The Three Parts of Me

I feel like my strengths paint a very clear picture of who I am as a person. The strengths that I personally attribute myself with may not be the same strengths that others see in me but nonetheless I see them in myself and that is what really matters. My first biggest strength is that I am dependable, I feel as though if you ask me to do something or need some help, I’m can be reliable. My second biggest strength is that I am consistent, when I get in the habit of something (for example coming in on time) then I do not lose that habit. My third biggest strength is that I work well with others, I can still work by myself but when collaboration is involved I can excell. I believe that all three of my major strengths can come into play when working at my ILP.

Dependability

Being dependable basically means being responsible enough for people to trust you. I feel as though I am a pretty dependable person. Whether that means to my friends, teachers, our employers. For example in my most recent job over the summer I had to earn my boss’ trust first for her to know that I was dependable. Being dependable is hard work and something that can be easily lost. I am confident that I can bring my dependability into my ILP.

Consistency

When I say that consistency is one of my greatest strengths I mean to say that is that I can stay consistent with my routine. If I get in the habit of something I can continue without any problem. This could possibly seen as a weakness but I play it to my strengths. An example is last school year I would consistently come in to school everyday on time. I plan on bringing this trait into my ILP.

Work Well With Others

Working well with others is not something that everyone can do or likes that much. I feel as though I work very well with other people.  For example during a group project in school, I find it easier than working alone because there is collaboration involved. If everyone is pulling their weight then it is really easy to excel in whatever work your doing. I cannot way to see how this comes into play with my ILP.

Real World Application

I plan on using my three greatest strengths during my CTE engineering program and my engineering ILP. During my CTE engineering program at school I will be consistent when making it to class and following the rules, I will be dependable in order to operate with the tools, and I will collaborate with others while studying engineering. During my ILP I will be dependable in order to achieve more exciting tasks, I will be consistent with professionalism, and I will work with others to get the job done. I plan on using all three of these attributes throughout my experience in the CTE program. My main focus is to just get the most I can out of it.

In post #1, I talked about about how gang violence is affecting individual neighborhoods and how it is a burden on our society. I also did some research on those topics and talked about it in the blog post. In post #2, I reached out to someone who is dealing with gang violence first hand and interviewed them. I analyzed what they said and elaborate it throughout my post. However, In post #3 I did something that will hopefully cause change to occur. For post #3 I constructed a website that informs the public on what a dangerous thing gang violence, how to protect yourself, what to do and not do, how to act in a gang violence related situation, how they can help, etc...

youth.gov logo

During my research I came across many helpful websites, but one website that really had great solutions to the easily fixable problems of gang violence was made by an organization called youth.gov. They believe that the roots of gang violence issues is the youth members. A quote from them is “To prevent youth from joining gangs, communities must strengthen families and schools, improve community supervision, train teachers and parents to manage disruptive youth, and teach students interpersonal skills.” I personally agree with their methods because the decision to be in a gang comes at a young age and it is important to stay on a good path throughout your whole adolescence. I also really like this website because their intentions and mine are the same. We both have similar goals to prevent gang violence from harming our society and children.

LAPD police badge

In addition to researching youth.gov, I did research about the Los Angeles Police Department. There goal is to protect us from gang violence and life threatening danger. On their site, it was really helpful that they made a list of what regular everyday citizens can do to help stop gang violence. Four items on the list are “Set up a Neighborhood Watch or a community patrol, working with police”, “Make sure that all the youth in the neighborhood have positive ways to spend their spare time, through organized recreation, tutoring programs, part-time work, and volunteer opportunities.”, “Clean up the neighborhood! Involve everyone - teens, children, senior citizens. Graffiti, litter, abandoned cars, and run-down buildings tell criminals that you don't care about where you live or each other. Call the local public works department and ask for help in cleaning up.”, and “Clean up the neighborhood! Involve everyone - teens, children, senior citizens. Graffiti, litter, abandoned cars, and run-down buildings tell criminals that you don't care about where you live or each other. Call the local public works department and ask for help in cleaning up.” I chose these four in particular because once completed they can actually produce real change. I also chose this because I also had a list of what citizens can do in my website.

