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Earlier in the year, I decided to take on the lead the Spirit Committee and I can tell you, I did not expect it to be this challenging. What I wanted out of this project was a growth from myself. I realized that I used to always stay in my comfort zone- which was allowing others to lead- and I never realized that it started to get boring. I was tired of the norm and I found that being that it is my last year at SLA, it would be the perfect timing to do so. I wanted to step up and see what I can do. I wanted to leave a mark that spoke about the person I am and that is a young woman who enjoys life. I believe that although school is important, so is a person's’ social skills. We all need to let loose and enjoy what is around us.

With that being said, throughout this school year I hosted the Halloween Costume Contest, Ugly Sweater Contest, fundraised for the school dance, hosted the SLA Dance, and lastly held a Pep Rally. The challenges I faced along the way was communication. Being that there are a handful of members on the committee, we had lots of ideas contributed. At one specific event, it was postponed twice. It was a stressful process and at times, I wanted to give up. But I had to think of the students and what worked best for all of us.

Improving The Care For The Youth

Hi, I’m Niya and for some time now, I have been doing some research on Problematic family. Basically I am going over the problems that happens in family homes such as abuse. It talks about how children are affected by the family homes and feelings they may come across while in a group or foster home. We aren’t really aware of what happens when no one is around. What if these problems are still going on in the oster or group home the child is staying in? Some people don’t really care or think about it as much as people like me. This can become a bigger problem and here is nothing changing to make sure children are safe and in a great group or foster home, To read more about go read my first post.

In my first post, I didn’t include something which would be very important to this project which is DHS. ( Department of Human Services) DHS is a child care system what protects children from bad parenting or abuse in homes. These people are big responders to any type of harm to children in their homes. Social worker play a big role in taking children from abusive homes and putting them into new group or foster homes. If you are interested in child welfare, there are people that will come to your home to see if everything is fine for a child to stay there with a gurdan.

Yes being in a group or foster home can be very stressful. So me children don’t believe that they should be there and they choose to run away from their foster or group home. In Oklahoma City, children were sexualy asstulted and after running away from state custody. You would think, why? Why would they run away just like that? This says that something is going on that others who care are not aware of.  Check out this situation about the abused runaway children.

I have recently interviewed a friend of mine named Orlando. Orlando is 15 year old  has been in 2 foster homes in his life for about 3 years. He says he has never liked foster homes . The first time he has ever stepped foot in a foster home was when he was only 6 years old and he says he didn’t feel comfortable and they didn’t not treat him like he was wanted there. He was also scared and had lots of problems that he can’t explain. While in foster homes, the only person he said he could count on was his sister who was also in a foster home but at the age of 17, it wasn’t required for her to stay there so she had left. Orlando says if he was one of the most important people working for the foster care system he said he would “Talk to kids privately and see if they are experiencing any problems in the group home. Mainly just talk to them and see how their foster parents and siblings are treating them.” You should see more of this interview with Orlando.

Also if you are looking for more information, I suggest you go check out my annotated Biography!

Hey everyone, I’m back again to tell you more about eating disorders. For an overview about what they are, see my last post. To recap, eating disorders are a medical issue when a person’s diet and relationship with food is severely damaged in some way. There are four categories of eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge-Eating Disorder, or Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFEDs). They can cause a person’s body to rapidly deteriorate to the point of death, if not treated.

Last post, I didn’t talk much about treatment for eating disorders, so that’s what I’m going to talk about now. According to Akron Children’s Hospital, treatment for eating disorders “focuses on helping kids cope with their disordered eating behaviors and establish new patterns of thinking about and approaching food.” This means that the affected person is being coached to think more positively about food and its purpose as nutrition, not to be abused or deprived of. There are different types of treatment: short-term inpatient, partial inpatient, intensive outpatient, and outpatient care. These can be combined or used one after the other, like a timeline. First is short-term inpatient, which is used when the patient is too physically or psychologically unstable to be home, and needs to receive medical help and/or therapy everyday. Then there’s partial inpatient care, where the patient needs to be at the hospital often, but isn’t a danger to themselves if at home. After that comes intensive outpatient, which means that the patient is home full-time, but receives medical and therapeutic help on a regular basis. Finally, there’s outpatient. This is when the patient has reached a much more stable relationship with food and life, is becoming much healthier, and is just in therapy, usually once or twice a week. Throughout the recovery process, it’s estimated that about 168 hours per month are invested in healing. However, sometimes treatment for these disorders are hard to get. In fact, less than half of people with eating disorders actually get the help that they need, with the statistics going as low as only 6% of patients getting treatment (this rate for bulimia, specifically). Part of this is due to people’s unawareness of what eating disorders are and how dangerous they can be. It’s also sometimes due to lack of health insurance to be able to pay to get checked into inpatient care, for the sometimes required medical tests and medicine, and therapy.

