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Timor-Leste Election Project
The principal said she could not ask her students to interview people on election day because there was a possibility of violence.
After that, we sent an email to the Timor-Leste ambassador to the US.
Unfortunately, he never replied to us.
Then I remembered using a site called rafi.ki in freshman year to contact foreign students. We went to Mr. Sherif and got the login information we needed to go on Rafi.ki.
Unfortunately, we couldn't find anyone from Timor-Leste on the site.
We also started looking on Twitter, but didn't find much.
Then I found another international school in Timor-Leste, so I sent one of their teachers an email.
The teacher replied, explaining that the students might be too busy but he'd give me their email addresses anyway.
I sent the students emails.
Rita also sent out emails to students.
ROne student replied to Rita, but it turned out she hadn't actually gone out on election day or spoken to anyone about it.
You, and The World
English Journal #25
I think that finding your voice comes from living life and see things differently. Everyone has a story and every story gets told. I feel like finding your voice is saying what you feel and saying what you know. And when you find your voice you can do that.
English Journal #14
I want to write about life and how nothing goes as planned. How a tool for learning turns into your worst nightmare. I want to write about me. And how no matter what great feats I get to I give myself no credit. No matter what feats or falls. I want to write about writing and how long it takes. How it cramps my hand and opens my eyes. How it all ways knows the right words. It lets me shed my pain. I wan to write about you. And how I never thought I deserved you and how you are to good for me. I want to write about the ocean and how I have missed it. How being in the vast body of water makes me feel but you never have a pen when you’re in the moment. I want to write moments and how they never last.
English Journal #7
The sun is up. Its warm but the wind is blowing part me the colors of yellow, orange, and brown dancing through my mind as I sit here. It’s as interpretive dance. The colors are dancers and they are chasing the red-hot sun blue ocean and yellow lemonade away bring the color of baked leafs and sawn costumes. I watched as the wind directed around me. One step two step three step four. They all seemed to go along with flow and the wind carried all their troubles. Wondering aimlessly around, looking for a new journey. The song stuck in my mind. It didn’t have lyrics but a melody for ballerinas, peaceful, delicate, and beautiful. The sun inform of haze that surrounded orange, brown and red leaves. Such wonderful colors that comes once a year. It’s so much more beautiful then the crystals of snow, because these colors aren’t just on the floor but every everywhere. Fall is very beautiful and that is what I love.
History Journal #41
How do Ibo gender roles compare to gender roles in our society
-Woman has a say in discussions
-Women can work
-Women are considered impatient
-Women are responsible for themselves
-Women are more respected
-Women are not sold off to men
-Women don’t have to take care of men
-Women are independent
English Journal #25
Finding your voice is where you don’t care about anyone opinions and just say what you honestly feel or think
-Honestly telling your story/speaking honestly
-Realize who you are
-Finding peace with oneself
-Happy place
-Learning to express
-Not caring about other people thoughts
-Not being taken advantage of
Janie finds her voice when she loses her husband. She doesn’t’ have a man physically abusing her anytime she wants to speak her mind. No one in the world to tell her if she is wrong or right. She finally learns to think and love herself for who she is. But losing her husband was the best and worst time of her life. But she was taught one lesson throughout all losses, She need to love herself before any man loves her.
English Journal #15
I want to write about food…
After Simon Death…
-Simon dead
-One less person in the group
-They still think the Beasty is there
-They are murders but they try to justify what they did.
-Jack steals Piggy glasses
-Groups are divided
Beneath the Skin & Skull of Hydrocephalus in Sub-Saharan Africa (Blog #2)
20 new cases of Hydrocephalus come into the CURE hospital of Uganda everyday. Doctors measure the heads of the patients to get an idea of how far the infant has developed within the sickness. 5 centimeters. 6 centimeters. 7. 8. 9. How much more must the head grow for the world to realize how much of a major issue this epidemic has become?
