Dear Reader,

This cookbook was made to inform you about the power of food and how it affects our body. Every food out there has a power. These powers affect our bodies in positive or negative ways. I call fruits and vegetables power foods because they fuel our bodies the right way and provide the balance we need. I call unhealthy foods powerless foods because they take power away from us (our health) and they give no health benefits. A balanced diet is very important because our diet is what fuels the body. If the body is not balanced, health problems come about like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure etc, and we get sick. The cure is in our food. If we eat right and feed our bodies what they need to function, we can be powerful people.

I hope this cookbook can make some people more aware of what they should eat and I hope it informs people about how crucial it is to have a balanced diet. 

Process Paper

For my senior capstone, I created a health food cookbook. This is not just a regular old cookbook, it is an instructional resource that I would like people to refer back to in order to remind themselves that a healthy diet is a key component to a hardy life. I chose to do this project because I found myself eating unhealthy and I see so many people eat unhealthy everyday. These people have no idea what some of these foods are doing to their bodies, and up until I did my research, I had no idea how foods effected my body. I wanted to make a cookbook to inform people that healthy foods didn’t all have to be nasty or bland. Eating healthy is not only beneficial for the body, it’s tasty and it makes the body run better, you can feel the difference. I put a note to the reader on the second page of my book, explaining to them why this book is so important for people to read if they are interested in learning the truth about food. Most food that people eat is out of bags, cans, boxes, and it is all processed and empty foods for the body, I like to call it powerless foods. I am well aware of the fact that people enjoy eating food, and that’s why they eat so much fattening food, to satisfy their cravings. But, over time, cravings can cause the body to become over weight and unhealthy. That’s why I have come up with healthy alternatives people can eat to sanctify their cravings, while eating healthy and fueling up the body with the right ingredients. 

I had to make sure that my capstone addressed all five of the SLA core values, inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection. My project began with inquiry. I knew I wanted to do something with spreading awareness about healthy eating. I just didn’t know how I wanted to present my work. I asked myself a lot of questions about what I wanted to show in my capstone and how I wanted to show it. That’s where my research came in. I research different ways people have published their knowledge about healthy eating. I figured out that I wanted to construct and informative cookbook. I already had many of my own personal favorite recipes, but I also researched some more. I also had to research why certain foods are good or bad for the body. I collaborated with both of my mentors and kept them updated with everything I was doing. I especially collaborated with my grandmother a lot because we made all of the recipes together. I also collaborated with all of the people who were willing to try my recipes. My final collaboration with people with this capstone would be anyone who was to use and read my cookbook. I chose to present all of my work in book form. I have it as a PDF and as an actual hard copy document. I also have a few of my recipes on my health food blog I created on google. I can reflect on this project because I can take what I learned during this experience for the rest of my life. I now have more knowledge about food than I ever have before. This is very useful because I can now educate other people like my family and friends. 

There were many steps I took to complete this capstone. I first had to come up with the idea of a cookbook. Then I had to gather up all of my recipes and find more to make them my own by tweaking them. Then the fun part came in, I got to cook, make and eat all of these foods. I did extensive research about all of the power foods that were in each recipe. This is where all of my learning took place. Once I was done cooking and researching, I put all of my pictures, recipes, and information together to make my cookbook. 

I didn’t really bump into any major obstacles to complete my capstone. Whatever dishes I wanted to make, my grandmother and I made them, then I wrote about them. I used many resources to complete my capstone. I used some internet resources to learn about health benefits of the power foods. I used many healthy food resources to make my recipes. I also looked at some books and cookbooks to see what other people have done with it in the past. I am most proud of my information in my cookbook in this capstone. I spent many hours conducting intensive research in order to get all of my facts straight. I feel like if people actually take the time to read this book, it would be able to help many people, that is why I am so proud. I personally have learned so much from this process and I am so eager to share it with the public. I learned that the food that we eat has everything to do with how our body shapes, adapts, and functions. If I could do this whole capstone all over again, I would honestly do nothing differently. I am throughly satisfied with the way my cookbook turned out. SLA is a better place because I was a student here because I feel like as a student, I have a lot of useful information available to share with SLA. I showed this through the cookbook because unhealthy eating is a huge problem, even within the SLA community. If students and faculty took some time out to read this book, they would not only get awesome recipes, but wise advice about eating. They will also find out a lot about what they didn’t know about foods they probably eat everyday. 

