Hey! It’s Ebony again. In my last blog post, I talked about how bullying could lead into depression and suicide. If you have not read the blog yet, you should!

I actually have found a couple new information. One of them is statistics of kids being cyberbullied and bullied. However, they are not kids in my community, but kids across the world in the UK. This shows that it’s not only an issue with mine or your community, but it is a worldwide issue. That is another thing that I wanted to prove. Also, it is something that should alarm people of how dangerous and serious bullying is. These are high percentages of kids who have been both been bullied, physically and through social media such as Facebook, twitter, instagram and even through text messaging.

Another part of this research is to get original research. For my original research, I decided to do a survey of kids in 6-12 grade. The reason I chose a variety of grades is because today, most kids are going through it, no matter how young they are. The point I am trying to get is what is the grade that’s being targeted more. Honestly, my main target was younger kids, ranging between 11-14. The problem about doing this survey is that I was not able to get any information about 7th graders but the majority being 6th graders. Although I was not able to get some of the information I wanted, I did get the information that I needed.

Here are some examples of the most important ones:

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The results that surprised me the most is the number of kids that do tell someone about being bullied. Even though more people have not told anyone about it, there’s only a 6% difference.

So far, this is goodbye, but I will be back soon to show you guys my agent of change part! I’m quite excited and hope everything goes well. Doing this part will give me a better understanding of what people go through. Thank you again for reading. If you went ahead and read this instead of the first blog, I suggest you read the other one too. It’ll help for a better understanding. So, click here! Thanks again.

For further information, check out this.

Hello my name is Luke Watson-Sharer. Hopefully you have read my first blog post here First Blog post. I’m writing my second blog on my discovered research. As in the other blog post,  the purpose of You and the World is to make a difference through an issue.  I picked obesity which is a very significant issue in the U.S. and many other countries.  Obesity affects our physical and mental health and therefore our future. Blog 1 discussed the many issues related to obesity in the U.S. and the world.  I decided to do my own study by conducting a survey on my topic. I did two surveys:  one for people with knowledge on the topic and one for anyone. I wanted to know what experts or people with knowledge believed and what anonymous people think about the topic.

Survey 1 This is my first survey. It’s for anyone to answer and you share your opinions and basic things you do. I start by asking the responder if they believe they’re obese, Then I asked why they believe they are or are not obese.  Next, I ask if they made attempts to lose weight.  You can read the other question on the link “Survey 1.”  The responses were interesting.  What interested me was seeing that about 90% said they didn’t believe they were obese but about 70% said they eat sweets a lot. This is interesting because if you  eat a lot  of sugary things you may gain weight.  Many said eating sweets is a bad habit.  Since most said they are not obese, metabolism may be a factor.  Genetics could play a larger role; I will discuss  this later in the blog. Also almost everyone says they don’t workout or  try to  cut calories but of 90% do not believe they are  obese.  This makes me curious. Finally, after seeing my results for survey 1 it seems that obesity could be more genetic  than a result of bad habits. Responses To survey 1

Survey 2 This is my second survey. It’s made for experts or people with knowledge. I asked for only knowledgeable people reply. (I couldn’t control who replied.)  This is so I could learn more about obesity. My first question was probably the hardest question to ask. What do you believe obesity exists? This can be hard because I got many opinionated responses and because it’s a heated topic. Then I asked other questions on what to do to help children with obesity. I ask about helping kids and ways of recommending things to kids. Survey Responses: Responses Here you’ll see many of the responses to the questions I was hoping to answer.  Finally, I got good insight from knowledgeable people on childhood obesity.

