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I dove deep into the causes of the African American achievement gap in my first slate post. In that slate post, I explain how I found 4 major causes for this achievement gap. Those causes were home life, school, mental health, and the history of African Americans. I spoke of how African American children may have a stressful home life caused by financial issues and not enough guidance and love from their parents. I spoke on how ignored mental health is among the black community. Parents often dismiss their child or even ignore their own mental issues causing them to cause their own children harm. Treatments regarding the mentally ill seem to also be less effective on black people. It has to do with the difference in how African Americans are raised and their environment. In order to have effective treatment, people who work with the mentally ill would have to consider cultural and environmental differences. The history of African Americans has not been sweet. African Americans have experienced segregation in the past and African Americans are still going through it but in a different way. Predominantly black schools are severely underfunded and students are expected to thrive in a place where their building is falling apart.

Like I said in my last slate post, digging to find information on this topic is almost impossible. Although I was not able to find people who were working on a way to reverse this gap, I was able to find at most 3 websites going deeper into how to reverse this gap. I think that the website I’m going to reference is very informative and should be brought to the attention of more people. It talks about how teachers should be trained to deal with different cultural backgrounds. Teachers do not understand the role they play in a child’s life sometimes and this is one of those times. The website explains how teachers don’t understand the reason behind a child’s behavior and that can lead to them lowering their expectations of the child. How could this affect African American students? Well, as I explained in my slate post, when the teacher and parent give up, what do you think the child is going to do? Give up.

For my agent of change, I decided that I wanted to do a mini course with my classmate, Kyla. My initial thought was to educate teachers within SLA about how to interact with students from different cultural backgrounds so that they don’t go down a slippery slope. But then I thought a better method would be to target the youth. The youth are the people who will enter society not too long from now and they’re more likely to want to get up and do something about it. So what better way to spread my message than designing a mini course for freshmen? This was a big thing to do honestly. To design a whole lesson plan from scratch on our own? We had to go from student to teacher and it wasn’t easy. Me and Kyla had to figure out how long we wanted our mini course to be, what we would discuss, how much time we would each get, how our topics connected, and so much more. We also had to email Mr. Spry in order to approve our mini course. This project was a challenge, but fun. I also found amazing videos on things like generational trauma that almost made me tear up because of how real it was. Of course, we didn’t get a chance to put the mini course in action due to it being almost the end of the year but I do look forward to presenting it to the freshmen next year.

Our first email to Mr. Spry

Our second email to Mr. Spry

This project was really cool and a great way to push yourself to learn something new or to learn more about something. I think this project was a good challenge and it feels really good to be able to feel like you can change something in the world. I learned about the unknown stress many African Americans go through. I even found myself realizing that I went through a lot of the stuff mentioned and yet I didn’t see how bad it actually was until now. So many things mentioned regarding the lack of achievement in the African American community, I’ve seen in real life. I learned that African Americans go through a lot as a whole and we ourselves fail to realize how bad our situation is.

If I were to do this project again, I would start the slate post early on and as I go. I feel like the project didn’t need to be fully done in order to like half the slate post. Regarding my agent of change, I would’ve started planning the lesson on the lesson plan doc first instead of writing in my book. The doc gave a lot of guidance and made everything 100x easier.

In order to see real change regarding this topic, we need awareness. That’s why I chose my agent of change in the first place. I want to see more people talking about this. I want to see people upset about this. I want schools and families to take a step back and reevaluate how they treat the youth when this is brought to their attention. What has to happen from here is quite obvious. We need more people to know about this, spread the word, find solutions to these issues, and then execute those solutions.

In my first slate post, I explained how cultural appropriation is harmful to the Black community. Black culture benefits every other community, except for its own. It was important that I gave 6 examples as to why cultural appropriation is an issue in the world that needs to be solved, while also using my 6 sources as main ideas. The amount of various ways I persuade the readers to help seek the principle and bigger picture, of a struggle out of many, that Black/ African Americans face everyday are strong.

In view of the fact that Black cultural appropriation is my topic, to be an agent of change, I have teamed up with my classmate Tybria Bowser. Her You & The World project is about the African American Achievement gap, which connects to Black cultural appropriation, in many ways. We thought it would be a brilliant idea to combine our ideas, and work to produce a future mini course for class of 2025, and if successful, so on. It would be great to teach the youngest classmen on how to not harm their peers, especially at such an open and diverse school like SLA.

*Tybria and I emailed Jeremy Spry, proposing our act of change. We gave background information about our projects, and basically just went into depth about our plan. He agreed for us to move forward with our idea :). *

After hearing that there was a chance of our plan coming to life, Tybria and I created this mini course template, to help prepare and brainstorm criteria for the future freshman. We each went along and created material for each of our topics, and found a way to connect one anothers. The mini course will be 8 days long. We have an intro for the first day, and then cultural appropriation is spent using the next 3 days, and then I transition my last day into Tybria’s first day. She also has 3 days, and then our final class, the 8th day, we’ll let the students take control, and use that as a way to reflect on the course as a whole. I did some research mainly for my section of the course, and found a video to explain “What is Black culture?”. I thought it would be a great introduction to our first class.

The process in making and planning a mini course during a chaotic benchmark time like this was very difficult, but very interesting and enthusiastic. Tybria and I were able to finish our mini course template, and emailed it to Ms.Giknis and Jeremy Spry.

Unfortunately, Tybria and I weren’t able to hear back in time to see if our mini course was approved or not, but we feel very pleased with our journey, and feel supported through every step of the way. Before I close out my slate post, I just wanted to mention Tybria and I’s projects connect to each other, because of the double standards that Black people face when doing anything in society. It just made sense to collaborate on a project like this, because we can both use each other as a strength in educating future SLA students, about the Black community better. Like I said before, we aren’t aware if our mini course will be approved yet, but a way you can be involved, is by showing us your unconditional support, and being here with us on this journey.

My original slate post, I spoke about how suicide is one of the leading causes of death and how mental health is one of the biggest factors of it. I included not only a chart of the leading causes of death in each age group but also provides a video narrates the experience and recovery of a suicide victim. I go into depth about different types of therapy that may help those who are seeking help while also providing a link to other ways to help prevent suicide.

Since that post, I have continued to try to raise awareness for suicide by focusing on one of the leading factors, mental health. In my engineering class, I decided to create an infographic that states “Do’s and Don’ts of Comforting Someone” and it came out nicely! I researched on this website and also asked a few friends on this topic. I also have been spending time researching different hotlines to call when you are in need and made a poster providing all these hotlines. These hotlines were made to help people in need and those who do not have someone to go to so by spreading these hotlines, it will encourage people to use them. If people actually decide to call or text these hotlines, it can decrease the number of people committing and that is exactly what I hope for.

