Hey again! My name is Adlynn Gonzalez and this is my second blog about Literacy In Philadelphia. For my first blog, I introduced this topic and talked about how many kids in Philadelphia aren’t up to par when it comes to their reading scores. I just recently found out that in 2012 there was a decline in PSSA reading scores, and that Philadelphia’s NAEP scores lag far behind other cities. Just 19% of Philadelphia’s children scored proficient or above on the PSSA’s and that’s extremely low compared to other cities.

For our You And The World project we were required to do some original research. For my original research I did field observation. I went to Boy’s Latin Middle School (6th graders) and observed 4-5 English classes and interviewed a few of the students. Before interviewing a couple of the students, I just merely observed the class; and since it was a make-up work day in that English class, I observed the students that didn’t have to make up work. There was a TED talk video playing for the kids to watch, but others did not watch. I noticed that some of the ones that weren’t watching were reading books of their interest, others were goofing off. That’s when I decided to interview some of the kids. I asked them simple questions like “what’s your favorite book?”, “do you like to read?”, “on a scale of 1-10, how much do you like reading?”, etc. Then I asked them “what do they think of people who don’t care about reading”, “ when kids end up not liking to read, what do you think is the issue”, etc. The answers I got were surprising. One kid blamed kids not liking reading on technology, which is one factor I have not thought of before. While doing the field observation and interviewing the kids, it kind of opened up my eyes a bit to see what these kids are thinking. (Transcript below)

After meeting those kids and interviewing them, I now want to know more about what that one kid said about technology being a reason for kids not wanting to read. Also I want to know what else they think about PSSAs because most of them said that it wasn’t stressful, but they feel the need to exceed expectations. While doing some online research, I read about how students more male than female dropped out because they struggled with reading and felt inadequate in class, and that standardized tests were stressful, and not in a good way.  I also asked their teacher a few questions and he thought that PSSAs put good stress on the students. He is also really enthusiastic about reading.

Last but not least, I wanted to talk about my Agent of Change. In our You And The World project, we are required to be an Agent of Change and I wanted to possibly help out a reading organization. Like the Eagles Mobile club, or the Phillies Be  Phanatic About Reading program, or even the Reading Olympics (which I was a member of). All I want to do is promote why reading is important, how it can be fun, and lastly how it benefits you in the long run.

Well, that’s it for now, but make sure to stay tuned for Blog #3 where I actually talk about what I eventually did for my Agent of Change, and what other information I found out about this topic.

Links:

Philadelphia’s Test Scores

Philadelphia’s Scores Drop

Be A Phanatic About Reading

Transcript

 Hello, again people. As, you may know my name is Husain Kegler. In my last blog I was talking about the basic point of animal abuse. And, how it may affect children in away. I hope that inspired some or most people to look into animal abuse and how they can help animals, helping others, even volunteering. For, my new blog I will be doing the same thing but this time I will be doing field observation. I will be doing this by calling an Operation AVA . I will be asking a associate or employee these questions: ( answers below questions )

1. How well do you like animals?

2. Has animals ever affected your life? katie@operationava.org

3. How safe do you feel around a animal that was abused?

4. Do you have a animal at home, if so how many hours do you spend with your animal?

5. Have you ever been a suspect of animal abuse?

6. Have you ever been a victim of abuse?

7. Have you ever been critically hurt by a animal?

8. If you could change the world for all animals how would you do so?

9. Have you ever thought about abusing an animal?

10. For future references about animal abuse, what advice to stop animal abuse would you like to give to the youth?

11. What kinds of brutality have u seen?

12. What was the most shocking/painful thing to see?

13. Out of cats and dogs which animal do u see more abused, cats or dogs?

14. Do you think it's likely for an animal that was already abused will get abused again when it gets adopted by a new owner?

15. How much time do you think you spend helping out animals?

1. I love animals! I grew up with all kinds of animals (dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, fish, etc.) and love working with them.

2. Animals have always affected my life in a positive way - I think animals can have a positive influence on most people's lives.