These responses added to my knowledge of f the issue  and ideas for helping overweight kids.  I got a wide amount of responses that differed a lot; this is still helpful data.  Some of my personal opinions have changed on what obesity is and how to help kids with obesity because now I’m leaning towards obesity being more genetic. This will affect the recommendations to help kids;  losing weight isn’t as easy as saying “exercise.” I still wonder about what causes obesity. I got many answers between genetic and bad eating habits and I still am baffled. While I was going my survey, a new study found children from 2 - 5 years old are not as obese as 10 years ago.  This is great but all other age groups saw no major change.   I’m thinking of doing a program for schools without gym’s so that students can also get exercise even though they don’t have a school gym. I can maybe go back to my old middle and elementary school because we never had a gym.

My research has helped me a lot. It  left a question mark but has given me more views on the topic of childhood obesity. Maybe we will never have an exact definition to childhood obesity or if it’s genetic or from bad habits.  What we do know is that it’s a big issue in the U.S.  and worldwide.   I hope to be an  agent of change. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy my next blog post.

Annotated Bibliography: Here

Hi readers! Welcome back to my You And The World (YATW) project. Last time, in my Blog Post #1, I was looking into Financial Education. What I found was that Financial Education is a real taboo in America, even though it is one of the most important things to have. Since then, I have looked a lot more into this, and have seen a lot more information.

First of all, If anyone is looking for a professional look on Financial Education, please look for some videos of Suze Orman. She makes very good points, and knows a lot about this topic. I have learned much from her.

Second of all, I’d like to update you all on my research. I have been doing some of my own research (surveying and interviewing) and have come up with some personalized data. An Annotated Bibliography, a Survey Analysis, and link to all of the survey information, including the survey itself, is here.

All that I found was basically this: Financial Education is a real taboo. Most people don’t know their income or what they’re spending on. However, all of the survey takers knew what kind of Financial Support they received. Another thing that I found was that, even though there was a wide range of Financial Education, reaching all across my 1-10 scale, almost every single person was taught outside of school. Most people were taught by parents or mentors, or even taught themselves. All of this information makes me think that Financial Education needs to be taught a lot more on a bigger and more important scale.

I am hoping to learn more about this, because I didn’t learn all that I wanted to about Financial Education. How does America budget? What is the average ratio of spending to saving, and spending to income? What percentage of ALL Americans receive Financial Support? All of these and more could be important to my teaching.

Now on to the future. Ahead of me is the Spring. I will be performing an Agent of Change Service Project. All of my research has lead up to this. I will be planning with some teachers at Science Leadership Academy, along with some teachers at Independence Charter School, to create a lesson plan to teach some children.

I am hoping to teach at least one class of First graders, one class of Third graders, and one class of Eighth graders. I will also be teaching a more advanced lesson to some high schoolers (if I can). This is a work in progress, but so far I have some notes about how the lesson might go. They are here.

If you have any other suggestions as to things I should see, topics I should research, or more subjects I should teach, feel free to leave a comment. I am also open to any suggestions as to where I should take this next. I am looking to continue this education onward and outward, past YATW. I want to teach more at ICS and SLA, and more at other places as well. The world needs to hear more about Financial Education, and there needs to be more of a teaching force.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If there’s anything at all, please feel free to comment!

Felix

Some extra information:

Your Income Level (Optional)

Less than $30,000 a year [5] 21%

$30,000-50,000 [0] 0%

$50,000-70,000 [5] 21%

$70,000-90,000 [4] 17%

$90,000-110,000 [2] 8%

$110,000-130,000 [0] 0%

$130,000-150,000 [2] 8%

Don’t Know [6] 26%

Do you receive Financial Aid/Support? (Optional)

Yes [5] 19%

A little bit [4] 15%

No [17] 65%

Don’t Know [0] 0%

The names jesse for those who don’t know. In my first blog post I first introduced my topic which is the School to prison pipeline a fancy name for the process in which school’s harsh policies kick kids out of school on the the street then into jail or even straight into jail and through the criminal system. the pipeline is the reason for the many incarnations of youth even as young as ten. If you missed my first blog there is a link to it at the bottom of this blog but enough of that… on to blog number 2!

