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When I work with charcoal, I am reminded that art can be seen in different views. I begin a piece by making a shading for the whole sheet of paper. I know a piece is done when I can step back and look at my art and feel proud of it. When my work is going well, I am filled with a sense of happiness because I want to go home and show my parents so they can be proud of me. When people see my work, I'd like them to have to take a second look and say I did a great job.

Code switching is necessary. At least, that’s what’s gotten me this far. Is it a skill? Probably. Something to acquire and become good at. I’ve always been pretty good with words – a silver tongue it’s called.

“Ay ma, what’s for eat up in here?”

“I already ate. You betta find somethin in here for you starve. You better not go to bed hungry, boy, It aint good for you.”

“Aight mom, I won’t”

“We got some fries you can whip up right quick”

“Aint that what we had yesterday?”

“I don’t even want to hear complaints. It be people in Africa that would eat fries every night.”

“Ugh. I know mom. Fine I will.”

It’s an interesting thing, slang. One can’t be bad at it. The simpler it gets, the easier it is to get the main point across. That is of course, if the person in the conversation is a patron of partial English too. It’s picked up easy, and it’s unique because a deliberate effort is needed to abolish it completely unless one was never influenced by it in the first place. Its staying power is offset by its lack of compulsion. What I mean is, it’s hard for a person that speaks “proper” English (i.e White people) to demote to slang. When talking “proper” it feels irreverently inconvenient. Most words that are effectively condensed in slang feel too deliberate and imposing, almost arrogant to be used in intimate or casual talk.

Unless of course, one is adept at code switching. It’s no longer about “acting white” or “being black”. It’s about getting what, (and who) you want using the right language. As James Baldwin said in his essay “If black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is?”, …”The price for this is the acceptance, and achievement, of one's temporal identity”. It doesn’t feel natural- to code switch I mean. Or rather it is much more comfortable to stick to one dialect, tone, language, theme, even status quo. For the price of leaving my inner comfort I can excel much better than I ever could restraining to my “Black English”. Not to say Black English is restricting, although, due to specific reasons it should not be used outside of intimate conversation.

When I was young, 5 or 6, everyone spoke it- Black English I mean. I was home within my comfort zone. I had not been exposed to anything else. Back then It was fine to have one mindset, one code, and to be ignorant of any other was not only acceptable, but sadly widespread within my community. At that age, of course, my community did not consist of many people outside of my family. Then there was school. School is a place where solitude was only obtainable through great effort. There was always a curious boy or girl who wanted to know what another name. To my credit, I wasn’t the least bit shy. If I was I most likely would not have the skills I do. I probably wouldn’t even attend the school I do now.

When I got a little older, I started to realize just how important code switching was. I was about 9 or 10 when I saw just how “clicks” formed. Similar people grouping together to for stable community inside one dysfunctional one. I noticed how different they were. Separated by music choice, neighborhoods, earlier childhood relations, even as general as gender. Usually one would blend into one that fit his or her category. Not me. Now 12 and 13 I watched, observed the wildlife in their artificial habitat.

Stephon Alexander, an internationally known physicist, and accomplished jazz saxophonist, visited SLA earlier this month as a guest of The Franklin Institute to share his vision of how science and music are really one. The talk focused on cosmology and quantum mechanics, which he related to sound through the wave phenomena present in both, and through the physics of sound in everyday music. Dr. Alexander also took the science of music to a new level, exploring geometric patterns in saxophone improvisation. He illustrated his points using his saxophone - and at the end, gave an improvised jazz performance.

-- Dr. Stephon Alexander

I chose that topic because it revolves around me a lot. I am a hard-working female, and so are other females in my family. I felt that it was important to show everyone that females are also important. 

What frustrated me was that my plan A didn't work (plan A was the original benchmark plan on moodle), so my project is my plan B which was turning it into a video blog. I liked that better actually because I was able to be myself, and express my opinions and facts. If my timing was better, it would've looked better than what is shown now.

I really enjoyed interviewing my great-great aunt, who worked at Pennsylvania Hospital for 41 years. She gave a lot of interesting thoughts, facts & opinions. Also, one of my C-SPAN videos were interesting too (the 2nd one shown). I learned something that I felt should've been in my project, which about the Womens Act.

I complained about timing this whole project, and I know it's my fault. It took me forever to come up with a topic that I really wanted to stick with. Once I came up with that, I rushed into creating a script for myself, and a plan. Come to find out, plan doesn't work. So it also seemed as though I was rushing through this project, but also I was taking advantage of time. That could've been handled better. Also, I went OVER the time limit.

I really LOVED that I was myself. I didn't have to put on some type of character, & I used a method that I do on a daily basis. I was about to combine that into a project and it didn't seem difficult to me on how I wanted to show it. I just wished that if my timing was better, everything would have been way better that what I displayed.

During this project journey, I learned about how the women became involved with the 14th amendment, and how important it is. I also learned how the Equal Protection Clause would affect women if it didn't exist. I also learned from both my aunt and mother that we need equal share and we will get there. It's just a shame that we have to work 5 times as hard as Caucasian females, and males in general.

My advertisement is showing and explaining to kids that you don’t need fancy and expensive shoes to fit in with others. You should be happy for what you have. The majority of kids fall into the trap of buying these fancy and expensive shoes just so they can be popular.  In my opinion people should like you for you not the sneakers you have.   It should only matter on how the person is treated.  If a person is nice to you then be nice to them if not then not. If I was to do this benchmark again I would not change my process because it was an easy structure for me to do and I didn’t want to overwhelm myself with going through things.  The class’s feedback was very helpful in helping me with making a successful advertisement

• Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre...My group and I did a PSA about... cómo los árboles son importantes
• Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue...By creating this PSA, the most important thing I learned was... cómo subjuntivos útiles
• Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque... el niños es muy comica
• Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo cambiaría...If I could do the project again, I would change... cómo utilizamos nuestro tiempo para trabajar.