"Speedy"

Screen Shot 2014-06-05 at 10.43.30 AM
Screen Shot 2014-06-05 at 10.43.30 AM

In 1946, one year after World War 2. After observing Earth for countless years, aliens have decided that humans are two destructive. This is due to the aliens promise to preserve planets and after seeing the destruction of the Atom bomb determine that the risk for allowing humanity to continue was too great. Using a device the aliens have that can determine the path that a species will follow. The aliens have seen more of the destructive wars that are fought by the humans as well as all of the damage on the environment that will be done in the future. The new war began on New Years day with the aliens demonstrating their technology by sending soldiers with protective suits that are powered by oxygen. This combined with their laser weapon technology quickly put battles in their favor. The aliens send their troops from an armada in ships that are in space right outside the gravitational of earth. In charge of all the ships is the mothership that is lead by the main groups of aliens in charged. In an effort to save humanity all nations teamed together to face off against the threat. However, humanity is losing this war, with the remnants of society that were able to make it to safety are now living in Antarctica in bases under the ice. Those that were not lucky enough to be rescued try to survive their extinction in the place they once called home.  As a form of respect for their culture the aliens have captured some human in order to study and experiment them. However those who have manage to escape after experimentation have notice that they have become something beyond human. Humans who have special gifts caused by the experimentations. It’s with one of those humans that our story begins.




As I wake up to the bright light in front of my face I look around the room I’m in. Bright lights, symbols I can barely translate, and aliens who look really mad that I’m awake. The aliens are looking as they always do with their full gray skin with the large eyes and that’s it. An odd thing that I never understood with these aliens is that the same areas on the side of their heads that these aliens used the hear are the same things they speak out of. It’s really annoying because the sound isn’t focused to sound as one voice, so instead it sounds like two people talking at once. Really aggravating and impractical. Then here I am, laying down on this table tapped wearing my same baggy red shirt and old worn out coat. It’s not that I like wearing this old stuff it is just that no one makes clothes anymore in any areas except for the main civilian areas. So i’m stuck wearing the same clothes that I worn since the attacks began. Good thing I haven’t grown at all. Otherwise I would be in a lot of trouble.

“So is this the fourth or fifth time you guys have captured me? Cause I honestly stopped counting.” I say to the aliens in hopes I can get them to slip up.

Getting captured has been very aggravating for someone like me, Everytime I get captured the aliens bring me to the same kind of ship, and try to do the same tricks that they always do. They forget that I’m one of the test subjects that escaped during their experimenting. I notice now that my trick worked as the aliens look at me in an attempt to figure out who I am. This clears up two things to me, one, this alien does not know who I am which leads to two, he does not know of what I am capable of. So I begin using the curse these freaks gave me as I vibrate my molecules fast enough to break the holdings on me and before they know it, I’m already running to the exit out of here.

It takes over a minute for those idiots to figure out i’m gone and the alarm goes off, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The plan is always the same when I’m getting out of one of their bases, find the map thats always at the same spot right in the middle of the ship, find the flight deck, knock over everyone I run past just to freak them out. It’s been like this the last three or four times and I doubt it will be any different. The aliens hate changing any parts of anything they build or create. But yet their fine with changing people they don’t know, like humans, those hypocrites

Making it to the map I see all of their different symbols. Thankfully I’ve looked at this map enough times to know the symbol order for the flight deck. “ Let’s see flight deck, right there. All I have to get through is the test labs?” I must not be putting those symbols together correctly. What kind of idiots would put the area where you test prisoners right by the exit? Running now I see the exit in my sight and I realized that these aliens are those idiots.

Seems like there aren’t guards at the exit yet, which means I’ve broke my new track record. With the extra time, how about a look around the lab. Let’s see what words I can make out. I see this earpiece in a glass container and vibrate my hand through to grab it.

“Let’s see I can make out the first four letters as tran, so let’s hope that means translator. Suddenly I can make out the intruder alert that’s being shouted over the alarm.

“Sweet it’s a translator. If I was a character in a story that could only have the readers understand the aliens language by my understanding this would be super convenient.” Having decided that nothing else is of convenient value I head run to one of their ships and escape.


First things first, so I’m not followed I need to turn the cloaking on. That way I can just quietly cruise down to Earth. Just because I can move fast, doesn’t mean I like speeding my way everywhere. As I look down at Earth, and you know what’s interesting? Even when these aliens are on a mass extinction of a species, they still act as eco-friendly as possible. They plant trees, clean rivers, and other eco-friendly things. You wouldn’t be able to tell there was a war going on the planet if it wasn’t for the well….war part.

“Stupid war” I say to myself. I was starting my first year of college when the war began. I was on my way to my parents house for a New Years break only to find that everyone I knew was gone. I quickly was capture by the aliens and became “speedy,” the apparent name that was given to me by what’s left of any gossip in this world.

Snapping me from my thoughts is the super loud sound from the alien ships communicator, all of the ships get the transmission from the aliens mothership, even if one is missing in action. I guess they just assumed no one would ever be willing to steal their ships.

“Did anyone find the missing test subject?” says what I assume is some high commanding officer in the aliens army.

“No. He got on one of our ships and flew away.” “It’s best to assume that he has turned on cloaking and is on his way back to earth” Said an alien who I assume was in charge of the flagship that I had escaped from.

“Should we send scouts to find him?”

“No, it doesn’t matter if he escaped or not. That was the Fifth time we caught him” (I knew it was four or five times) “ We will find him again. Besides we need all the troops ready for the attack on their base in Alaska. The drills will be ready soon.”

Man, the aliens found the base in Alaska. The Alaskan base doesn’t have many civilians there. It’s mostly a military base. It’s where the army keeps it’s stockpile of weapons for the war against the aliens. I’ve heard the base is underground in the ice, which means that those drills are not going to be good. This would be the part where my conscience tells me to do the right thing for absolutely no reward. Well I guess it’s time to be the good guy so it time I speed towards earth.



This is why it sucks to be one of those alien test subjects. Sure I escaped certain death from the aliens, but all other humans are afraid of me. Which shouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t want to hurt any human, or make myself look worse than I already do. So I can’t run when they come to arrest me. Which is why i’m in this easily escapable prison in Canada. If I don’t tell the person in charge about the ongoing attack we’ll all be, well actually i’ll be fine. It’s all the people at this base and eventually the people at the antarctic base that will be in trouble. But according from the Knowledge I got from my parents before they were well killed was that if you don’t at least try to help those in danger, the grief will kill you later. So running out of here is unfortunately not yet an option. I notice the door far away open up and an old man started walking towards my cell. He had a scar across his face which was partly covered by the eye patch over his right eye. I assume he’s seen his share of battle and it cost him his eye. However if it’s from the last war or this one I guess I’ll never know.

“You should know by now that the alien’s escaped test subjects are seen as threats for humanity.” Says someone who i hope is the guy in charge.“ I assume by the the burn marks on your shoes that you must run a lot. Which means that you’re the one my army calls speedy.”

“ Yeah that’s me. Which means that you are aware that I can get through these bars very easily.” I say as I vibrate fast enough to walk through the bars.

“ Yeah I know which means you’re here for something and that‘s what i’m here to find out. I hope that you aren’t here to help the aliens which gives me enough reason to trust you.”

“ I guessing that ‘trust’ is why there are no armed guard in this cell with us. I have information thats super important and is a matter of life and death. At least for you and your army it’s a matter of life and death.  “ I was recently captured again by the aliens and as I was escaping I found this translator, I say as I point at the earpiece attached to the right ear. “ As I was flying back to earth using a ship I stole from them I heard them talk about an attack on this very base. They said they are using some special drills they developed.”

The general had all the color drain from his face, but quickly regained composure. “ I was worried we would have an attack on this base. My scouts recently saw signs of another attack, but I had no idea that it would be this close. Do you have any full proof that they are going to be attacking here.”

The nerve of this guy. “What, you don’t believe me? But no the only thing that I have is what I heard over the radio.” The general turned away for a second to think to himself, but then quickly turned back around.

“ It’s not that I don’t believe you, but we have two problems. One, people hate test subjects like you. So the chance that they will believe you telling me all of this is close to zero percent. Especially if with claim that the device in your ear is a device that can translate what they are saying.  The other problem is that we have no idea what the machines that they are using to drill through the ice look like. So it’s going to be hard for us to prepare for something that we don’t even know what it looks like.”

“So then what are you going to do? I told you what you needed to know so I’m outta here.”

“ We are going to need to find proof about the machines. I’m going to need your help to find them and I can guarantee they will be some form of a rewards.” Once he said that he peaked my interest. Nothing is better than doing good and getting a reward for doing it. However considering the only thing these military guys have our weapons. Not something that I need nor am I a fan of.

“ So what would this reward be. Not like money is necessary and considering I can move faster than any weapon you can shoot, I don’t need any weapons ether.”

“The reward would be a chance to start humanities faith in the test subjects like you. With your speed you should be able to find and steal the blueprints for the machines and give us the edge in the next battle. After my army learns to trust you and the other test subjects we will be able to team up and win this battle for humanity once and for all.”

You know if my conscience was bugging me before to help just people who might be kill. It’s increased by ten when the topic of the other escaped test subjects are brought up. So as much as I’m not gonna like doing this I’m gonna have to.

“ I’ll do it. But we have another problem. The blueprints are more than likely on the mothership, and it’s not like they’re just gonna let us fly up there.” The general look at me and laughed.

“ Well that will be the simplest part of this mission. Everyone that is captured by the aliens in this area are assumed to be for the military. Due to this they get taken to the mothership for a more advanced interrogation. So in other words the plan is for you to get captured. Which from my understanding you are very good at.”

This is not going to be fun.



Random fact, The projectiles that are fired from the aliens weapons move a lot faster than any of the bullets fired by any of the guns are earth. The reason why I know this is that I just recently broke out of the same kind of containment room that was just like the last room I was captured in. However the aliens seem to know me by now so I was quickly fired at. I zoomed fast around corners knocking over the aliens I run past. This mothership is way bigger than of the other ships. There are so many corridors and I have absolutely no idea where I am. To make matters worse I realizes that I’m running to fast and no longer I have any shoes, but that’s besides the point. I need to find their battle plans room to get the blueprints for the machines down below.