BLOG POST # 2

For my original  research I chose to do an interview with the Philadelphia Community Youth Court’s Intake coordinator Ms. Kimberly Stevens. Her job is to look over the referrals and decides whether or not the person referred should go through youth court. The results from my research is also at the bottom of the blog if you wanna go and check out her answer it’s right there. Doing this interview informed me on some of the factors that strengthen the school to prison pipeline. One of the factors is of course the schools but what I’ve learned from my interview was that It was 75% referrals that PCYC gets come from schools. It might not sound like It was a big “ah- ha” moment but allow me to delve deeper. If 75% of referrals come from schools around philly then that means that the policies in place are the reasons that students are get referred out of school and to the police or just kicked out of school period. Also This means that maybe about 20% come from the actual police and the last 5% come from youths just making a bad decision or being in the wrong place and the wrong time. Now think If PCYC wasn’t in place, All of those kids would be in jail either from school or from doing something on the street and all of them would lose their chance to live their life to the fullest.

By doing this interview it allowed me to further my understanding of the school to prison pipeline. By doing this I have now seen how people see or education system in philly. After doing this additional research I feel like I finally know enough about this topic to have an opinion on it. That opinion is that this Pipeline needs to stop for youths to truly live their lives and show that they aren’t the problem but the solution. I’ve seen and heard so many things about we get kick out because we are bad students but what people fail to remember is that we are kids and what do kids do? We make mistakes, but with the certain policies in place we are not allowed to learn from those mistakes and are quickly punished for what happened. People in high places feel as though we are the problem and give up on us but never realized that they were talking at us and not with us to fix the problem. They are so quick to say the problem when in fact we are the solution and the brighter future if they gave us a chance. 

Another thing that I realized with my research is that with everyone that is one our side there are 5 on the other side already counting us out and they are winning by using the pipeline. In my first blog I said that they opened up 2 new prisons worth 400 million dollars but closed down 26 schools as well. If this wasn’t a clear sign that they already scratch out our education I don’t know what is. They rather invest in the business of incarceration than invest in our education. This is why I want to help in any way I can to break this pipeline even if I have to do it little by little.

There isn't much I’m left wondering about This issue. The only thing that could possibly come to mind is who was the first person to think that They would get more out of prisons than the youth’s education. Other than that I’m already thinking on what to do for my agent of change  part for blog post #3. Actually let me rephrase that I know what I’m going to do for my agent of change.  I will volunteer with the Philadelphia Community Youth Court(PCYC) every friday or whenever else they might need me so that I can be a change and help break this pipeline for not just mine but all of our futures. Well thats all for now look out for my big conclusion in blog #3.

Tally-ho!( That sound much cooler in my head before I typed it…. somehow?)

Here is the link to my first blog:

blog post #1   

link to my annotated bib:

Annotated Bib

link to transcript of interview:

Hello! Welcome to my second blog! My name is Cacy Thomas and if you have not read my first blog you can click here to do so. If you have, thanks for coming back! I’m just going to do a quick recap of my last post because I know it’s been a while.

• My blogs are especially for my You and the World english project

• My You and the World project for english class is Awareness and Prevention of Concussions in Young Athletes.

• I have chosen this topic because I have had 3 concussions at the age of 12. These head injuries ended my athletic career in contact sports and forced me to go through 2 years of emotional and physical rehabilitation.

• It is imperative to spread this information out so that kids are not experiencing the same things I did.

To continue my childhood concussion adventure, I did some research and am still pursuing to do more. I received a link from my English teacher, Alexa Dunn, on concussions and helmets from cbsnews.com. I was really interested in the experiment shown on the web page as well as the results. This was helpful in enhancing my knowledge on the subject because even though I knew helmets did not do much to protect people from concussions, I did not know which helmets had the best results. I also did not know how helpful they would actually be in providing support for the brain. In my own personal journey I made a survey concerning concussion awareness. If you would like to help further my research you can take it here. I am also currently trying to set up interviews to collect more information. However if you would like some more information about head injury awareness in soccer, please click this link to read a summary of a concussion symposium I spoke at as well as 16 year-old Kim Zeffert, former Philadelphia Flyers captain Keith Primeau, and former professional soccer player Taylor Twellman.