During the second quarter of senior art class, I brushed up a lot on my drawing skills. I bought myself a brand new sketch book to start fresh and my goal was to only draw things in it that I knew I was going to be really proud of. Before this quarter, I was working a lot with charcoal so I wanted to switch it up a little and just use my pencil for a lot of the work that I did. I really wanted to improve my drawing skills so my drawings look a little more realistic. I think this really showed through with my daffodil drawing. That is the drawing I am most proud of doing this quarter. It took me about three class periods to complete because I was being very meticulous with the shading. I wanted it to look good enough to be a tattoo, that is what I kept envisioning. 

I also worked on a project at home. I was doing some research online and I came across a Crayola canvas. It really looked interesting and I wanted to try it out. I went to the craft store Michael's and picked up a new canvas and the biggest pack of Crayola crayons I could buy. I color organized the crayons the way I wanted them to be on the canvas. I then hot glued each crayon onto the canvas in a zig zag pattern. My next step was to take a hair dryer and put it on high and melt the tops of the crayons so the wax melted and dripped down the canvas. I was very happy with the way it turned out. I used my friend’s professional camera to take a picture of it. 

After that project, I went back into pencil drawings. I drew a bunch of pictures of my favorite cartoon characters. This included the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, Alice, and the Mad Hatter, all from the movie ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Then I drew Jake and Fin from ‘Adventure Time’, my favorite TV show. I also threw in one charcoal drawing I drew down Valley green and two flower pastel drawings. I really enjoyed art this quarter because I did a variety of different things and I got to brush up on my drawing skills and make a Crayola canvas. 

Ingredients and Recipe for Baked Eggplant

 2 large eggplants(Organic) 

2 cups of Extra Virgin Olive Oil(Organic) 

1 cup Balsamic Vinegar 

Salt(Raw)/Pepper(Organic) to taste 

Fresh grated Locatelli Cheese 

Directions on how to cook ‘Baked Eggplant’

  Heat oven to 350 degrees. Remove the top and bottom of the eggplant using a knife. Slice eggplant from top to bottom (about 1/4 inch slices).

   In a large bowl, pour olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper over the eggplant and coat the liquid mixture evenly using your hands or a basting brush. Once evenly coated, place eggplant slices on a raised baking pan and bake uncovered until edges are crisp and center is tender about 35-45 minutes depending on thickness of each slice.  

Grate fresh Locatelli Cheese over the top and ENJOY. 

Recipe Analysis

  Approximately what percent of this meal is processed vs. whole food? -0% of this meal is processed. These are all whole foods. The eggplants are whole foods because they were grown on a farm and not tampered with any chemicals or growth hormones. The olive oil is a whole food because it is organic and not processed with any chemicals or additives in which I cannot pronounce. The balsamic vinegar is not processed because vinegar is naturally oxidized from fermented organic grapes. I used raw salt and organic pepper so neither one of those ingredients are processed foods.The fresh Locatelli cheese is also not processed because the cheese comes from cultured bacteria and goat’s milk only. (There is a process to make and produce these products but I personally do not consider them to be “processed foods”)

 •Health/Nutrition There is 33 calories, 1 gram of fat, 13 grams of sugar, 6 grams of protein, and 11 grams of sodium per eggplant. There is 1909 calories, 216 grams of fat, and 4 mg of sodium per cup of olive oil. There is 224 calories, 38 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein per cup of balsamic vinegar. There is 6,976 mg of sodium per tbsp of salt. For pepper, there is 16 calories, 3 mg of sodium and 2 grams of dietary fiber per tbsp. For Locatelli cheese, per ounce, there is 110 calories, 8 grams of fat, 30 grams of cholesterol, 55 mg of sodium and 7 grams of protein. If a person was to eat this meal everyday, depending on how much salt they used, it could create high blood pressure. There is a lot of olive oil in this dish and if someone were to consume that much oil everyday, they would gain weight and possibly clog arteries. 