On the Left, the “Do’s and Don’ts of comforting someone”infographic and on the right is the different hotlines poster.

For my Agent of Change project, I decided to start a selfcare club. Originally I wanted to keep my ideas virtual but after getting suggestions from teachers, I finally decided to start a club at SLA with my sister. We needed to create a proposal to send to Mr Lehmann and Mr Spry but we also wanted to create an interest form for the SLA community to fill out. Fortunately, our proposal got approved so the You & Me Selfcare Club will be opening the school year of 2021-2022!! The process was very nerve wracking and confusing since I am still new to SLA’s community. I think starting this club will hopefully make the SLA community closer and provide a safe space for students to have someone to talk to. The pandemic has sort of ruined our freshman experience so starting next year, I hope this club can allow all of us to get to know more about each other.

Above is the club proposal that I sent to Mr Lehmann and Mr Spry (click on it to view the whole presentation).

I genuinely hope this club will help the SLA community in a positive way. I am excited and quite nervous about starting this club next year but I am happily doing it to provide others a trustworthy space. I learned many things about mental health and will still continue to do research on it. I also found out the SLA community and staff are very supportive and kind-hearted, so to that, I will be very excited to meet everyone! Suicide is still a huge problem but we are talking it a step at a time. I think we should all remember to check up on our friends and also do mental check in for ourselves too. We should continue to care for each other and recognize our emotions, thoughts, problems and more. We should try to understand each other and keep our community healthy while also having fun. I will continue to plan the self care club to make it as enjoyable and informational as possible for next year so can’t wait to make a positive influence at SLA.

Annotated Bibliography

For my capstone I did a continuation of my You & The World Project, based on the rate of hate crimes and abuse LGBTQ people face. Although this was not the original plan, it was the best option because over my years at SLA I have collected more knowledge about my topic, which has allowed me to grow.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1931nCIfO-9Y1_aYpDmyqHPqUl0UPcK_jrYQsycKX7t0/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17XY-QOzNdrfXqyyaOEnRIK-z3smosTAk6e63Sds4nTI/edit?usp=sharing

For my Capstone, I wanted to focus on refining my artwork and the techniques I learned during the school year. I learned animation via Windows Movie Maker, I practiced lip movement and blinking animation. I would start by drawing the beginning frame and the ending frame and then move onto the frames in between. For talking animation, I would have to count out the amount of syllables that is used in a phrase to make sure it matches. One of the techniques that I use is gray scaling in my art to make up and fill in the blanks for when I don’t have any materials for colorings.

The slate post was about plastic pollution. In the community and throughout the rest of the world people are using a large amount of plastic. It is very bad for the environment and the future. In the world right now there are lots of things being done to help stop plastic pollution. A few examples are people trying to minimize the amount of single-use plastic or plastic, in general, being used daily. Scientists are finding organisms that can consume plastic. The last example can be using more glass objects. Some organizations that are trying to help currently are

Keep Philadelphia beautiful

Love your park

Trash hero world

Changing how much plastic pollution there is out there is by working together. There is so much plastic out in the park and in the ocean that we all need to reduce the amount of plastic being produced. The reliance on plastic in this society is huge. Big cooperation needs to stop with the plastic bottles thing instead use glass bottles. Glass bottles are a lot more sustainable for the environment. Glass gets recycled from 50% to 80% which is a lot compared to plastic.

When I had to decide how to do the agent of action, I had no idea what I was going to do. I asked myself “how am I going to change the plastic pollution”. Being realistic now, one person can’t fix the globe of plastic pollution. I designed a presentation which will inform people about plastic pollution. It’s now up to everyone else who wants to help fight plastic pollution or make it worse. I also made a social media account to post daily starting May 28.

Throughout creating the project it was stressful. There are many reasons why it was so stressful. A few are that I had a lot of homework and projects to be working on. Balancing that all out was stressful and stayed up late working on these projects. The second reason is motivation. I lack the motivation to do the actual writing part but I do love researching. I think researching is the easiest because you can learn so much. The last one is that I wanted time to do things other than just homework and projects. They are both time-consuming and to be honest, I want to also have time to learn how to cook or just go outside and be a teenager.

While making this project I would be wondering how effective this would be. The answer to that question is, I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t know, I don’t know because I have to rely on other people. Sometimes things are successful other times they are not. I hope this project is one of the successful ones but if it’s not I can try again until I get it right.

With the whole project, I was under a lot of pressure to get it done. It was very interesting to learn about plastic pollution and the side effects. Although the side effect is really bad it makes someone realize that people are so reliant on plastic. Plastic is everywhere, even in the least expected places. In my opinion, people should know the bad effect of plastic pollution but also how reliant they are on it. It’s sad to see the constant reliance on plastic.

What I learned about myself is that I just need motivation and to be strict with my work. I say this because I just lack motivation a lot. Sometimes it hits in waves. When I push through I feel accomplished even if I only did one assignment. I think it’s something to be proud of because that means I have one less assignment to do and I can move on. What I learned from others is that they will cheer for you and believe in you. Sometimes it’s just that, that a person needs.

When I reflect on this Agent of change project, I feel like my time management could have been better. I lack the motivation of doing work in the last quarter. I would also spend more time doing the project part. I would like to add more detail to the project. Now that’s left is to spread the information. Spreading the information is going to be the hardest part. Not only do I not have any control but people need to work together in this. No one can solve global issues alone, we have to work together.

Bibliography

Presentation

Capstone Process Paper

For my senior Capstone, I renovated a house with my mentor. The process took us about 7 months to complete. This process involved finding a house which was very easy because realtors called my mentor because they know that he buys houses. I believed that the property was a good choice because it was around my house and there were not too many problems. The reason I chose this project for my capstone was because it was important to me to get more involved in my mentor’s business. This is something I want to do in the future and having a mentor was a great way for me to learn the process of real estate investment

This process allowed me to implement the SLA core values in the real world. After we actually bought the house, there were a lot of steps involved in completing this capstone. I used the core values of inquiry while I was researching the budget. I had to research prices and places to get every utility needed for the house. I had to research contractractors and their prices. Also it was important to my mentor that he did not always tell me how different things work like how to install windows or how to run water lines so he wanted me to research these topics and learn how to do it myself. A lot of collaboration was involved also we had contractors, electricians, plumbers and carpenters. We all had to work together a lot of the time all in the same room at the same time so it was very interesting. For the final presentation we wanted the house to be brand new so we installed new bathrooms, new kitchen, new drywall and floors throughout all the rooms. Also, we presented the house when we put it on Airbnb. Reflecting on the project, I realized the amount of work that was put into the project and the amount of time involved. Also I believe it was a great experience to have because not a lot of kids my age or even adults can do this. One of the major obstacles that we encountered was when me and my uncle broke all the stairs. This cost us more time and money that could have been put into something more important. Another obstacle was important objects being thrown away like light fixtures and speaker cover which was another expense that could have been avoided.