After I released Blog 1, I got lots of questions from my classmates asking how Hydrocephalus actually the head of the infant besides the obvious growing of the head. What is going on beneath the skin?
The fact of the matter is is that Hydrocephalus IS curable...with the right procedure. There are usually two options when it comes to surgery and treatment of the infants in sub-Saharan Africa. Endoscopic is the first option. Endoscopic is when a camera is inserted into an incision at the most swollen part of the head. Then as the endoscope travels deeper and deeper, the doctor will slowly puncture a hole in the chambers that are holding the water to drain the fluid naturally. If the endoscopic procedure fails, then the neurosurgeon moves onto a move traditional treatment of placing in a catheter from the head to the abdomen to drain the "water" in the brain.
Both procedures are very tedious. But multiple studies have shown that the endoscopic treatment, performed in both developed and developing countries, have a lower success rate in developing countries. There are many variables to why this maybe. What is thought to be the leading cause is neonatal infections. This is also the leading cause of Hydrocephalus itself.
In the next blog, action is going to be taken.
Now read Blog #3!
Bibliography if needed.
Immigrant Rights Part 3: Change
My final blog post is about change. The Post For Change is the last of the trio of blogs for the You And The World Project. In my first blog I talked about the DREAM act and it’s impact on many students and the country. I talked about how helpful it would be to the eager students who want to become part of America and their first step being getting an education. In the second blog post I focused on the youth group Fuerza and it’s several Latino members. I talked about our mission and the things we do in our struggle for equality and immigrant rights.
With the first two blogs being informational posts I was able to introduce my topic to several people. Although bringing awareness is part of the mission of gaining immigrant rights in our country, there is much more that can be done.
One of my first steps was joining Fuerza in order to better educate myself in the controversial topic of immigrant rights. Through this organization I will be doing several things including going into the streets of Philly in order to get signatures for petitions, or maybe even participating in protests such as the one on May 7th. This group is a great opportunity to become a young activist in the movement towards equality and rights for immigrants. A second step I took was posting a formal petition through Facebook, in order to get enough signatures to urge our representatives and legislators to vote against the anti-immigration laws. I also recently sent the email to the 9th grade streams. My final phase for change will be to e-mail the Senator of my district of Philadelphia, Sen. Shirley M. Kitchen. She is the representative in the Senate for my district (District 3) of Philadelphia. I met her on a previous occasion in 8th grade and along with other members of the school government. I was able to remember her, and I made a plan to send her a proper e-mail stating my point of view on my topic and how I would like her to help.
You and the World Blog Post #3
Many groups have been formed to help educate their communities about the issue, including one in my school (the Gay-Straight Alliance, or GSA for short).
Community members have written letters to their governors to educate the governors on why they should legalize gay marriage.
Recently, the daughter of Raul Castro (Mariela Castro, a sexologist) helped organize a gay rights march, and Raul Castro openly supported the march.
I have chosen to bring awareness to the topic of homosexuality in general by giving out 5” by 4” stickers with a design titled “I support gay rights.”
This design will be placed onto a 5” by 4” rectangular sticker and given out to students in SLA.
My dad has been working in the printing business for more than twenty years, and has helped me out with school projects in the past.
I made the design for the sticker and sent it to my dad. He printed 100 stickers with that design on it, and I handed them out to students at my school.
Prior to handing them out, I had very high expectations about how the students would run with the idea and the materials.
The students put them on many of their belongings, like their laptop cases, backpacks, even books and binders.
I think the stickers were a great success. So do other people. I talked to some of my friends about the idea of having the “I support gay rights” sticker, and here is one of my friends said about the idea:
“I think the stickers were a great idea. Publicly displaying your support for gay rights could help relieve a gay person of their stress, because they know that someone supports them.” - Ray Albarouki, SLA 9th Grader.
To conclude my blog, I would like to thank my english teacher, Ms. Dunn, for helping me out tons with my blog posts, our student assistant teacher Emma Hersh for giving me lots of great advice to enhance my blogs, and my dad for helping me print out my stickers.