3. Every animal is different, but interacting with one that has been abused is something that should be done carefully and slowly. If you're patient, careful, and willing to understand them, there isn't much reason to be afraid.

4. I have two cats at home - I spend most of my time at home when I'm not at work, so we hang out for hours and hours.

5. No.

6. No

7. A horse stepped on my foot and broke my little toe once, but that was an accident. Other than that, no.

8. I would like animal abuse to have more legal consequences than it currently does. There should also probably be restrictions on breeding animals - so many end up in shelters or on the street.

9. No.

10. If anyone ever witnesses animal abuse, they can call the Animal Cruelty Hotline,  1-866-601-7722 to report it to the SPCA.

11. I have been lucky enough not to have witnessed much animal cruelty.

12. We often get dogs in the shelter that have clearly not been treated right. Many come to us as strays but have clearly lived with humans before. They are often underweight, nervous, and sometimes have clearly been used for breeding.

13. Probably dogs, simply because we have more of them here at Operation Ava. Philadelphia has a serious stray cat problem, so often the cats I see have just come off of the streets - sometimes they have never lived in homes with people before.

14. No, definitely not. Especially with our adoption process we screen the applicants before they are allowed to take animals home. We check vet references, personal references, and talk extensively with potential adopters.

15. Since I work at Operation Ava full time, I spend at least 40 hours a week trying to help animals. Outside of work I also try to help anyone who comes across an animal that needs help and point them in the right direction.

I was happy to see the results of my questions and how quickly the employee responded back. This was a great field observation because I got to see or hear what happens in the Operation Ava animal center.

Synthetic Hope

Welcome back!  As part of You and the World, we are working to become agents of change making the world a better place. As you may remember, we are exploring the protection and pollution of aquatic environments.  

We Are In A Bit of Trouble

In my last blog entry, I talked to you about our oceans, lakes, marshes, rivers and streams and how our waste was affecting them.

I was exploring if the future might be as dark as we once thought.  Can we reverse the damage done to our oceans, or are has the media given us false hope by providing an incomplete picture of the damage already done?

The media is the most common source of information about climate change to the general public. What happens when we are given false hope from our sources of information; specifically the media?

The media does it's best to convey the rapidity in which the aquatic systems of the world are falling apart but it lacks to convey the urgency of the need to change our ways. I'm not implying that the media is lying to us; in fact quite the opposite.  The media is giving us just the facts but a disconnect is created. They don't explain that the floods happening in Florida are directly linked with the melting ice caps. This being so they also seem to breath a false hope into the matter of climate change, as not to scare the public.  I will be not be delivering any false hope

A look at media coverage on Climate change

picture provided by CSTPR

Knowledge is Power

The more we know the better off we are. Today, I want to talk to you about what I have found through my original research.  Surprisingly, a survey that was administered to a peer group of twenty has shown that we may not be as naive as I may have suspected.

In Blog #1, the subject of how the by-products created by modern humans was discussed. Now we move to how much the average human knows about the damage they cause to the environment. For my research, I chose a survey because of its was a casual way to collect information with ease of administration.

To my surprise, my peers were actually much more informed about such subjects than once thought.  Keep in mind that I had very low expectations. I was hoping to find holes in the information that they held and to point out where they were oblivious and where they were well-informed.

The survey results show that most of my peers are fairly aware of their footprint on aquatic environments. Most questions regarded the amount of litter they produced and where it went.

The one area in which people were particularly misinformed was about where their trash goes. Most of the answers were expected: trash cans, landfills, dumpsters. Only one respondent regarded the ocean as a recipient of trash.   The rest were completely unaware of the 6,000 mile long Pacific Garbage Patch. For more information on the garbage patch, click here.

I was particularly interested in their knowledge about endangered animals. I wanted to know if they could name any marine animal on the endangered species list.  The most common response to this question was a member of the whale family. This does say something about which marine animals are favored by the public or at least well known. This also gives insight into why the blue whale is making a population comeback. Through the research I have done, I have been given insight into how knowing really is half the battle, but I am still left with the question, where do we go from here.  Knowledge isn't worth jack if not applied.

