on what to do to help children with obesity. I ask about helping kids and ways of recommending things to kids. Survey Responses: Responses Here you’ll see many of the responses to the questions I was hoping to answer.  Finally, I got good insight from knowledgeable people on childhood obesity.

These responses added to my knowledge of f the issue  and ideas for helping overweight kids.  I got a wide amount of responses that differed a lot; this is still helpful data.  Some of my personal opinions have changed on what obesity is and how to help kids with obesity because now I’m leaning towards obesity being more genetic. This will affect the recommendations to help kids;  losing weight isn’t as easy as saying “exercise.” I still wonder about what causes obesity. I got many answers between genetic and bad eating habits and I still am baffled. While I was going my survey, a new study found children from 2 - 5 years old are not as obese as 10 years ago.  This is great but all other age groups saw no major change.   I’m thinking of doing a program for schools without gym’s so that students can also get exercise even though they don’t have a school gym. I can maybe go back to my old middle and elementary school because we never had a gym.

My research has helped me a lot. It  left a question mark but has given me more views on the topic of childhood obesity. Maybe we will never have an exact definition to childhood obesity or if it’s genetic or from bad habits.  What we do know is that it’s a big issue in the U.S.  and worldwide.   I hope to be an  agent of change. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy my next blog post.

Annotated Bibliography: Here

Hey guys ! I’m back ! In my previous blog post I introduced my YATW  issue,  music being therapeutic for children with chronically ill diseases. I discovered that music has a huge affect on our brains, mood, and is very therapeutic. Click here.  Blog Post 1

Since my first blog I found it’s not only therapeutic  chronically ill children for treatment, but it’s beneficial for everyone. My knowledge on the cts music has on our brains has broaden.  I’ve done research and surveys and I’m happy to share some of the information I found with you. At the end of reading my second blog post I hope you have learned a little bit more about how music is therapeutic for all of us.

I have found groups that go to hospitals and perform for the children and teaches them how to play certain instruments. Such as the “Ryan Seacrest Foundation” and another organization “The Group & Entertainment volunteer Program”. The second organization particularly visits Children Hospital of philadelphia. I interviewed a Registered Nurse. The office she works at is located at 34 st. and civic center boulevard. I asked her a few questions regarding the topic. Below  is a link with questions she was asked, along with her answers. This interview really helped me to see inside the hospital world. I got to see more  than just  the surface.

click here. Interview

To further my understanding about how music affects the brain I looked at some neurology experiments, and test. I found that music improves visual skills, language skills, and thinking skills. One study said that ”Both music and written language involve formal notation reading from left to right; music notation consists of symbols that represent information about sound and time and speech requires attention to the temporal order of rapidly changing acoustic events.” Another study said that” There are two types of emotions related to music; perceived and felt emotions.”  It’s saying that we can understand the emotion of a piece without feeling it, which explains why some people enjoy sad songs with low tempo.  I found these facts very interesting.  

( This is a diagram of certain areas in the brain that our used when we listen to music. )

Finally to see what others thought about music and it’s effects I made survey for the students in English 1. The results help me to see everyone listens to music! Sometimes different genres. They listen to music through the day, when they're stressed or need to focus. To relax or even to past time. The results from the survey can be found below.

Click here. Survey

Making a survey, interviewing and researching has all help me to further my knowledge about my YATW issue. I got to see how different types of people think about music and how it affects them by making a survey. When interviewing, I got to see a different view of things through a Registered Nurses eyes.The research was very insightful and made me feel comfortable with the topic, and I can inform others. My personal opinion about my YATW issue is that music is very influential on the brain and can be used as a form of therapy. I used to play the clarinet and being able to read notes made me feel like I spoke a different language, the language of music. It felt good it was a way to go to your own world for a minute. Even though I don’t play my instrument anymore, I still get away when I listen to my music.  So, I truly believe music is a form of therapy and changes your mood. Everything in the world has a beat, walking, running, your heart even has a beat.

For my Agent of Change part 3 I’m thinking about volunteering at Children's hospital. To read books to the children that are immobile and can’t get out of bed. There bodies might be immobile but their imagination are not. Their imagination can go anywhere it wants. They shouldn’t be robbed of their childhood because of imperfection.  Whatever helps the children get in better spirits, I’m willing to do it.  An alternative option would be to join an entertainment program like the  “The Group & Entertainment volunteer Program”.  