There also seems to be a stigma around eating disorders due to a lack of knowledge. I conducted my own survey, distributed to SLA students via the advisory memo and direct confrontation, and asked about how much the students know about eating disorders, how aware they are of their prevalence, how they learned about eating disorders, and how they see them in our community. The answers were downright dreary. Of the polled students, almost 70% have known someone with an eating disorder, and 22% have had one. That’s crazy, that eating disorders are so common, even in our own community. I also asked about what eating disorders people have heard of, the majority being Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. This shows that awareness for eating disorders is low, to the point where only one or two disorders are widely known. Wake up, anorexia isn’t the only eating disorder! To see exactly how people think, I asked the recipients what comes to mind when someone says “eating disorders”. The most popular answers were: “Anorexia and Bulimia”, “skinny girls”, and “overeating”. This shows that people have a very one-dimensional view of eating disorders.

To see how students felt about eating disorders in our community, I asked about what they knew and felt. On a scale of 1-5 (1 being “I disagree completely” and 5 being “I agree completely”), students were asked to rate how much they agree with a statement. Most rated a “4”, for whether or not they feel eating disorders are a problem in our community. What’s outrageous is that not a single student said that they completely disagree that eating disorders aren’t a problem. That means that every student to take my survey thought that eating disorders are at least a little bit of a problem in the SLA community. Most people also rated a “2” on the statement “Students are well educated on eating disorders.” Therefore, the majority of students who took my survey think that we should learn more about eating disorders. I agree with this, because I have never, in any health or eating course, learned about eating disorders. I was never talked to about eating disorders, I learned about these disorders from a book and the internet, like a large number of my surveyors. Most of the people who took my survey also agreed that eating disorders aren’t talked about enough in our community, which I personally agree with.

As you can see, I and other members of the community feel that eating disorders are an under-communicated about problem. Eating disorders aren’t talked about much in our community, meaning that the only information people get about eating disorders, if any, is from their own research and the internet. Shouldn’t we be learning about this stuff in school, or from our parents? How can we know how bad these things are for us if we barely even know what they are. If someone finds out about bulimia, but doesn’t know all the consequences, they may think that it’s okay to get food out of your system in those ways. This needs to change. Therefore, I am going to raise awareness for my Agent of Change piece of this project. I intend to make one or two posters to hang up in our school, talking about eating disorders and their statistics, and to make a video. This video will talk about my own experience with eating disorders, as well as what they are and treatment for them. I will also include help resources for any struggling. I intend to show this video, perhaps at a grade-wide advisory if possible. Tune in next post to see how this all goes!

Hi again! As you may have read in my first blog, my name is Asnain Khan and I am currently working on a project called “You and the World” for my English class. This is my second blog post of the project, and I am here to inform you even more about the environmental pollution in Philadelphia. If you are reading this and haven’t read my last post, you can access it here. In my first blog post, I talked about what environmental pollution is like in Philadelphia and what some of the main causes and effects are. I also talked about the different types of pollutions. In this blog post, I will informing you about the original research I have done and some new research I found about pollution in Philadelphia. Without further ado, here’s my post!

Since my first blog post, I have done more research, and conducted my own original research. As part of my own original research, I created a survey, which I sent throughout my school. My goal with my survey was to see if the SLA students were aware of the environmental pollution encasing Philadelphia, and what they thought about it. The questions I asked were: What grade are you in? Are you aware of environmental pollution in Philadelphia? What do you know about environmental pollution in Philadelphia? What do you think are the main causes environmental pollution? How many of these types of pollutions have you heard of? Did you know that Philly is the 10th most polluted city in the United States? Did you know that each year in Philadelphia, an estimated 126 lives are cut short and 284 people are hospitalized due to excess air pollution? Did you know that Philadelphia area's pollution earns an “F” from American Lung Association? Did you know that ozone and particulates exacerbate chronic obstructive lung disease, requiring more than 280 Philadelphians each year to seek hospitalization or treatment in an emergency room? On a scale of 1-10, how much do you agree with the following statement? Environmental pollution is a major problem in our community. On a scale of 1-10, how much do you agree with the following statement? Environmental pollution is often talked about in our community. On a scale of 1-10, how much do you agree with the following statement? Students are well-educated about environmental pollution? Finally, do you think that people should know more about environmental pollution in Philadelphia? I felt that these questions would be helpful to determine everyone’s knowledge on this topic.