(To see survey information, click here.)

Even with the knowledge that my survey has given me, I'm still left with many questions.  One is since my survey was only administered to a small group of high school students, what would my results be if I could have accessed a larger group. I personally think that the results would be much less informed but I'm a bit of a pessimist. I also wonder if by asking the questions in my survey, if I changed the way that my peers look at their impactt on the environment?  I be curious to know if, after they finished the survey, any of them took the time to Google the endangered species list, or took a serious look at where trash ends up?

A Look at Endangered Species

For more information, click here.

I have an exciting way to help make a change in the condition of aquatic environment.  I have decided to organize a river walk along the Schyukill River.  During this walk, trash and recycling will be collected along the banks of the river and disposed of properly.  We will have games & prizes that will motivate and educate participants.

I will also be doing a number of presentations on how humans affect the water around us. Please contact me at xcarroll@scienceleadership.org, If you are interested.

Hello again.  My name is Jason Greene and I am 9th grader at Science Leadership Academy.  In English class we are doing a project called You And The World.  During this project we have to find a issue we are passionate about then go into the world and try to fix it.  My issue is Public Education in the city of Philadelphia.  This is my second blog post.  To read my first blog post click here.  In my first blog post I introduced my issue and how it is one of the biggest problems facing the city today.  I also talked about how there was a lack of funding for public schools.

   

For my original research I decided to do make a online survey.  I wanted to find out if the people taking the survey had special classes while in middle-school.  I also wanted to find out if there were cuts while they were attending the school.  I got lots of good responses back.  Almost all the people who responded said that they went to middle-school in Philadelphia in the past few years.  Most if not all of them said while they were there that the school made cuts that hurt their learning and safety. Some of these positions were Teachers, Counselors, Secretaries and Lunchtime aids.  All of these positions are very important.  If you don't have enough teachers than you have to put more students in each class.  If you don't have any lunchtime aids there will be no one to watch the kids while at lunch.  The results I got really informed me on my issue because now I knew that the budget cuts of the school district just did not affect me but also my friends.

While most of the people who filled out my survey did have special classes like art and music…

Does/Did your middle-school offer...

Art               6  22%

Music/Band  5  19%

Computers   6   22%

Gym            5   19%

Health          5   19%

Over the past few years there have been lots of layoffs.

Over the past few years did your middle-school cut any of these positions?

Guidance counselor	2	15%
Secretary	1	8%
Dean	2	15%
Teachers	5	38%
Lunchtime Aids	3	23%

Now that I got my results I believe even more that this has to change.  The change has to happen now.  It is not fair for kids not to be able to get the best education they can get.  They can not get that without simple things like teachers and counselors.  As I was doing my research I started to wonder how many schools in Philadelphia were shut down and how many students had to be relocated because of that?

The next part of this project is called Agent of Change.  This is when go out into the real world and I go volunteer somewhere and try to have an impact on my issue.  As I said in my last blog post I will be going to my old school, J.S Jenks.  J.S Jenks have been badly hurt by the recent budget cuts.  My sister still goes there and she told me that they don't even have an art teacher anymore, that a dad that used to be an artist now comes in 2 times a week and teacher classes.  When I volunteer at the school I want to help out in a 6th, or 8th grade classroom.  I think I will have a big impact when I come because I the school needs as much as it can get. When I am at the school volunteering I hope to help the teachers in anyway I can if that means making copies or help teach the lesson I will try my best.

     

Seal of J.S Jenks

Stay tuned for part 3!

My bibliography.

Hi! My name is Katarina Backo and I am a ninth grader at Science Leadership Academy. I am doing a project for my English class about an issue that concerns
me, and I have to write three blogs about it. Here is the link to my first blog and this is my second blog in this series. My issue involves play time, and how technology impacts
children’s activity and therefore their lives. I am an artistic, athletic person connected with my family and happy about it. I wish that everybody could have the happiness I have, but I think that wrong use of technology prevents that. Hope you’ll enjoy reading my ideas.