After running around for way too long (for me that’s like two minutes). I realize that I need to treat this like one of my usual escapes. So what better way to find this blueprint and my way outta here while i’m at it then to find a map of this place. So going by my knowledge of all the other ships that there’s a map into the middle. So I head into what I hope is the middle and make my way through the ship.

I gotta admit I’m impressed. Well I was right about my theory on the middle on the ship having the map, but the middle of this mothership is literally the map! This place is absolutely huge. But thankfully the spelling for all the rooms are the same so it’s time to head to the battle plans room.

Now I’m on my way to the battle plans room, and that when I notice that there’s no guards shooting at me anymore. Plus that loud intruder alert noise that I usually hear isn’t going off. Maybe they just assume that I was pulling one of my usual escapes and that I’m already gone. Well aliens, I find the lack of trying to find me very insulting. But no matter I’ve made it to the battle room. It’s what you would expect from the average battle plan room. Large table in the middle with the plenty of chairs around it for meetings with a Monitor at the front of the room projecting what I think is the machine I’m looking for. That suspicion of if it is the device or not is quickly changed as i see a clear diagram of the drill digging into the ice. So I quickly used the device given to me to print it out. Plus for added measure I took some photos of it using the camera the general had given me. You know what would be handy? A camera that can take colored photo. But considering these aliens don’t even have colored technology.  So i guess that technology is impossible to get.

Now that is done it’s time to head to the flight deck. Running through the corridor it makes me wonder, what if the ships they have there are the flagships that I normally escape from? That would be awesome and regardless of what anyone says. If that ship is there I am taking it and it will be mine and no one is going to tell me otherwise. Finally I make it to the flight deck and what do I see one of those flagships waiting to be taken and more guards then I have ever seen in my life.  They aren’t even taking prisoners this time they start firing away and quickly I dash towards the ship. If I can run as fast as I think I can I should be able to make it to the ship before they even know what hit them. I run past the guards, knocking them over just in case as I make my way to the ship. Running through the flagship interior I know so well I make it to the drive console and fly on out of here, Now I can sit back and relax as I fly close enough to the base and run to deliver the blueprints. All of my troubles are over...except for the alien that I now see is right behind me.

“Thank you translator or I would have never realized this dude was behind me” The alien was now laying on the floor presumably dead. It’s not that I wanted to kill him, I just didn’t want to take that chance of him being around. But still I hate getting my hands dirty. So this is what happened. I was sitting back getting ready to relax when all I hear behind me is;

“It seems that I’m the only one smart enough to stay in the obvious ship you would take. It seems I have the upper hand now.” The alien said which what I assume was a smug for look at them. But that look quickly faded as I ran toward him, grabbed his gun, and shot him before he even realized what happened. However now that this minor conflict is over with, it’s time to head down to earth.


“Speedy” managed to make it towards earth and give the general the blueprints he’s looking for. This helped breach the fear wall that was blocked between humans and the test subjects working together and after the successful defence of the base in Alaska, humanities military showed that they have what it takes to fight back. However the results of this war are unknown for Speedy because after his help with delivering the military the blueprints and not taking no as an answer for the ship, Speedy decided to take his ship and head to other planets to see where life will take him. With the common misadventure every now and then. However where he goes there are always those that are never going to forget what the boy that can run fast did for the world.

The Story of Diamond Philips

The Story of Diamond Philips

Stream: Fire

By: Jules James


The name is Diamond Phillips and this is a story about what I went through during the year of 2100. I will start off by telling you about myself. I was born on February, 29, 2083 in West Philadelphia. I lived with my father, Greg Phillips, but I called him Wawa because he told me that’s where he was when he found out Angela, my mother, was about to give birth to me. Wawa worked as a contractor who builds houses and hospitals. He was born in West Philadelphia too but we moved to New York after his wife abandoned me and him. Me and my dad got along perfectly, we're like best friends. We told each other everything and we always hung out. I must say I loved that man to death. His death would tear me down from the inside out.

Now, the lady who gave birth to me was Angela Martin. She was from South Philly and also was a drug addict. She died in 2097. It’s not much I could say about her for the simple fact that I really didn’t know her. All I knew is before 2100 came I didn’t like her much. My reason for this is because I never had a mother figure in my life and I blamed that on her. I never saw my mother in real life, only in pictures. When Angela's funeral came I refused to go because when I needed my mother she wasn't there for me so I thought that I wasn't going to be there for her.

Other than Wawa, I had no other family in my life, but I do had this friend, she was my best friend. Her name was Mia but people called her Mo, that wass her dyke name. At first she was hard to get along with but by the end of sophomore year we ended up becoming best of friends.

I was also raised as a Christian. I questioned myself of whether or not I still was a Christian. I still went to church, once in a while but the person I was drew me from that religion. During 2100, I was single but I also was bi-sexual. I never had sex with a guy but I did with a girl once, only for fun though.

My relationship life wasn’t the best. I’ve had 18 “boyfriends” altogether but only 1 real boyfriends, the others only wanted to fuck. And I only had 1 girlfriend, sadly we didn’t work out.

Enough about the people around me, I’ll continue telling you about me. During the time of 2100, I was in 11th grade and I attended Turner High and I received good grades such as A’s and B’s. As much as I didn’t want to do the work I knew I had to just to keep my father happy. I was all he had, I didn’t want to be a disappointment to him.

I was smart, quiet, defensive, persistent, emotional, and I had anger issues. I was a basic young girl who tried to finish up high school, had no hobbies and no favorite sports. I hated the way I looked and the reason for that was because I looked like my mother. I was scared that I was going to be just like her and I didn’t want that. So I thought if I changed how I looked then I would be different from her. When I was 17 I was 5’4: I had tattoos on my chest, arms, and thighs, I had to cover up the skin that was just like my mother’s. I dyed my long black hair to blonde and I cut it. I was full in the chest and butt area, and I wore makeup all the time. My goal was to get rid of the look of my mother as much as I could no matter how much I had to change the way I looked. I mostly wore all black and my clothes were fitted just enough to show far my beautiful curves.

There’s one more thing you should know before I start my story. Everyone other than Wawa and Mo didn’t like me and the reason for that is because I was different and no one actually tried to get to know me. That was the reason I kept my distance. My happiness was all that mattered.


Now I’ll began my story:

I ran. I ran at an incredible pace so she wouldn’t see me coming. I flew through the cold, hard metal doors of my school, which created a strong breeze that hit everyone that was in my way. I went inside every girl’s bathroom and I looked in every stall but she was no where to be found. After I went in all of the bathrooms I then went to the place she had to be, her rusted 25 year old locker. Her locker was the first locker installed inside of our school. People call it the ancient locker.

When I got there, there was a group of people there, including Tia. We were both dressed alike, we were in fighting clothes with our hair tied up. I was the one who had to break the intense silence.

“You was talkin’ a lot of shit yesterday, why you so quiet now?” I said putting my book bag on the ground. I’m not going to lie, she was a brave bitch but so was I.

“The only reason I ain’t saying anything is because I prefer to use my hands other than wasting my breath with you.” She turned around to everyone behind her and said something that turned all of my sanity off. “Don’t worry about her. She just mad because I saw her mom yesterday for the first time and that was more than how many times she saw her mother. I put up a picture of her on Tweinstabook. Y’all should go see it.”, She said.

As she laughed, a boy with his phone out, it was set on video mode, asked, “Wait, but didn’t her mom died like three years ago from cocain?” She turned back around to me with a smirk on her face.

“Oh yea, oops. Maybe it was another dirty ass old crackhead that I saw then.” Everyone behind her gave out their “ooo’s” and I didn’t want to hear anymore of the bullshit.

Before I knew it my left hand was connected to her nose that stood out more than  her hard effort she put into her Tweinstabook pictures trying to expose a butt that never existed. Lucky for me she didn’t know how to fight and I found that out by noticing the only thing she was doing was pulling my hair, like that was never been done to me before. But because my head was down and I couldn’t see her face, to aim at it some more, I had no choice but to knee her in a not so delightful place. That one hit brought her down on the ground, which gave me the advantage to get on top of her and start fisting her face in a few times.

I heard kids yelling, videos being taken, flashes, and a lot of other loud things that, for no reason, made me angrier which made all my hits on her face harder. But then I heard Officer Smith work his way to us. He pushed his way through the crowd so he could try to get me off of her.

When he finally came and got me off of her I looked her dead in her bloody face and said, “Try talkin’ about my mom again, bitch.” She covered her face and started to weep. Officer Smith and I walked away while the blood drops off my fist followed me.

I got suspended that day. They sent me home after the fight and suspended me for a week. When I was on my way home I thought my dad was still going to be asleep by time I got there and I would just explain to him what happen when he wakes up. But I was wrong. When I got home he was getting himself ready to go somewhere. He also had a bag packed.

“Wawa, where are you going?”, I asked putting my bag down slowly, hoping it wouldn’t touch my knuckles.

“Did you forget what today is?”, he asked. After a few milliseconds a nebulous look appeared on his face.

“Why aren’t you in school right now?”

“I’ve gotten suspended. It’s a long story involving a fight. I’ll tell you later.” I tried to change the subject quickly.

“So what’s the special occasion?”, I asked

“Your mother’s 3 year death.” I rolled eyes then quickly painted a polite smile on my face.

“I hope you have fun at the graveyard daddy. I’ll see you when you come back.”

“Oh well I’m going to stay in Philly for a day so I won’t be back until tomorrow night.”

“That’s even better, I’ll just stay with Mo tonight.” I was on my way to my room to pack some clothes but then Wawa stopped me.

“Wait, there’s something I wanna talk to you about.”, he said in a low voice, trying to sit me down.

“What is it?”, I asked. He pulled out this hackneyed paper from out of his back pocket, it looked like it was there for years.

“I’ve had this information for a while and I was thinking maybe,” he began to hesitate “... maybe you would like to go back in time?” I was confused with where he was getting at.

“Why would I do that? What’s back there for me?”

“Your mother.”, He said gaving me a sharp stare in my eyes.

“What?No... I won’t... I refuse...I...” I couldn’t complete any of my sentences. I was too appalled by his suggesting. Why in the hell would I ever go to see her?

“I don’t wanna hear it. I’m your father and I command you to go see her tomorrow. Do you understand me?” Wawa said with a loud tone of voice.