One thing that makes me the most proud in this capstone was seeing the finished product of all my work and time. Also, I was proud of my ability to manage a property flip beginning to end. One thing I learned is that taking on a property flip was too much for a capstone project SLA is going to be better because I was able to show my peers that this a project that can be done by a teenager.

My Website http://propertmagementcapstone.simplesite.com/

Previously, I researched and went in depth on why my topic of body positivity was important. I cited multiple sources and found how misunderstood the body positivity movement is. I said I hoped to clear misconceptions and impact the body positivity community positively.

Since that post, I’ve dug deeper into how I can impact the community with my knowledge. My English teacher sparked an idea to my twin sister, Gina, saying creating a club can be helpful to the school community. She brought up the idea to me and we decided to collaborate on the club idea. Her topic was suicide and mine is body positivity so we decided to make our club focus on self care. Our club is called You & Me Club. First, I decided to do some research on support groups and how being in a support group can be beneficial. In the article, ‘How to Choose the Right Support Group’ by Mayo Clinic, it gives both perspectives on why support groups are good and bad. It allows people to be able to lean on people who experience similar problems. Support groups can also be used as a sense of motivation to go through a journey with others; it makes people feel less alone.“A support group among people with shared experiences may function as a bridge between medical and emotional needs.” It can be hard to trust a doctor so finding people in the patient’s age range going through similar problems can help the patient open up more. There are also cons to every pro. It may be possible that people may compare themselves to each other. For example, degrade their problems and tell themselves that others have it worse. I believe the pros outweigh the cons. Being with a group of people who already have something in common with you can be a good ice breaker. I believe support groups build a family and the bond is strong. Even though there are cons, it can always be fixed. To my example, people in the support group can make it known that it’s not a competition if we are all on the same team.

Group of people counseling together

Based on the information I gathered from my research, I think creating a club in the SLA community can be beneficial to students - and teachers if they like to attend. In order to start a club in SLA, I have to make a proposal to the principal, Mr.Lehmann and the program manager, Mr.Spry. Me and Gina spent a few days working on a google slide as our proposal. After completing the proposal slides, we started drafting the email. Here is the email:

“Good Morning Mr. Lehmann and Mr. Spry,

We are Gina and Tina Zou, freshmen here at SLA. Recently we have been working hard with Ms. Giknis and our advisors to plan a self care club! As new additions to the SLA community, we hope to make a positive influence in our time here by starting a club that allows students to learn more about themselves and their mental health. We would like to propose this club idea to you, so please click on this link to view our proposal.

We hope to receive approval to launch this club next year (2021-2022). If there are any questions, feel free to ask! We will try to answer them as detailed as possible.

Thank you for your time and consideration, Gina Zou & Tina Zou”

In addition, we decided to create an interest form to put in the advisory memo to help give a sense on what best fits for the community. After two minutes of just sending the proposal email, we got a reply! Our club accepted to open next year. It may be a slow process but I believe it will pay off in the long run. Creating a self care club for the community can boost people’s awareness on mental and emotional health. Our objective for our club is “You & Me Club seeks to create a safe environment to talk about emotions and mental hardships. It is important to care for mental health. So You & Me Club hopes to increase awareness of mental and emotional exhaustion and prevent people from blocking out their feelings any longer. This club will hopefully positively affect the SLA community and bring us closer together.” Even though this change will be slow but steady, hopefully it helps people.

I really enjoyed doing this project. Even though the club is starting in the school year of 2021-2022, I already know it’s going to make me step out of my comfort zone. I technically already did since I committed to this club. I hope the club succeeds. I didn’t realize how toxic people can be when they are uneducated or misinterpret something. Looking into plus-size activists really made me frustrated when people are so fast to judge. I felt as though I could’ve spent more time researching for the Agent of Change part. I think my research was enough to pass but I knew I could’ve done more. I do know I will continue to learn how to conduct a club to its fullest potential. I still need to wait for the club to launch next year. I hope people will join to help themselves and others. If you are interested, please do fill out this form so we can include what you like in the club. We hope to see you next year in our meetings:)

Annotated Bibliography

In my last SLATE post, I’ve introduced the topic of the 737 MAX and it’s groundings worldwide (Below is a brief summary for those who haven’t seen the last post). Since then, there are actually quite a few things that have changed since then, especially with the news of possible reintroduction of a new type of plane, which I will also discuss below. This new type of plane can really help Boeing bounce back into the aviation market as a leader, and I chose to explore a bit on that for this SLATE post. This resulted in a full essay that I plan to send to multiple experts along with a few aviation enthusiast/large-scale aviation discord server, and hopefully it may spread. I’ve gotten a few responses from quite a few people, including experts and travelers. Below is an example of a response from one of the engineers currently at Boeing.

I also had a conversation with an engineer at Boeing itself, and we had a discussion around the topic. He was actually quite interested and offered me to take the information up to the managers at Boeing, and so I am currently waiting for their response (which takes around 2-3 weeks).

I recently switched my topic from elephant poaching to teenage sleep. There were a couple things that motivated me to make the change. First off, I wasn’t very inspired to work and complete the elephant poaching project. This is due to how exotic the topic is. Yes it’s a big problem but it’s out of my range to actually make a change in. When choosing a new topic I wanted to pick something that was impacting my everyday life and was within reach to change. That’s when I had noticed how my sleep schedule had affected my attention and learning throughout my classes and day to day activities. This is when the topic of sleep came to mind. It would be very easy to make a change due to the fact that I am always surrounded by teenagers with sleep problems and it’s something that I struggle with. So even if i couldn’t make a change with other people i could with myself. During my research for this project I came across many interesting things. For example seventy percent of teenagers are getting too little sleep. So chances are you are affected by it or someone you know is. Although the numbers vary between people most doctors recommend getting eight to ten hours of sleep a night as a teenager is critical for “physical, intellectual and emotional growth.” Although sleep can seem like such a small thing, it contributes a major role in your mood and much more the next day. Sleep deprivation has many effects on teenagers’ day to day life. For example, sleep deprivation can in some cases lead to struggle with memory. Getting to little sleep also affects your motivation and productivity inside and outside of school. It can also increase the risk of depression, which is a serious medical condition. So how do you know you need more sleep? In my research I’ve found that there are multiple signs you need more sleep. If you notice that you have to regularly take naps in the middle of the day that are over thirty minutes in length then you probably need more sleep. Other signs of sleep deprivation include not being able to think straight, struggling getting out of bed in the morning, and getting worked up over little tasks. There are other more common side signs like the well known general sleepiness. How do you maintain a healthy sleep schedule? There are many things you can do once you have a healthy sleep pattern to maintain that pattern. One of the main things is to avoid looking at screens before you go to bed. Other things you can do to get better sleep are things like exercising daily, avoiding long naps, and going to sleep around the same time every day.