In my previous blog my focus was on balance (“I love technology as well, but I think that everything should be balanced.”-Blog #1). My concern was that nowaday teens will choose to play with technology rather than going outside to play. In the meantime I continued with all my activities and still didn’t notice new teens making use of abundant free teen programs that exist in Philadelphia. Besides working on this project I have had the opportunity and luck to do a research on how technology affects people for my technology class. For my Science Fair Project I have decided to dig deeper into how teens tell time and that helped me understand how I could resolve my issue. Finally my original research opened new questions.

The movie "Digital Nation" I watched in technology class, in my eyes was about the balance I spoke about which is pushed to technology side, meaning that we are forgetting the real world we live in. It also brought a good argument about multitasking and why is it actually bad. People are so crazy about the virtual world that they are losing the sense to tell the difference between virtual and real. Even if you think that you are good at multitasking it is wrong because multitasking makes you lose your focus.

I have also studied the term "digital native" (CNN article defines this term more closely) - a person born when digital technology was around, so they can learn about technology at the age they learn how to speak. That is exactly what today's teens are, and that is where my issue starts, growing up as technology grows. This is not necessarily bad, technology is meant to enhance our lives, but yet again I see the need for balance.

Working on my Science Fair Project I have unexpectedly run into one possible, maybe obvious solution for my issue. For Science Fair Project I wanted to check the saying “time flies when you are having fun”. My experiment was to engage my classmates into activities and see how well they can tell time spent on their activities. I gave a Rubic’s Cube to my friend who is using technology all the time. He was focused on the cube for about 7 minutes and then I stopped him. He wanted to continue, because he was not even close to solving it. When I asked him if he liked solving it, he said he loved it, but he thought that he spent a whole hour trying. His focus was amazing, even though technology is said to ruin the ability to focus and strengthen the wish to multitask. I expected to hear that the time flew for him, but I got the total opposite. As usual, when you get too many results that you didn’t expect, new ideas are born. It might have been obvious from my current point of view, but I didn’t think before that in order to resolve my issue I just have to find the way to get my fellow teens interested in activities that do not include technology.

Having everything sorted out, I wanted to check what activities other teens are involved in. For my original research, I recently made a survey which you can access here. It asked people about technology they use and how much they use it. I also asked about extracurricular activities and sports.

20 people took my survey and 19 of them were teenagers. Everyone is using technology in some way:

Do you have an electronic device?

Every person that filled up my survey said that both, they and their families, have electronic devices. The two most common ones were cell phones and laptops. That is what I expected. However, I found out something that I did not expect and that made me revisit my original hypotheses. I expected to have more people say that they do not play sports and don’t engage in extracurricular activities. That was not the case. 95% of people said that they engage in activities not related to school and technology. Out of those 95%, 50% said that they play sports, while others said that they both play sports and engage in other activities.

Do you play any sports?

Then if people do all these activities, maybe our ways were not ruined with technology, just overwhelmed. Is my sample representative? If yes, is Philadelphia that big that I did not notice that most people play sports and do extracurricular activities? Or did I accidentally get all the people that play sports to take my survey, or maybe the activities I am involved in are not well advertised? I still have to search deeper to find the answer I am looking for.

I can conclude that technology is not something stopping us from being as active as other generations before us. It is only the way we use it to help our way of living. In terms of technology, right now we are stuck between the past and the future.

To read my Annotated Bibliography, please click here.   

Hello, my name is Gabrielle Kreidie. I am a ninth grader at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you had read my Blog Post #1, I am doing a project on refugees, focusing on Syria. For the past three years, there has been a conflict unfolding, a conflict that has killed nearly half a million people. This conflict is called the Syrian Civil War. The people of Syria have been rebelling against their government controlled by the brutal, President Bashar Al Assad. This has resolved in endless deaths, homes burnt to the ground, small supply of food and water, and a refugee crisis that is scaring everyone.