Me making my website.

After researching about others whose goals are to stop gang violence and what their methods are in doing so, I decided to share my opinion and inform the public on my methods of stopping gang violence. That is why I wanted to do a website because I feel as though it is the best way to learn a lot of information in a convenient way. The important part is that the public gets the information. My experience creating this website was mostly good but at some times a little frustrating. There were times when I did not know what to put on my website in order to keep it relevant and well explained. I was effective in making a change because I got my information out into the world. I obviously can’t force anyone to do something, but I think that it is really important to have the option to inform yourself of potential danger.

Reflecting on this project now, I felt good doing it. I have felt a larger connection to this project since I have been working on it for so long. I have witnessed my knowledge and ideas for this project grow and change through the past few months. This project has let me learn about myself that if I devote a lot of time to a topic, it grows and improves so greatly. What I feel like I could have done better was the my planning out. My ideas were growing rampantly and if my schedule had a little more structure, then I could have saved a lot of more time. What still needs to happen to fulfill a change is that my website needs to be viewed and used by a lot of people and it needs to spread awareness. In conclusion, my agent of change was a successful product of my first two posts.

Annotated Bibliography

Planning for Post #3

www,preventgangviolence.com

In blog post #1, I took an issue in the world and I further developed it to see what could be done to solve it. I focused more on why I was passionate about the topic as well as sources for information. I proved its significance as a valid topic and went into further depth about the issue. I explained the impact that it has on people and why it needs to be solved. Lastly, I had to explain what I wanted to learn going further, and from then I have learned a lot.

Since my last post a lot of new information has been discovered. In my recent findings, I found an organization who not only share my concern for gang violence but they are actually doing something about it. Philanthropy Roundtable is an organization that is combating violence with nonviolence. They offer a lot of programs and take in a lot of donations. I recommend checking out their magazine, Philanthropy Magazine and they have an excellent website as well. Another source that I used I actually reused the website and found a different article. It is an article about gang resistance education and training law from the site US Legal. It is about a program that teaches youth how to protect themselves from threats like gang violence. These programs are focusing on the same type of things that I am. Solving gang violence with nonviolence is the best solution when combating this issue.

In my original research I interviewed one of my classmates. Like me she lives in a neighborhood were gang violence is common. She is affected by gang violence everyday. This helped inform me on my issue because we both have different stories and different memories and live in different neighborhoods. We both have a different perspective on the same issue and are affected by it in similar ways. She informed me on how gang violence effects neighborhoods on a bigger scale. This helps me understand my topic better because it informs me that I am not the only one who realizes that this issue is an issue. It also helps me understand how specifically this issue affects others. With this interview, I am now very informed on the current issue that is gang violence.

After doing a fair amount of research and having a strong opinion on the matter, I feel as though the only way to protect neighborhoods and their citizens from gangs and gang violence is to non-violently inform them so that they can protect themselves. Also I think that putting more patrol cars in sketchy areas is necessary. After all of my research I still am left wondering what is the real reason for one to join a gang? Is there really one solution that solves it all? What can I do as a citizen and as a youth to inform people on this topic? I wanted to see if I could get this information from an expert. Along with my interview with my classmate I was supposed to interview a police officer who specializes in gang violence and gun violence, unfortunately the interview did not work out. Now that I have done all of this research I plan on looking into some of the programs about gang violence and developing my agent of change.

Annotated Bibliography

Interview

The War on Violence

Here is a word cloud of gang violence. Image source

Imagine hearing gunshots not blocks away your own home. For some people this is an everyday occurrence. Gangs are organized social groups who commit crimes. Some gangs partake in violence to receive social status, partake in theft, vandalism, murder, etc… to receive respect from their gang members that they probably haven’t received or earned in their own lives. Gangs are very passionate about respect, so passionate that they will do anything to protect their own members or their turf, this is where the violence part comes in. Out of passion, gangs inflict violence on each other to maintain respect. Not only is this problematic because of the deaths it is causing in gangs, but it is also harming innocent people who might just be pedestrians or bystanders. This issue is growing, because now it is affecting whole neighborhoods and branding them as “bad” or dangerous neighborhoods. This leaves a bad reputation on the neighborhood, the people who live in the neighborhood, and the entire city.

