Blog Feed

Create a Post

The 10th Amendment and "Us"

Posted by Natalie Sanchez in American Government - Laufenberg on
My group (Mathhew Scuderi and Julia Boyer) and I chose the 10th amendment because it was something that not everyone in the class was researching. We weren't too schooled on the powers reserved to the states and wanted to become more informed on the subject. In completing this project, we learned that the basic idea of the tenth amendment is that there are certain powers or laws, rather, that the states have control over. The nation should not interfere with the way that the states handle issues like education or gay marriage, among other issues. The tenth amendment is the reason why Obama can't forcefully demand that all states require their children to go to school until the age of 18; he has to ask the states permission to implement this law because education is a power reserved to the states. Among all of the issues that we could have dwelled on for this project, we chose to research education as a power reserved to the states. 

I liked this project because we were given the opportunity to use video as a our means of media presentation. It is not something that I, personally, usually use to present, so it is exciting whenever I can make a video for one of my projects. I also liked that we were given the liberty to speak with outside professionals about our topic and could record interviews, not only with said professionals, but also with our school peers. We were able to put the student voice into our documentary. 

As with all of the projects that we complete in school, our documentary could have used some growing room. If I were to do the documentary again, I would start on the project a little earlier and incorporate more dimensions of the issue at hand into the documentary (How we can fix the problems, the funds that we have to make changes to the way that this works, connect education as a power reserved to the state to the powers of the states under the 10th amendment, etc.) I feel like we could've done a better job connecting education back to the 10th amendment. 

We ran into a little bit of trouble with this project after winter break because I missed school for a week, as I was with my family in Puerto Rico. I was not back on time to work with my group on the project in the beginning of January, and had to wait a week before I could see them again. I worked on finding information for the group on our issue and posting it on our google doc while I was still away and after a week was able to come together with my group once again to touch base about what we needed to complete our project. My absence threw me back a little because I could not effectively find out what my group needed from me to complete the project. We fixed our problem by making sure that we all completed our designated jobs on our own time so that when we did meet, we could present what we had to import to the project. In the end we put all of our individual pieces into one project. We were all pretty on point and prompt with all of our individual tasks which helped us to complete our project on time. We also made sure to collect our c-span footage really so that when it came to put all together, we wouldn't have to spend too much downloading the videos from the site and adding them to our movie.  If I had to do it over again, I would probably begin my project before I left to Puerto Rico, so that my group could have a big bulk of it already done before the new school years starts up again. If we would have done this, we would have saved ourselves a lot of stress and time.

 I learned that the States can decide how they deal with issues like education, marriage, and gun certification. The Federal government cannot interfere with this. The problem is that sometimes, since the federal government funds the states, federal policy tends to leak into the state policy (because states need funding and support from the federal government). 

To see our bibliography, click here. 

If you are having trouble viewing the video, please click here. 

Focusing on the 14th Amendment.

Posted by Semaj Smith in American Government - Laufenberg on
For this benchmark I worked with Ayanna Robinson we focused on the 14th Amendment. I will be uploading our citations and Ayanna will be uploading our video and then we will both make sure we have everything on both pages at a later time. Below are the sources we used. 

Mulligan, Robert, dir. To Kill A Mocking Bird. Writ. Horton Foote. Universal , 1963. Film.

 

Comer, Dawn, writ. Our Friend, Martin. Dir. Rob Smiley, and Vincenzo Trippetti. DiC Enterprises, 1999. Film.

 

Brooks, James, dir. Spanglish. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 2004. Film.

 

The Ed Show

 

Fox News

 

C-SPAN

Medio Ambiente PSA (Force y Manton)

Posted by Sean Force in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
Introducción
Hicimos un PSA sobre el contaminacion del aire en Filadelfia.

Es un asusnto importante a nosotros porque nosotros queremos aire que no esta contaminé.

Esperamos que el público de Filadelfia ayudarán nosotros con nuesto meta.


Mi Reflexión
Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre el contaminacion del aire en filadelfia.

Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue que hay muchos, muchos cosas que nosotros podemos hacer a ayudar el medio abiente.

Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque yo pienso es un muy bien PSA, y yo peinso que es un poco comimico tambien.

Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo pienso que yo cambiaría los tiempos que nosotros hacemos algas cosas.

Quarter 2 Benchmark: 14th Amendment

Posted by Brittany Riggins in American Government - Laufenberg on
I would like to start out by saying me and my partner Samantha have learned alot more about ourselves and our struggles with our past and our present by completing this project. Using the 14th amendment with both of us having ethic backgrounds and expeirencing discrimination in some sort of way whether it be school, jobs, or anything that we as people can come into contact where you can possibly be judged for, we deal with on a daily basis. I know that not only is the 14th amendment important to me and Samantha, but that law being written im the past has given us ample opputunities for today and will give us even more our futures. We hope that you enjoy our video.
One of the main reasons why me I choose amendent 14 is because I realized that without this amendent there would be a drastic change to,the lives we lead today. although there are many topics that fall under the 14th amendment the one that hit close to home was discrimination. We live in a time where everyone has the same equal rights but not for a second do I forget the people who fought, died and marched to get those rights granted. I did this amendment because I could relate to the feeling the desire and the privelege of people who were discriminated against but ultimately survived and knew they deserved better and got better. What I enjoyed most about this project is that it allowed me to take time out to think about the day to day things I do without even thinking about it twice and really examine if this amendment was not there, there would be many things even on my way to school that would be difficult for me to do, on the other hand the most challenging thing to do was to relate the message though a presentation even though there was a Set way you had to present it making your video unique and different was the hard part. While doing this project the most interesting fact is that people who we incuded in our video were good at explaining thier point of views on the subject and had stories as to go with our topic that was interesting. I loved doing this project but overall if there was anything I could improve it would be our timing and our editing. The timing part was good but towards we had some problems with sound and what not, but if we would have had more time that we paced ourseleves we could have had it perfect. And editing it was both our first time working with editing so that was kind of difficult. What I learned is that don't forget that life is how itbecuase of these amendments.
Bibliography

HIV/AIDS Discrimination - Recent Court Cases, Issues and Articles." American Civil Liberties Union. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://www.aclu.org/hiv-aids/hivaids-discrimination>.


"HIV & Your Civil Rights: Know Your Rights in the Workplace." American Civil Liberties Union. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights_hiv-aids/hiv-civil-rightsbrknow-your-rights-workplace>.


"History of U.S. Since 1877 Important People, Terms, and Events." Colorado Public Record Search. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://coloradopublicrecordsearch.org/95/history-of-u-s-since-1877-important-people-terms-and-events/>.


Somerville voices article. web 23 Jan. 2012<http://www.somervillevoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/somerville_ma_schools_graduation_and_drop_out_by_race_ethnicity-1.jpg>. 


Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to be Far Lower Than Expected. web 23 Jan. 2012 <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html>. 


How Important is Cultural Diversity at school your school. web 23 Jan. 21012 <http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/defining-your-ideal/284-cultural-diversity-at-school.gs 


Racial Disparity in School Suspensions. web 23 Jan.2012 < http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/education/14suspend.html> 


Milestones in African American Education. web 23 Jan. 2012 <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872844.html>

Reflection

Posted by Allison Patterson in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre la importancia del agua limpia.
      Mediante la creación de la PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue que el agua la suciedad duele más que sólo las personas.
      Me gusta mi grupo PSA, ya que escuchaba a mis ideas.
      Si yo pudiera hacer de nuevo el proyecto, que cambiaría el tiempo que tomó para que empecemos.

http://scienceleadership.org/blog/PSA:2

PSA

Posted by Allison Patterson in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
Hicimos un PSA de agua potable en Filadelfia. Se trata de una muy importante para nosotros porque el río de Schuylkill es uno de los más sucios ríos. Esperamos que el público de Filadelfia no va a contaminar el agua.