I’d also like to thank you the readers for taking the time to educate yourself with the research that I have uncovered. Thank you so much. To see where I got all of my research, my bibliography is here. All three blog posts are included in the bibliography.
Artist's Statement Q4 - Breeanna Noi
My first piece of art was just a piece when I was dabbling into landscapes (as listed in the course). I felt like it would have been nice to try what was recommended, first. Landscapes were interesting, but I am very particular about how I emphasize certain part of a picture.
My next sketch was just a bunch of aztec patterns in one. I've never drawn a whole sheet of just patterns alone, so it was something new for me to try. I guess this was the part when I was indecisive on what I was going to work on, so a bunch of lines and doodles was a great break rather than trying to be very precise with certain textures and areas.
My third sketch was the beginning of my typography. What better way to try something new than to start with the basics? My first step was sticking around in Google Images and finding different font styles to sketch up. When I finished my alphabet, I went on to look at different sentences and I worked on different styles of words to get a better view on the art of typography.
My fifth sketch led me to incorporate the things I've done in my previous work to sketch my name. I used very simple block letters, but I went back to different patterns in my name like I did in my second artwork.
Last, but no least, I wanted to Google a work of typography where the word related to the picture. I, like everyone else in the world, love bacon. So I tried to make a bacon face while I wrote bacon in a bacon-y looking style.
Human Trafficking- Modern Day Slavery #3 (The Change)
So far in my research, I’ve noticed that there are many campaigns working hard to raise awareness about the issue of human trafficking. A lot of them are actively working to rescue trafficking victims on a daily basis. It’s incredibly wonderful that there are already so many people working hard to end human trafficking across the globe. However, the problem still remains that they can only help people, if other people know the issue and what’s going on.
This being our final post about our topics, it’s time to help make a difference. I think the first step to ending human trafficking is informing people on what it is, and how big of an issue it is. To do this, there are several steps to take. Two organizations that are actively working to end Human Trafficking have released documentaries on their work. I will be hosting a showing of these documentaries, and informing people on the issue of human trafficking. After showing the documentary, there will be a short panel of discussion about the topics shown in the film. This will take place shortly after the school year ends, and will include people from a variety of age groups, from all around the city.
I did an informal survey, which I mentioned briefly last week in my second post. Here is the data that I collected:
The first step to change, is AWARENESS.
In order to raise awareness of the issue of Human Trafficking, I decided to make a flyer-type thing that essentially just states the main issue. I will be posting this picture on my facebook page, tumblr, and twitter account. It's really just to get the word out that human trafficking is an issue, and if people have any questions they can ask me about them.
English Journal #41: Write a letter to someone that you'd never send
Dear Warren
Pop Grandfather
Stranger,
It’s a shame when I have to cross out such personal/ informal names, but what am I supposed to write? I don’t know you; you don’t know me. You don’t fit under those crossed out nicknames because those names are based on love, family, memories, and all the things you’re not. Did you really think that you could just step into my life after 15 years of not existing?
-Signed, someone you’ll never know
English Journal #26: Write your own "Mask" poem
Each and everyday I hide behind a lie
in hopes that they can’t judge what’s inside.
There’s no need for them to pity me
or treat me any differently.
We all have a past that we’re entitled to hide,
a little piece of us we wish would just die.
It controls every part of you,
and you have no idea what to do.
Your mask keeps you going;
there’s no use in anybody knowing.
All you can do is try to let someone in
because once you do that, your life can begin.
English Journal #21: Describe your Thanksgiving in detail
At dinnertime I isolated myself, staying quiet and unnoticed. The food was wonderful and was the only thing keeping me content and pausing me from going absolutely crazy. The colorful food filled the table and created a warm, confronting smell. In the section of time, we came together as peacefully as we ever had. Just as we finished, the loud house full of banter and cruel jokes returned.