In my previous post titled “Why beauty standards are stupid” I talked about my research about toxic beauty standards and how they affect people everyday. More recently I conducted interviews with fellow classmates asking them more personal questions about how beauty standards affect them. In this post I will be talking about my experiences with my research, interviews, and overall how this project affected me and how I plan to bring change to the world. One of the biggest challenges about my topic is beauty standards are something that are ingrained so deeply in our society. Specifically something I feel our society almost revolves around, social media. For many people, especially people my age and a little older social media is a big part of our lives. Sometimes it is the first thing you check when you wake up, and the last thing you check before you go to bed. But social media is toxic. And when something you spend so much time on is toxic, bad things happen. In my last post I talked about how toxic beauty standards are often pushed onto people on social media platforms like instagram and tik tok. A term I have used in my previous post is “The perfect lifestyle.” And what I mean by that is on social media platforms so called instagram models will post about their perfect body, and perfect lifestyle. Which often negatively affects the people viewing it. Teenagers are especially affected by this because they will look at one of these posts and wonder why their body or life doesn’t look like the so-called perfection on their screen. When conducting my interviews I asked two of my classmates whether or not they feel beauty standards would exist without social media, both had very different answers to this. Aylin Echandy stated that she thinks beauty standards wouldn’t be as “Big or impactful” without social media. While Caleb Park said “Yes, beauty standards have existed since the beginning of written history.” Both of these answers made a lot of sense to me and believe that they both have a lot of truth to them. After conducting my own research I learned that beauty standards have been around forever, but have they always been toxic? Or was social media the thing that made them that way? For my actual agent of change I did two things. The first one I have already talked about a little bit. I conducted interviews with a couple of classmates and out of those interviews made a podcast. The second thing, shown down below is a piece of artwork I created. View my podcast here

The artwork I created for my project.

I used quotes from my interviews and then at the bottom asked the question I have been asking myself throughout this process, is social media the problem? I then drew a picture which I think captures the way beauty standards can make people feel. The podcast was my first idea. I thought that interviews were a really solid way to conduct research on people who have had a first hand experience with beauty standards and social media. I also thought that making a podcast could be a really cool way to show others how people, just like them, feel about this issue. Actually conducting these interviews and making the podcast were much harder than I originally thought. I had to identify people to interview, set up time that worked for both of us, conduct the actual interview and then edit it into a podcast. I had originally planned to interview 4 or 5 people. But only ended up being able to do two interviews. After all of this I still question whether or not I actually made or am making a change. Will people listen to my podcast and feel moved? Will people relate to my visual? Is that what change is? In the end I like to think I made a change. I hope the people I interviewed, and the people who listen to my podcast, reflect on my questions and feel better about themselves because of it. I really hope that I made a change, even if it’s a small one. Annotated bibliography

In my previous slate post, I talked about my research on abusive relationships. I mentioned things like statistics, warning signs, effects, and ways to get help. There are many other organizations and websites that are trying to help with my issue. There is a National Domestic Violence Hotline as well as websites that talk about resources to use when trying to get out of the relationship. I think a lot of the information that these websites and organizations provide is very helpful especially since most victims of abusive relationships do not have someone close to them to talk to. These resources are widely available which makes it easier for someone to find the help they need.

For my Agent of Change, I decided to create an Instagram account that talked about all the information I learned about. I wanted to create something that many people had access to and that would always be available to them. Most people have access to the internet and social media accounts so making an account sounded like a great way to spread awareness on my topic. The name of my account is @l.t.h_abusive relationships and there I talked about all the information I thought would be helpful to people that are either in an abusive relationship or know someone that is in an abusive relationship.

Agent of Change Instagram Account

The account is still very new as of the time I am writing this post so I’m not surprised to see that there hasn’t been much interaction with it yet but I do hope in the future that more people will find my account. I hope this account is actually able to make a change in someone’s life.

This project sounded very difficult at first. I didn’t have any topic I wanted to talk about and didn’t think I’d be able to contribute much to any cause. But after finding an issue that I was passionate about, this project became a lot more fun and interesting to do. It took quite a lot of work and time to be able to research and find all the information I needed to be able to talk about this topic but it was still very interesting. I learned a lot more than what I originally knew about this issue and I think that is a great thing. This is a very common issue, I know people personally that have been affected by being in an abusive relationship and I feel like I can finally understand them more. I feel like I could have put more work into the research and the account itself. I really like what I created but I just think it could have been better. The creation of the account and the posts ended up being done in a bit of a rush so I believe that if I had more time to work on this project, it would have come out better. I still very much like the account that I created though, even if it’s not perfect. I just hope that it can help others that are being affected by my issue.

Annotated Bibliography

In my previous slate post, I described my issues and concerns for public health. I spoke about my interest in travelling, wanting to see people, and I urged people to continue wearing their masks. Since that post, I have conducted more research, finding fundraisers that will help with the production of masks/distributing masks to the homeless. On Thursday (5/20/21) during my advisory period, I gave a presentation on the issue I wanted to address. In the presentation, I included a link to a GoFundMe, which will help to provide more masks to homeless individuals. I decided to do this because ever since quarantine began, we haven’t been able to go many places. There are a few things that inspired me, making me passionate about public health, and those are: helping others and travelling. During my research, I learned how many people are having a difficult time during this pandemic. I’ve learned how many different things have been affected by it, such as overcrowding in prisons and mask distribution for homeless people. Although I could not act on the bigger issues like overcrowding in prisons, I could at least speak out about something we’ve all been affected by: masks.

To take action, to be an agent of change, I decided to present to my advisory class. My presentation was 6 slides, including links to GoFundMe’s & other informational articles.

This is a screenshot of my screen-share during my advisory presentation.

Overall, I enjoyed creating and taking action for this project. I haven’t experienced making an actual change before in projects like these. It was very interesting to make a whole presentation and promote my ideas. Hopefully my presentation will have taken an effect and persuaded people to continue wearing their masks and staying safe. Thankfully, a vaccine has been created and maybe people both teenagers and adults, can get the vaccine. This will also help keep public health in check! Something I could have done better for this project is improving my slideshow presentation. I think I could have added a lot more information on the matter. I had lots of links to articles, and I think I should have added more information from them.

My initial ideas for this project were to create posters to hang up around a park I have gone to since I was younger or to create and donate to fundraisers to help mask production. I have a few designs that I created for the posters, because at first I was committing to that idea. If I were to do this project again, I would test that idea and see if posters would have had more of an effect than a presentation!

Initial design ideas for posters.