•Environmental The eggplants I bought came from California and the rest of them I believe came from Pennsylvania because I purchased them at a local organic shop that only carries local ingredients in order to support local businesses. The eggplant traveled the furthest. The eggplant was organically grown and all of my ingredients are also organic. •Political/Economics This meal altogether costed me $17.00. This compares to fast food because fast food is much cheaper. It’s cheaper because I don’t have to buy all the ingredients when I eat fast food to make it, I just buy that one single item and it comes out to be much cheaper rather than preparing a whole meal. The items in my meal are regulated by making sure they are all actually organic and not processed. The small businesses involved are local organic food markets and the farm in California where the eggplant was grown. 

•Social There are no social ramifications of my meal choice. The eggplant I bought from the local organic market directly purchased the vegetable from the farmer in California. The olive oil I bought from the market probably directly bought the olive oil from another local market that got it from an organic distributer that bought it from an organic olive farm where the olive oil is made. It would have been cheaper for me to buy eggplant seeds and grow it myself, but it was more convenient for me to go to the market and purchase it.

Personal Reflection: 

During this unit of science and society we focused mainly on stem cell research, America’s food system, obesity/diabetes rates, and how the food system is linked to obesity and diabetes. In the beginning of this unit, Mr. Best introduced the idea of stem cell research, I had no idea about what this concept was. While studying stem cell research, I learned the pros and cons to using stem cells in research and cures. In the assignment, “Intro to Stem Cells” I got to discover what kind of stem cells can be used on different parts of the body. For example, I learned where scientists can find somatic cells in brain tissue, teeth, skin, liver, gut, blood, and muscle tissues. It was interesting because Mr. Best also showed us two sides of stem cells research, why people think it’s a good thing and why it might be considered a bad thing to do. We did come to a conclusion as a class that stem cell research doesn’t mean killing babies. 

The second half of the unit is where the class focused in on food systems. We started off with a warm up and we were asked to write down a few things that was can do personally to live longer. The next assignment let me discover how much overweight America really is. I learned that in about 20 years, America went from between >10% and 15% to >or equal, all the way to 30% overweight. That means about 30% of Americans are overweight. After learning about America’s obesity rates, I learned about the disease that goes hand in hand with obesity, diabetes. The diabetes rate is rapidly increasing along with the obesity rate. I discovered that the a lot of the areas that are impoverished are also overweight, this is because no one in the area can afford healthy food. Healthy food has become more expensive than fatty, high processed foods like McDonald’s. This is because the food system has become skewed. The “whole foods” are so much more expensive because they are real foods rather than fake, this is the biggest problem in our food system. I learned that I could make a lot of changes to my food choices. I need to stay away from processed foods altogether because people consume so many chemicals everyday and it’s unnatural and very bad for us to be eating on a daily. If everyone stopped eating processed and fatty foods, the obesity and diabetes rate would drop down. Personally, I am willing to make these changes if it means living a healthier life. Food Rule Slide:

​Kimberly Parker
Self Reflection
For this second quarter project mini project, it was our jobs to show theme or themes demonstrated in both the book ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and the film ‘Juno’. After giving some thought about what themes I wanted to reflect, my partner Rebecca and I decided we wanted to show the themes of showing ones true self and being who you are even if it is not accepted by society. We chose to show these themes by choreographing a unique dance. 
For our dance, we chose the song ‘Raise your Weapon’ by Deadmau5. We chose this song because the lyrics talk about about a lost love. The lyrics also have a message that relates to what we have been talking about in class. An example of the lyrics are, “Raise your weapon, raise your weapon, one word and it's over. Rippin' through like a missile, rippin' through my heart, rob me of this love.” Figuratively speaking, the singer asks for someone to raise their weapon at her and launch an assault. This assault hurts her heart, and this is where our themes come in because these meanings have connections to both ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and ‘Juno’. 
In the dance, Rebecca starts out as a ballerina. Her playing a part of a ballerina represents the “normal” in society because she is gracefully dancing. My part was to represent society. While Rebecca starts to dance, my part was to constantly critique her ballet. I followed her around, lifting her arms or legs higher as she moved, told her slower, or to go faster. Me representing society shows that even though Rebecca is being “normal” it still is not good enough. About half way through the dance she runs away and slips into her tap shoes. The tap shoes were incorporated into our dance to represent ones true self. Tap shoes are loud, clanky and black, representing something different society is not used to. Rebecca runs back and preforms a fast pace tap dance and I’m standing there looking appalled, telling her that this is all wrong. As I am representing society, society fears the other. Rebecca dancing in her tap shoes showed Rebecca’s true self and what she really truly wanted to do. After I yelled at her and told her it was wrong, Rebecca collapsed to the floor and rolled over, dying. This represented her giving up because she knew she could not win and society was not going to accept her. This was the conclusion to our dance. 
Coming up with this dance was the fun part. Rebecca takes dance lessons, so as soon as she heard the song, she knew exactly how to dance. It was interesting coming up with ideas on how to incorporate society into our dance, but finally, we thought of the perfect idea and we felt like it worked out well. We didn’t really come across any problems or complications while creating the dance. I believe we did well on the creativity and representation aspect of this project. I feel like everything flowed together really nicely and made sense. In order to have made this project even better, I suppose we could have expanded the choreography and practiced even more than we did. Practicing more would have made the performance more polished. If I could do this whole project over again, I would have defiantly practiced more and would have added more dancing. Overall, I am pleased with the way this creative project turned out, I am glad we were able to demonstrate the themes we selected. 

Kimberly Parker

Senior Art Blog

Sugar Skull 

A sugar skull is a one of a kind decoration and symbol. Sugar skulls celebrate and honor the dead. There is a holiday in Mexico called “The Day of the Dead” and instead of mourning over the dead, they celebrate their lives. The people of Mexico use these sugar skulls to symbolize death by using a skull, and decorating it with bright festive colors to celebrate the death. This quarter, we were asked to make our own sugar skulls. So, I did my independent research about what sugar skulls really were. I sketched an idea in my sketchbook, seeing what designs I would like on my sugar skull. I looked up some ideas online and finally saw a sugar skull that I really liked. I sketched something similar to it and then began my construction of my skull. 

We used paper mache, water, a straw, and lots of Vaseline to do construct the skulls! First I laid down on the table and had my peer Christian get the paper mache and water ready to put on my face. While I was on the table, I rubbed Vaseline all over my face, over my eyebrows and lips so the paper mache would not stick to my face and the mask would come right off after it hardened. I put a straw in my mouth so I would be able to breathe. Christian then began to put the paper mache over my face, pressing dow on every piece to mold the mask into the shape of my face. After putting layers and layers of this paper mache on, we waited for the mask to harden, this took about five or six minutes. 

After the mask hardened, we peeled it off of my face, immediately I wanted to wipe the slimy Vaseline off of my face! During the next art period, I used a pencil to start sketching out on my skull the designs I wanted. I did not erase anything on it once. Once I started to sketch, I liked everything that I drew. Once the sketching was done, I picked out all of the bright colors I wanted. I mixed red and white to make the pink, blue and yellow to make the green I wanted, and so on. I used different brushes for different parts and different brush strokes. I painted until I felt like I had my sugar skull master piece. That is what I ended up with, a master piece! 

   At first for this project, I had NO idea what I wanted to do. So I thought about some of my talents and I know I'm a pretty good writer. So, I decided to work on a SciFi novel for the 10% project. I'm really interested in becoming a neurologist, the brain really interests me, so I based a story around it. I also incorporated religion into the story to give it some character. Sometimes, I disagree with modern science, so in my story, I wrote about science going wrong. Scientists discover a cure or brain cancer, but this treatment makes the patients go mad. This resembles the doctors trying to play god, which can be bad sometimes because it might not be the dying person's fate to live. That is why I turned those people into zombies because it was not their FATE to keep living. That's why I talked about faith and fate so much, in hopes that the readers will understand what I am trying to get across.
     My process for this project went very smoothly. I didn't really plan a plot or anything, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I did not face any challenges, I actually enjoyed doing this project and writing this story.