Thanks for reading ! Can't wait to share my next adventure with you !

Hi, it’s Kai again! I’m back and writing my latest You and the World post. If you haven’t read my first post I’ll give you a quick recap. I’m in 9th grade and my English teacher is asking us to write three blog posts about an issue that we personally are passionate about. I chose to write about the overlooked and forgotten of Philadelphia. Basically I want to know how less fortunate people feel about the way the government has been taking care of them. To learn more about my topic I will be working closely with the Germantown Avenue Crisis Ministry (GACM) and Abbotsford Falls Family Practice and Counselling (AFFPC). The GACM provides resources to people who have suddenly found themselves in a crisis. They offer canned goods, housing, and financial help. AFFPC is a clinic in Germantown that  is known for taking patients without insurance, and providing them with whatever medical help they might need.

For my research plan I conducted an interview with RN Leslie Burton at AFFPC. I know that a majority of the patients that come to the AFFPC don't have insurance, which is why they get so many patients. In my opinion this is a problem because there is no reason that a person shouldn't qualify for health insurance healthcare has come to be a basic human necessity. I also that the amount of people without insurance is ridiculous and the people without it are the ones who need it the most. The fact that the government isn't doing anything to help it is not okay. In fact a lot of people aren't condoning things like the Affordable Care Act.  Ms. Burton on the other hand had a slightly different view she feels as though there are so many people that need help and the government can't help everybody so it's up to the people to step up.

During my interview with Ms. Burton I wanted to know where the influence of the government comes in to play as well as how her patients feel about the government or their current situations. What I found was that most of the patients that Ms. Burton encounters are impoverished, and not very comfortable or happy about it. In the AFFPC offices there are in house social workers that often have patients referred to them by the nurses. Even while there are plenty of resources to help the patients that are funded by the government such as food stamps. The patients know little about what is happening in the higher places, leaving most of the pressure on the nurses to inform patients of anything that could potentially impact their lives.

My research isn't just based on the people who are overlooked by the government… it's also about the people left to take care of them who are just important. Leslie Burton and Eileen Jones only only a small portion of overlooked Philadelphians and without more of them, a large percentage of Philadelphia would be forgotten. I learned that everybody deserves to be heard and to know that somebody cares, even if they don't believe it. We have to start looking out for eachother. As a people we should stick together and work for the change that we want to see in our community. Check back soon for my next post to see how my work at the GACM went. Thanks for reading.

My annotated bibliography here.

Hi readers! Welcome back to my You And The World (YATW) project. Last time, in my Blog Post #1, I was looking into Financial Education. What I found was that Financial Education is a real taboo in America, even though it is one of the most important things to have. Since then, I have looked a lot more into this, and have seen a lot more information.

First of all, If anyone is looking for a professional look on Financial Education, please look for some videos of Suze Orman. She makes very good points, and knows a lot about this topic. I have learned much from her.

Second of all, I’d like to update you all on my research. I have been doing some of my own research (surveying and interviewing) and have come up with some personalized data. An Annotated Bibliography, a Survey Analysis, and link to all of the survey information, including the survey itself, is here.

All that I found was basically this: Financial Education is a real taboo. Most people don’t know their income or what they’re spending on. However, all of the survey takers knew what kind of Financial Support they received. Another thing that I found was that, even though there was a wide range of Financial Education, reaching all across my 1-10 scale, almost every single person was taught outside of school. Most people were taught by parents or mentors, or even taught themselves. All of this information makes me think that Financial Education needs to be taught a lot more on a bigger and more important scale.

I am hoping to learn more about this, because I didn’t learn all that I wanted to about Financial Education. How does America budget? What is the average ratio of spending to saving, and spending to income? What percentage of ALL Americans receive Financial Support? All of these and more could be important to my teaching.

Now on to the future. Ahead of me is the Spring. I will be performing an Agent of Change Service Project. All of my research has lead up to this. I will be planning with some teachers at Science Leadership Academy, along with some teachers at Independence Charter School, to create a lesson plan to teach some children.

I am hoping to teach at least one class of First graders, one class of Third graders, and one class of Eighth graders. I will also be teaching a more advanced lesson to some high schoolers (if I can). This is a work in progress, but so far I have some notes about how the lesson might go. They are here.