I had no choice by to reply by saying, “Yes Wawa.”

“Good. Now it will cause $1,000 so here you go.” He handed me a thick envelope that said, “Back in Time Money”.

“Now with this, you will go to the Franklin Museum, to the Time Machine exhibit, and give the people the money that’s in this envelope. And when they ask where do you want to go you have to say the first house on 58th and Christian Street on March 10, 2084.”, Wawa explained.

“Why this date?”

“This was the day she left.” This was a lot to take in. One part of me didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to see her face or hear her voice. But another part of me wanted answers to all my questions. I didn’t know what to do but I knew someone who would help me, Mo.

After Wawa left , I went upstairs to pack my bag and then I texted Mo to tell her that I was on my way over her house to spend a night.

When I got to her house she was home by herself. When she opened the door for me she only had on black and white ball shorts, a black sports bra, and white socks with Nike sandals. Her hair was wrapped in a bun and she looked like she just got out of bed, which made sense since she skipped school that day. But even though she was not there to see the fight between me and that girl she still had people there to tell her about it.

Time was going by fast and all l wanted to do was go take a shower and talk to Mo. And that’s exactly what I did. After I got out of the shower took of my clothes that was covered with my blood and Tia’s blood and threw on my pajama shorts and the matching shirt that came with it. I went to meet Mo in her room so we can begin our long talk. When I entered her room she was sitting on her bed.

“Come here girly and tell me what’s going on.”, she said as she patted on her bed. I took a seat next to her and my mouth began to run. It felt like it was running at 90mi./hr.

“Well, you know Tia, like the bully she is, she started talking about my mom. And you know how I get when people start to talk about my mom, I snapped. I had to fuck her up because she just kept running her mouth. She wouldn’t shut up. So after they suspended me for a week I went home and I saw my dad about to leave. He told me he was going to Philly to see my mom at the graveyard for her third year death and he is going to stay there for a day. But then he was like he want to go to the Franklin Museum to use the Time Machine to go back in time to go talk to her and I just don’t know if I should go or not. HELP.” When I was finished saying all of this I was out of breathe but Mo was just laughing. I think the speed of my talking was amusing to her.

“You lucky I’m your best friend cause if I wasn’t I don’t think I would have understand you. But anyways, I’m going to skip over the fight because that is totally irrelevant, but we are going to talk about going to see your mother. I think you should go see her. “You lucky I’m as good of a friend as I am or I would’ve not been able to understand anything you just said. But anyway, you’ve been in a hundred fights because of her and I think you should talk to her about how you feel. And you can’t say that you don’t feel anything because you wouldn’t fight for someone you don’t care for. And you know you have questions for her so why don’t you just...”, before she had the chance to finish her speech I stole a kiss. Both of our soft lips connected and the kiss that I thought was only going to be just a peck for maybe 20-25 seconds ended up being a long. passionate,  love kiss that lasted for hours.

After a few hours into our kissing, I detached our lips from each and looked her in her eyes.

“If you really want me to go see my mother than I will.”, I said in a low, soft voice.

“To be honest, what I really want is you.” She spoke just as soft while smiling and leaning in for another hours long kiss and a cuddle session. And that is how we end our night together.

She woke me up the next morning around 10 o’clock and told me I should get ready to go the museum before it gets crowded and she was right. I threw on my black crop top with my black tights and I put on my make up and repacked my bag and I was ready to go. But before I left, I gave my girlfriend a nice “think about me” kiss and then I was on my way to the museum.

When I got there it wasn’t crowded at all but when I my turn came I was hella nervous. After I gave the workers the money for the use of the machine and I told them where I wanted to go, they told me somethings I should know before they started me up. The workers told me that I only have 15 minutes inside the past and nothing longer. They also told me to not do anything that could negatively affect the future, basically don’t kill anyone. After the workers was done explaining everything. They put me inside the machine and strapped me in. They closed the door and told me to count in my head to 30 with my eyes closed. I started counting as I heard the machine start up and I felt the air blowing through my hair.

When I got to 30, I was there. I was standing right outside of the house my mother a banned me and my father in. Then I saw her. I saw her long caramel soft legs exit the door with her perfectly curvy shaped body following it. Her long black hair that was put away into a ponytail and her incredible ass was the last to exit.

I went behind a bush as she came down the stairs and waited for a G bus to take her away from me forever.

“Hi Angela.”, I said. When she looked at me I could tell that she didn’t know who I was.And she seemed high by the abject smell of weed in her breath and the redness in her eyes.

“Ummmm.... Do I know you? Who are you?”, she asked.

“No you don’t know me... Well you do but not as much as you should. I’m Diamond Phillips.” She gave me a hard stare.

“What?”

“I’m your daughter but from the future.” I was emotionless at first because I didn’t know how to feel.

“Oh my god, it is you Dia. What are you doing here?”, she asked.

“I have so many questions I want to ask you. Like why are you leaving?Do you even care about me? Did you...”, she stopped me.

“These are questions I never wanted to hear you ask so that’s why I’m leaving while you are or while you was young. But I guess the U.S. figured out how to created a time machine. But I do owe you an explanation. I’m leaving because I want to find help for myself. I didn’t want you to grow up with a crackhead mother so I’m taking myself to rehab for a few years.”, my mother explained.

“I was forced to grow up without a mother. When you was finished with rehab why didn’t you come back?” Tears was flowing down my face.

“I had plans too. Maybe I did try to come back. Did y’all happen to move at anytime?”

“Yea, we moved to Brooklyn a few months after you left.”

“I probably tried to come back but y’all was probably already gone. I left for your life and and for mines baby girl. I have nothing but love for you. I would never want to hurt you.”, then she started crying.

“Mom, I love you but you physically and mentally destroyed me when it came to me not having a mother figure in my life. I forced myself to change my physical appearance because I was sure that if I looked like you then I would be like you and I didn’t want that. I want to be there for my child, when or if I have them. But now that I know why you  did what you did, I can’t be mad. All you really wanted to better your life for your family.”

“May I give my beautiful daughter a hug, please?”, she asked.

“Yes you may mom.” We hugged and cried on each other for 5 minutes.

Then she asked, “So I have a question, how is our relationship right now?”

“I'm sorry to say but you’re dead back in my time. This is my first time seeing you in person. You died when I was 14 years old. I had so much hate for you that I didn’t even go to your funeral. But not my dad. He still love you so very much. He went to your funeral and he go see your gravesite every year.” I started to fade.

“MOM”, I yelled.

“ Baby girl, I want you to remember this one thing, I will never go a day without thinking of you. I love you baby.”, she wiped away her tears as I slowly became transparent.

The last thing I was able to say was, “I love you too mommy.”

I was back. The workers unstrapped me, let me out and told me to have a good day. I was happy. I finally knew the truth about my mother and even though I really only knew her for 15 minutes I was glad that I took that time to get to know her. I cried happy tears all the way home and when I got there I told Wawa about it all. I told my girlfriend too. She was so happy that I went, and I was too. Knowing that my mother never went one day without thinking of me helped me become a better person to the people around me, a better wife to my wife, and an awesome mother to my daughter. And this is all because of my mother. I love you Angela Martin, I love you mommy.

“The Portal Ring”

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Screen Shot 2014-05-23 at 9.42.10 AM


Having a family is a dream for many people. The thoughts of coming home everyday after a long hard day of work to a loving family is a wish to be fulfilled. Making something that you’ve built from love is a blessing, and thats what a child is. Putting all hope, faith, love, and care into a tiny baby to help them grow into the person who has it all. To someone who people look up to, who has a future, who has a good life. Knowing that there is no such thing as a perfect, you still will try everything in your power to have something as perfect as possible. Someone you always wanted to be, its now the time to try and make that happen. Watching a baby grow, from being born, to crawling, to their first words then to their first foot steps. The moments are precious and are meant to be cherished forever.


When someone has a child they will do anything in their power to keep them from falling, getting hurt, and from losing. Making sure they are always happy and having what they want, when they want it. Even if that means you doing things that you never wish to do but will anyways because you’re doing it for the light of your life. Even though you may not be capable to do so, you’ll still try your hardest to make sure that it will happen. Having a child can change a person forever. The way they think, to the way they do things, to the way they love and see things. Making you finally see the light of the gray years that passed. In the darkest days. The feeling of a full heart, just for a tiny baby. That feeling of having a child will make you happy every second of every day. Even when there are fights, miscommunications, regrets, and tears. Your child will always know where home is.


But what if you aren’t able to have that. The ability to make a love child. You’ll do anything to have the capability of creating a beautiful creature.  You’ll do anything to have that, even if that means taking in someone else's child as your own. Thats how Maria and John saw it. And thats exactly what they did. They wanted a child, no matter the race, the gender, healthy or sick. They’d love it as their own. Never giving up on something that meant so much to them.


John was a Doctor, one of the top plastic surgeons around. He performed over a thousand surgeries, where all were very satisfied. He made enough money a year to help support his small family that he always wished for. He had it all. Because being one of the younger doctors on his field and being very talented at what he did, he was a bit more liked, with his age and his charming looks. Maria on the other hand was not as good looking as John. She didn’t make as much money as he did and wasn’t as liked. The thing is, John didn’t care about her money, he made enough to make both of them stable. He didn't care about her appearance. Looks didn’t matter to John, he was completely fine with Maria’s appearance. The way someone looks shouldn't be the reason to start a relationship with someone its the way you feels towards and about them. Matter of fact, he liked the way she looked, she had a different kind of beauty. The way she spoke gave him chills. Her words grabbed a hold of his heart which made it no longer his, but hers. It was love at first sight for the both of them. The thought of him not being with her broke his heart, he couldn’t imagine life without her. Thats when they finally decided after three years of happy strong marriage, it was time to expand their family with a baby.  


Trying for a few months, many doctor appointments, injections, and tears, it was impossible for the them to ever have a baby. Maria’s body could not stand the what was needed when trying to have a baby. She was devastated, broken down. She tried so hard, did everything in her power she could to try and conceive, but nothing worked. A long month of grieving, barely able to eat, barely able to speak, John finally rose the conversations about adoption. A big responsibility, long process, questions, and wonders. Where they up for it? Caring for another person’s child. Having to face the fact that they are not the child’s birth parents. It was all too much but despite all the fears, they began the process of really being a family. Almost a year being past, the adoption was almost final. John and Maria were now going to be the new parents of a healthy baby boy by the name of Jack. Jack Mask was his name, no one really knew where Mask originated from but they weren’t going to change who Jack really was. Like they said, they’ll love him no matter what. For some odd reason, though the name was different, it fit him. They finally got what they always wished for.  