​(I have designed and created a pages doc where my I have more detailed and a better display. I can show this in class. When this project is completed, I will convert the doc into a PDF so I can put it up on the course blog.
Objetivos que hice (5):
Michelle Torrelli me está ayudando a alcanzar mis metas. Michelle habla con fluidez el español. Vamos a video chat una vez por semana durante cinco semanas con el fin de cumplir con mis metas.
Week #1) I want to focus on clothing. In this first conversation, I want to focus on being able to recognize different articles in clothing and able to say them in Spanish. I also want to be able to compliment on clothing that I like.
Week #2) I want to learn how to tell other people where I am or where I was, using past and present tenses. I also want to describe the places I’ve been.
Week #3) For week #3, I want to focus on talking about emotions. On top of that, I want to be able to describe why I feel that way.
Week #4) For week #4, I want to talk about food! Food is an interest of mine and would like to expand my Spanish speaking on it.
Week #5) I want to work on completing sentences. Not just any sentences, detailed sentences where I describe everything I’ve learned so far.

Pre Conversation
1.¿Cuál es tu tema de conversación?
Mi tema de conversación para una semana se va a centrar en la ropa. Quiero reconocer artículo diferente de la ropa. Quiero felicitar a la ropa que me gusta.
What are five questions related to your conversation goal that you can think of ahead of time to ask your partner?
Five questions that I am going to ask Michelle are:
-¿Qué es una buena de complementar la ropa de una persona?
-¿Me puede dar un vocabulario para la ropa?
-¿Cómo se utiliza el tiempo pasado?
-¿Qué ropa te pones?
-¿Qué ropa usa la gente en la Argentina? (Michelle originates from Argentina)
3.How do you anticipate your partner will respond to these questions?
I anticipate that Michelle will know the answers to all of these questions. She will defiantly be able to give me some vocabulary. I think that these questions are going to be good conversation starters and will enable the conversation to go really smoothly for the five minutes.
4.What are you looking forward to about this conversation?
I really am looking forward to having a full on conversation in Spanish with someone who is fluent in the language. I’m also looking forward to learning some new vocabulary. I’m curious to know what kind of clothing they wear in Argentina as well.
5.What are you nervous about?
I’m not as nervous as I would be if I was to chat with a stranger. Since Michelle is my friend, I know she will be able to help me and I shouldn’t be too nervous. I’m a little about not being able to keep up with the conversation or not knowing what she is saying. But I know Michelle will help me if I get stuck and won’t get irritated with me like maybe someone over the internet would.

Post Conversation
Post-Conversación
Michelle Torelli’s nationality is Argentine.
Who did I speak with and why did I choose that person?
I spoke with Michelle Torelli. I chose to speak with her because she is one of my good friends and I know she will be able to help me out with my Spanish goals. I also know that she will be patient with me.
What did you learn about them? What did you learn from them?
I didn’t necessarily learn anything about Michelle because I’ve known her for three years now. I learned from her, new vocabulary, what they wear in argentina, and how to compliment on clothing,
How did this interaction help you move towards achieving your personal goals?
This interaction helped me move towards achieving my goals because I learned new vocabulary. Michelle also answered all my questions. So now I can look back on this video and reflect on what she said, I can always go back and recap.
-What specifically did you do well according to your goals/expectations?
I did well with understanding what she was saying. I also did well with learning the new vocabulary and asking her the questions.
-What specifically do you need to improve on?
I need to improve on my accent. At times, Michelle could not understand what I was saying.