If you have any other suggestions as to things I should see, topics I should research, or more subjects I should teach, feel free to leave a comment. I am also open to any suggestions as to where I should take this next. I am looking to continue this education onward and outward, past YATW. I want to teach more at ICS and SLA, and more at other places as well. The world needs to hear more about Financial Education, and there needs to be more of a teaching force.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If there’s anything at all, please feel free to comment!

Felix

Some extra information:

Your Income Level (Optional)

Less than $30,000 a year [5] 21%

$30,000-50,000 [0] 0%

$50,000-70,000 [5] 21%

$70,000-90,000 [4] 17%

$90,000-110,000 [2] 8%

$110,000-130,000 [0] 0%

$130,000-150,000 [2] 8%

Don’t Know [6] 26%

Do you receive Financial Aid/Support? (Optional)

Yes [5] 19%

A little bit [4] 15%

No [17] 65%

Don’t Know [0] 0%

The names jesse for those who don’t know. In my first blog post I first introduced my topic which is the School to prison pipeline a fancy name for the process in which school’s harsh policies kick kids out of school on the the street then into jail or even straight into jail and through the criminal system. the pipeline is the reason for the many incarnations of youth even as young as ten. If you missed my first blog there is a link to it at the bottom of this blog but enough of that… on to blog number 2!

BLOG POST # 2

For my original  research I chose to do an interview with the Philadelphia Community Youth Court’s Intake coordinator Ms. Kimberly Stevens. Her job is to look over the referrals and decides whether or not the person referred should go through youth court. The results from my research is also at the bottom of the blog if you wanna go and check out her answer it’s right there. Doing this interview informed me on some of the factors that strengthen the school to prison pipeline. One of the factors is of course the schools but what I’ve learned from my interview was that It was 75% referrals that PCYC gets come from schools. It might not sound like It was a big “ah- ha” moment but allow me to delve deeper. If 75% of referrals come from schools around philly then that means that the policies in place are the reasons that students are get referred out of school and to the police or just kicked out of school period. Also This means that maybe about 20% come from the actual police and the last 5% come from youths just making a bad decision or being in the wrong place and the wrong time. Now think If PCYC wasn’t in place, All of those kids would be in jail either from school or from doing something on the street and all of them would lose their chance to live their life to the fullest.

By doing this interview it allowed me to further my understanding of the school to prison pipeline. By doing this I have now seen how people see or education system in philly. After doing this additional research I feel like I finally know enough about this topic to have an opinion on it. That opinion is that this Pipeline needs to stop for youths to truly live their lives and show that they aren’t the problem but the solution. I’ve seen and heard so many things about we get kick out because we are bad students but what people fail to remember is that we are kids and what do kids do? We make mistakes, but with the certain policies in place we are not allowed to learn from those mistakes and are quickly punished for what happened. People in high places feel as though we are the problem and give up on us but never realized that they were talking at us and not with us to fix the problem. They are so quick to say the problem when in fact we are the solution and the brighter future if they gave us a chance. 

Another thing that I realized with my research is that with everyone that is one our side there are 5 on the other side already counting us out and they are winning by using the pipeline. In my first blog I said that they opened up 2 new prisons worth 400 million dollars but closed down 26 schools as well. If this wasn’t a clear sign that they already scratch out our education I don’t know what is. They rather invest in the business of incarceration than invest in our education. This is why I want to help in any way I can to break this pipeline even if I have to do it little by little.

There isn't much I’m left wondering about This issue. The only thing that could possibly come to mind is who was the first person to think that They would get more out of prisons than the youth’s education. Other than that I’m already thinking on what to do for my agent of change  part for blog post #3. Actually let me rephrase that I know what I’m going to do for my agent of change.  I will volunteer with the Philadelphia Community Youth Court(PCYC) every friday or whenever else they might need me so that I can be a change and help break this pipeline for not just mine but all of our futures. Well thats all for now look out for my big conclusion in blog #3.

Tally-ho!( That sound much cooler in my head before I typed it…. somehow?)

Here is the link to my first blog:

blog post #1   

link to my annotated bib:

Annotated Bib

link to transcript of interview:

Hello! Welcome to my second blog! My name is Cacy Thomas and if you have not read my first blog you can click here to do so. If you have, thanks for coming back! I’m just going to do a quick recap of my last post because I know it’s been a while.

• My blogs are especially for my You and the World english project

• My You and the World project for english class is Awareness and Prevention of Concussions in Young Athletes.