Something I’ve learned about myself is that I really do want to help others, and I feel much stronger about this idea than I thought I did. Something I’ve learned about other people is how many people are willing to create organizations and donate If anyone would like to help make this change, you can create your own fundraiser at https://www.gofundme.com/c/blog/mask-for-coronavirus, or donate to Carpenter’s Place, an organization working to create and distribute more masks.

Here is my annotated bibliography.

In my first slate post I talked about Generalized Anxiety Disorder and its causes, affects, and my experiences with it. I explained how it affects students with their education and day to day life. I did my best to explain why mental health is so important and its impacts. I also provided statistics about GAD and mental health in general. I tried to pick a topic that I knew I could relate to so I could understand it and its effects better.) I talked about Generalized Anxiety Disorder and its causes, affects, and my experiences with it. I explained how it affects students with their education and day to day life. I did my best to explain why mental health is so important and its impacts. I also provided statistics about GAD and mental health in general. I tried to pick a topic that I knew I could relate to so I could understand it and its effects better.

As I continue my research I find more and more hotlines and online resources for mental health that I didn’t even know existed. There are so many online screening websites for people to get diagnosed and seek treatment. There were even substance abuse treatment websites that found you help based on your zip code. I was surprised at how easily accessible they were as all it took was a quick google search to find them. Most of the hotlines and resources I found were located in philly too! It was encouraging to see all of these websites together as I felt like I was seeing real change. I think this change is so important because it’s a huge step in making mental health more accessible to everyone. I just wish more people were aware of these websites and resources and knew that there is help out there.

My GAD awareness Instagram Account

For my agent of change I made an instagram account (@gadawareness) and made my own infographics with my research from my annotated bibliography! I had my friends share and follow the account. I also made a link tree for my bio with mental health resources and hotlines that I found in my research. I decided to do this because I felt like most students my age had social media so the best way to connect with them was through an instagram account. My experience was great and I enjoyed making and designing my infographics. I liked being able to get creative and chose the color palette for my account. I think I was effective in at least providing some information to my followers which is a small step but in the right direction.

One of the posts I made for my account

My overall project was refreshing to work on, I felt like there was hope out there and that even my small steps toward change can help. It also felt overwhelming but seeing everyone else make their accounts and fundraisers and websites encouraged me. I learned the impact of hearing other peoples stories and seeing people get the help that they needed when I was researching. I felt very supported by my classmates who followed and liked my posts, it was a reminder that we are a community. If I could change anything I would have made my posts earlier or made more. While I like the way my account turned out I could have planned the timing out way better. I feel like all of my small steps matter but to achieve real change we need people to talk about mental health more and make it more common, maybe then we can finally erase the stigma.

In my previous Slate Post, I talked about how eating plant based is better for animals, our human health, and reduces climate change. Consuming less meat or avoiding meat altogether could change our lives, other’s lives, and the world we live in. I promoted vegetarianism and I understood how hard the change could be, to go from eating everything to eating fully plant based. Before coming up with my idea for my Agent of Change, I came across a list of organizations and resources that you can donate or share with other people to raise awareness for eating plant based. I think supporting vegan/vegetarian organizations is another great way to educate yourself and others. It’s for a good cause and unlike my vegetarian challenge, it’s not limited to only SLA students, anyone can sign or donate.

For my Agent of Change, I decided to create a Vegetarian Challenge where I encourage students at SLA to eat all plant based or attempt to eat all plant based for a week, in hopes of introducing the vegetarian lifestyle and bringing awareness to the harmful things eating meat can do. This idea first came to be when I questioned, how can I get people to physically change their diet and what they eat, without forcing them to go full vegetarian. That’s when the idea of a challenge popped into my head. A low pressure, vegetarian challenge that could help people arrive at the first and hardest base of vegetarianism; actually eating all plant based. The rules were to try to eat all plant based for five days while keeping a food log of all the things you ate during the week. At the end of the week, participants will receive a google form they have to fill out and turn in their work logs.

I know how hard it is to have enough commitment to eat all plant based and resist meat, so I thought, maybe participating in a challenge will help motivate others to stick to that diet for a week and see how they feel physically and emotionally. It was really nerve wrecking organizing a challenge but in the end, everything fell into place. It was my first time being the creator of any type of event, and I would say it has been very interesting being on the other end of something. From the responses I got back, I think my Agent of Change has been really effective. Most of the participants felt physically and mentally better. I decided to do more research on how eating plant-based food can affect your mental health and according to this article, certain foods can either increase or decrease anxiety and depression. The foods you eat play an important role in your mental health and well being. Eating plant based releases serotonin, making you feel more positive because plant foods are high in antioxidants. Meat and animal products are high in arachidonic acid, which will create a chemical reaction in our bodies that can increase anxiety, stress, and depression. I also felt like it was a success because most of them said they would consider being a vegetarian after the challenge. Even if they didn’t want to go vegetarian after, I think it’s great that they are now aware of the situation.

I’m really happy with how my project turned out. My project wouldn’t be this successful if the students of SLA didn’t step up and volunteer to participate so I really appreciate everyone who participated in this challenge! I was so lucky to have people who were vegetarian see my challenge in the advisory memo and request to spread the word of my challenge to their friends.

Something I learned about myself while working on this project was that I could handle the pressure of organizing a challenge or a program. I learned to not doubt myself and to believe that I am capable of making a change, no matter how small or big my actions are. I think something I could’ve done better was reach out to the participants more. I kind of felt disconnected after I introduced the challenge. If I could do this project again, I would have a mid week check up on the participants or maybe send encouraging words, just something to show that I want them to do good. There is still a lot of change we need to promote in order to convince everyone to eat plant based, but overall, I think my project was a successful way to reach out to the SLA community.

Annotated Bibliography

In my last post, I talked about one of the biggest problems in Philadelphia right now which is gun violence. I talked about how much it affects our communities and the people that live in it. I gave numbers and graphs that showed the yearly increase in homicides, a map that showed what areas are being affected most by gun violence, and charts that showed victims of gun violence with and without paralysis.

As research continues for my project, Mayor Jim Kenney and congressmen plan to use next year’s stimulus money as funding for anti-violence efforts. Even though this isn’t major, it’s a step in the right direction for combating gun violence. Also, social media is spreading news about gun violence through platforms On twitter, Gun violence was trending just last week. This helped to continue to raise awareness to the issue and gain attention to the people in power. I am very happy that these tactics were set in stone. I think it’s a perfect mix of combining media and views from the mayor and congressman as a way to combat gun violence.

On the topic of social media, I decided to make a twitter page that specifically covers gun violence in Philadelphia. I wanted this page to consist of news, charts, videos, posters and more. Here’s one of the tweets I did, I dedicated this tweet to how gun violence has increased due to the pandemic. I talked about things like unemployment, health care, and housing that have been hard to find during the pandemic, ultimately factoring into an increase of homicides.