    My group dealt with the drug trade of Philadelphia. The group consisted of myself, Olivia Smith, Khalil Clark, and Anissa Amed. The first day that the benchmark was assigned we decided to construct a web page. We decided on a web page because we figured that people today use the internet as an informational source more than anything else. After we decided to construct a web page, we dished out the different parts we wanted to do. Anissa decided that she wanted to take everyone’s research, put it altogether and prepare it to be on our web page. She also ended up doing some of her own research. Olivia was our designer. She designed our whole campaign and put everything together on the website. Khalil was a researcher. He brought many interesting things to the group and provided a lot of the information. I was a researcher as well. I focused my research on the younger crowd of the viewers. I researched the consequences of the drug trade to try to persuade people to not get involved with it. As the days passed, our work was coming along really nicely. Closer to the deadline, we decided to come up with a pledge people can take to steer free of the drug trade. I made it up and put it on poster board. I also made a poster full of information on it about why people should care about the drug trade in Philly and how they could get involved and help. I hung these posters outside of the office on the second floor of the school in hopes people would take the time to read it.
    I enjoyed constructing my portion of the project. I knew I wanted to do research because I know my strong point is in persuasive writing. The campaign’s focus and point was to persuade people not to join the drug trade and to inform people about it. I focused my research on the consequences of the drug trade and was very straight forward in my writing. I explained just how this lifestyle could and would ruin your life, I included the gory details as well. I thought my research was a success for the project and I hope that people of all ages get to read it and think about it. A challenge in this project was trying to get the actual website to publish! It’s finally up and working now. So, now my group and I have to track to see how many people visit the website.     Overall, the entire project was a success, now as a group, we have to get our campaign out there for more people to see. Hopefully the campaign has some sort of impact on people to keep them away from the drug trade.

All of the members of the group practice the religion Christianity. None of us really knew how our religion became so popular. As soon as this project was given to the group, within the first five minutes of thinking about what we wanted to do our research on, we came up with the idea of the uprising of Christianity. We thought that the best time period to study for this particular topic would be the Crusades. We started our research right away. We explored many different websites and went to the library and took out books to read about Constantine and the Crusades. We decided who’s going to to do what specific event and we got to work! We gathered up all of our information and put it together. We found that our information flowed together so well that we thought it would look best displayed on a website. So we made a website and then later modified it to be a bit better. 

Our project relates to NHD theme because we took a very interested time period and explored it. We became reporters from over a thousand years ago and spread the good news of the uprising of Christianity. We got to witness first hand Constantine declaring that he is converting into a new religion. We got to explore this time period knowing what we know already, knowing that the dates we visited are dates where events happened that changed our world forever.

http://54959405.nhd.weebly.com/

Here is our website w/ everything included. Our sources are under "More".

Rebecca Fenton, Kimberly Parker & Jordan Mc.

Our website... Enjoy(:

http://thehistoryofroxbourough.webs.com/index.htm

This song is telling about how much I love my family. I came from them, they made me who I am. I really liked my chrorus it sums up all of my feelings. The song explains how I feel about how I grew up and where. If I could, I would change around some words in my verses.

(Kim’s Part)

Amor es familia 

El amor ésta en casa

El amor ésta en nuestro corzon

(Refrán)

Amor y familia es todo lo que necesitamos

Ellos son muy necesarios

Ellos son significos a nosotros

Yo vivo en Filadelfía

Aquí es en donde yo a vivido toda mi vida

He vivido con mi abuela y abuelo por cuatro años

Mi abuelo influyó a mi hermana y yo

Me gusta vivir con ellos

(Refrán)

Amor y familia es todo lo que necesitamos

Ellos son muy necesarios

Ellos son significos a nosotros

Yo vengo de una familia que me ama

Yo vengo de una casa bonita 

Yo vengo de personas inteligente 

¡Yo amo mi familia!

(Becca’s Part)

(Refrán)

Amor y familia es todo lo que necesitamos

Ellos son muy necesarios

Ellos son significos a nosotros

Vivo con una familia muy pequeña

Mi hermana, Faith y mis padres Victoria y John

Ellos son muy cuidadosos

Yo amo mi familia porque ellos son muy buenos

la familia es especial para mi

Yo vivo en Roxborough con mi madre, padre y hermana

Mi casa es mas o menos grande y yo soy amable por eso.

Amigos son buenos, pero la familia es mejor

Mi familia me enseña todo lo que yo necesito 

¡Mi familia es mi vida!