Everything was great, Jack loved his new home and Maria and John loved being parents. As time flew by and Jack was growing from a baby to a developing boy it was time for Maria and John to start thinking about schooling for Jack. For some odd reason, Jack wasn’t as comfortable with other children, not comfortable with people in general. There wasn’t a problem with family because they knew Jack since he was a baby, but you couldn’t bring different people around Jack because nothing ever turned out right. He would spaz out, shouting, kicking, crying, and no one knew what to do to stop him. The only way for Jack to really calm down is to get the people he saw as strangers out of his presence. Maria and John didn’t know what to do anymore, it was either bring new people around Jack and hear him scream and shout or it was having no communication with anyone when it come to Jack having to meet new people. After several doctors appointments to see if anything was actually mentally wrong with Jack, but there wasn’t. After a few weeks of John and Maria consulting about their son about school there was no other choice than to place Jack in homeschool. There were scared about the whole face the thoughts everything not working out right enough to keep Jack in home school because he didn’t have the ability to stay focus, or the ability to memorize things that he’d learn and then recap by doing a project or taking a test. But all they could do was try. At first, John and Maria didn’t know how to homeschool Jack, they both worked. While John was performing surgeries, Maria was cleaning houses so who was going to teach Jack. Thank god that Maria’s sister Jamie somehow joined into the conversation and suggested to John and Maria that she could homeschool Jack while they are at work with his cousin Alex. They seemed to get along well since they are around the same age and understood each other, agreeing with aunt Jaime to homeschool Jack Mask, the situation of schools was no longer a problem.


Everything seemed to be working out fine, Jack was doing better in school then John and Maria expected, he averaged out in grades as a’s and b’s which is good enough for them. Alex and Jack seemed to get really close as they began to see each other everyday for school. But the only thing is that Alex was loud and outspoken where Jack was always the shy one who kept to himself and came to a whisper when he actually spoke once in a while. John and Maria seemed to be okay with the fact that Jack was shy and to himself most of the time. He was comfortable with who he was and that is all that matters. One day while Jack and Alex were at school, Alex suggested to do a project about halloween because of it being early October, he liked the idea. Jaime being okay with that she gave a project of researching about any halloween character and then make them with some type of arts and crafts. Alex did no what he wanted to do at first, he was stuck between a ghost, a which, or a vampire. Where Jack did know what to do his project on. He never really went out for halloween except once but something bad happened and Maria and John never let that happened again, but that was when Jack Mask was only one years old, so he doesn’t remember anything that happened that day. John and Maria don’t like to talk about it so they try to keep it in the past. Jack always had a thing for people in colorful mask, dark clothes with bright ascents, with velvet material. He was looking up different types of monsters that are “seen” around halloween time. He came across some type of monster that caught his eye immediately. It was called the “joker mardi gra monster”, this monster was all that Jack loved. Searching up pictures of this creature, Jack fell in love with the whole look. He began researching about this mysterious creature. He researched day and night, and when he wasn’t he would draw pictures of the monsters. One picture he drew that his mother found was a family of these “people”, she was a little curious but she didn’t ask Jack about it because she understood he was a young boy and was exploring in his own ways. In the drawing, there was tiny words spread around the paper, but in a way to understood what it said in a sentence. “I will come home soon.” Maria didn’t understand what it meant, she just thought he was playing but thats when everything started to change.

Jack would stay in his room on the computer he received for his school work, he would sit up all day and all night on this computer. One day while Maria had off from work she went into Jack’s room to see what was going on while he was at school and went into his history just to see what he has been looking up all this time. The history list was full of google searches saying, “what am I going threw?”, “Feathers growing from my face”, “Body suit growing from nowhere”, “Joker”, “Mardi gra”, “Monster”. She was confused and didn’t know what to do or say. She questioned on whether or not this is just a stage her son was going through or something serious. But because Jack didn’t approach her with anything, so she thought is was best to just leave it alone.

The next day it seemed like everything was changing about Jack, his appearance, his mood, his voice, everything. Being new parents, Maria and John thought he was just going thru an early stage of puberty or something along those lines. But it wasn’t, it was something way more than that. The next morning Jack went down to the kitchen to get breakfast, he was thinking about either cereal or pancakes, walking into the kitchen and saying “good morning” to his mother there was a loud smash of a plate and a horrible scream that came from his mothers mouth.


“Jack, you scared me, why do you have that ugly mask and outfit on? Where did you

get that at?” Maria said while cleaning up the broken dishes.


Jack’s father ran down the stairs in alarmed from hearing the bloody scream;


“Whats going on down here? Maria why’d you scream like that, is everything okay?” John said while trying to catch his breath.


“Look at the costume your son has on!”


Jack then turned around facing his father in confusion,


“What costume? I have no costume on, what are you talking about?” Jack said while slamming his hand on the counter in anger.


“Where did that come from Jack, get that off before you give your mother a heart attack, I fix faces not hearts.”


Jack finally went to the mirror in the living room to see what his mother and father was talking about. Being a little hesitant to look in the mirror to see what they were talking about he finally gain the courage.


“No, its happening! Why me? Why mom why?” Jack screamed while tears were streaming down his face.


“What do you mean sweetie? Just take the outfit off, you’ll be fine, here I’ll help.” Maria said while smiling coming getting close to Jack.


“Stay away mom, please I don’t know what can happen to you if you touch me, don’t even look at me!” Jack screamed and cried crawling backwards to get away from his mother.


Jack knew this was going to happen soon enough, he thought it was just some stages but it was real. It was like all those dreams that he had. He became what we was researching, as joker mardi gra monster. From all of the research that was done he found out that these type of monsters as well as many others come from a place called Halloween World. Its a place like Earth but is different in a way where they have monsters instead of humans. They sip on witches brew instead of wine. They eat worms and cow eyeballs instead of spaghetti and meatballs. They are all around different from what a human is and does. But to get to Halloween World you can’t just take a plane there or drive a car, in order to get into that world you need to find the portal that leads the right way into the element. Unless you actually know where this portal is you can not find it until you are giving the ring of worlds by someone who actually lives in Halloween World.


Jack told his mother and father everything he knew about what he was now and the place he had came from. It was hard for him to everything out so he went to grab his computer to show his parents a video he found about the type of monster he is now. Though it was all so much to take in, they had to except their son for who he was now. They were still going to love him like how he was before all of this happened to him.


Months past by and Jack didn’t go to school anymore, it was all too much to take in and hold. So during the day he would continue to research how to go over to the Halloween World to see where he really came from. Why his real parents gave him up. And what he has to do to go back to a normal ten year old boy. Not having to wear this colorful, feather, shiny mask every day without taking it off. Not being able to remove this suit that was now his new skin. He wanted to know so much about himself from what he knows already. He knew that the only way from him to know everything is until he gets to the other world. He needed that ring.


Today was the day that everything was going to happen, Jack was going to get his ring, he was going to cross over to the other world and see what he really came from. Who he came from and why’d they let him go. The day was October 31st, halloween and Jack’s life is about to change. But Jack, Maria, nor John knew what was going to go on. Maria and John finally agreeing on letting Jack out for halloween again since he’s older and he actually wanted. Jack was going out trick-or-treating with his cousin Alex then after treating for all their candy to rot their teeth, they were going to go carve pumpkins at Alex’s house. Alex was going to be a mummy, he was so excited because his costume actually looks pretty real. Jack on the other hand can’t change his costume because it wasn’t a costume it was his real skin. Only because of how unique it was and how much it resembled halloween, he was okay with wearing it and going out.

While getting ready at Jack’s house he started to feel weird, like a sick feeling.

“Ahhhhh, ohhhh, ugh, ow,” Jack cried then falling to the floor.


“JACKY, are you okay? Whats wrong? Want me to go get your mom?” Alex said with a panic.

“I just don’t feel that well, I’ll be fine just give me a second.” Jack said while holding on hand on his stomach and the other over his purple lips.

Jack didn’t know what was going on. To him, it felt like someone was twisting his already twisted intestines. Like someone was holding and not letting go of them, holding them like they were trying to save themselves from falling in a body of water with sharks. After a half and hour or so Jack felt completely fine. It was weird. One minute he was in complete pain but the next he was completely fine. It didn’t make sense but now that it was gone, he was not even going to question it. Jack finished “getting ready” and it was time to leave and explore the world for the first actual time by himself, well with his cousin Alex. After Maria and Jamie being good mothers and telling their children what and what not to do they finally let them off to get their candy. So many things were running through Jack’s head and not knowing if it meant anything important or was it just a state of fear. He couldn’t put in words what he was feeling inside. There was a mix of emotions running through Jack Mask. The one step out of his front door and it all hit him. Reality hit him hard in the face and he knew where he had to be. Not with these type of people who he really is not. Not these people who are nothing like him. He needed to find a way to get back to where he really belonged, he needs that ring, but where does he find it at? Then he started to remember everyone who put a good impression on his life. His caring father who took him in, his loving mother who even though she didn’t give birth to him she still cared for him as his own. He thought about the two people who didn’t judge him at all when helping him grow and become better, his aunt Jaime and cousin Alex. Alex, his only friend. He could just up and leave Alex alone, that was his best friend. He loved Alex to death and would never want to hurt him but it was either the change to see where he come from or staying with the family that took him in. Cared for him. Fought for him to be theirs.


Jack try to put all the emotions and thoughts behind him to try and make the best  out of have some fun with his cousin. Trick-or-treat to get all the candy a kid could ever wish for. Walking down the street with Alex, Jack looked back and glanced at his house for one of the last times ever, turning back around to find a tear rolling down his face.


The boys were out trick-or-treating for only about a hour or so and their bags were filled to the brim. A ton of people ran up to them to complement how amazing their outfits were. They were pretty happy about what they have received for the night so they decided to head home.


“Alex im not feeling that good so I think I’m just going to go home instead of your house to carve pumpkins, we can just do it tomorrow after lunch!” Jack said while holding his stomach.


