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Good evening all

Did you know the government can cause harm to students?

Now go back to when you were in school and think about all those big benchmark exams. Bubbling in those twenty four questions deciding if it's A or B while your hands are aching. As I stand here in front of you all today, thinking back to when I was bubbling in Tamir Harper. Which is the only information they would ever know about me because there is know section where I can bubble in that I am A Philadelphia Youth Commissioner.  Now come back and imagine instead of those big benchmark exams, they are projects where you are able to collaborate with your peers and ask for help when needed. Project base means exactly what it says.

So now lets discuss an important topic for students, parents and educators everywhere. Know I'm not here to discuss funding in schools or why school sucks but I am here to discuss something that is equal to that. Which is Standardized Testing. Yes, Standardized testing is just as big as funding our schools or stopping bullying. But this affects everyone.

I begin advocating for youth once I became a student at Science Leadership Academy, a Philadelphia magnet school which focuses on Project Based Learning.  

Standardized test affect everyone even students that have low funding in their schools or getting bullied or students like myself that go to project based schools.

You are forced to sit in front of a test that measures how smart you are. How your teacher have been teaching through the year and your capabilities. Why? That's a question that I have been asking for about 6 years now. Why do I have to sit here in front of this test? I now know the answer. Do you?

Its to measure out how smart you are. Why? I don't know. Do you? I have been wanting to know this answer because this is not the only way the government can figure out how smart you are. Instead of sitting in front of a test how about they test your creativity by making you create an amazing project or by asking you to go teach a first grade class. There's other ways. These test does not do anything except make you feel as dumb as a rock and make you feel as though you were cheated out of an education which is not the case.

As a student I have experienced all of those problems. As a middle school student I was one of the last students and the most frustrated student during the Standardized Test.

But know. The Government likes it there way. Did you know in the state of Pennsylvania you are required to pass Keystones in order to graduate high school? After the PA government decided to put this rule in effect The School District Of Philadelphia projects a forty three percent decrease in graduation in the school year of 2016-2017. Already the district graduation rate was only at sixty five percent. With that project it will decrease to twenty two percent.

Lets make a change. Lets not make our students go through this emotional journey. This is not fair this is not okay and change must be made to the laws of Standardized Testing.

A good friend of mine Seyni Ndaw once said. ¨I am more than a standardized test because... A test score does not determine my learning journey.¨ But once PA determined that High School students were not able to graduate without passing test. It defined her learning journey in a classroom.

Why are we making our students stress about a Standardized test? Why are we making students stop learning for five weeks just to do test prep? Why? We could be using those five weeks to prepare them for next year or maybe prepare them for life. But instead we cover classrooms up and make students feel like trash.

I want everyone here today to go and ask a youth how they feel about standardized testing. Go to your Mayor and Governor office to challenge them on different laws on Standardized Testing. Government officials I challenge each and everyone of you to sit in a classroom and take a standardized test.

- Testing does not define me, my goals or my creativity.

Previously I wrote about anti-semitism and anti-semitism in the world. Throughout the world Jews are being mistreated and persecuted for practicing their religion. Throughout the world there's  a lot of anti-semitism raging on. From Europe to the middle east people do not like Jews and our religion. Another issue about anti-semitism that I wrote about previously is that there is a lack of knowledge about Jews and anti-semitism in the world.  Due to this lack of knowledge the issue is not getting solved.

For my original research  I met with and interviewed a holocaust survivor, Rabbi Charlie Kraus. He is a Holocaust survivor who was sent so several camps at the age of 14. In

Rabbi Kraus with his two daughters 1975

1944 his father was taken away by German soldiers, he along with the rest of his family were sent to Auschwitz. He was there for a week and a half, in that time his mother, brother and grandparents were all sent away and killed. After Auschwitz he was sent to Dachau (another concentration camp.) After Dachau he was sent to Mühldorf where he stayed for the first time by himself. After Mühldorf he was sent to Kaufering. Typhus and starvation were rampant at the time and people were dying every day. In the interview Rabbi Kraus said the last concentration camp was the worst. He forgets the name of it but he said the things people would do for nourishment were unspeakable. He was in the last camp for a couple of months until he was put onto a train with thousands of other jews. While on the train American soldiers in plains above began to shoot down onto the German soldiers. The person sitting next to Rabbi Kraus was shot and killed instantly. While in this commotion Rabbi Kraus noticed the Nazis were nowhere to be found and he jumped off of the train. He ran into the woods and stayed there for several days. He then was found and taken to a hospital. The war had ended and the Nazi regime had been destroyed. He went back to his home town where he was reunited with his father. After Europe he went to the United States and became a rabbi. He was taught by a famous rabbi and teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel.  