For my survey, I got exactly 50 responses. The majority of responses were from freshmen (72%). From the results I got, 86% of the students in SLA are aware of pollution in Philadelphia and 14% are not. This was kind of surprising to me, because people don’t really talk about pollution at all. When I asked what people knew about pollution in Philadelphia, many answered that it is very harmful to humans. Following this question, I asked what people thought were the main causes of environmental pollution, the majority of the students answered “people.” This shows that many people believe we are the main cause of the pollution. I also asked about what type of pollutions they have heard of, the majority being air and water pollution. This shows that the awareness of pollution, and types of pollution, in Philadelphia is low.

*This image shows the percentage of people that answered this question. 86% answered “yes” and 14% answered “no.”

*This image shows the answers to the question, “what do you think are the main causes of environmental pollution?” This shows that the majority of the students answered “people.”

*This image shows how many of these types of pollutions the students heard of. As you can see most of the students picked “air and water pollution.”

After that, I wanted to see if people knew the facts about pollution in Philadelphia, so I wrote down a couple of facts and asked the students if they knew about them. The questions were “yes or no” questions. The majority of the students answered “no” for all of the questions. I wasn’t surprised by this at all, because I knew that the awareness of pollution is low, so we can’t expect people to know that facts. To see how the students felt about environmental pollution in Philadelphia, I simply asked how they felt. Students were asked to rate how much they agreed with a statement from a scale of 1-10 (1 being “definitely disagree” and 10 being “definitely agree”). Most of the students rated a “10,” for whether they felt like environmental pollution is a major problem in our community. I expected this, because pollution is a major problem in our community. Also, the majority of the students rated a “4,” for whether they felt like environmental pollution is often talked about in our community. This makes sense, no one really talks about pollution in our community. Finally, most of the students rated a “4,” for whether they felt like students are well-educated about environmental pollution. I definitely agree, because many people don’t know about pollution and they aren’t taught about it in schools. The last question I asked was, “do you think that people should know more about environmental pollution in Philadelphia?” 98% of the students answered “yes” and only 2% of the students answered “no.” I would answer yes to this question as well, because I feel like students aren’t taught about environmental pollution as much as they should be.

*These are all images of the facts I wrote and asked the students if they knew it or not. As you can see for all of these questions, most of the students answered “no.”

In addition to conducting my own research, I did some new research online. In my last blog post, I didn’t go deep into the effects of air pollution in Philadelphia, so that’s what I am going to do now. I am also going to include new facts about air pollution in Philadelphia. Air pollution in Philadelphia makes people sick and cuts lives short. It irreparably damages lung tissues in ways similar to secondhand tobacco smoke, leading to a wide range of health impacts. Air pollution also triggers heart attacks and strokes. It causes diseases like chronic bronchitis and lung cancer. Air pollution can even send people to the emergency room with respiratory problems, cause asthma attacks, and contribute to respiratory illness in otherwise completely healthy people.

Most people think of air pollution only on days when the news announces an air quality alert, warning about high levels of smog and advising citizens to limit outdoor activity due to the health threat posed by smog pollution. Unfortunately, people in Philadelphia aren’t exposed to air pollution just a few dozen times a year on bad air days. Philadelphians breathe polluted air day in and day out throughout their entire lives. Much of the pollution comes from burning fossil fuels for energy, in cars, trucks, power plants and industrial facilities. Many of these pollutants are invisible, but they are everywhere.

Air pollution in Philadelphia is a serious and persistent problem. The American Lung Association gives 28 neighborhoods in Philadelphia an “F” for air quality, and that’s just for smog pollution. Philadelphia as a whole has the second worst chronic air pollution problem, worse than every state but California. Air pollution poses major health risks for Philadelphians, especially children and the elderly. Air pollution shortens lives, sends people to the hospital and the emergency room, and triggers asthma attacks. These are merely the most visible signs of the health threats posed by polluted air, as this pollution affects every individual in Philadelphia by reducing lung function and increasing the risk of illness.