News outlets I followed on my twitter page

My twitter page where I talked about gun violence in Philadelphia

My main drive for doing this cause for my Agent of Change project was seeing thousands of people lose their lives to guns, especially in the surrounding areas and communities I live in. It’s truly saddening to know that some of my friends’ communities have to deal with gunshots every day and hearing another person die down the street from your house. Going into this cause I had no experience with gunshots and gun violence in the streets of my neighborhood. Even though I had little experience, I knew my impact on this issue could be just as good as some with more experience with gun violence. Creating a social media page was my way of making a change. I’m glad I chose this route because I know a lot of kids my age are exposed to social media and can gain traction from social media consumers about causes like this.

Going into the project I wasn’t that confident. I thought the change that I would take decades to do wouldn’t have enough impact and would be something that is forgotten quickly. After delivering a social media page gaining traction and attention this would be a project that I will always remember one thing, I made a better situation then me and my city were in. What I learned about myself was being a news reporter would be a job I would be interested in as a future job. I think I’m good at gathering information and publicizing it. One thing I wish I did better was gaining followers. I put out a good amount of tweets but I wasn’t gaining a following which I think would’ve created more publicity. If there’s one thing I remember its change is continuous, it never stops until their is no change to be made.

Annotated Bibliography

In my previous writing, I talked about why I chose sexual assault. I also talked about ways to fight back against rapists and my own experiences. Sexual assault is a serious topic that should be talked about more. Which is one of the reasons why I picked it as my topic [(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T0u44GPI2UcW2braunOC5nnbnWIyhx6xiPo0bmS8onQ/edit?usp=sharing)]. To raise awareness, I’ve made a instagram account called no_means_no.21 (no underscore means underscore no.21) where I will be posting ways to protect yourself from rape or/and sexual assault, what to do if you have been raped, how to comfort someone if they have been sexually assaulted or raped, and promoting skits and videos by other people. I will of course give credit to the people of the videos in the captions. My goal is to educate the people who already follow me, but to also educate their followers. That is why I have told my sisters and friends to re-post my account. That way, a lot more people would see it and hopefully read my posts.

For me to be posting information on my new page, I will have to do a lot more research before posting so I know that I’m not posting anything that isn’t true or actually helpful. A source that I find really helpful and reliable is Rainn.org [(https://www.rainn.org/after-sexual-assault)]. This site has a lot of useful information. One thing that was useful for me is the “After Sexual Assault” section. There are a lot of ways we could change the amount of sexual assault. Boys are usually taught at a young age that it’s ok for them to hit a girl’s butt if you like them and girls are often told that “boys will be boys” after they tell someone that they were touched inappropriately. We could start a change by raising sons right and telling them that it’s not ok to touch people without their permission. Also that touching someone inappropriately is not funny or a joke. There also needs to be long sentences for rapists who are caught. Both women and male rapists get let off too easy too often. It’s always “What were you wearing?” and victim blaming. Then male rape survivors are told “You should’ve enjoyed it” simply because they are men. That is something else that really needs to change.

But for men and women, rape takes away their sense of power, confidence, love for themselves. For men, it can take away their manliness. (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/16/male-rape-victims-sexual-abuse-support) The purpose of Agent of Change is to bring attention to rape and sexual assault. How normalized boys touching girls without consent is and how normalized it is that male rape survivors need to just “suck it up”. I want to educate the people I know on this issue, that way they could know how to protect themselves and to understand how horrible this issue is. I chose this topic because it felt like something that could come to me easily. I myself have had experiences of sexual assault, which is one of the main reasons why I picked this topic, to show myself ways I could protect myself and to always be careful.

I want my followers and people I know to be able to protect themselves just in case anything happens. Rape and sexual assault could happen anywhere, which is why it is important to know these things. I learned a lot of things which is what I wanted. This was a very important and educational experience for me, yet sad to know that this is the world we live in. Even if my instagram account doesn’t get a big following, I know that I am contributing to changing the world. This was a very deep project for me, since I had to look into my experiences that I had in order to write this. Although I already knew that some things I went through stuck with me, while doing this project I realized how many times I’ve been sexually assaulted. At such a young age too. I don’t want other people to go through these types of things. I want people to know as much as possible so they can protect themselves and others. I’m actually proud of the outcome of this project. I don’t know what I would want to change. Even if this project is over, I want to at least have 10 posts on my account before stopping, so I will continue to post on it. I have a bit of followers right now, but hopefully, it grows, and hopefully my account does help people.

On my l[ast slate post] (https://scienceleadership.org/blog/misrepresentation_of_muslim_women_in_the_media) the misrepresentation of muslim women in the media, I have learned many new things on my issue. Muslim women have been the main target of “representation” when it comes to adding a muslim charter to a show and they shove all these negative stereotypes and display them on television, as if its normal. Muslim women have been given such an unfair outlook on their appearance [(hijab)] ( https://www.google.com/search?q=hijab&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS943US944&oq=hijab&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j0i433l3j0j0i433j0j0i457j0i433.4239j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) the religion they follow (being oppressed/terrorist) To raise awareness of my topic, I have reached out to social media and news blogs to bet their thoughts and options on this. As media platforms that many people follow, how are they trying to fix this? One media platform that i contacted was [MuslimGirl] (https://muslimgirl.com/) , an organization that is full of muslim women to empower them and others around them. I have emailed them but sadly have not received an email back. I have taken matters sito my own hands and decided to post about my topic on my own instagram page and hear what the public had to say. I made a google form and also interview some of my muslim women mutuals on instagram. Two of them decided to stay anonymous and the other decided to share theory name and school. This was a big highlight to the project because i wanted the project to have the voices of muslim women speaking up. I could easily sit here and write on why this ain’t right at all but other voices added to mine makes everything more powerful. In order to change these ways, is to do research., simple. To satop with the negative stereotype and to actually dive in and do research on muslim women. Wight Islam being the fastest growing religion at the moment, it should be hard for movie directors or bloggers to do some research and let their research on muslims be from muslims themselves, especially if its on muslim women. I wanted to pursue bringing this topic more into the light and to have people take it more seriously. Over the years muslim women have been seen as oppressed, we are not pressed by Islam we are oppressed by the negative stereotypes that the media has created for us. I wanted my Agent of Change to be something that would give this topic more exposure. Many women empowerment groups have spoken about this but they only get spoken about for a week then forgotten. My experience when doing this project was really interesting. My original idea was to email MuslimGirl and set up an interview with them but I sadly didn’t get an email back. I later made a presentation that I linked to an article I wrote. I was able to have it published in our school advisory memo! I also posted about it on my Instagram and many people saw it I was effective in making change by doing the first step: giving the problem or topic exposure. Making sure people knew that this was a problem shouldn’t be normalized. I knew stopping film industries from doing this harm would take A LOT of work so I took the first step, which is also a huge step. I felt very happy doing this project because I am very passionate when it comes to the rights of muslim women or women in general ( especially WOC). I feel like iot s aspace where i know what i am talking about and know how to get it done I learned from others that they feel as if speaking on big topics like this won’t change nothing burn from seeing all the nreposting i have done on my social media platforms, they have decided to finally share their thoughts and opinions which is helping this project, so they are also making a change! I learned about myself that I have a lot to say on this topic and could easily use my own opinions but I decided to listen to others and get their thoughts.I feel like I could have presented this much better. Originally this was supposed to be an advisory presentation but I was irresponsible and kept forgetting to ask and it was too late, but I found a way to make it work. What’s left now is to eliminate the negative stereotypes of muslim women in the media and listen to their voices instead of trusting anything you see or hear. We have voices that need to be heard.

