Hello and this is my last post for my Y&TW benchmark. In my previous 2 blogs I talked about internet addiction and one of the physical effect that can happen if you have an internet addiction or if you use your hand for anything non stop. In the first blog I talked about symptoms and how internet addiction is related to other addictions. Another thing from the blog is how some people had different views of why people are addictive to the internet and one of them was connectivity to other people. In my second blog I talked about Carpal tunnel syndrome as it was one thing on my survey that most people had no idea about. Only thing that would raise awareness that I know of is just websites from treatment centers that talk about internet addiction and contact lists for treatments. For my agent of change I did a phone free advisory. At first most of the class hated my idea but soon lightened up as my advisory did good news and shout outs. Then we spent the rest of the day planning a party on thursday which we did had to let a few people take out their electronics so we can figure out the prices. I originally had no idea and asked for help with ideas from my classmates and Ms. Giknis. At first it was stressful because I didn’t know how my advisory mates would take it but it went great so now i'm more calm about my own Y&TW. It was effective as everyone followed along with what I hoped they would of do and i'm glad it went well. At first I felt a little mad that we were getting this benchmark after we just finished another one. After I took it serious I sort of enjoyed it. I learned that people are addicted to both their phones and the internet as Ms. Giknis once said in class that she also seems to be glued to her phone and how she always just turns it on for no reason. I learned I also have an internet addiction that I can control but I always get distracted as last night I wanted to work on this but I just kept watching videos on youtube and as low as I could I yelled at myself at how I have to work on this. I can think of a few ways I could of done my project better and that would be planning it out as I wanted to try and get my agent of change done with all freshmen advisories but the teachers said they had other plans and that I should of asked earlier so time management is one thing I would of changed. Another thing would be me asking for help as most of class I just stayed in my seat thinking about what I would do for my agent of change that I didn’t do the second blog post till the day before it was due. I hope you learned a lot from this so good bye for now.

Donald Moses

Annotated Bibliography

Hey it’s Kai Payton again. In my previous two post I introduced my You & The World Project. For my topic of the project I chose to focus on premature births. In my first blog post I gave basic information on premature births. I also discussed some of the more serious topics of premature births. In my second blog post I discussed stories of other families that had premature births. I also included the major parts of the interview that I had with my aunt where she talked about how she got through the experience.

In this blog I’m going to be talking about the Agent of Change portion of the project. The Agent of Change portion of the project is where you go out and do something to make a change to your topic. So since my topic is premature births I did the March for Babies walk. The walk was on April 30th and it was ran by the March of Dimes Foundation. For the walk there are teams that raise money for the foundation to help with premature births. My aunt’s team raised a little over a thousand dollars to go to the foundation. I love doing these walks every year because it’s a good way to see family but because it’s for a good cause.

At the walk there was so many people from different walk teams and I thought it was so cool that so many people support premature births. Each team gets a custom shirt to represent their team. This year my team's shirt said “Fight Like a Preemie.” In my opinion that’s another reason to go to the walks every year because every always has cool different shirts. My team is called “Chasing Jase,” and it’s made up of family and friends basically whoever comes out to support Jase. From this walk it got family members to come together to support Jase. During the walk they gave Jase a purple cape and it was really funny to see him run around in it.

- Picture of Jase with his cape

-Picture of the shirt

- A picture of the walking team

While doing the walk you meet a lot of other families that share a similar story to yours. The experience creates a way to be active and meet new people who all support each other. There was a lady we met and she had a daughter that was the same weight as Jase when she was born (1 pound 11 ounces). My aunt and her had a heart to heart in a way because their children were in the hospital for about the same amount of time. I wish I had a way to thank the March of Dimes Foundation personally because the walk is always a great experience when we do it.

Before we started this project I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go with it. In the beginning I was thinking about choosing littering as my topic. Then as time went on I realized that I could choose premature births a topic that people know about but don’t know the major facts or how they can help change it and I had a better connection with it. This project helped me gain a new understanding of premature births because before I did this I didn’t know too much myself.

So in conclusion, I want to thank Ms. Giknis for allowing us to do this cool project. It helped us go out in the world and make a change big or little to a problem we connected with. It helped us learn more about each other and connect with our classmates on a deeper level.