Anti-semitism effects people. Rabbi Kraus was lucky and strong, he manages to keep a happy life and stays optimistic after everything he has been through. Others are not so lucky, many lost faith and could not continue living after all that they had seen and been through. My understanding of anti-semitism is now more personalized, I have heard an account of someone's experience in the Holocaust and feel closer to my faith. I am still left wondering, why Jews? Before the Holocaust Jews in Hungary were prominent members in society. They were lawyers and doctors and businessmen. Why were Jews picked out as the evil ones, as the evil religion. Not just during the Holocaust but throughout history. With the exile from Babylonia, the Crusades, Pogroms, the Inquisition and even in this country there were quotas to limit Jews in universities and in professions.  Jews have been persecuted wherever they went.

For my agent of change I would like to make a presentation and present to some of the classes at Greenfield Middle School. I want to inform people about this issue and get the word out in the world that Jews are being mistreated and persecuted. I hope students will get out of my presentation a new look on Judaism. Not as a religion that seems to be nonexistent or a religion to pity but a religion that has endured so much and still continues to thrive and be existent in the world. I want to show people that people who are anti-semitic often masc their beliefs behind being anti-Israel. I want to inform the world and make a difference.

Capstone Annotated Bibliography:

Addison, Kevin. "SDO | Solar Dynamics Observatory." SDO | Solar Dynamics Observatory. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2015. <http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/>.

Working in tandem with my presentation, this website helped me demonstrate different views of the Sun with different filters on. What I wanted to get into with the different filters is how to see specific parts of the Sun or Sun Phenomenon without harming our eyes. I went back and forth talking about both Mylar Filter and Hydrogen Alpha Filter. On days that I did not have full access to the Zeiss Telescope, which is The Franklin Institute’s main telescope used mostly to view the Sun with either the Hydrogen Alpha or Mylar. This site gives me a good way to let the students view the Sun without having to walk to the telescope and having a slim chance to actually use that telescope. This website also gives a constantly updated version of different filtered views of the Sun daily.

Choi, Charles Q. "Earth’s Sun: Facts About the Sun’s Age, Size and History."Space.com. N.p., 20 Nov. 2014. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://www.space.com%2F58-the-sun-formation-facts-and-characteristics.html>.

At first, I had to think about what I wanted to teach to my students, I remembered from my ILP that I was studying about taking pictures for The Franklin Institute and those pictures would consist of different filters over our Sun. What I then thought about was information about the Sun, because I wanted to teach my mini-course. I thought about how this website could help me convey basic and rare knowledge about our Sun. The reason why I use this source is because it has different specific breakdowns of the Sun and it’s different areas, I could find it helpful.

Dufour, Richard, Robert E. Eaker, and Rebecca Dufour. Professional Learning Communities at Work: 2005 Institutes; Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree, 2005. Print.

With this book, this is the breakdown on how teachers could find different ways to interact with students. Some students could be the type that are willing to learn but don’t  know how, some could be visual learners, vocal, hands on, etc. This book also gets down on how the teachers should be able to incorporate a lot of ways to be flexible when it comes to students of different ways to learn. Introducing how teachers should act and giving insight on how they could tackle a lot of obstacles when it comes to their students. Also, the book talks about how teachers, or in this case, me, could fulfill most if not all student requests with flexibility in the classroom.

FightRegression. "Surreal Video of Aurora Borealis from ISS - Jan/Feb 2012."YouTube. YouTube, 9 Mar. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAIyVZoXv9M>.

This is one of the videos that I had put into my lesson plan\presentation for the students that I teach. It covers the space view of an Aurora happening in Earth’s atmosphere. This video was one of few that I looked at that could give me a decent view using the International Space Station (ISS).  I thought that this video would come in handy and would work well when I could explain the interaction between the Earth and the Sun. The video mostly showed the greenish teal colors of Auroras which people are most common to seeing, while there are many other colors that were not viewed commonly.  

Fuchs, Miriam. "Teaching Astronomy." Personal interview. 23 Jan. 2015.

Miriam is an employee at The Franklin Institute and she has gave me information revolving around my topic that I did not know, different activities for me to get the students engaged and ways to amaze them with the common knowledge of the Sun. She specializes in study of exoplanets, classifications of different stars and a wide range of terms pertaining to her specialties. She thought of the different ways for me to provide aiding links that will have different videos that I could show to the students. She also gave me different write ups for activities that were revolving around Spectroscopy that I read and demonstrated to the students, amazing them with the different elements that could be identified.