The 26th amendment - StudentCam Benchmark

Posted by William Marsh in American Government - Laufenberg on
Created by:
Ali Ahmed
William Marsh
Tim Mamrol

My group chose this topic because it was the most relevant topic we found. As young men, the voting age is massively significant to us, especially because we will all be 18 by the next presidential election. I liked the freedom we were given in completing this project, and I also especially like working in video and digital media. I found the most difficult aspect of this project to be finding people to interview. My parents (Earl Marsh and B Hibbs) agreed to be interviewed eagerly, but Ali and I spent at least two hours asking people to answer a few questions and found all of three people that were willing to speak to us, out of dozens. I was fascinated and horrified by the Kent State shootings in response to student protest of the Vietnam war and the draft. As someone who will be going to college this fall, while not of the same era as this horrible event, it was startling to think that someone of my age had been killed by his own country for protests. 

I think that the project would have been better if we got more interviews and better stock footage to use for voice overs. I was a bit disappointed by how bland some of the images we had to use for our voice overs. I ran into issues with this project with organizing group mates and formatting the video. When changing the format of the video into flv (the preferred format), the audio consistently cut out in the same spot in three different sets of encoded video. I changed the settings around to the same settings used for the full time digital video class, but the audio still cut out. I think that our script and the interviews were done very well. If this project were to be repeated, I would try to distribute the work more evenly. I feel that I did a large amount of the work, with a decent amount of help from one of my group mates, while the other was largely uninvolved. I learned that the voting age had not always been 18, but perhaps more importantly I learned how valuable a draft can be. While I do not want to be drafted, or have the draft reinstated, the draft can be held responsible for a huge change in the politics of the nation. By forcibly taking mother's sons away from her, to be sent halfway across the world to fight in a brutal, controversial war, the draft really made people in the U.S care about the politics of the nation and the world. While I don't like the idea of the draft, I must say it is an incredible source of motivation for the youth of America, something that is seldom seen in the voting environment.

Inflation Valuation - StudentCam Entry

Posted by Jeffrey Kessler in American Government - Laufenberg on
Learn about how one small clause in the constitution affects every decision we make!



As one who has always been interested in economics, I have always understood the importance of inflation and the valuation of the US Dollar on our purchasing power. As a result, I decided to study congress' ability to value money as found in the constitution. My interest in this topic certainly allowed me to enjoy both the research and filming of the project. However, the most difficult portion was certainly getting stock footage of various people doing random acts, as many people often feel uncomfortable with being filmed.

One of the most interesting things that I discovered through my benchmark was that there was an "eagle" in addition to the standard dollar. This was primarily interesting since the eagle no longer exists in our economy, nor do many of them still remain. I would've liked to who an eagle in my project; however, I had not found any. My project could've mostly been improved by focusing a little more on how it directly affects myself; I spent much of the time focused on how it affects everyone in their daily lives. Despite this, I think that this project was certainly done very well, as it explained a topic in a way that was both easy to understand itself and its implications. Overall, in addition to learning some tricks for documentaries, this project taught me much about the economic system that affects our daily lives.

Q2 Benchmark - Freedom of Religion

Posted by Chelsea Starks in American Government - Laufenberg on
This was LaMaya's, Tyler's, & my project for our Q2 Benchmark. The provision we decided to focus on was the freedom of religion in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Click to watch the video below.
Benchmark Reflection:

  • Why did you choose this topic?
    My group members and I wanted to choose a topic that was personal to us, original in such a way that it was not cliché and share our opinions and ideas openly on.
  • What did you like about this project? What was most challenging?
    I liked that we didn't necessarily have to stay in one section of the Constitution, we were able to choose what part in the Constitution we wanted to. I found myself most successful being able to speak freely on my ideas and opinions on this topic as did my teammates. The most challenging thing though, in this project was figuring out how to fit the C-SPAN footage in, in such a way that everything transitioned smoothly.

  • Describe the most interesting fact or event that you investigated.
    The most interesting fact that I have investigated was how before the Constitution there was quite a bit of persecution for people's beliefs but the same people who came to this country because they were being persecuted in Europe for their religion, did the same thing once they got here. It seems to me that history repeats itself if we let it without a doubt.

  • How could this project be improved?
    I think we could have have switched the camera maybe more than what we did. I also think this could have been improved by ways of having clearer C-SPAN footage, but that was just poor video quality on their part.
  • Where did you run into trouble with the project?
    We ran into trouble when trying to convert the video into an FLV file but finally my computer cooperated with me and I was able to upload the video.