Since my last blog post, there has been a lot that has changed in Syria. There is now Cases of Polio becoming aware in a country where vaccinations are nearly impossible to receive. The refugee crisis in Syria is NOW the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. Out of all the genocides and wars in the past seventy years, Syria has now made the top of people having to leave their homes than any other. Not only have 2.5 million people become refugees in Syria but an additional six million have become refugees in their own country. This means six million Syrians who have left their homes, either from random attacks or destroyed homes, taking refuge in other places in Syria.

There have been many new articles I have found in the past three months since my last blog post. Check them out on my Annotated Bibliography. Stories have been pulling into the internet as the world starts to get the real sense of the struggle of the Syrian people. I wanted to go deeper though, than what the media portrays. I wanted the complete picture of the Syrian people. That is why I conducted two interviews. One Interview with Marwan Kreidie, a Middle Eastern studies professor at Villanova University and a Lebanese-American, who just so happens to be my father. The other Interview with Chukri Korchid, a Syrian-Ameircan businessman who is head of the Al-Aqsa school. The way these two men described the sickening details of the lives of refugees in Syria and in neighboring countries. The truth came out, and I must say it was not one to be proud of.

Al Assad is a horrible person. I think we can all put that behind us, he is killing his own people and no one from the international community is really stepping up to the plate and helping the horrified Syrians. Surely it does not help that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the strongest ally of Bashar Al Assad’s Regime, which makes the US almost scared to strike Syria. This is what gets me damaged as a US citizen myself. Why is Obama and Congress not striking Syria? I do not know why these politicians believe that watching innocent people die is not our problem. Look I am no patriot, I do NOT believe that the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth- honestly we do horrible stuff all over the world. That’s not the point, however, we are the most powerful country in the world. We have the largest military compared to the next ten largest militaries combined. We have large allies that will stick by us all the time, England, France. We have the power and resources to strike Al Assad’s regime, yet we do not do it. We claim that we promote freedom to all yet we are one of reasons why twenty two million Syrians are in suffering. Just because we are scared doesn’t give us a reason to step out of the picture. As Mr. Korchid said: “We missed out on the opportunity to change it (to end the Civil War in the beginning of the fighting). In Libya we didn’t care if we threw in a missile.”  

As long as the US does not jump in and start helping, the CIA is projecting that this war will go on for another decade. That’s a very long time. I’m disappointed on how the international community is handling this. The United Nations tried to do a conference, in hopes of promoting peace for all sides. That did not turn out so well, and I’ll tell you why. Mr. Kreidie states, ”We (the United States of America) are too eager in playing our regional games there. To solve this conflict we need all people in, we had this peace talk that did not go well. Iran and Hezbollah should we brought in, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia- they are all involved. Iran is supporting AL Assad, Saudi Arabia rebels. This shouldn’t have to be on who is the US enemy or ally- the conflict is in Syria, everyone needs to be involved.” That’s just it, this is not a US issue, we are barely participating yet we want to take control of the conference. Every single person needs to get involved in this conflict. We need everyone to promote peace.

For my next step in this project I have to come up with a way to change this issue, one way or another. Since Syria is halfway across the world for me, I have to think small to help a crisis. I plan on making my own blog promoted in keeping a strong view on Syrian refugees and the Syrian people. As well as getting other humanitarian crisis on alert, including Congo, Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, etc. I will interview all sort of people to get their opinions, to get the truth on what the people are thinking.

I hope the end of this crisis approaches, I hope that people will return home. We need to act as people, we need to get our government completely involved in this crisis. We need our government to listen to us, the people who they should be listening to. We need their attention, before a whole generation of Syrians are ripped apart.  

Hello it’s me again, Niah Lombo and I am back for round two of my YATW issue. In my blog post #1 , I talked about my issue which was the shortage of donors for African American, Hispanics, and mixed people. Since then I have found more stories of people with cancer looking for donors with one and a million chance of finding one. Lewis Dyche was diagnosed with leukaemia  and after a global search he finds his one in a million bone marrow donor. To read more about his story click here.  

