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​When I work with any form of art, I am reminded that art is not what I think I know, but what I know I see. I begin a piece by saying to myself ‘you are not an artist’. By saying this to myself first, no matter what the finish product maybe, I am content with it because I am not an artist, therefore it I can be filled with happiness and obtain a sense of equality when my work is placed side by side with someone who actually is an artist. Art does not come easy for me. It’s almost as though art should be classified as an unofficial emotion. This being because art is what you feel, what you depict when you view a painting, or look at the world; it’s your spirit. And all these I lack.

  In fact, my artwork doesn’t contain any of the qualities one would qualify as being art. There is no skill, no talent, no emotion, no feeling yet what it lacks in those departments; it’s generously made up in effort. I cannot allow myself to do something I haven’t done in a long time, but I could more than a courteous amount of effort into trying, and that is what my artwork is a reflection of: enterprise.

  For my quarter two benchmark, I struggled with what exactly I wanted to accomplish, and what I would be proud to show the world. Something I could own up to, and put my name on. However, this wasn’t easy. I started drawing sketches of different objects that would be placed before at that period of time. This didn’t work. My interpretation of copying what I thought I saw, was confused with copying what I knew should be there. And with each attempted trial, I thought I had failed.

  Given everything I learned about art thus far, I figured I needed to start with something more basic. Something that truly had to do with sight, or something that could replicate my emotions even if they weren’t truly there; for this would be my artwork. So I picked up 3 colors.

Now, the color wheel is not complex. It’s simply an organization of color hues around a circle, showing relationships between colors considered to be primary colors, secondary colors, complementary colors, etc. The wheel can show more, and more mixtures of colors, without every truly defining what color is.  This was my artwork. Knowing that I could replicate something that no one else could define but myself because it was the way I saw it, made me anxious.

And from this, I created my vision of what I believed to the color wheel. I mixed colors to create other colors, and mixed those colors to try and create new colors. I knew my piece was finished when I started to get the sense of frustration. Because I was becoming overwhelmed with the idea of completing my color wheel, I knew I was beginning to think too hard. And because I was able to tap into an emotion, I knew I had accomplished something. When my work is going well, I am filled with a sense of happiness, and when I try to go beyond what I believe to be all of my ability, I know it is time to stop. Art is not my passion, but it is something I am trying to “relearn”. When people see my work; I'd like them to realize that I am not an artist

 

Congratulations to SLA Science and History teacher, Mr. Gamal Sherif, for being chosen by the National Science Teachers Assocation to be awarded the 2011 CPO Award for Excellence in Inquiry-based Science Teaching. Mr. Sherif was one of three teachers in the country and the only high school teacher to be chosen this year.

We at SLA are thrilled to see that NSTA has recognized what we have long known - that Mr. Sherif is a master teacher who helps students to inquire deeply about their world and learn powerfully from the questions they ask and the answers they find.

Congratulations Mr. Sherif, and thank you for all you do for SLA!

I am lobbying Global Warming. I want the state of Pennsylvania to do something toward Global Warming. As of right now the state of Pennsylvania have no real big supporters to help stop or slow down the process of Global Warming. Global Warming can possibly cause our children’s children to really be in trouble.
Maybe some of the ideas that have  already been presented to help Global warming should be put to the test to help out the ozone. I feel as though if the city of Pennsylvania does something, because of its influence on the United States, that other people would follow and we could possible help out our future children. One of our main supporters are the STATOIL company.
I've looked up my areas legislators which are Vincent Hughes and Anthony H. Williams and I haven't heard or saw anything recent about them stressing the importants of clean energy or a decrease in burning of fossil fuels. Anthony Williams is apart of the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee but hasn't spoke out about using less factorial methods of creating energy.

Barbara Adams is another Pennsylvania supporter of stopping global warming. She was under the governorship of Ed Rendell.

I think a good place for me right now is to find away to come in contact with some of our representatives and talk to them about how passionate I am about helping the situation. If they can hear a high school kids concern on the situation it might do some good.