  • What went well with this project?
    My group members and I worked really well with this project everyone was able to agree on one thing and really got what we needed to do done. The music, the transitions and the overall look of this project was great and I am proud of the finished product.

  • If you had it to do over, what would you change about your decisions or your process?
    If I had to do this process over again, I would try to record everyone's parts in the same place to keep some type of constant there or at least the background is close to what the other person has. Also I would have added in a skit or something showing what it would be like without that provision in the Constitution.

  • What did you learn?
    I learned just how necessary it is to have the freedom of religion and how strongly some feel about it in terms of them having an opposition to people believing differently than they do. I also learned more about my team members and how they feel about religion, I actually did not know that they sort of felt the same as I do about having the freedom of religion.

reflexión, español 3, Q2BM, Brown

Posted by Arlana Brown in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
​Escribe una relfexión personal en español sobre el PSA en tu blog usando este formato: 
  • Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre basura.
  • Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue afecta el ambiente muy mal porque destruye nuestra imagen como ciudad.
  • Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque muy útil y la comprensión.
  • Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo cambiaría probablemente el tema porque me lo va a querer explorar un poco más.

Charity Water

Posted by Brooke Thompson in Reading, Writing, and Rising Up - Rami on

The product in which I created an advertisement for is charity water. It isn’t necessarily a product but a foundation that brings 3rd world developing countries clean water. The message portrayed in my advisement is that everything counts. The slightest amount of money can even make a difference. For example the picture located in the center says, " $20 dollars can give on person clean water". Which isn’t much. When creating this advertisement I didn’t have a specific intended audience I fell as though this add could catch anyone’s attention and would make people stop and look. So I would say my audience would be all different types of people in any age range. I think creating a print add is effective because people can walk by and see it and they really don’t even have to stop. Also my advertisement has bright color that stand out, its visually appealing. If I were to complete this Benchmark again I would do a hand drawn print add because I feel as though I created a great advertisement but it could have been more creative. 

 

 

ayee
ayee

Español PSA/Relfexión

Posted by Aja Wallace in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
  • Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre, el contaminación en la cuidad.
  • Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue, es importante ese personas aprender por de cuidad y qué es pasa. 
  • Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque, mi amigas y yo nos divertimos. 
  • Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo cambiaría, nada porque el proyecto era bien y simple. 
  • Please include the link to the PSA that has been posted by a group member on their own blog.
    http://scienceleadership.org/blog/Espanol_3_BMQ2-Ssapp_y_Awallace 

Quarter 2 Benchmark: 10th Ammendment

Posted by Julia Boyer in American Government - Laufenberg on
For our second quarter benchmark, Natalie, Matt and I focused on the 10th amendment and how it relates to education. 
To view our work cited page, click here.

When picking the topic for our project, our group decided to find a topic that was easy so we didn't have as much to research and more time to get footage and make our project great. The 10th amendment and education stood out to us. All in all, I thought this project went well with the American Government class and making a documentary about something interesting made the project engaging. The hard part was working with the C-SPAN footage; while they provided us with a lot of material, I wish that I could have had access to the entire archive of footage. It was also difficult fitting our topic into the over-arching question: How does this amendment affect our lives? Trying to fit education into such a broad amendment was hard enough! But what we learned about our topic made the hard work worth while. 

The best information we received was from Gillian Cohen-Boyer, a member of the Dept of Education and a professor of education. She was eager to share her perspective on education reform with us but her interview via email was very challenging and slowed down our project enormously. Her answers, though thorough and full of good bits, arrived the night before the project was due in long, detailed paragraphs. Despite the setback, our group managed to produce a reasonably good documentary. I only wish we had edited so the story came through more clearly. But my education has increased during this project and that's all that matters! I now see the complex relationship between federal and state governments; it's, at times, icy and stand-offish-full of "blackmail" and polite requests with undertones of authority and warning. I also see how, as a student, I have little say in how I am taught due to the tug of war between federal, state and local governments. It's a terrifying and mesmerizing process.   

The Black White Girl

Posted by Zaria Fortson-Linton in English 2 - Pahomov on
​

 

Zaria Fortson-Linton

The Black White Girl

One summer day, I decided to hang out with some of my friends ad we were talking about many different topis. The topic at the moment was about what we were afraid of. When it came to my turn to admit it, the conversation went from being good, to me being bashed.