“Okay just have aunt Maria call my mom and we can do that and make sure you have you mom check your candy before you eat it, you know, just to make sure everything is safe,” Alex said with eye glaring onto his big bag of candy. Both walked the separate ways to their own houses without looking back.

Jack finally got to his house, waiting a few minutes to enter the house he looked at him candy bag and notice something. It was a shiny red rock sticking out in the middle or the candy that he received.


“What the hell is this?” Jack said to himself while reaching down into the bag to retrieve the mysterious item.


Jack eyes opened wide with his mouth following, it was a ring. Could it be the ring he needed to get the Halloween World. Sticking the ring in his pocket and then walked in the house like nothing ever happened.


“Hello sweetie, how was it? Did you have fun with Alex?” Maria said with a large smile on her face fixing a little snack for Jack.


“Good mom, I had a lot of fun, I’m not that hungry so I don’t need my snack, actually my tummy is hurting a little bit I think I’m going to go lay down and try to sleep.” Jack said while holding his stomach with both hands.


“You didn’t eat any candy did you sweetie, you know i'm suppose to check every piece to make sure everything is okay with it.”


“No mom I just think I ate something earlier to mess up my tummy.” Jack said while throwing the bag on the floor and running up stairs.


Jack ran to his room closing the door fast but silent. He didn’t want to worry anyone in the house with a loud bang. He went right in his pocket to examine the ring with a closer eye. He pulled it out and and as soon and his eye hit the ruby that was on the ring it glowed. Bright lighting up the whole room with a red foggy light. There was a bang in his closet randomly with a beep, there was silence after that. Jack jumped up and went to his closet door to see what was going on in there. He took a moment to gain the confidence to open the door. After thinking of what could be in there he finally opened the door. There was now a blueish purple light that was shining. There was a swirl or different colors just hovering over his shoe rack with a an inscription on the wall. It looked like scribbles but for some reason he was able to read it right away. “Once you come, you can never go!”, Jack finally found the portal that leads the the Halloween World. He knew that it was either a choice of staying with the family who took him in as his own, continue to be freak in the world or “normal” or go and explore where he really came from. Thoughts were running through his head and tears were running down his face, he didn’t know what to do.


The lights started to dim after a while and another encryption appeared onto the wall, “Now or never Jack!” Jack knew this was his last chance to meet the people who made him so different, to see where he really came from. He stuck a finger in the portal, it was cold but a sense of relief. Out of no where the portal was starting to close and suck Jack in but Jack still didn’t know what he wanted to do. He tried to pull the half of his body out of the portal but it was too strong. In a matter of seconds Jack was on his way to Halloween World leaving back his family, his thoughts, his memories, and all the love that the people who took him in as their own stayed.

"Hanging by a Shoestring" SLA Photo Show Top Pick for First Friday

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HBSSpostcardFRONT72dpi
Despite financial chaos in Philadelphia public schools, SLA managed to launch its first full-year high school photography program. Come join us on FIRST FRIDAY  (June 6th) at The Neighborhood House in Old City​ to celebrate 75 gifted student artists who won't take NO for an answer. 

Meet and mingle with the artists themselves, and learn how to support their upcoming $10,000 capital campaign to finance the future of the program via INDIEGOGO. (igg.me/at/SLAphotolab).

Philadelphia photographic and art luminaries Zoe Strauss and Paul Cava are acting as official judges for the show, and there will also be opportunities to sit for professional portraits by the students in their Great Hall Studio as well as purchase prints.

This is a Free Event.

The Neighborhood House
20 N. American St., Old CIty



 



YATW Blog #3 Agent of Change Teen Violence

Hey everyone, it’s Devia again! If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts on youth violence, you should know that I’ve been researching on youth violence. For my first blog, I mostly wrote about what my topic was and why it was important to me. Also, it spoke of what caused the majority of youth violence and teenagers’ participation in violent behavior. For my first blog post, click here. My second blog contained information on my piece of original research. For that, I conducted a survey marketed towards teenagers in questions that could help the reader and myself better understand what goes through the average youth’s mind. To access my second blog post, you can click this link.

This blog is the final piece of my English class’ “You and The World” project. To conclude the segment, we had one last mission; become an Agent of Change. To become this ”Agent of Change” it was our sole duty to not only research and write about our important topic, but to help to better our issue. This is just us getting involved in our topic, trying to be of service in any way we can, any way that we can think of. For my Agent of Change part of the project, I chose to spread the word. Even though this blog is helping get the word about youth violence, it still isn’t enough. I needed to do something else, something greater than just this blog to spread the word. Around my neighborhood, I’ve been posting up papers and posters that support anti violence in youth. I’ve also spoke with my peers at my church on this topic.

I know it isn’t much, but it’s more than what somebody else didn’t do. By putting up posters and flyers, the word to help subdue youth violence will disseminate. First, through my neighborhood, then the city and from there, there’s no telling what could happen afterwards. There’s no telling how far my anti violence campaign will go. With that, the additional piece of my Agent of Change work was with my church group, where I briefly spoke on my You and The World project and youth violence itself. I hope that it was good enough to subordinate anyone that I spoke to to partake in youth aggression. Furthermore, I hope that the people I spoke with can follow in my footsteps to help spread an anti violence campaign in youth. I’m fraught with satisfaction based on what I’ve been doing. I feel as though everything that I do is serving a helping hand in detaching violence and aggression from teenagers.    

Other things are also being done to discontinue teenage violence as well. Various organizations and clubs have programs that help prevent youth violence as well. For example, the city of Philadelphia has conducted a project, located as a pdf here, designed to become a bulwark, stopping violent behavior from reaching youth beforehand. The plan is a multiple step project whose focal points are broken down into the categories of Education, Training and Employment, Meaningful Engagement, Health, Detention and Diversion and a Safe Environment. The city’s main idea is that by doing things to prepare them for the future, distract them from violence, and help promote safety, youth would more likely be prone to a nonviolent behavior. Furthermore, there are an array of clubs and programs that teens can join that influence a stray from violent behavior. One of those organizations being PAAN, the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network, which strives to help reduce the violence in youth.

Even though I did a lot of work, I still wish that some things were to be done differently. If I could change anything about my project, I would change how much I worked as an Agent of Change. I think that I could have done more to promote my issue to others. I could have scheduled more opportunities to speak about my topic to others and maybe helped out in an organization as a volunteer. Everything is okay though because I still think that no matter how much I didn’t do, I did enough.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who helped me while I was trying to do this project. I would like to thank my teacher, Mrs. Dunn, and my student teacher, Ms. Lucy, for assisting me and answering any questions I had about the project. I would also like to thank my old teacher, Mr. Crain for helping me to get more people interested in my issue. I would also like to thank everyone who’ve read my blogs and been keeping track of my issue.

Thank you!


Negative Space

photo 1
photo 1
photo
photo

Negative space is the space around the picture that defines it. It surrounds the positive or subject of the picture. I found the negative space in the cut out by outlining the actual picture or positive space of the image. In the stool drawing the negative space was everything that was not touching the table in the center of the room. When an artist sees in negative space it allows he/or she to define the picture and find delicate pieces on what we should concentrate on. Negative space is useful to an artist because it creates more definition to the image.


Joseph tartaglia capstone

http://jtartagli8.wix.com/crave-more

web link ^^^^

http://jtartagli8.wix.com/sciencebehindlaugh#!blank/c9y7


The reason i'm going to use this for my capstone is for understanding of comedy, i've created a way for just about everyone to understand the science behind laughter, and using this method will help us construct better story lines, scripts, and jokes, knowing the a secret to comedy really does improve you're way of thinking and you're understanding of what really makes us laugh. i created this system after a series of times studying the way i react to laughter.


gilly, richard. N.p., 24 08 2003. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://www.openculture.com/2009/10/ira_glass_on_the_art_of_story_telling.html >.


Now this is a source i'm going to use as an example to the people in the group, i'm going to show them the videos on the website and expand on the information on the videos with our own creative way of writing the stories, using our idea combined with this information on the site/video, will help us improve our way of story writing, because there are stories that are good and stories that are bad, and they are head to know sometimes (especially when you're the one writing it, sometimes you're ego gets in the way and you don't follow the structure, but that doesn't mean all stories have to be the same, all I'm trying to do with this info, is try to make the videos/films move with the story more and more perfectly as we create videos/films


http://www.imdb.com


(A website used to give information, nothing specific yet)


To give information about certain movies because this site gets really deep with actors, films, directors, producers, etc. anything to independent films to popular films, Imdb could gives us clips, photos of behind the scenes, and personal pictures that the actors/director puts on the site them self.


http://www.meetup.com/


(A site used to find people, no information but information on finding people with common interests)


could use this site to find people that are particularly good at one thing involving a movie and use them for that par, (probably going to switch out these types of people ever video, besides people in the main ILP) It's going to help by learning to work with different people, getting people inspired to do it, and make people feel creative changing the way their wired so they can be more confident within themselves.



Scottman, Ron. Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation. Las Angeles: independent, 1999. Print.


Although learning a script is important, it is more important if the actor feels natural saying it, saying the script exactly could make an actor nervous, but giving them the freedom to say what comes natural but get the point across, it can work, but not in all situations, but it's important if they can improv so this book is good with that.


Brigade, Upright. Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual. newyork: newyork times, 2004. Print.


I want to have this as another source of improv because this book has different methods and newer methods to add on to the truth in comedy but i believe that they are both equally important to the independent film group.


Straczynski, J. Michael . The Complete Book of Scriptwriting. Cleveland: penguin, 1997. Print.


This book will help me format a script better and it will show us all different types of writing we could do in that sense, i will also learn more about moving a story forward instead of having a bunch of pointless scenes i could have a really good steady flowing movie. so i don't have to cut out scenes after i shoot them i will just have all good scenes 


 Zemeckis Robert. Back to the future

Movie. 1985. Universal studios

 


I'm going to make everyone in the group watch back to the future because i believe that it's a perfect movies to the last detail, when it comes to imagery, and scriptwriting and story telling, it has all the elements of a perfect movie, and the group will watch it and i'll explain how the scenes are set up and how there are deeper meaning to great movies.


wilson, Jack. N.p., 4 11 2008. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~candace/basics/shooting.htm >.