(Mira Young a junior at SLA replied with this under my story)

In my last post, “What Do We Owe To Education”, I researched some questions I had about education and funding in general, and learned a lot about the Federal Budget, funding gaps, and the affect the lack of funding had on schools.

Since then, I have focused on the issue of the lack of funding for schools. I did some more research based on this more focused view, using these sites:

Once I had finished my research, I decided to make a Public Service Announcement (PSA) with the information I had gathered. It was difficult to decide which information to use because I had to decide what was most important. That was why at the end of the PSA, I put a link to my bibliography so if someone was really interested, they could look more into it.

In order to get this PSA out to people, I decided to share it on social media and reach out to some members of staff who could help me. I reached out to Jeremy, who said that he would put my PSA into our advisory memo, and to Ms. Jonas, who said that I could present about my topic to my advisory. I thought this would be most effective because technology can really get around to many people. If things were back to normal, I probably would have adapted my PSA to be printed and placed around the school. Since so many people are online, I decided to make a more in depth PSA with all the information needed.

Below are some screenshots of putting my PSA in action:

Overall, I am not sure I was really making a change. A Public Service Announcement can help to get information out and make people aware of an issue, but I would really like to talk to more people to actually go from informing to making a change. If I did this project over again, I think I would interview more students, teachers, and staff about their experiences with the system and get more involved in my community. I became less interested in my topic as I continued, but was happy with the result. All that is left is to send the PSA to Jeremy for the advisory memo and present in my advisory on Monday. I think at the very least, I made a change in myself because I know a lot more about this topic and issue and can understand a little more of the education world as I go through it.

My favorite thing that I wrote was:

Because while there are people in power, there is also the power of the people, giving each and every one of us the opportunity to make a difference.

The importance of knowing oneself is most commonly known as a really good thing and is associated with giving a person clarity and a feeling like taking a deep breath of fresh air. Something people don’t really realize while striving for this achievement, is that the journey comes with contemplation of your mental health. Mental health has been pretty overly stigmatized in the media (media suasion) to the point where it is commonly known for being a dangerous or scary thing. On my previous SLATE post, I covered a few examples of how and what the media has stigmatized. Because of this research I thought it would be good to start off with a smaller action to raise awareness as a sort of way to get comfortable with this form of activism. My main idea for this poster was to try and push and move the normalization of people with any kind of mental health issues. More specifically, the conversations of mental health. Since a lot of the time people with these different issues get clumped into a category with other people with different symptoms and clumping people together isn’t known for being great at all, I believe normalizing the conversation of people being different and with many kinds of mental illnesses or not helps make the misconceptions of mental illnesses lessened. “We’re Basically All Struggling With Mental Health Right Now—Let’s Normalize It” by Jessica A Gold explains the importance of these conversations and also gives a few tips on some simple things that you can do to help out as well.

It’s hard to tell when you are making a difference, at least in the beginning, but there are other ways I also try to help this cause in day to day life that I believe does something. I try to have meaningful conversations with people about the states of mental health when it comes up, unless they are really uncomfortable. If they do feel uncomfortable I usually drop the conversation but also bring it up later if I feel like its important. This could feel really bad or really rewarding depending on what kind of person I’m talking to, and a lot of other components also contribute to this as well. It feels good to know that you made a difference in the world, or at least put it out there that you tried and succeeding is kind of a bonus. A big bonus, but a bonus nonetheless. I realized that the idea is primarily to make a change, but trying to do that, and also the intentions and ambition behind it make a difference as well.

The project is never really done for me. I don’t think it’s something that can really be “fixed” but it can definitely be better. Looking back on this project I think I could have and maybe should have chosen a project that was a little more ambitious and less “easy” in a way. I feel like even though this was probably a good first step, this project could’ve had more components to it that made it stand out more or something that made it different. It feels a little like I took the easy way out, but really I think I would have done more if it were a little less time crunched. Overall I think this was a good experience that I can rely on for sources and information to back up the main idea mostly.

(side note) - The watermark was very much unintentional and I couldn’t get rid of it so sorry if it’s a little bit more difficult to read because of that.

So my project was a little different. It wasn’t a problem I could really change but I still feel it was important. I did mental health changes during quarantine. For my previous post, I did research on mental health changes in quarantine.I discussed multiple sources that I researched to see percentages and rates. It was surprising but at the same time expected to see the percentage of good mental health go down. I decided to do an instagram page where people could talk about their experiences.I got a lot of people to send me messages about how they changed or didn’t change with consent to post. I posted them on instagram and I thought they all looked good. I related to almost all of them and it was very interesting to see a lot of the answers. I followed some mental health pages but I sadly didn’t do much to promote my page. I really only posted whatever piece of writing I was given. I made 6 posts total and they all were meaningful.

[This website] (https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/) has some more info on mental health percentages during the pandemic.

The reason I have decided to do this is because my mental state had actually gotten better in quarantine. It was the most free I had ever felt and I was surrounded by things I loved. I know others didn’t feel that way so I was curious to see how. That was basically my whole motivation for this. I learned mostly new information through this which I am very proud of. I made actual progress with this project and learned a lot. I am very thankful for people helping me as well.

I have been reflecting on my project and these are my thoughts: I feel very good about this project for the most part. People cooperating with me felt very nice and I also learned a lot about the people around me. It was also a great experience to see what other people had done in quarantine and how they changed. Without saying names, I learned that one friend had worked on themselves in quarantine and that it was a great time to do so. This person should be proud of themselves for their work.

I learned that I wasn’t alone about some of my thoughts. Some other people also didn’t change too much and thought it was a good reflection time to work on themselves. I also learned that there were other people who struggled with quarantine and didn’t have that good of a time during it. So I found some information about other people and compared it to myself to see the differences or similarities. I definitely learned new things about myself and others.