Nor are we safe on days when air pollution levels are below those recognized by the government as meeting federal “safe” standards. Ozone smog and particulate soot can cause health problems even on days when pollution levels are within the “safe” standards set by federal officials. This is especially true for people who live, work, or play near busy roadways. Pollution from traffic can be high near roadways, even when overall air pollution levels are relatively low. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that, “In numerous cities in the United States, the personal automobile is the single greatest polluter, because emissions from millions of vehicles on the road add up.” Scientists are now finding that children who live or go to school near major highways are more likely to have respiratory problems, including asthma.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Congress adopted the federal Clean Air Act in 1970, it established the goal of setting and achieving air quality standards protective of human health by 1975. Nearly three decades later, Philadelphia’s air still fails to meet established health standards—standards that may not even be fully protective of human health. With the rollback of key air pollution policies at a federal level—and with increased motor vehicle traffic population, and overall energy use threatening to undermine the progress we have made toward cleaner air—Philadelphia has reached a critical juncture. Solutions do exist. From modern emission controls for cars and power plants to effective transit systems, we have the technological know-how to significantly reduce air pollution in Philadelphia. By adopting public policies that put these technologies to work, Philadelphia can reduce air pollution and help millions of its citizens to live longer and healthier lives.

For my Agent of Change, I am going to raise awareness. I am going to make a video about pollution in Philadelphia to inform more people about it. I will make sure the video is set to public, so that people can see it. I am going to post the video up on facebook and even show it to people in school. The next blog is on it’s way, stay tuned in!

Check out my annotated bibliography for more information!

Hockey is something I have become very passionate about and has continued to make a huge impact on my life as I grew up so I knew I wanted to do something related to hockey for my senior capstone. My initial idea was to attempt to raise money for Snider, the organization that has allowed me to play hockey from a young age regardless of my family's financial standing. This was difficult for me because I couldn’t think of a practical way to raise a substantial sum of money that would be useful to the organization while also struggling with the logistics of paying for ice time. With this defeat, I sparked the idea to organize a roller hockey tournament, being since all outdoor roller rinks are free for public use. I used my Snider contacts to gather the children who would participate in the tournament and then the rest was a breeze. I discussed rink times with those in charge of the playground rink to coordinate which days the rink would be in use and when it would be open for the tournament. Once the day was decided, I contacted all of the children involved, who were excited to participate. The young boys, aged 12-15 years old, had experience with hockey so they got right into playing while I supervised and refereed the games. It was wonderful to have organized an event where my passion created a sense of community and happiness.

Hey there! I am Sarah Son, a freshman at Science Leadership Academy. In my previous blog post, I introduced my English project, which is called You and the World. My main focus is animal cruelty. In my previous research, I found a lot of alarming information about my topic. The results of graphs that I have found were very surprising. Recently, I interviewed a volunteer from SPCA in Philadelphia and her answers to my questions were very helpful.

In my original research, which is the interview, I found out even more about animal cruelty, mainly in the area of Philadelphia. It was quite shocking to hear what Sandy, the respondent, had told me. Her responses were so detailed and clear, it made a great interview. The first question that I asked her was, “When animals are found, how do they react towards people? Or in other words, how do they act when they are being pet?” She replied by saying “... it depends on the situation. Sometimes the animals that we find don’t like humans, really. They have a hard time adjusting to humans and then others are perfectly fine with them and they are willing to interact with humans.” She also told me that they once found a dog that was chained up and was very skinny. Once they took care of him, he was actually one of the most playful dogs they have seen in the SPCA. I’m quite glad that she even gave me an example.

Annotated Bibliography

If you’d like to listen to the interview, click here!

Note for Ms. Giknis: There are few hyperlinks in this post because there is more in the first.

For my capstone project, I was able to travel to Cuba in the spring. During our trip, we were allowed to research a STEM related project of our choosing. For my topic, i decided to look at business and entrepreneurship in Cuba. My research questions were:

• How are entrepreneurs able to start-up in Cuba?

• What does entrepreneurship look like in Cuba?