Now it’s my turn to do my own original research and I wanted to learn more about Donors, and then I thought who would know more about donors? Doctors! So I schedule an interview with Dr.Carmen Febo. Dr. Carmen Febo is a primary care physician and even though she does not deal directly with Donors, etc. she was a great help with the questions and being able to let me interview her with with the short notice. The interview helped me have a better understanding of the importance of finding a donor, being a donor, and the effects of being a donor.

Interview:

Me: What is your chance of living if you find a match donor?  

Dr. Carmen Febo: If you have deadly disease, like kidney failure, heart failure, or liver failure, your life would depend on finding a donor.  The chances of survival have many determinants that include weather this is a living donor, or a dead donor, how close a match it is, how many other conditions you have, how good a surgical candidate you are, etc.  Many of the conditions are better understood now and we have better medicines to combat infection for example, or rejection.  But, what is true is that without the transplant the patient do not have a chance.

That was one of my questions for Dr. Carmen Febo. This hit me hard as it made me realize that a persons life is in the hands of a stranger, and that stranger has no idea how important they are. Its not their fault if they didn't know but only if they could have gotten tested to see if they could save a life.

Margot was 17-months old when she was diagnosed with two of the rarest cancers. But since her parents are mixed she is having trouble finding a match donor. Click here to read her story.

Robin Roberts (left) is a breast cancer survivor and find her match from her sister.  She was aware that because of her race she would have a hard time finding a match donor. Read more about her story here.

That is it for now, the next time you guys will hear from me is when I do my agent of change. What can I do to make change happened? My plan is to host an event to help raise awareness for my issue and will be hosting fundraisers that will be donated to find the cure for cancer. Also I will be writing a letter to Robin Roberts about my cause and because ABC news is having opportunities for people who wants to make a difference to be featured on the show. I will submit my story and how I want to make a difference, and if anything does happened before my blog post #3 I will let you guys know on here.

Hi, it’s Kai again! I’m back and writing my latest You and the World post. If you haven’t read my first post I’ll give you a quick recap. I’m in 9th grade and my English teacher is asking us to write three blog posts about an issue that we personally are passionate about. I chose to write about the overlooked and forgotten of Philadelphia. Basically I want to know how less fortunate people feel about the way the government has been taking care of them. To learn more about my topic I will be working closely with the Germantown Avenue Crisis Ministry (GACM) and Abbotsford Falls Family Practice and Counselling (AFFPC). The GACM provides resources to people who have suddenly found themselves in a crisis. They offer canned goods, housing, and financial help. AFFPC is a clinic in Germantown that  is known for taking patients without insurance, and providing them with whatever medical help they might need.

For my research plan I conducted an interview with RN Leslie Burton at AFFPC. I know that a majority of the patients that come to the AFFPC don't have insurance, which is why they get so many patients. In my opinion this is a problem because there is no reason that a person shouldn't qualify for health insurance healthcare has come to be a basic human necessity. I also that the amount of people without insurance is ridiculous and the people without it are the ones who need it the most. The fact that the government isn't doing anything to help it is not okay. In fact a lot of people aren't condoning things like the Affordable Care Act.  Ms. Burton on the other hand had a slightly different view she feels as though there are so many people that need help and the government can't help everybody so it's up to the people to step up.

During my interview with Ms. Burton I wanted to know where the influence of the government comes in to play as well as how her patients feel about the government or their current situations. What I found was that most of the patients that Ms. Burton encounters are impoverished, and not very comfortable or happy about it. In the AFFPC offices there are in house social workers that often have patients referred to them by the nurses. Even while there are plenty of resources to help the patients that are funded by the government such as food stamps. The patients know little about what is happening in the higher places, leaving most of the pressure on the nurses to inform patients of anything that could potentially impact their lives.