This is a photo of the streets of Kensington. Image source

I live in Kensington, gang violence is a huge problem there. I have a personal connection to gang violence because it could affect the way I live or harm me. Not only me but my friends, family, and neighbors could all suffer from gang violence. I don’t want to see my neighborhood have a bad reputation or be dangerous. My neighborhood isn’t the only neighborhood with this problem. People need to be informed if they want to be safe or to have a positive effect on their neighborhood. Making a change to make your neighborhood a safer place is not hard. You can make a change in a big way or small way. It is important to have safe living conditions for our generation growing up and the next generation to come.

Poster against gang violence. Image source

Gang violence is something that has a long history. Sadly there is a lot of facts to back it up. A statement from USLegal says that “Gang violence means criminal and non political acts of violence committed by a group of people who regularly engage in criminal activity against innocent people.” This source is a negative towards gangs but it can still be true. This means that gangs can and do that stuff. That it why it is important to be aware and be safe. Another statement from NCBI says “During childhood and adolescence, the formation of groups or gangs is a normal part of the growing process. Playmates, school friends, Boy and Girl Scout troops are each examples of the natural inclination to form group attachments that provide a stable social outlet.” this source is important because it is explaining how gangs start and what to look out for. It is important to be educated in subjects like gang violence which are very dangerous and can affect your safety and security.

Poster for victims who suffered violence. Image source

Through extensive research about gang violence, I have concluded that gang violence is not just a two-sided topic. Gang violence is something that has been completely stereotyped, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. I do not understand the pride that gangs need to maintain. I question the reliability of the opinions of those who are not victims of gang violence or gang members. Going forward in research I hope to find a simple way to improve this solution.

Annotated Bibliography

I learned from the critique of my slide that short and sweet is the move and tangits are bad. To be honest my slide was awful, it was too crowded, disorganized, some pictures were blurry, and some pictures didn’t align right. I did not put as much effort as I could have put when making my original slide. I intended to create a cool collage of some sort but I didn't meet myself halfway and the slide came out bad. I didn’t really do enough research either so that may have been another factor.

I made the changes that I made because I needed to clean things up and properly format stuff. I also made the changes because my peers strongly thought that I needed to. It was not only them, I wasn't very fond of it either. My peers told me to make sure to align stuff correctly, get less blurry pictures, and most importantly, no tangents! After moving some stuff around and deleting other stuff, my peers comments helped me a lot.

The main research that I did that actually influenced what I did/changed was that color is the first thing that people notice. Also how space makes it breathable and calm. Lastly, that if this slide was an IKEA billboard, that it would look organized and sweet/simple. A good source for information is slide design for developers. The reasoning behind the necessary elements are very good and convincing. In conclusion the research that I did, and the comments from others helped shaped my slide into a very good slide.

Sam: This collaboration of images you see before you are all related to Vegetarianism. I have been a vegetarian for my whole life, it has affected my life in the following ways, the way I interact with people, my options, and the way I think about animals. I chose to add these images also because they are colorful, Also these are all images of things that I see pretty often. I also chose to have a balance of color between white and color. I also chose to make it multiple images because I am more than one image.

It affects the way I interact with people because people always ask “oh you're a vegetarian” or “you're a vegetarian, how!”, and that's what people mostly talk about when they find out.

The way it affects my options because when I go out to dinner there might not be vegetarian options, or when I'm in the school lunch line there might not always be a meal ready or at all.

Lastly it affects my opinions on animal cruelty, and meat in general. I think that It is important that we conserve animals, because they have feelings too, also no offense if you like meat but just how you might think my vegetarian food is gross, I think that meat is gross.

In conclusion those are just some ways it's like to be a vegetarian.