I believe that this site will teach us the right shoots we should use in certain scenes wither its a close a medium or whatever, this site will inform us on the shots we could should and shouldn't use. as opposed to one shot scenes which won't make the movie interesting. and more theatrical. 


jake, shmitt. "information please camera shots." camera shots. N.p., 7 4 2011. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <Pearson Education>.



I believe it is very important that we get a better understanding on the sounds and audio parts of the editing process, the audio is very important, i could make, or break you're film, and if you are sloppy with it, no matter how good the camera shots are, all together the film will be bad, so we must study this more





Act I, Scene I (Ava, Des, Lauren, TJay)

There was a lot of essential material that we decided to keep, such as the main arguments of the characters. We basically left most of the things that did not include figurative language, because it wasn’t crucial to the plot. In addition to this, we decided to take out a lot of how the characters were feeling. We thought that since the characters express how they feel through what is happening, as well as the reader being able to imagine their emotions and how they feel for themselves make it easy to remove a lot of the spoken emotion.

We eliminated a lot of unnecessary banter. There was a lot of figurative language used, which we believed wasn’t necessary to get the main arguments of the characters across. Also, there were a few places where the characters were just going back and forth about the same things, so we thought it was just redundant, and removed it.

There is an officer who has only one line in the second scene. We kept him for a bit, but then we realized that we would have to add a separate character just to say one line that wasn’t that important, so we took him out of the scene. This is just about the only thing that we kept for so long because of being skeptical.


Des:

Brabantio: Brabantio is angry and upset because of his daughters decisions. He wants revenge. His rants and iambic pentameters have been taken out.


Cassio: Cassio plays a minor role in these scenes. He’s basically just fulfilling his role as Othello’s loyal ancient.


Lauren:

Iago: Iago is very mischievous and in playing him, I intend on being witty and sort of secretive but boastful. I am going to try to portray him as he was in the movie version that we all watched.


Ava:

Othello: Othello’s character isn’t really revealed yet, because he is very different in the beginning of the play. However, I plan to portray him as very powerful, but a tad arrogant because of his position.


ACT I

SCENE I. Venice. A street.

Enter RODERIGO and IAGO


RODERIGO

Iago, who hast had my purse

As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.

Thou told'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.


IAGO

In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,

I know my price, I am worth no worse a place:

But he; Evades them,

Horribly stuff'd with epithets of war;

for, 'Certes,' says he,

'I have already chose my officer.'

But he, sir, had the election:

this counter-caster,

He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,

And I--his Moorship's ancient.

Now, sir, be judge yourself,

To love the Moor.


RODERIGO

I would not follow him then.


IAGO

I follow him to serve my turn upon him:

We cannot all be masters, nor all masters

Cannot be truly follow'd.

In following him, I follow but myself;

not I for love and duty,

But seeming so, for my peculiar end:

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at:



RODERIGO

What a full fortune does the thicklips owe

If he can carry't thus!


IAGO

Call up her father,


RODERIGO

What, ho, Brabantio! Signior Brabantio, ho!


BRABANTIO appears above, at a window


BRABANTIO

What is the reason of this terrible summons?


RODERIGO

Signior, is all your family within?


BRABANTIO

Why, wherefore ask you this?


IAGO

'Zounds, sir

Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;

Even now an old black ram

Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise;


BRABANTIO

What, have you lost your wits?

This is Venice;

My house is not a grange.



IAGO

Because we come to

do you service and you think we are ruffians, you'll

have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse;


BRABANTIO

What profane wretch art thou?


IAGO

I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter

and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.


BRABANTIO

Thou art a villain.


RODERIGO

your fair daughter,

At this odd-even and dull watch o' the night,

We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs;

If she be in her chamber or your house,

Let loose on me the justice of the state

For thus deluding you.


BRABANTIO

Strike on the tinder, ho!

This accident is not unlike my dream:

Belief of it oppresses me already.


Exit above


IAGO

Farewell; It seems not meet, nor wholesome to my place,

To be produced

Against the Moor: for, I do know, the state,

However this may gall him with some cheque,

Cannot with safety cast him, for he's embark'd

To lead their business: in which regard,

Though I do hate him as I do hell-pains.

Yet, for necessity of present life,

I must show out a flag and sign of love,

So, farewell.


Exit

Enter, below, BRABANTIO, and Servants with torches


BRABANTIO

It is too true an evil: gone she is;

And what's to come of my despised time

Roderigo,

Where didst thou see her? Are they married, think you?


RODERIGO

Truly, I think they are.


BRABANTIO

O heaven! How got she out? O treason of the blood!

Call up my brother.

Do you know

Where we may apprehend her and the Moor?


RODERIGO

I think I can discover him, if you please,

To get good guard and go along with me.


BRABANTIO

Get weapons, ho!

And raise some special officers of night.

On, good Roderigo: I'll deserve your pains.


Exeunt

SCENE II. Another street.

Enter OTHELLO, IAGO, and Attendants with torches


IAGO

I hold it very stuff o' the conscience

To do no contrived murder: I lack iniquity

Sometimes to do me service

I had thought to have yerk'd him here under the ribs.


OTHELLO

'Tis better as it is.


IAGO

Nay, but he prated,

And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms

Against your honour

And hath in his effect a voice potential

As double as the duke's: he will divorce you;

Or put upon you

The law, with all his might to enforce it on,

Will give him cable.


OTHELLO

Let him do his spite:

My services

Shall out-tongue his complaints.

But that I love the gentle Desdemona,

I would not

Put into circumscription and confine

For the sea's worth. But, look! What lights come yond?


IAGO

Those are the raised father and his friends:

You were best go in.


OTHELLO

Not I, I must be found:

my title and my perfect soul

Shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?


IAGO

By Janus, I think no.

Enter CASSIO, and certain Officers with torches


OTHELLO

What is the news?


CASSIO

The duke requires your haste-post-haste appearance,

When, being not at your lodging to be found,

The senate hath sent

To search you out.


OTHELLO

'Tis well I am found by you.

I will but spend a word here in the house,

And go with you.

Exit


CASSIO

Ancient, what makes he here?


IAGO

'Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carack:

If it prove lawful prize, he's made for ever.

It is Brabantio.

He comes to bad intent.


Enter BRABANTIO, RODERIGO, and Officers with torches and weapons


OTHELLO

Holla! Stand there!


RODERIGO

Signior, it is the Moor.


BRABANTIO

Down with him, thief!

They draw on both sides


IAGO

You, Roderigo! Come, sir, I am for you.


OTHELLO

Good signior, you shall more command with years

Than with your weapons.


BRABANTIO

Where hast thou stow'd my daughter?

Thou hast enchanted her;

That thou hast practised on her with foul charms,

That weaken motion

I do attach thee

For an abuser of the world

Lay hold upon him: if he do resist,

Subdue him at his peril.


OTHELLO

How may the duke be therewith satisfied,

Whose messengers are here about my side,

Upon some present business of the state

To bring me to him?


BRABANTIO

The duke in council!

Bring him away:

Mine's not an idle cause: the duke himself,

Cannot but feel this wrong as 'twere their own;


Exeunt


The Sickle Cell Anemia Disease Blog #3

Hello, It’s Dejah and i'm back to speak upon Sickle Cell anemia. This is my third and final blog on this topic. In my first blog i mainly focused on the background of Sickle Cell Anemia. I told how it was caused, etc. Here is the link… https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1CHCZss-APVTyRxaYsB_MuX4-mFhxE0ZrwazFj9pZTxc
In my second post I used original research instead of things found online, in books, ext. I interviewed different places and people who had knowledge on the disease or work with this disease.  Here is the link…  https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1EHTMZd_zmlYV3LrFo0u_7KyO8K3-bLZYAF1ilRgKnhw/edit
As for this blog I would to address the different that are being done to try to help Sickle Anemia and some things that I will be doing to help fight against this disease. Also I will tell how these blogs has helped me learn more on the topic and how I feel about this project. 
At this time stronger medications are trying to be invented to help with the cure of this disease. Also, there are foundations all over the world that donate funds to help make and test these medications. Support groups are also a big thing that helps with the victims of Sickle Cell Anemia. In September of every year there is a walk that supports this disease; Which ties in with my agent of change. 
I have not been able to do my agent of change because I will gather a group of people this upcoming September and go participate in the walk against Sickle Cell Anemia. I think this walk is a great way to show people that there are others that care and are supporting them.
When I first started this project I was not really passionate about my topic. I did not think this was going to be my topic the rest of the year. But as I started my research I became very engaged with the topic. There are a lot of people with this disease and it is sad to have to deal with the side effects that come along with it. The part really stuck out to me is there are a lot of people who does not have any knowledge on the disease. Yes, I know there are people who take it seriously but I don’t think enough people do. You hear a lot about cancer and STD’s, don’t get me wrong those are important things to know about; But nothing about Sickle Cell Anemia. Which is just as important as the other two. This project has bought something to my eyes that I never though to even think about before. I am happy that we had the chance do this because it helps you look at things differently. Also, it pushes you to be more active in the world. 
Yes I am happy with the effort and work I put towards this project but there is one big thing I could have done differently. I should have added more to my agent of change. Now that I am thinking I should have started a walk just for my school. And make that annual at my school. Also, I could have done more research on the medications they are tying to make to help Sickle Cell Anemia. 

Joshua Melendez Capstone


   
Abstract

For my capstone I decided to do it on Poetry and Coaching the SLA poetry team. I helped coach them in the PYPM SLAM LEAGUE competition, which incorporates a lot of high school teams and even some elementary school teams from all over Philadelphia. The PYPM SLAM LEAGUE is an intellectual friendly competition. The main point of this competition was for students to meet new people and help youth discover the power of their voices. Personally I think poetry is a great thing that helps kids bloom into leaders and is a positive thing that could change lives. 
     This topic fits into my area of interest because poetry was something I have been doing on my free time. I’ve been writing since seventh grade and started competing in poetry competitions since my freshmen year of high school. Poetry also relates to my life goals in a way because poetry is something I want to keep doing and want to teach to others. I feel as though poetry can benefit someone in so many different ways and is a fantastic art form to help people to express themselves in a positive way. 

Link to Capstone: http://sla-poetry-team.weebly.com/

        Annotated Bibliography:

"Ancient Scripts: Origins of Writing Systems." Ancient Scripts: Origins of Writing Systems. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_origins.html>.