The results of my survey were a little bit surprising. I asked what symptoms were caused by concussions with the choices, Headaches, Dizziness, Hallucinations, Fatigue, Possible death while sleeping the same day as the injury was received, Nausea, Extreme Hunger, and Sensitivity to light or noise. The majority of people who took it said that extreme hunger, hallucinations, and possible death caused by sleeping were symptoms. This just shows how uninformed a lot of people are about concussion side effects. Also many survey takers were confused about the definition of this injury. The most accurate response was,

“A bruise to the brain, often caused by impact.”

Others said things anywhere from, “head trauma,” to, “when your head or skull is badly damaged.” Likewise I was amazed just at the fact that just about half of the answerers said that concussions become less serious as you get older. No matter how you look at it a concussion is brain damage at any age and obviously brain damage is extremely serious. This research added to my understanding of this subject because it made me realize how much people are actually informed, and not many are informed at all. I am wondering how we can prevent concussions and what will have the biggest impact to really drive people to spread awareness.

The final part of my 9th grade You and the World project is being an agent of change. This means we go out somewhere into the world and help either informing others about our issue, or doing volunteer work to help solve it. For being an agent of change I am planning to make a presentation about information regarding childhood concussions along with my story and struggles. I will present this to my school community at Science Leadership Academy.

Welcome back! I am Junjie Zou from Science Leadership Academy. I am back again with my second blog. In my first blog, I talked about the physical features of the casino and how it affect the community and the business’ surrounding it. I also talked about how the casino can form a domino effect on the victim’s community or his/her family members. Following up with my last blog, I placed an interview with a casino activist. He is also a member of Asian American United, a group created by proud activists fighting for everyday world problems, such as the effect of casino.  

I have discovered so many new things out of this interview. After the interview, I learned that there is a difference between a arcade and a casino. The arcade is a place with different stations containing variety of video games that can be played for a fee. Similar to a casino, a casino has gambling games that you play with your own money. The difference between a arcade and a casino is the addiction and the rewards you receive from these two type of entertainment. As I mentioned in my first blog, casinos don’t have many windows to let you determine the time outside while you have your head focused on the machine. The arcade is not as addicting as a casino because it shows you the time outside so you will know when to leave. As you might know, you must be 18 or older to be in a casino, but as for a arcade, any age are welcomed. Overall, the arcade is absolutely fine to go to because it doesn’t have much addicting content as the casino.

Like I mentioned earlier, I held an interview for my original research. I interviewed a Asian American United employer, Wei Chen. He told me all about his experience being a casino activist and how the casino affected him and his family. He told me that his dad was one of those people who was addicted to gambling and how his father tried to convince him to stop his education and start working for money for him to gamble. This really gives me a lot of information about this topic because I got to talk to a person who has been through these things and now fighting against it. “...because of gambling, they are willing to leave their child in the car in a hot summer day.”

This adds to my understanding of this issue because it tells me that there is actually a person who has been affect by this and that this is not a made up thing, but can turn into a very serious life-losing situation.

After all of these research on the effect of casino, I feel like something can definitely be done by the government. It’s harsh seeing these people suffer from a lost of family or friends because of some addicting machine created by the government. The casino’s money all go to  the government for their uses either to the military or to us citizens. This can definitely be a good thing, but taking advantage of people by getting them addicted to a inescapable addiction, is not a way to raise money for this country.

  Hello again! My name is Ian Fay and I am a freshman attending Science Leadership Academy. You may remember me from my last blog I posted over two months ago in December. I was writing about the invasion of internet privacy and how net neutrality is being repeatedly tarnished. I described it as a very paradoxical issue and also being a very hard issue to solve. Since then, I have looked a bit deeper into this issue and created my own research as well. Now, I am here to share it with you so let us get right into it.