The only things that I regret are not having good time management and not promoting my page. I didn’t ask anyone to repost or shout out my page. I also only followed a couple of people. I definitely would have managed time better as well. I would probably have more post if I didn’t wait as long to start as I did.

[Annotated bibliography] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wGSNZbk9LJ9G478gjohRBqlmtA-TvlFW1ECYdrPpGdQ/edit?usp=sharing

These are a couple examples of the writing pieces I posted. If you want to see the rest then please check out Quarantinehealth24 on instagram. If you want you can also follow the account.

In my previous post, I explained what my reason for trying to solve the parking problem was. That reason is mainly because of how much it affects me and my family and everyone around me everyday. When my teacher told me to think about something that related to me and that I wanted to see better, I immediately thought of this. So, the last post is just looking at the problem, and seeing what I could possibly do about this, and why this is even a problem in the first place. Then I conclude with the main reason why people park illegally, which is pretty much just tradition.

Since my last post, new articles have come out due to Covid that are surprisingly related to parking. So because of the city being practically shut down, a lot of the travelers that usually come here to eat, tour, and party, now don’t. That means much less cars, and much more parking spots. Also, no one is going into work, so you can account for that too. I haven’t found many articles on this, but it’s pretty much a given. That being said, parking also may have also gotten a little worse. Let me explain, so restaurants are just now opening back up to their inside seating. So what have they been doing for the past year? Outdoor seating. But where do the seats go, we live in the city. They go right in the street, blocking the way for traffic and parking. I’ve personally seen this many times, but it doesn’t speak for every restaurant, so this is slightly less of an issue.

Wanting to do a little more research on this project, I reached out to my neighbor who works as a meter revenue collector. He told me a lot about how the PPA has worked in the past, and how it is changing today. The interview is linked [here] (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FHjv6_8-NYTpM_P63iPwdAvHs_p7sE1D/view?usp=sharing0) is very interesting and talks more in depth about the coronavirus and how it conflicts parking.

I feel that these changes are much needed. If people see that there are less spots possible to park in, maybe they won’t take the car out as much. There are many different means of public transportation that are cheap and pretty easy to use. This would significantly cut down on traffic, and most of all, parking problems. Road closures for pedestrians and outside seating might just be the accidental solution to this problem.

What I pursued for my agent of change is a bicycle taxi service/informant. Basically, I ride around on my tandem bicycle and pick up people and take them where they want to go. While im riding them, I talk to them about parking issues and inform them on how they can help. This has worked well for me because I don’t even ask for payment, I just ask where they are going. I do this because I think that any trip to center city without a car is a worthwhile trip.

Above is shown parking conjestion

For my You & The World project, I was trying to give off a what is the best thing to do for people that were born different from others and not just saying that we are different. We are the same because we are the same but just have our brains thinking different not all people will think the same things as you are but people that are born with autism makes them have a hard time talking because some people that have autism have a hard time just trying to talk with someone people because they can some times not tune out other noise that comes from different areas. After all, I have seen some families not show their kids they think that they are going to tell them that it is not right for society to have to take care of them because they need to work a lot with them just to make a connection with someone that has special abilities. To think that other people will say that is not right because if you were in that person’s shoes that has a special need kid and people telling you that it will give you a bad feeling because they are saying it to you when you were just saying that to the other person. I wanted to make a video but things got hard for me and I had to change a lot of things I could not make the video in time so what I did was try to explain the best I can about my video

The thing that I know from my research and my family members is that some people who have different needs for their children makes you think is autism the same for other kids and the video that I was going to make I was going to explain that others have different thing some people that have autism can talk and some that have autism can’t. My cousin is part of the people that have autism that can’t talk and he makes you read his body language to understand what he is talking about I have seen this because my aunt has different ways to talk with my cousin when he is hungry he starts to shake his hands and his head to make look and say that he is hungry. I have a video that I found about this person his name is Mark Rober and he has a son that has autism he has a video explain about it more than I do in the video that I was going to make he explains the things that he does as a father but makes the courage make a video to explain about his son and to teach others what is autism and I can tell that he does not feel right when he is making the video about his son. I have a cousin that has autism and my aunt and uncle don’t like to think about what other people will say about their son

Mark Rober and his son.

The process that I was going to do was make an animation video explaining what is autism? Why should we teach other kids about autism? and why is it important? I was going to make this question the most key idea of the video and I was going to make it be able to download for other people able to spread the word of autism and make them think to teach their children in the further and to make this video come up always to there mind when other people want to learn about autism

Links to everything I used https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r53VdN2-ogy4reWxAQZ5u9SKNc5C_PUohNhA7RlY9OY/edit?usp=sharing

On my last post, I explained the problems with having snakes as pets. This is a topic that needs to be brought way more attention. Snakes are captured from their natural habitats and transported to different places, this process can cause them a lot of harm. Then, for the rest of their lives they are kept in tanks that don’t even have the space they need to stretch. Not only their physical body gets harmed but so does their mental state. They can feel a lot of stress and anxiety in captivity. Most snakes are very cheap, which gives more people a reason to want to buy them. When I was looking for organizations that are doing things to help stop this, I couldn’t really find a lot, but the one I found was World Animal Protection. They have made articles informing people why this is such an important issue. They also have a wildlife pledge that people can sign to share support and help stop this issue. They receive donations to stop all sorts of animal cruelty, including my topic. And they also have an instagram account to raise awareness to this type of stuff. I think these are very effective ways of helping snakes and other animals. However there’s way more that needs to be done because there’s still not a lot of people know about this.

*A screenshot of my gofundme link

For my Agent of Change part, I decided to set up a Gofundme link so I could raise money in order to donate to World Animal Protection. Since the least amount you can donate to World Animal Protections donation link is $30, I thought it was best to set up a gofundme for people who still wanted to donate, but couldn’t exactly contribute with that much. I reached out to the organization so I could inform them of my plan, but I got no response. My gofundme actually didn’t turn out to be very successful, since I only got very few donations. I will still be donating to World Animal Protection but with my own money, and the donation money I received. Even though I didn’t get as many donations as I hoped for, I got multiple people to sign the wildlife pledge.

Screenshot of one of my friends signing the wildlife pledge *

Overall, I really enjoyed working on this project. I really liked being able to work on something I actually care about and having to do something to help. I also thought it was cool how everyone had such interesting topics, and helped in many different ways. I thought everyone’s topic also let me know a little more about the person and about what type of topics they cared about. I think there’s a lot of things that could have gone better if I was to do this project while I was in the country. Since I wasn’t, I had to change some things so I could still try to help in a virtual way. If I could do things in person, I would’ve loved to do some type of fundraiser in person since a lot of people that wanted to donate couldn’t because they had no way to pay virtually. There’s not much left for me to do but I want to wait a little longer to see if I can raise a little more money so I can donate more to the organization.

Annotated Bibliography