1. What is your project? 
My project is a six page scrapbook describing myself from the past, present and the future. I used pictures of myself and people who I care a lot about. I described my likes, dislikes, routine, personality, and traits all in the Spanish language. 
2. What do you like about it?
I really like how creative and colorful my project is. I also liked the outcome of it because the grammar is all correct and makes sense. 
3. What would you do differently? 
If I could redo this project, I would take the time to include and congregate more verbs and use more description. 

​For the third quarter, we had to complete various drawing that I found quite challenging. I had to teach myself how to draw these pictures and make them proportionate. I also had trouble with putting some things into perspective. My favorite part of this project was getting to pick an artist and copy their work. My inspiration was Vincent Van Gogh. He painted both of the pictures that I copied but I altered it and used charcoal. Charcoal is my favorite to work with because I can get the shadings just right. I did work very hard on all of my art pieces, I hope you like them!

 

Here I interviewed my father about his growing pains as a child. We discussed these hardships on a deep and personal level. Looking at the person he is today, nobody would ever suspect that he grew up in fear. 

Kimberly Parker

I started this patch quilt during the first marking period. I have crotched the entire thing over the passed few months. I would have never been able to produce such work if it wasn’t for my great-great aunt Stella. This special woman taught me how to crochet when I was seven and I haven’t been able to put the habit down since. My piece that I am in the process of working on now is a giant patch quilt with many colors. I am crocheting rows of patches and then going to crochet them all together to form a quilt. This piece is going well because I am following my own pattern and crocheting my own way. When I say my own way I mean my style of crocheting with adjusting the tightness of the stitch and flow of the yarn. This piece isn’t quite finished yet because it takes a long time to construct such a large quilt and will need more time to finish.

            These pictures were taken in this way to symbolize my great-great aunt Stella and what she had taught me. In the background you see another quilt in which she made forty years ago. I put my work over top of her quilt to show how great her skills were and how it inspired me to make a quilt of my own. My great-great aunt was very skilled with crocheting and she passed this skill down to me with her teachings and patience.

            Crocheting to me is very soothing, and relaxing. My favorite thing about my work is that I can just sit down with my piece in my hands and watch television or have a conversation with someone. I can be creating a piece of artwork while relaxing and having time to myself. I see this as a major stress reliever in my life.  My favorite tool to my artwork is my needle. With my needle I can create just about anything I put my mind too. My needle is my gateway to my finished product.

            Finishing my product is the best part for me. My quilt isn’t finished yet but I can feel that point coming soon. The process of completion is satisfying, but not as satisfying as seeing my finished product lay out, nice and pretty. Then I can reflect on this work and think about how much hard work I had put into this piece. I look now at my rows and rows of finished patches and I think about all of the hours I had put into making these squares with neat and tight stitching. That brings me to think about my hands. My hands really wove all of this yarn into something big and useful without giving it much thought. My hands are my main tools and with them I created this giant patch quilt. 

            My favorite color in this quilt is the dark green. It is very appealing to my eye and engages the sense. The color has good qualities such as blending in with all of the other colors I used. It engages my senses and gives me a sense of warmth because it is a gentle color and it is on a quilt, which is warm. If I were to crotchet this entire quilt all over again, I would have made sure all of the yarn was of the same thickness or gauge. Some of the patches are thinner than others, which are fine, but in order to maybe look better, the same constancy of yarn should be used. I would have kept the tightness of the stitches the same because they are very well held together and will probably never rip apart. That is what makes a quality quilt! 

By: Kimberly Parker

 

“I told you, I don’t got your eyeliner!” my sister screamed.

“You don’t HAVE my eyeliner?” I yelled back, making sure I emphasized the have because it really gets under my skin when my sister uses improper language.

“Nah, I don’t got it. That’s your fault, keep track of your stuff, it ain’t my fault you always loosin’ your stuff.”