This site talks about the origins of writing and its mythical origins. Also that it was created in Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica. It also talks about how writing is view today in modern society and peoples views on it.


Farrell, Rachel, © CareerBuilder.com 2011. All Rights Reserved. The Information Contained in This Article May Not Be Published, and Broadcast or Otherwise Distributed without the Prior Written Authority. "23 Traits of Good Leaders."CNN. Cable News Network, 03 Aug. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/08/03/good.leader.traits.cb/>.

This site talks about how there are 23 traits that make a good leader. Also that when a team has a good lead the team tends to excel pretty well and that a leader has a major impact on the team as a whole. So being a leader is key to having a good team.


"Fun Activities for Team Building for Teens to Get to Know One Another." Everyday Life. Dr. Kelly S. Meier, n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/fun-activities-team-building-teens-one-another-33111.html>.

This site talks about how team building is the best way to get a team together. It has specific examples on how people can play certain games that make kids laugh and have a good time and build trust between the kids. Also that celebrating things the kids have in common is something that tends to work efficiently.


"History of Writing." History of Writing. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm>.

This site talks about the origins of writing and how it evolved over time. It also address the fact that writing was something that was created after language. It also talks about it went from drawings to paintings, to carved in rocks, then letters.


"Related Materials." Team Building Activities, Ideas, Games, Business Games and Exercises for Team Building, Learning Organizations Development,training, Management, Motivation, Kids Activities and Children's Party Games. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://www.businessballs.com/freeteambuildingactivities.htm>.

This site talks about how icebreakers with team building is very good to establish a relationship between teens who don't know one another. Also that interactions and amusement and fun is a great way to bring a team together.


"Team-Building Exercises." - Team Management Training from MindTools.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. <http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_52.htm>.

This site talks about team building activities that actually work. It talks about ways to improve communication between people. Thus making the team a better and affective team. This site also gives me a good demonstrate or conduct games that build on trust and communication.


"Team Building Activities For Kids." Team Building Activities HQ RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://teambuildingactivitieshq.com/team-building-activities-for-kids/>.

This site talks about how icebreakers are a good way to get team mates to know one each other. Also that creating a place of safety fro each kid leads to the kid being productive and making the space a bit more friendly.


"Team Building Activities Guide." Team Building Activities Guide. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://www.teambuildingactivitiesguide.com/>.

This site helps people to find out what is team building and defining what it really is and why it is a major factor to a successful team. It also talks about how team building is used eery where. From small schools to big business.


"Team Building Exercises." Team Building Activities HQ RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. <http://teambuildingactivitieshq.com/team-building-exercises/>.

This site talks about three key team building activities. One is designed for kids and school environments. The other is designed for people at work and to bring workers together and creating a better work environment. The last one is about how to bring a sports team together. All three of these are good was of making a better and stronger team with communication and collaboration.


"What Is “Leadership” and What Makes a Good Leader? | Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute." Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2014. <http://www.siyli.org/what-is-leadership-what-makes-good-leader/>.

This site defines what leadership is and what makes a good leader overall. I also talks about how great leadership in business its what makes a corporate exceed and how a good leader could turn something really bad into something magnificent. Also that great leaders usually have good Emotional leadership.


Jonathan Spencer Capstone

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For my Capstone I worked with another student, Khari Evans in order to make a bionic arm at first. We quickly realized how impractical that was and rethought our Capstone. That was when we thought about designing something that didn't necessarily have to be attached directly to an arm but could be mounted to someone's back or to the side of a wheelchair. We quickly realized that we could accomplish this with a combination of simple machines. The top part is a lever, then there are two different systems of pulleys attached to it. There is also a set of springs attached near the bottom which act as a form of shock absorption. 

Throughout this Capstone I have learned a lot about a series of different simple machines and the roles they play alone and when together with a combination of other things they can be used to create more complex inventions. The arm can turn a 100 pound load into 7 pounds of effort on the user. This is simply a proof a concept that expresses how me an Khari Evans were able to work together and how a series of simple machines each played a role in the system. The final product was however a little bit of a disappointment because the base that the Mechanical Advantage Arm is attached to isn't the best of metals and bent easily after running a couple of tests to see what the max the arm was able to pick up. 
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Click --> HERE <-- for Annotated Bibligraphy

Martez Card Capstone

Abstract

For this final project here I wanted to do something that most people wouldn't dare do and something that will forever be remembered. Nuri and I ended up doing this capstone because at first we made a joke out of it but then people doubted us and thats when our pride made us want to end up doing the project and we also thought it would be very fun. So we decided that we would go out and get a first hand experience of the life of the homeless and record it for everyone to have proof that we actually did it. This capstone has opened my eyes to how cruel this world can be and how easily it is to have everything taken from you. it has opened my eyes to make me want to strive and do better so I never end up like this. 

Bibliography


1.  "Alpha Project: Where Miracles Happen!" Alpha Project Catalog Products RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. http://www.alphaproject.org/


This source is about an non profit organization who make it their duty to help the homeless and people who are in need. They also have basic homeless emergency service and they help anyone in need and provide housing and food. They help if you have a serious problem at home or something is wrong with your health and you really need help.



2.  "Building hope for today’s homeless ." Top Causes of Homelessness in America. Homeaid inc.. Web. 30 Jan 2014. http://www.homeaid.org/HomeAid-Stories/69/top-causes-of-homelessness


This source helped me because it gives information about what tends to cause homelessness. It also says the there are about 3.5 homeless Americans each year and that about a million of them are children. This also has helped me because it gives me ideas for the type of questions to ask the homeless people that I interview and also the people that work at the homeless shelters just to see if they are aware of these things.


3. "City of Philadelphia." Office of emergency shelter & services. City Of Philadelphia . Web. 28 Jan 2014.  http://www.phila.gov/services/emergency/index.html


This source helped me for this project because it gave me information in order to be able contact people in the city who are in some way involved with homeless shelters. I can use the contact information that I as given to find out who is the person I will need to talk to in order to continue on with work in this capstone.


4. ”Homeless Health Concerns.” Homeless Health Concerns. National Institutes of Health, 11 12 2013. Web. 30 Jan 2014. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/homelesshealthconcerns.html


This source talks about the health concerns for the homeless and lets you know that some people being homeless was caused from health issues. It also tells you some of the main health issues that the homeless have and that tend to be obtained from being homeless. It also talks about the dangers of being a homeless women and how they tend to be victims of domestic and sexual abuse.



5.   "Philadelphia Pennsylvania Homeless Shelters & Services For The Needy." Philadelphia Homeless Shelters & Services For The Needy. Helping the needy Philadelphia Homeless Shelters & Services For The Needy. Web. 30 Jan 2014. http://www.homelessshelterdirectory.org/cgi-bin/id/city.cgi?city=Philadelphia&state=PA


This source helped me because it gave me many different locations and phone number to many different homeless shelters in Philadelphia and New Jersey. I now know where all of the homeless shelters in Philadelphia are located and the phone numbers in order to contact them to be allowed to come and interview people.



6. Prois, Jessica. "Philadelphia Homeless Feeding Ban Officially Blocked By Judge." . N.p., 14 Aug 2012. Web. 30 Jan 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/philadelphia-homeless-feeding-ban_n_1773438.html


This source talks about the attempt for philadelphia to ban the feeding of the homeless. The judge blocked this ban even though the Mayor had some reasons that could possibly make a good case for this to have happened. The mayor talks about how the homeless need other things than just food and this is why he tried to put the food ban into action.



7.  "Project HOME - Ending Homelessness in Philadelphia." Project HOME - Ending Homelessness in Philadelphia. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.  http://www.projecthome.org/


This source gives you an overall view of the project home and the different things that it helps the homeless with. It shows you the way that they help the homeless children get their education it shows the time of job opportunities that they offer to people to help out the homeless and it also shows the different kinds of housing and medical care.



8.  "The State of Homelessness in America 2013." National Alliance to End Homelessness:. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2014. http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/the-state-of-homelessness-2013


This source talks about the economic issues that are found with homelessness and also the change in the amount of homeless people who are out here on the streets due to something happening in their life. It shows the change from 2011-2012 and begins to talk about 2013. It also says that homelessness is caused due to the fact in which people have the inability to pay for housing due to the income made by everyone in the house. The income made per household is also dropping.  


9. "Watch Full-Length Documentaries Online for Free. Updated Daily." DocumentaryTubecom Watch Documentaries Online for Free RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. http://www.documentarytube.com/amateur-documentary-film-making-tips/


This source gives tips on things that you should do to create a good documentary and things you can do to catch and keep peoples attention. This gives tips on how to make a documentary as if you are a professional filmmaker and with these tips it will be easy to make a very good documentary that everyone will love to see.  


10. "5 Simple Mistakes Documentary Filmmakers Make." Raindance Film Festival. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014. http://www.raindance.org/5-simple-mistakes-documentary-filmmakers-make


This source talks about the things that people do when making/filming a documentary. This will help me as I go along with the recording process and when I am in the editing stage to make sure to avoid doing these 5 things that tend to make documentaries bad.


Website Link: http://amazingfilm.weebly.com/


Keyaira Doughty Capstone

Topic: Philanthropy: Youthadelphia
Mentor: Hull

Project Abstract: For my capstone I am going to work with the Philadelphia Foundation’s Youthadelphia program and help donate money to Youth-led and Youth empowered programs in Philadelphia. I will work with a faculty of other teams sitting down and discussing different issues affecting the teens in our communities and help fund programs that our helping to reduce those issue. At the end of the program we get to have a big ceremony and reward those programs with a big check and thank them for all they are doing for the people in our community.

I intend to gain more experience working with in a business setting with others collaborating on new ideas and topics revolve around my community. I intend to learn how to gain more experience with dealing with a great amount of responsibility in the workplace because when you’re working in a career you have to learn how to be a team and allow yourself to count on other people and share the responsibility.



Annotated Bibliography:

  Annotated Bibliography


"The World's Biggest Givers." The Richest . N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan 2014. <http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-lifestyle/giveaway/the-worlds-biggest-givers/>.


This website talks about different philanthropist who have given billions of dollars to different foundations and different causes all throughout the world. These causes range from scholarships for high school scholars, youth sports, cancer treatment, healing diseases, homeless shelters, single parents studies, vision impaired youth, entrepreneurs and etc. This website has helped me a lot with understanding why some philanthropist have decided to give their money and what types of causes a lot of people are for supporting.