• I have chosen this topic because I have had 3 concussions at the age of 12. These head injuries ended my athletic career in contact sports and forced me to go through 2 years of emotional and physical rehabilitation.

• It is imperative to spread this information out so that kids are not experiencing the same things I did.

To continue my childhood concussion adventure, I did some research and am still pursuing to do more. I received a link from my English teacher, Alexa Dunn, on concussions and helmets from cbsnews.com. I was really interested in the experiment shown on the web page as well as the results. This was helpful in enhancing my knowledge on the subject because even though I knew helmets did not do much to protect people from concussions, I did not know which helmets had the best results. I also did not know how helpful they would actually be in providing support for the brain. In my own personal journey I made a survey concerning concussion awareness. If you would like to help further my research you can take it here. I am also currently trying to set up interviews to collect more information. However if you would like some more information about head injury awareness in soccer, please click this link to read a summary of a concussion symposium I spoke at as well as 16 year-old Kim Zeffert, former Philadelphia Flyers captain Keith Primeau, and former professional soccer player Taylor Twellman.

The results of my survey were a little bit surprising. I asked what symptoms were caused by concussions with the choices, Headaches, Dizziness, Hallucinations, Fatigue, Possible death while sleeping the same day as the injury was received, Nausea, Extreme Hunger, and Sensitivity to light or noise. The majority of people who took it said that extreme hunger, hallucinations, and possible death caused by sleeping were symptoms. This just shows how uninformed a lot of people are about concussion side effects. Also many survey takers were confused about the definition of this injury. The most accurate response was,

“A bruise to the brain, often caused by impact.”

Others said things anywhere from, “head trauma,” to, “when your head or skull is badly damaged.” Likewise I was amazed just at the fact that just about half of the answerers said that concussions become less serious as you get older. No matter how you look at it a concussion is brain damage at any age and obviously brain damage is extremely serious. This research added to my understanding of this subject because it made me realize how much people are actually informed, and not many are informed at all. I am wondering how we can prevent concussions and what will have the biggest impact to really drive people to spread awareness.

The final part of my 9th grade You and the World project is being an agent of change. This means we go out somewhere into the world and help either informing others about our issue, or doing volunteer work to help solve it. For being an agent of change I am planning to make a presentation about information regarding childhood concussions along with my story and struggles. I will present this to my school community at Science Leadership Academy.

Welcome back! I am Junjie Zou from Science Leadership Academy. I am back again with my second blog. In my first blog, I talked about the physical features of the casino and how it affect the community and the business’ surrounding it. I also talked about how the casino can form a domino effect on the victim’s community or his/her family members. Following up with my last blog, I placed an interview with a casino activist. He is also a member of Asian American United, a group created by proud activists fighting for everyday world problems, such as the effect of casino.  

I have discovered so many new things out of this interview. After the interview, I learned that there is a difference between a arcade and a casino. The arcade is a place with different stations containing variety of video games that can be played for a fee. Similar to a casino, a casino has gambling games that you play with your own money. The difference between a arcade and a casino is the addiction and the rewards you receive from these two type of entertainment. As I mentioned in my first blog, casinos don’t have many windows to let you determine the time outside while you have your head focused on the machine. The arcade is not as addicting as a casino because it shows you the time outside so you will know when to leave. As you might know, you must be 18 or older to be in a casino, but as for a arcade, any age are welcomed. Overall, the arcade is absolutely fine to go to because it doesn’t have much addicting content as the casino.

Like I mentioned earlier, I held an interview for my original research. I interviewed a Asian American United employer, Wei Chen. He told me all about his experience being a casino activist and how the casino affected him and his family. He told me that his dad was one of those people who was addicted to gambling and how his father tried to convince him to stop his education and start working for money for him to gamble. This really gives me a lot of information about this topic because I got to talk to a person who has been through these things and now fighting against it. “...because of gambling, they are willing to leave their child in the car in a hot summer day.”

This adds to my understanding of this issue because it tells me that there is actually a person who has been affect by this and that this is not a made up thing, but can turn into a very serious life-losing situation.

After all of these research on the effect of casino, I feel like something can definitely be done by the government. It’s harsh seeing these people suffer from a lost of family or friends because of some addicting machine created by the government. The casino’s money all go to  the government for their uses either to the military or to us citizens. This can definitely be a good thing, but taking advantage of people by getting them addicted to a inescapable addiction, is not a way to raise money for this country.