• How are people able to brand their names in a socialist country?

Because Cuba is a socialist country, many people believe that citizens aren't able to branch out to make money any other way. By going on this trip, I was able to destroy that myth, but I also learned of the many different opportunities for Cubans to make money.

For my final project, I made a website detailing some of the most popular  ways Cubans are able to make money. I was able to include pictures to show just how life changing this trip was.

Link to my website:

https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/establishing-business-in-cuba/home?authuser=0

Link to my annotated Bibliography:

Abstract:

For my Capstone project, I wanted to expand and share my knowledge on a topic that has changed my life; cancer. My only sister was diagnosed with Lymphoma 11 years ago and passed away after a two and a half year battle with the disease. Losing her had a tremendous impact on me and the time spent trying to cure her taught me valuable lessons that I want to share. My goal for this project is to make people aware of what cancer really is, how doctors treat it, and the impact it has on families and individuals. To meet those goals, I wanted to share a very personal story of moving to a new country to cure my sister’s cancer. Aside from the personal aspect, it includes detailed scientific information about the disease.

I decided to have my story put on a website so that anyone, no matter where they are, can access it and hopefully learn new things from my childhood experience. I also hope to inspire others to learn from their tragic experiences and become stronger individuals rather than giving in to depression. Writing this story was not easy; there were times when I re-lived my painful memories and felt emotionally uncomfortable to continue writing, but I was able to overcome that by reminding myself of my goal to support others. I sincerely hope that this story will help and inspire those who are struggling with life tragedies such as mine.

Story:

My Sister's Cancer: A Climacteric Experience

Public Defenders Overloaded

I have recently realized the public defender system first hand. Realizing how big of an issue it is, I decided to inform the people of how big of problem it is with this project. I found out that the problem is affective to the people who can’t afford an expensive attorney. I was stunned to find out the average time a person talks with their public defender before appearing in front of the judge is 7 minutes. This information is listed in a document, you can read here.

Throughout a year a public defender is recommend to get 150 felony cases, but they are getting way more.  Even if they had enough time to get the cases done, they don’t have the same resources the private attorneys do. People don’t realize how public defenders are deprived of resources such as time for working as hard as they could and witnesses. The public defender system is never the same in different states. Each state is entitled to write their own criminal codes. This could also hurt the person under precaution.

I interviewed a public defender, Michael Arthus. He happens to be a very experienced public defender who gave meaningful first hand information, letting me in on a closer look for the system. There are public defenders who handle the trails and public defenders who are handling appeals. Those who handle the trails will normally be in the courtroom everyday appearing in front of the judge with their clients. Those who do the appeals are mostly sent for research. In Brooklyn, which in every state is different, are given 75-100 cases at a time to juggle. Mr. Arthus says that throughout all his odds he still fights his hardest for the justice for his clients.  

This is a picture of a Brooklyn Defender System Logo...

I also interviewed Taylor Rogers. Taylor, who is my sister, had her case in the hands of a public defender recently. She said that she didn’t even know who her public defender was until day of the court date. Her public defender talked to her 20 minutes before appearing in front of the judge. She does feel as though her public defender did her more justice then she could’ve done. The public defender was “kind” just very busy and rushing when you are having conversations. She feels as though he put forth his best effort and did everything he could.

This picture is a public defender. He is working hard to get his many cases done.

Throughout this project I realized how different each state’s public defender offices are. As I read this article, “I’m a public defender. It’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients.”, I found that in New Orleans to avoid layoffs because of the budget cut the entire staff will go 4 weeks in a year without being paid. They’re asked to do way more then an attorney with less material and less everything compared to an attorney. The author of this site says that their clients who can’t pay their bail are focused to sit in jail for 60 days until the district attorney decides to arraign them. During this project we have a part where we need to be an agent of change in our issue we choose. Iḿ thinking about making a website for informing people on how overly overworked the public defenders are. This will be first hand information and give people more notice to the issue and hopefully get the ball rolling on the issue.

This problem among the public defender hasn’t seemed to get any better, it just seems to worsen. What will come next??? Public defenders are going to not be able to deal with the impact of the case overloads as time continues. This research has helped my understanding of public defender so much further than what I thought. I really hope so see some justice among the system, even baby steps help!! I’ve learned that in the justice system money can take you a long way..

Visit my annotated bibliography here!