"High impact Philanthropy." Boston Foundation. The Boston Foundation, n.d. Web. 31 Jan 2014. <http://www.bostonfoundation.org/Content.aspx?ID=14400>.


This website comes from the Boston Foundation and talks about specific necessities needed to make a philanthropic organization successful. One of the main things they talked about is that you do not need millions of dollars to have an high impact on people and or a cause. Instead of worrying about how much money you want to give you need to think about the time commitment, energy, and being actively involved in the cause. Giving money makes you a philanthropist but giving money while being an active participate in the process of bettering a cause makes you a great philanthropist.  



Lotha, Gloria. "Philanthropic Foundation." Britiannica. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/455867/philanthropic-foundation>.


This website gives insight on what a philanthropic foundation is and all that consist in beginning one. This website also taught me about the history of philanthropy and how the amount of money has increased dramatically over the years. Hundreds of years ago philanthropic organization were usually small and donated a small amount of money to only local and palliative purposes. The first huge amount of money donated to a specific cause was by Andrew Carnegie which was worth $350 million and was used to establish The Carnegie Foundation. Years laters researches have found out that most funds were for activities in the fields of education, social welfare, science, health, religion, conservation, international relations, and public policy.


Walker, Paul. ROWW. Reach Out Worldwide, n.d. Web. 31 Jan 2014. <https://www.roww.org/about_us.php>.


Reach Out Worldwide is a non-profit organization founded by the late Paul Walker. He first created this website after helping respond to the massive earthquakes in Haiti on January 12, 2010. Paul Walker believed that there was a huge and disturbing gap between the availability skilled volunteers and resources in post disaster situations. So he partnered up with STIHL to devote helping victims of natural disasters and making sure that they get access to skillful workers and paramedics to help and support them through a very difficult time. He provides project management, logistics, heavy equipment operation, firefighting, EMT, paramedics, healthcare, and etc and takes the time to go out and physically help build homes and help heal the sick. This website has taught me that some philanthropist who create non-profit organization do not just sit back and give out money but become active participates in fighting for the cause.



"Becoming a Philanthropist 5: steps." Huffingtonpost. N.p.. Web. 31 Jan 2014. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/10/becoming-a-philanthropist_n_1507361.html>.


This website talks about the quick and easy steps to become a successful philanthropist. They talk about how in order to truly be successful you must be passionate in the cause you are trying to fund and don’t worry about just trying to give a check. This website is more uplifting and empower them to become great contributors. They talked about getting your issue known to lots of people and get them to understand why this is so important.

"How to be an inspired to Philanthropist." About. N.p.. Web. 31 Jan 2014. < http://nonprofit.about.com/od/fordonors/fr/inspiredphilant_2.htm>.


This website talks about what it takes to become an inspiring philanthropist. It gives you the tips of what you need to help improve your leadership skills, helping to find a certain role that you can fit into in the non-profit, knowing that this is a time commitment, that you should join a board and etc. This website was just like a few others I saw that were created to inspire, and educate how to become a successful philanthropist.

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2014-05-29 18.03.35

Abstract & bibliography

http://pleasantcapstone.weebly.com- Link to my capstone


Tyanna Pleasant


Ms.Menasion


Mr.Ameen, Sayre Morris Recreation Center


Topic Summary:

The goal of this project was to develop skills that best helps elementary school aged children study better.


Project Abstract:

My capstone is designed to help children in my community better their academic skills and for me to gain teaching experience. I always loved children since elementary school, and I love to see them academically improving themselves and they progress to the next grade and eventually get to where I am. The best people to influence these young children are teenagers, because we are not too far from them in age, and we are not bossy and intimidating to them as adults are. This gave me the idea of helping children develop the skills that I had as an elementary school child. During this process I learned that each child has a different way of better understanding material. So I decided to create a test with english and math questions on it to give to them. The children who did not do so well were the children that I will focus my project on. I helped them study using the methods I came up with that best work for children and practiced it on them. To help guide me, I studied a psychologist named Jean Piaget, who came up with a theory on cognitive learning. I gave them the test again and who ever passed showed me that my methods and how I taught them worked. This capstone has given me a better understanding of cognitive learning and efficient way to teach something to a child and make it stick.


  • Ashman, A. F., and Robert N. F. Conway. An Introduction To Cognitive Education : Theory And Applications. London: Routledge, 2002. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 29 Jan. 2014.


This ebook is a source I found on EBSCO. Its about cognitive education by Adrian Ashman and Robert Conway. I read the section about memory and learned that in order to best understand the way cognitive development is learned, you must understand memory and how the brain allows people to learn. Without memory a person cannot learn “... if there is no memory, there can be no learning and without learning memory is an empty storehouse.” It also shows diagrams of how memory works by comparing it to holograms. This is different than my other sources because it is a book written by two professors of a psychology field and it is about memory while the other sources are about Jean Piaget and his theory. I believe the goal of this source is to help others learn more about cognitive development and to help parents and teachers understand how to help their children and others when teaching them something new. This source was very helpful to me, it made me think deeper into my capstone project. Especially when developing my tips for the children. I know more about memory and how to enhance a person’s learning ability. It hasn’t really changed much about what I think of my project. It made me think deeper into what i'm really trying to accomplish which is making effective study skills for elementary school aged children.



This site is about Piaget’s cognitive stages of development. It goes more into details about what each stage of his theory says. It also says that Piaget acknowledged the children who did not go through this process accordingly because of other mental problems. The ages he has for each stage is the average ages of children he tested. I do think that this is a useful source, because it is not a blog, or a made up website. I think that website is reliable because it has who its by and when I search it the same information this website did. This website is different than the other I used because it elaborate more on the theory and what exactly does each stage of his theory is about. I think that it achieved its goal of informing others on Piaget’s theory. This information helped me think about how I am going to structure the test and teach the children my tips for better studying. Should I teach them visually, by writing on the board, or tell them something and make them repeat it?



This website helped me better understand how to write an annotated bibliography. It has a lot of information on grammar questions, annotations, bibliographies, and many other issues or questions someone may have about english, or things you should know how to do when writing a paper. It teaches students to split it up into three categories summary, assess, and reflection. Each section has guided questions based on what the section is about. This site is very reliable, a lot of schools and teachers recommend it and they use it to show their students. I think that this source is objective, it is educational and explains the correct way to write papers and other help other with grammar issues. This source helped me write my annotated bibliography. I answered most of the questions in each section as it pertain to each source in all of my annotations.



This video is about a psychologist who focuses on motivation and young children. This video explains her theory, that when you congratulate children on their success they will be more motivated to do it again and move on to harder challenges. When you do not congratulate them, they will either want to try it again or stick with what is easier for them. She studies the correct way to congratulate children because the way you congratulate them could have a positive effect or a negative effect on them. This source is useful because it gives me a visual explanation of who she is and what she does. It tells all about her theory and how she came to them from the tests she did. It helped me think more about how to keep the children motivated and wanted to learn more in order to keep them interested in what I am showing them. I learned the proper way to congratulate a child when they have done something right to make them want to do it again or move on to something harder.



This website was about the different theories made by psychologists about child development. It has the different theories and who they are by plus a link at the end about the theorist. This website helped me determine which theory I wanted to focus on because focusing on just child development was too broad. After reading the theory made by Jean Piaget, about cognitive learning, I became more interested and wanted to know more. I do think that this source is reliable because it is not opinionated. The goal of this source was to inform others on the different categories of child development and the theories that famous psychologists came up with that are also being used. This was helpful to me, it helped me determine what I wanted to do my capstone project on.



This website talks about what cognitive learning is and how do we learn. We learn cognitive by experience something, processing it, and remembering it. This source is based on something that I must know in order to complete by capstone. I think that I should know what cognitive learning is, and this website gave me a lot of information about it. I think that it is reliable because it isn’t made of others opinions, and it has facts that I can look up and confirm. This fits into my capstone by allowing me to have the ability to better explain what cognitive learning is. I will be able to inform others about how memory is a big part of cognitive learning, and it enables us to communicate with each other, and understand what others are talking about.


This video is a documentary about Jean Piaget and he theory. It shows actual clips of him testing his theories on children of different ages, from infants to teenagers. It gives an overview of his life from when he was a young child till his death. This is reliable because the man who made the video knew him personally, and he had actual evidence of Piaget working on his theory. I think the goal of this source was to inform an audience on who Jean Piaget was, and to show how his theory came to be. This source helped me in my capstone by better understanding his theory so that I could give the audience more about him and have the ability to answer any questions about how he came up with his theory and what made him interested in it.

This website is about what a student teacher learned while teaching at an elementary school. I will use these eight skills she learned when teaching the children at Sayre. It says that each student is different and they each have different potential. As a teacher you must push them to do the best they can. This source is credible because I know where and who the information is coming from, it also has other link to topics similar to it and it is coming from a personal experience. I will use this in my capstone by have a slide that will include how to explain things to some students and to remind my audience that each child is different and they do not think in the same way the teacher does so things may seem harder to them than they actually are. This source was very useful when learning how to make connections with the students to get them to better cooperate.



This website is about mindset and how Carol Dweck tested her theory with blocks. It introduces what a “fixed” mindset and a “growth mindset” is. Also how “gifted” children could avoid challenges because they are afraid of losing their status. This is a great source, it goes into more detail about Carol Dweck’s theory. It gave me more of an open mind about what else I should know when doing my capstone. This is different than the other sources in my bibliography because it is based on the mindset of humans. Also it talks about how the environment and the way a child is treated while growing up either gives them a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. This fits into my capstone by allowing me to better explain to other what is the difference between telling a child good feedback that will allow them to have a growth mindset, and feedback that will leave a child with their fixed mindset. It helped me think about how I should refrain the praises I say when they get something right or understand what I am teaching them.


This website is a biography of Jean Piaget, and it explains every theory he ever had, about developmental psychology each of them based on cognitive child development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities. It also informs us that before Piaget’s theory, children were just people with less sense and ability. No one really thought about how and why children act the way they did. Piaget showed that children have a completely different mindset than adults. This source was very useful, it also helped me realize that children really do not think the way adults do, which makes me start thinking about the brian development of children. I think I should further my research and look at the brain of children and adults and compare them.