Pahomov, Larissa. "Membership." ASCD Book: Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Students Through Inquiry. Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://www.ascd.org/Publications/Books/Overview/Authentic-Learning-in-the-Digital-Age.aspx>.

Mrs. Pahomov’s book spoke about the way that Science Leadership Academy’s way of teaching seems to be revolutionary. The ways that Science Leadership Academy approaches their students with the project based learning is something out of the ordinary as some would say. What I took from the book is the different ways that I can teach my students and bring them to a classroom that could revolve around SLA core values, though I am teaching a freshman class, they won’t truly understand the core values and the main thing is to not give them the answer, but let them come up with questions that they already know answers to, get into a deeper understanding of those answers and questions. What the main thing that I am getting out of the book is that students don’t want to be lectured all the time, it’s better to have hands on activities or something that can get students to come together and come up with solutions on their own.

Pitts, Derrick, Sc.D. "Teaching Astronomy." Personal interview. 23 Jan. 2015.

Dr. Derrick Pitts is the Chief Astronomer at the Franklin Institute. Dr. Pitts studied at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, PA, St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, and La Salle University. While at La Salle, he received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree. He continued his studies and research to the extremes when it came to Astronomy, it was something out of the ordinary because he was so interested in the idea of the universe. He is highly amazed by the different wonders of the universe and does not cease to keep learning. What Dr. Derrick Pitts told me to ready me for my mini course was to engage the students with questions, be the guide for them, not the gatekeeper. Let them reach their answers together and won’t have to worry about being given the answer.

Redd, Nola Taylor. "Space Weather: Sunspots, Solar Flares & Coronal Mass Ejections." Space Weather: Sunspots, Solar Flares & Coronal Mass Ejections. N.p., 13 May 2013. Web. 28 Jan. 2015. <http://www.space.com/11506-space-weather-sunspots-solar-flares-coronal-mass-ejections.html>.

When it came to looking for something that could help me explain the different phenomenon that happens on the Sun, this source was that go to source for general and in depth information. I am teaching about the different events happening on the Sun from Solar Flares, how they happen, why, etc. Same thing for Sun Spots, I am trying to break it down to the simplest ways so that the students would not be overwhelmed by what I will be saying to them but also enough that will get them to think. This source is something that I could use for the students to look over after they have my class so if they are interested in the topic that I had taught, they could continue their

Stovall, Idris, Ph.D. "Teaching Astronomy Reflection and Debriefing." Personal interview. 23 Jan. 2015.

Dr. Stovall attended Hampton University, graduated then went to University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He got his Ph.D in mathematics and now is teaching students at Penn State. His contribution to my teaching plan was techniques that I can use on the students to veer them towards the right direction when it comes to difficult questions. Coming up with lesson plan that could reach out towards their young minds. Using the various methods and techniques, he also informed me in ways I can help the students bring about inquiry about my topic. What things should be asked at certain moments, how can I turn that into something else. Follow up questions and other thought provoking questions.

Tate, Karl. "Anatomy of Sun Storms & Solar Flares (Infographic)."Space.com. N.p., 4 Jan. 2013. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://www.space.com/12047-solar-flares-sun-storms-space-weather-infographic.html>.

I Conor Meier am doing artist rights for my you and the world project. i chose this because i am an artist and i know how i would feel if someone took my work. basically artist right are the fact that bigger companies and really just about anybody can steal an artist's work, and we usually can't do anything about it

the significance of artist rights is that anyone can steal an artist's work that they have been working on for along time and take it. if it is jewelry a large company can take it and mass produce it in a factory and the artist is making like one every few days and of course the factory sells it for less so not only does the artist have less even if someone finds it they wouldn't buy it because they can get it cheaper elsewhere. it is important for people to know about this so that we can put a stop to it. also we can look out for it at all stores and if anyone that we know does it.

I learned that some companies aren’t stealing stuff, they can buy the rights to it.

Artists Rights Society-http://www.arsny.com/

Quick Guide to Artists' Rights -http://www.collegeart.org/guidelines/rights

R.I.G.H.T.S.-http://www.rightsforartists.com/

Artists Bill of Rights-http://www.artists-bill-of-rights.org/

When Jason Greene woke up on Wednesday morning the last two things he wanted to do were take a standardized test and check into a hospital. All he wanted to do was play some baseball and help his team prove they are worth respecting, and perhaps even fearing. Unfortunately the first two came to pass, and the latter was something that literally unfolded across the street from where Jason needed to be rushed after taking a hard chopper to the mouth in warm ups. He ended up needing stitches, and was so groggy that he didn’t even realize he hit the ground in the first place.