Blog Post 5:

I think that Brianna and I did a pretty good job on every aspect and step of this process besides communication. I think that if we had had more time we could have gave that area a little more attention. I felt as though this was an important part of the process that we didn’t do extremely well. If we were given time to add on, we would probably go back and maybe contact different offices in different areas to see if our response would have gotten better or worse. I also think that showing up to an office in person and being able to speak to someone face to face would have been more effective. We could have communicated our ideas better rather than forcing the opinions of the welfare representatives and perhaps it would have made the conversation a little more easygoing and comfortable for both of us. We should have communicated our ideas of making the welfare system more efficient better and in doing so I think we would have gotten a better outcome

Blog Post 4: Communicating With a Representative

 

Plans for communicating:

-       Figuring out exactly whom we should contact.

-       Finding telephone numbers and addresses for these representatives.

-       Getting them to talk!

(What are some process methods they feel are flawed?)

(What plans do they have in the future for the Welfare System.)

(How can they make improve the welfare system.)

(What suggestions can be made to us as students in trying to make a difference and have our voices heard?) 

 

WIC South Philadelphia Office

1536 South Broad Street, Philadelphia PA

(215)-463-5571

 

It was no surprise to my partner and I that the representatives at the welfare office weren’t much help to us at all. We contacted them by phone. We spent most of our time on hold or we were given the run around. We weren’t able to get much information on the subjects of our questions that we presented to them. I can’t necessarily say they were rude it just seemed as if they had better things to do. The feedback they did give us wasn’t at all helpful because they didn’t feel as though their system had many flaws. Neither do they believe that there are ways around there system, which was one of our major concerns. I think that maybe if we had shown up in person that it would have been a lot harder for them to ignore us and easier for them to understand how serious we were about changes for the best in the welfare system. 

Vichhay Roeung

Artist Statement

There were many success and failures during this quarter. What this quarter focused on was life and perspective form of art. From my experience this quarter I would have to say it was a challenging and difficult process, as I was introduced to new method of art such as charcoal and real life perspective. Even though using charcoal was like using a crayon, the difference was its ability to show the color and shading. While real life perspective, there were many details in which it was difficult to capture or even show on paper.  

Drawing from real life, was the most challenging process during this whole quarter. As there were always more then just one layer of shade or the image in which I could see, the viewpoints and the details of the object. At first drawing from real life perspective such as my hand was easy but when it came to shading or transparent objects, I couldn’t seem to capture the exact details of the object. The clear bottle small project, I believe was the first challenge in further advancing my real life perspective skills.

My first clear bottle small drawing was that of a glass jug. The difficult part of that project would be my ability to capture the glass like texture of the drawing. Where it looks like the glass was bending and reflects part of the lights. It wasn’t until I worked on the large clear bottle, when I noticed my improvements in this type of skill. Using charcoal, I have to say that was the most successful part of this experience. Mainly because I was able to improve in art, using two skills I wasn’t familiar with, which in the end I believed it was a beautiful piece of art. Which that was one of the art piece that I am proud of and thought was a success.

  For each week there was a new assignment. From real life perspective and charcoal small to real life perspective and charcoal large. Which every project that was assigned during that week must be finished in two class periods, mainly because we only had art twice a week. So most of the projects were to be done on our own time, during the snow, and even when we don’t have the class. I feel that I could get the art done easily and well during class, while at home the motivation for it is not much. Thus, large projects should take a little longer, while there should be art that could be finished in one class period.

  Finally for the menu project where we had to choose a category, I choose to work on the genre focus. Where I had to create two inspired piece of art from my genre. I focused on fantasy art as my genre, as fantasy to me is a colorful and playful art such as a child’s book. Using origami to express myself, I created two scenes. One being a vase filled with origami pastel stars as the soil and lots of origami flowers consisting of a tissue rose and paper lily. The second one features two-origami crane interacting with each other around a pile of food, hearts, and stars. Which these are my inspirations from fantasy art, which combines my imagery of fantasy and my love of origami.

Genre Focus: Fantasy Art and Origami 

Where to watch/listen - 9pm - 1/25/11

• • All major TV networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews
• • Online at whitehouse.gov, cspan, pbs
• • On the Radio at NPR 90.7FM

​​For the Seniors - 

1. 1. Listen to the State of the Union
2. 2. Take notes. 
3. 3. Bring notes to class on Wednesday.