“I am so petrified of squirrels! Just there presences is enough to making me sprint away from them in fear!”

My friend then responded saying:

“Why you always speakin’ wit that proper voice & those big words? Its like you tryna make everyone look stupid.”

“I am not! I just can’t help it. It is something I’m so use to doing.”

“Whateva! Tryna act white!”

 

This is the typical conversation I have with my peers. Most sixteen year olds my age like to use as much slang as they can. They tend to cut off certain letters and make abbreviations in texts. Since I don’t like to use them, I come off as a “Miss Know-It-All”, stuck up, or even white. Being known as a know it all or stuck up doesn’t bother me as much. The one that bothers me the most is being told that I sound white. For one, I can’t seem to comprehend how race has a language. I also didn’t know that using higher-level words that I am taught in school gives off the impression that I’m trying to be someone who I am not.

 

The worst part about this is that it isn’t just my friends who think this. Even my family views me this way. When I mean family, I mean cousins and aunts and uncles. You see, my mother, step-father, sister, brother, cousin and grandmother all live together, and we all use what people consider “White people talk.” Not only that, because we get really good grades and it’s been that way since kindergarten, that also gives them a reason to classify us as know it alls. I’m not saying that we are stuck up, but I feel as though this generalization is unfair. I feel like judging someone before you even get to know them, or judging them because you were taught differently then they are is wrong and unfair.

In the passage “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” by James Baldwin, he says, “…that language is also a political instrument, means and proof power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public or communal identity.“ 

This quote is something of which I disagree with. Basing the way someone talks is one of the worst ways of trying to get to know and better understand someone. Judging someone before you get to know this is terrible.         

Quarter 2 Benchmark: 19th Amendment

Posted by Sofia Frank-Fischer in American Government - Laufenberg on
This video was created following the guidelines for C-SPAN's StudentCam project. 

I worked with Thea Farah and Rita Willard.

If the embed isn't working, check here for a link!


At first, my group wanted to look into the ability of the president to veto bills. However, we couldn't find vetoed bills that really affect us. Instead, since our group was all female, we figured that the amendment that most directly affected us was the 19th. Once we picked a topic, our lives got a bit easier! We did have a lot of trouble choosing a method of storytelling. Although I do really like the freedom we had to pick our method, so long as it fit in the video, we ended up brainstorming for far too long and didn't have as much time to produce.

Although I appreciated that the project was formatted after the C-SPAN documentary challenge, I think that a slightly altered assignment could have been better for SLA. Maybe we could have chosen whether to create documentary videos or some other form of presentation – videos tend to be just as much about editing as about actual information. We could have had more restrictions on how much history we had to put in. My group did a lot of work on finding the history of the 19th amendment, but didn't include much of it in our project because it didn't fit with C-SPAN's requirements.

As we prepared to create our video, we found plenty of drama in the fight for women's suffrage: a constitutional amendment was brought to congress for 40 years in a row before it was passed, women wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments" that is a pointed reference to the Declaration of Independence, and more. The one point that I found most interesting was the story of the ratification of the amendment. In the end, it all came down to the vote of a single senator within Tennessee. He was in his 20s, and ended up voting for women's suffrage partly because his mother wrote him a note and told him to do so.

In the end, I liked our final project. However, I don't think it thoroughly reflected all that we learned. Instead of telling the story of the amendment, we had to think of ways to explain why the right to vote matters to us. I think that we ended up successful because our video definitely explored the reasons that the 19th amendment matters, and even tied in those reasons to the history of the amendment and an international perspective.

My group specifically ran into a lot of trouble with the scheduling and technicalities of collaboration. We had to get the video from computer to computer, and weren't able to find time to all work together at the same time. Even when we did all work together, we ended up unable to work efficiently. I did enjoy working with the group, though, because we all brought different ideas to the table. If I had to do this project over, I think I'd want to start getting video earlier. That way, we would have been able to add more pictures and other edited pieces, and I think our project would have been richer. However, I did like our overall project, and am proud of my work.