    I had a technology class earlier in my first semester of school. My teacher, Ms. Hull, showed my class a Ted Talks video with Eli Pariser. Pariser talked about a concept called “ The Filter Bubble”. A filter bubble is a term he used to describe the predicament he was talking about in the video. When you consistently search items that fall into a certain category, the website you used  would assume that you “like” things that are similar. As a result, it filters out all of the things that do not fall into that certain category. I found this to be very ludicrous. This is effectively restraining us from seeing any pieces of information other than what we “like”.   

    In addition to finding out about this new research, I conducted some of my own. Recently Ms. Dunn may have been blowing up red and orange streams inboxes with messages about surveys as well as some students sending their surveys out themselves. I had mine sent out by Ms. Dunn. Obviously it was the one on internet privacy and security. I wanted to have the question centered around online security and legislature and how people think it can be improved upon itself. If you want to see the results then you can check them out using the link here. I noticed how many people do not see companies as trustworthy with their personal information.

    Now the next step for me to become an Agent of Change. This is where I try to make a difference in this issue. However I feel that I may have it a bit harder than others. With the issue involving all of this neverending confusion, I found it hard to try and find a way to help this problem in the world. Then I decided I would do a presentation for my advisory. I do not know if there are any people trying to help stop this issue, but I feel as of right now the best thing I can do is to raise awareness of this problem.

    This is where my blog #2 ends. Thank you everyone for reading and be sure to comment below. In the next blog, I will talk about how I did as an Agent of Change. I will also talk about the efforts that are being done for this problem right now. I am eager to see you then. This was Ian Fay who will soon become an Agent of Change!

Bibliography

Eli Pariser “Filter Bubble”

It's been awhile since I have posted a You and the World (YATW) blog. In  my first blog, I first presented my issue of childhood cancer. In the blog, I presented how many kids on average were diagnosed with childhood cancer and the late effects that could sometimes occur. Some late effects include the first cancer coming back, a second cancer occurring, heart damage, or lung damage. Most survivors do not realize these late effects can occur when they are much older, sometimes in their 30’s and 40’s. After using research I found online, I did my own research on childhood cancer.

In my original research, I conducted a survey about childhood cancer in order to get other people’s knowledge of the topic. With the survey I wanted to learn the occurrences of a second diagnosis, since that is one of the symptoms of late effects, but all of the people who took my survey and who were connected to childhood cancer said that it was a first diagnosis. The responses may show that perhaps there is more of a chance to fight childhood cancer and to have it gone for good.

The responses really helped to understand how the amount of childhood cancer survivors has increased significantly over the years. I feel like I now understand childhood cancer better since I got people’s personal opinions on childhood cancer and their personal connection instead of just statistics presented by medical professionals. Through the responses I was able to see the family and friends view on the topic.

Even though the responses I got were helpful, I still would have liked if some of the people who had second diagnosis had taken the survey so that I could see their point of view. I wanted to know if their second diagnosis would be something that they could get past or if unfortunately they were unable to move past the diagnosis. While, having this survey information about second diagnosis would have related more to my first blog on late effects, the responses I did get showed how second diagnosis may not be as prevalent.

My next blog will be based on my Agent of Change project. An Agent of Change project is when we go out and try to help with the topic we chose to study. I originally wanted to volunteer at a hospital which deals with childhood cancer, such as CHOP or Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York however the requirements for high school volunteers were summer only or did not fit the project schedule. Instead I hope to volunteer at the Cure Search Walk in May. The Cure Search Walk is an event that Cure Search, a childhood cancer foundation, holds to raise money for childhood cancer research. I want to volunteer to help out at the event by either registering people or handing out water throughout the day. This way I am helping out instead of just researching.