For the Juniors - 

1. Listen to the State of the Union
2. Finish filling out the SOTU Graphic Organizer
3. Bring the SOTU Graphic Organizer to class on Thursday

For the Quarter 2 Benchmark I had to search the three branches of the government, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. For each branch I had to find two positive and two negative examples of the branch's power, and write paragraphs of what they are and how they affect me. I had some serious difficulty with this benchmark. Which is evident from how late I am handing this in. Connecting the laws and court cases and such to myself wasn't that difficult, but finding the examples themselves proved to be difficult and tedious to me. I feel that even though I am late handing this in the quality is well enough to make it worth handing in. I am proud of my work, and proud of myself for getting past my difficulties with the project. 

Here is my lobbying assignment. For the final lobbying assignment,I decided to transfer all my information into a newspaper article. 
I thought this would be a better way to explain my topic and my point of view etc.

For my 2nd quarter project I wanted to show the contrast between color and black and white. At first I wasn't sure how I would show this, but one day when I was really angry I made a splatter painting. I painted the page black and then threw colors onto it. The result was this:



Next I got a white sheet of paper and splattered just black paint on it. The comparison of the two is this:







From here I wanted to draw actual shapes and things so I started a colorful drawing with flowers and got this:



Instead of finishing my colorful project I moved onto a black and white Mandala drawing on the opposite side of the paper. This took ridiculously long to make, but the result was this:



This was my favorite thing to make, even though it was epically difficult. The comparison between my two final drawings is this:



I had a lot of fun doing every aspect of this project. I just wish I would have done this blog post on time :(

I did a terrible job with these. To me my hands look like clay-mation on paper. So i tried doing them in different ways. Didn't work to my expectations. But draewing me kind of did. So i don't quite get what made my face easier to draw.

My Benchmark Ant Byrd

 I've been working solo this project and trying to get in touch with Anthony Hardy Williams 8th District Representative,  and trying to get people aware of the situation.
 As you should know by now I want to get a group together to influence neighborhood cleanups, specifically urban neighborhoods.  I wanted to start a group within SLA that expanded to a much larger crown with the help of the senator, It was to be something bigger than your average optional Saturday block sweep. My main concern has been to have our urban streets clean like we have them clean in Downtown Philadelphia and Independence Hall. I haven't heard anything back from the senator but I also know these things take time and he is a very busy person.

For this blog post it is really just an update on the current status of things. Basically I am just waiting on a go from the Senator or at least some support on his part. It wouldn't be a problem to start straight out of school, i just want the support of the senator.

When thinking about the water issues you need to conceder four main things:

Water scarcity: I some parts of the world the hot climates are drying up water resources leaving 1.1 billion people without access to safe water. This leads to death and illness from drunken unsafe water, affects ford production, leads to hunger and increased global food prices. 

Water sanitation: Throughout poor countries access to clean water and basic sanitation is a major problem. 2.6 billion people are lacking adequate sanitation leading to 5 million deaths per day. 

Water access:Many people have to travel long distances to get the water they need because the other ways of getting water such as through ground water, a spring, or a river. 

Resource management: This is often a political issue, usually there are many groups trying to use the same water source and without political intervention these fights for water can become nasty

This is a link to "World Toilet Day 2009" 

http://waterwars.pulitzergateway.org/?p=7060

Nearly 2.6 million people world wide, 40% of the worlds population, lack access to basic sanitation. 

1.1 billion do not have access to clean water. 

1.8 million people mostly young children die each year form water relatable diseases. 

In sub-saharan Africa the lack of sanitary water is holding back economic growth.

On this site are some videos from the Representatives from Water for People, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Strategic and International Studies and Water Advocates. These people went to these places and saw first hand the depth of the crisis and came p with possible solutions. The above link will take you to their videos.

http://waterwars.pulitzergateway.org/

This is a good website to go and check out the Water Wars. On it you can take a test to see how many gallons of water you use and give your opinions and you can also see whats going on with the rest of the worlds water struggles and you can see what many people are doing to help the problem, you can also share your ideas on helping the water problem. 

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