Let’s just say that it was a breath of fresh air walking out that door.
Cell Phone Stupidity #3
This blog is my Post For Change! I am writing this blog to try and make a difference in society and help people understand that this is not something to just throw to the side. It's a problem that has been overlooked for years but never actually was taken seriously. But I'm taking it seriously and I will make a difference one way or another!
I AM FURIOUS!
I kept thinking of all these different questions and their possible answers. So I decided to take a survey. The survey asked very simple questions and it gave me the answers I needed. Click here to take the survey.
I found out a lot about how many people have cell phones and how long they use them for. I sent my survey out to over 400 people but only 49 of them filled out the survey. However, I was not able to retrieve every single answer due to technical difficulties. My findings are shown below:
How old are you?
Years | How Many
12 1
13 0
14 10
15 17
16 3
17 6
18 12
19 0
Do you have a cell phone?
Yes | No
47 2
How many years have you had a cell phone?
0 0
1 2
2 2
3 6
4 6
5 12
6 7
7 2
9 1
10 2
11 2
Hours | How Many
2 6
5 1
> 5 12
8 41
Grade | How Many
10 0
11 0
12 19
0-1 1
1-2 0
2-3 1
3-4 17
11 38
24 25
After analyzing my results numerous times, it shows me that when your a young teenager (14 or 15) that you tend to have a cell phone. Not only that, but you tend to also have a touch screen phone and a more high powered phone. It was shocking to me when I saw that more people thought humans have stayed the same over time and over the evolution of technology.
CHANGE
Julia Boyer
Science Leadership Academy Students
Apple
The Internet
Myself
Blog 3 Post for change
Blog 3:
In my first blog I introduced you to the topic of child trafficking and told you why I was interested. In my second blog I showed you some new info I found based off of my new research and I also voiced my opinion on the subject. Now this is my 3rd blog post and it’s my post for change.
In my research I’ve found that things that have been done to raise awareness were written letters to the government so they could step up and try and save these innocent children, donations, some send gifts, clothes, and on the 21st of every month you can join others in fasting for child trafficking. I think these are great ways to raise awareness for child sex trafficking. donating clothes and money could help save a child’s life.
To raise awareness I’ve made a public service announcement. In my P.S.A. I showed where the trafficking is happening, what age group it’s affecting, and how you can help. The most effective way to help children in the trafficking is to donate to UNICEF. My opinion on the subject is for it to stop completely. Trafficking is the second most popular organized crime in the world. and billions of women and children get trafficked each year.
I propose that there should be police stationed in places with high reports of trafficking. Like Thailand and all of Asia. Child trafficking is so popular that I can almost guarantee that you’ll find at least one brothel. And finding one brothel could save up 30 children’s lives. It hasn’t happened yet but I hope that it will happen one day it could be a very effective way to help end this industry.
Here’s the link to my bibliography
Burkina Faso (Africa) Election Project - Blase Biello & Ian McClendon
We started our project by trying to find some people living and tweeting from Burkina Faso. (1st picture below - click to enlarge). We searched Burkina Faso in the Twitter search bar to try and find some teenagers - but little was tweeted and English and everything seemed to be a dead end. Access to computers is not as common there - and sometimes limited technology is not being used for Twitter. So, we changed up our approach a little bit and tried looking up some International Schools located in Burkina Faso. The biggest hit we got was for the International School of Ouagadougou. So, we checked out the site at the URL: iso.bf and went to the Contact page - so we can connect with some teachers, who could've potentially connected us with some teachers. So, we both filled out the form seem below (2nd picture) and wrote a detailed message about our project and how we'd like to get some of their teenagers involved. However, we never received a response. So, we then tried to email them directly not-through the site. Blase emailed them through my professional SLA email account at the provided email address on April 26 (3rd picture below) but never received a response. Ian did the same, and also did not receive a response. If we were to do it again we would probably try and find other International Schools and American programs/organizations in the area to try and connect us to some of the youth.