My research isn't just based on the people who are overlooked by the government… it's also about the people left to take care of them who are just important. Leslie Burton and Eileen Jones only only a small portion of overlooked Philadelphians and without more of them, a large percentage of Philadelphia would be forgotten. I learned that everybody deserves to be heard and to know that somebody cares, even if they don't believe it. We have to start looking out for eachother. As a people we should stick together and work for the change that we want to see in our community. Check back soon for my next post to see how my work at the GACM went. Thanks for reading.

My annotated bibliography here.

Aaron Watson-Sharer

2/28/14

YATW Blog Post #2

Head Injuries and How They Affect Current Lives of People and Will Continue To Do So

Hi I’m Aaron and I’m a student at Science Leadership Academy. In my previous blog post, I spoke about the impact  of  head injuries.  Many the side effects do not end or pass away. I expressed my concerns for the kids and adults who have sustained head injuries that still affect them today. I really spoke about CTE, a disease that causes one too many issues to your brain. I finished my first blog post speaking about the significance and how these injuries shouldn’t be forgotten. I’m not alone; many doctors worldwide want to prevent  head injuries from happening.

I found a few more sources that really helped me become attached to this project. For example, this source gives great perspective and knowledge. I found out that the football helmets players are wearing really don’t prevent injury as widely advertised by the league. It was found that these very helmets our coveted athletes wear only reduced traumatic injuries to the brain by 20% rather than wearing no type of gear. I am starting to question that safety, why should we trust helmets that are only 20% effective. We must get that number to 100% effective  if you want to save lives.

Since writing my first blog post, I have conducted some non original research and some original research. I have found online resources that have helped me along with my personal research. For my original research, I created an online survey. What I’ve found with the limited responses I’ve received was that non contact sports were a leading cause for head injuries in my survey. I saw that all but one of my participants had worn any type of protective gear. Headaches were the most common symptoms for my participants post concussion. My research show three things.

- We are as individuals are very unprepared  for possible head injuries.  People aren’t being very safe or using protective gear.

-  People who have sustained head injuries of any sort are more careful due to the possibility of reinjury.

- Most head injuries happen to younger people -  child to young adults.  This is from activities like bike riding and sports.  

My understanding of head injuries has expanded  beyond  the state of people prior to their initial injuries. I learned like me, others almost never expect a head injury at any time. My research showed that 1 out of 11 participants had any type of protective gear like a bike helmet. I did not think about about prevention. I had focused on the injury and the after effects. This is similar to someone starting a TV show in the middle of a series rather than the beginning. Those people don’t know what happened or occurred. They know the current storyline and  what comes next  but they never knew how the storyline started. They don’t know why characters think or do something. I and many other people have been in this situation. I still have yet to fully know what happens before a head injury but my mission is to find out and find out more about prevention.  That is what I took from my research.  I do not focus on all the stats because I did not get a lot of responses but I have an understanding, an idea and a piece of the puzzle with 100 more pieces to go.

Some opinions that I have are that despite efforts, there is no one answer to this solution. That head injuries can’t be killed, they can be quieted, but never silenced. I have many other opinions like that sports from soccer to martial arts should have some type of way to keep head injuries from happening. I think we need more funding, even though money worldwide is tight. My first and principal opinion is my rock of all of them. I believe that my first idea is comparable to the real world in many ways. It’s like a vaccine, whatever we do to quiet head injuries is no more than a vaccine, no cure. There is no cure but I really am hopeful for a vaccine, that can quiet and mostly label head injuries to the point where they are rare.

I wonder what else can be done by me and how to really make an effect on somebody’s life. If I can just help one person I will be able to feel proud the next morning. I want to feel like I made a difference like Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to enter the NFL. He had enough courage to come out but I believe he saved a life, and if he did so, he’s an impact maker. That’s what I want to be. I’d like to find a place that has interns for helping in aiding to prevent head injuries. I will try to make an impact if it’s with my internship or my keyboard. If you don’t start none, you w0on’t be none. -Nas

My annotated bibliography is available here.