Just hearing that sentence coming from her mouth made me cringe, improper language is my number one pet peeve. My sister and I were raised to always use proper English. Both of our parents talk virtually flawless all of the time. Growing up, if we said one word out of line, we were immediately corrected. My mother especially held zero tolerance for improper language. If we walked past someone who was talking improperly, a disgusted look would come across my mother’s face and she would warn my sister and I to never use that kind of language, she would say, “You will sound like an idiot if you talk like you are dumb.” I was brought up to believe that improper language is any word that is slang, shortened or when poor grammar is used.

To my mother, if you don’t talk as perfectly as she did then you are either uneducated or just stupid. It doesn’t occur to her why people use different ways to talk the English language. People speak ‘loose English’ because it is a part of their culture and everyday life, they especially use this ‘improper language’ around people they are especially close to.

In fact, improper language is very popular considering it is constantly being used in some of the music we listen to. In the rap and hip hop industry, the lyrics to songs are heavily flawed with grammatical errors. This music uses all kinds of slang and curse words and yet people are getting paid to produce it. Rap and Hip Hop music is in high demands, especially for the younger generations. What these rappers and singers are not thinking about are the children that they are influencing with their lyrics. This kind of music does have a huge influence on people, especially younger kids like my sister. They think it is cool and hip to use the type of language that there favorite singers are using. These kids see these performers as role models and use their language. Ever since my sister has been hanging around a new group friends and listening to rap music, her language has defiantly been effected in a negative way. This just shows how easily children’s language can be influenced. This drives my mother crazy, at first she constantly tried to correct my sister and remind her that she goes to a good school that taught her how to speak the correct way. My mother was implying that my sister was being a fool for using improper language because my sister is in fact educated. This leads to another conclusion that my mother is drawing which is that people who use improper language are not educated, which is not true. I personally cannot stand when people use improper English intentionally but I do think it is also unfair to label people and jump to conclusions. You cannot just assume because a person talks improperly that they are stupid and or uneducated.

Sometimes when my sister uses this improper English, I tease her saying that nobody is going to hire her for a job if she still talks the way she does today. She always just gives me a sour look telling me how dare I think that. I am only trying to help her by informing her that in reality, improper English is not desired in the working industry. If she did go in for a job interview and used improper language, chances are she would not be hired. Jobs are a formal matter, appearance is key and if you speak improperly, it is going to be noticed and frowned upon. Improper language is very unprofessional and in the business world it is never used. It is looked at as being low class and everyone in the business industry wants to be on top. Nobody wants to appear as being low class and that is why the vast majority of the people in this industry have close to flawless English speaking skills.

My sister has been using improper language for two years now and does not see the significance of using ‘proper English.’ Other people as well do not see why speaking properly can be beneficial. Clarence Darrow who was an American lawyer in the 1920’s said, “Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?” This quote is questioning if speaking correctly is really worth learning. I respectfully disagree with this quote because in this day and age, you can speak correct language to your boss and coworkers who do not want to hear any kind of improper language. By reading this quote, proper English must not have been too important to Clarence and being a lawyer, I don’t see why he would that speaking proper is a waste of time. Being a lawyer, speaking properly is a big part of the job because speaking is in fact your job and the use of proper English is critical. 

The way that English is used is up to the person who speaks it. There are countless variations on how the English language is used and there are many ways to use the language properly and improperly.  This all depends on the person, the person’s history, and surroundings. The way that you use English effects how other people think of you and can often be stereotypical. The use of different variations on the English language can affect your life in both negative and positive ways. What my sister doesn’t realize that she is developing a bad habit that might affect her life down the road in the working industry. If she doesn’t start practicing proper English now, she might always be an improper monster.

 

 

 

This is my bottle cap poster that I took a picture of today. It has been hanging up in the halls of SLA for a few weeks now. Someone decided to add $5,000 at the left hand corner, I did not put that there. I hope that the students of SLA saw my poster and then remembered to bring in bottle caps to school because that is the purpose of this poster. Bottle caps were being collected from everyone in school so we could recycle them. I wanted my poster to be unique and clever so I figured that the plastic bottle caps were really wanted in the art room that I would make sort of like a warrent for Mr. Bottle Cap. I knew people would understand why we needed the bottle caps if wrote that the bottle caps were needed for art use.