Post for Change
In my earlier blog posts I talked about the effects of poverty on a student's academic success and the relationship between education, unemployment and homelessness. I also mentioned some information about homeless people infected with HIV/AIDS. If the reader would like to read those two previous blogs please visit these sites: Blog 1, Blog 2.
I am currently holding a fundraiser for homeless children that need a place to stay and an education. To draw attention to this topic, I put posters that asked for donations to Stand up for Kids around my school and a PDF of that poster in the advisory memo so that all the parents, teachers and students could find out about it. Some students at Science Leadership Academy have already contacted me about donations.
I decided help StandUp For Kids this because “more than 94% of the financial donations go directly to assisting homeless and street kids”. This information means that when I ask people to donate they know that their money will be used for putting and end to youth homelessness and that they are not be wasting their money. However, my main goal was not to see how much money I could collect; it was to make people aware of this topic and for them to spread the word. When people can relate to something and learn about it, that is when change starts to happen.
After making my community aware of this issue, the next step to making sure all children get an education and that they have shelter is to have people make a change by volunteering and donating. This will reduce the number of homeless kids in America (1.5 million). One way to make a change without donating money is donating things to the Salvation Army. Once this organization is done collecting all their donated items (t-shirts, shoes, household items) they sell them to gain money for people in need like all the homeless kids in the United States. Also if they are people that feel very strongly about homeless children in America with HIV/AIDS they can volunteer and donate to the Philly Aids Thrift store.
I was able to raise a total of $62.62 to donate to Stand Up for Kids. Even Though that the amount of money that raised was not that great, my campaign was very successful in raising awareness. I would like to thank all the people that donated, but most of all Jeremy Spry, Alexa Dunn, Chris Lehmann, Pejman Makarechi, Carlo Makarechi, Bijan Makarechi, Giovanna Chiti and Ray Albarouki. All those people helped me perfect my original content. I could not have done it without them and if it was not for them people would not be as aware of the poverty in the United States as they are now.
I wonder if in the future I will find better ways to inform people about something that is important to me.“Go out into the world and do good until there is too much good in the world.”
Larry H. Miller
Intimidator Difficulty Part 3 Post for Change
After collecting all of my research from the google doc form, many people filled the survey. Not too long ago, I have posted a survey on facebook and twitter for my followers and friends to answer the questions about their opinions and thoughts on bullying. I am satisfied of how many people had submitted their own thoughts. Many people had said bullying is a crucial weapon towards other people because it can hurt people’s feeling. Some people have said that bullying occurs around school. Practically, all of people who filled out the survey were teenagers. Most of them said if they see bullying occurring in the school or any place, they will report to an adult. If you still haven’t completed the survey, feel free to submit one.
There’s always a solution beside hurting each other. Children should be the role model because it shows that they are the better person who stands up for someone, or friend.
It’s time for my post of change. The bottom of this article will be a video about how I can get many views to stop bullying. In the video clip, I had grabbed some volunteers to hold the paper about words that describe the victims and ways to help my community a better society. In the video, it shows how many people are willing to help the problem. I can’t thank so many people who had help me. I have also posted the video on facebook for my friends and they had shared it to other friends to spread the word. Also, I grabbed some quotes from celebrities who had been bullied before and how celebrities may change people’s prospective without commiting suicide, or harming their self or other people.
The website is for somebody who may be in trouble of being the victim.
Click here.
Here is a website for donating money. The money is towards for programs to make an awareness. The website also shows who is the bullied learn about the topic, and how people can help.
If you want to read articles about bullying, there are a lot of resources.
No one can stop you, if you try to help somebody. I want people to not be afraid to step up for somebody because the bullied may be afraid when many people are helping the victim.
What will we do if no nobody cares about bullying? It can impact a lot of the victims. Many families will lose a member when they are not living. We don’t want our future to become a chaos when humans hurt other humans. We can always make a step by helping other people.
Together, we can stop preventing bullying in a matter of time. “We will make a difference!”
I would to like acknowledge to my english teacher Ms. Dunn, my SAT Emma Hersh because they guided me with all three blogs to have a rich blog. Ms. Dunn had been a wonderful helper because she told us what to write for each blog. Emma Hersh had helped me with editing, and upload my video to the blog. I would like to thank all the people who help me with my video, and revise my three blogs. Lastly, I appreciated for everyone who read all the blogs.
Bibliography
Post For Change: Reginald Simmons
Blog Post #3 / Post For Change
In my last two blogs, I’ve discussed cyberbullying. What it is, what it can do, what it already has done, etc. Before this project, I didn’t know much about this subject myself, and I’ve learned a lot about this issue. I plan to keep tabs on the path it takes.
This blog post is my last one, and the last phase of the project. This is the post for change. So far, I’ve made change by posting about cyberbullying, so that people on the SLA blog post site can read it, and get the subject in their heads. To continue to make change with my topic, I will craft a sheet of paper filled with sources to stories, facts and websites for readers to look at. It will be a paper intended to simply raise awareness, so that people don’t stop thinking about cyberbullying as soon as they leave me blog. That’s all that I have left to do.
My piece of original content will be the sheet of paper for awareness that I previously explained. I will make enough copies for all my classmates to have at least one. I’m glad i was assigned this project, because in trying to get the word out about your topic to other people, you learn a lot about it yourself. I would like acknowledge Ms. Dunn for all the help she’s provided for me.
See my bibliography here .
Post For Change
To spread awareness about my topic I’m reaching out to my advisory class at my school. I plan on showing them a movie called “Crash” then having a discussion about it and to get their opinions on the movie and what they think about racism overall. I also have discussion questions for my advisory to answer after the film.
This movie is about people of different races who live in Los Angeles with very different lives. Some how they collide in each other’s life and they turn out to need each other. For further information about the film heres a link to the movies main page with a lot of things for your intrest.
(A photo of the cast from the movie)
I’m planning to
watch the film with my advisory on Thursday, May 31, 2012 and Monday, June 4,
2012. I’m also considering playing a game with my advisory. My English teacher
played this game with my class in the beginning of the year. She put a line of
tap in the middle of the room. Then she asked questions about our life and
other things. If the question applied to us, we would step u to the line, if
not you would stay in place. This game helped everyone learn more about each
other and the things we have all been through. I plan on doing this with my
advisory to try to get them to open up more and to learn more about them. I
want them to express their opinion about my topic because everyone has a voice.
I hope that they will give me more ideas on how to make a change even further
than just trying to stop it in my community, but maybe the sate and so on.
To spread even more awareness about racism and how we can stop it, I’m creating “stop all racism” posters and hanging them up all over the city. By seeing this on street corners and everywhere people go, maybe it will make people think twice before saying some thing racist or even doing a racist action.
Maybe by doing my part, others can help and
contribute to stopping racism. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion also,
so racism will carry on as long as people who don’t like a race that’s not
theirs are against them.
Privatization of Public Schools - Post for Change
Before I educated myself about this issue, there were many others already involved, planning, getting organized, and making their voices heard. I stumbled across an issue that many people feel very passionately about. I am happy to say that I am one of those people now, too.
There have been community meetings with the Philadelphia School Reform Commission so that the community can voice their concerns about the proposed plan to close schools and possibly privatize several. To elicit change in this topic, I attended one of these meetings at Girls High School on Thursday, May 24. Below is a video clip of me speaking at the hearing.
For those who are interested, come to 440 N Broad Street outside of the School District of Philadelphia to make sure that the SRC hears your voice! I you cannot attend; you can live stream it from your computer here. It is my opinion that my education, and the education of my friends is in jeopardy, and it is our duty to make sure that we get the education that is our right!
You can view my bibliography here.