You can check out my Annotated Bibliography here

I had literally had so many plans for my agent of change in the begging of my process in my previous blog post I really liked to talk about helping others understand what it’s like to help your friend or child/teenager to a complicated situation in their lives as struggling inside of theirselves, fighting against themselves and have a conscience that will either trick or yell to them for help even most people who don’t know how to scream for help when they feeling like they are lost. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/depression/helping-someone-with-depression.htm

Being there to listen to a fellow a friend about their story and how they expressed their emotions, listening and being loyal is a big part if they push you away from you because really they care deep down when you actually are still there when say it does not mean that they meant it at all. Resentally I did a article on depression and a fundraise for notebooks at my chruch to help out for those  that suffer from depression and that really help this me and the other I’ve helped this week.

Sara Frunzi

One of my interviews and the second one is Autumn Harvey. She said she has shown lots of improvemnet with expressing her feelings like dancing and songs drawing or even writing, either I has change for not just me but for others people who actually really try their best to get better and work for it is a bigg thing for most and to see that results of that change is very heart warming.

   The thing with being there for the person whole time, just try not to smother that person even as much as you care give that person a space for just enough to breathe. What I did was talk and ask questions to that person and relate to these two people and be their to har the most amazing safe stories that break your heart but still have that to bring you back from most.

My experience with this project and this opportunity to have it with these two most bright young women who have had it hard and actually looked up to people and others in the eye and lie but had the courage to tell the ones they trusted to be the ones to listen in great moments in their life to be happy with all dure with respect it was the most amazing experience in my life to have be apart of both of their stories (reader) of the memoir.

Hello everyone! My name is Mayah Gold and I am a freshman at Science Leadership Academy. This blog post is about my Agent of Change for my You and The World project. In my first blog post I talked about what rape culture is, and in my second blog post I talked about the research findings that were shown in my own SLA community. Based on my research, my change that I am making is putting posters around the school to inform people about what rape culture is, and what it looks like.

Even though this is the final blog post I will be writing, there is some more information that I have come to gather. In this further research, I have come to learn are ways that men and women can combat rape culture, ways that they can speak up and stop someone when they see them perpetuating this behavior. Furthermore, some of those examples include being respectful of someone's space even in a casual setting, thinking intensely about the media's portrayal of men and women and the stereotypes that are set up for us.

Moving on, for my agent of change I decided to build off of the open survey research and information I had gathered. I had seen examples of rape culture and victim blaming throughout my own community. The community that I was supposed to feel safe in. And seeing some of my results not only shocked me, but made me sad for my community. So as a result of those findings, I wanted to send messages around the school informing people exactly what rape culture is and how they might be enforcing it. So I made four posters with pictures of sexual assault victims quoting their attackers. None of these people I knew personally, but I had read their stories, and my heart ached for them. I wanted more people to realize what exactly rape culture is. I printed out the pictures, put two images on one poster, and wrote a little message under each other.

These are just two of the four posters that I hung around the SLA school building. I feel that by putting these up, I can make people see what other people have gone through. What sexual assault and rape culture they have experienced, and how these ideas can lead to a bigger problem.

Reflecting on the overall project, I would say this would have had to be my favorite project of any subject of my freshman year. I was given the opportunity to choose a topic that I am passionate on, and inform people about it, and then make a change. Another point was I loved going on a rant when people disagreed with me. I learned that others don’t have the same string opinions as me, which could be challenging at times to deal with. But within myself, I learned that I have a really strong voice about myself. And I want to share it. I feel like I could have done some more outside organization research with more powerful people. In conclusion, I would love to do this project all over again, just for thr fun of it!

Leading back into my previous blog post about the depressing adventure of interest of learning about depression. Everyday in world people become insignificant of themselves, how exactly do you think the people who are suffering  from this problem feel?, What would you do from this to not keep happening? And How can you change this problem in the world and in you life?

This problem that occurs in our world is really important to me. I wish that someone had written something like this for me or at least ask me these specific question about” how I felt”. As a child I was always taught to be myself, when I felt like things were’nt going well I was feeling unsure of what to do with myself and I did’nt know how to express my feelings yet. What I did was hold them in (my thoughts my feelings and my anger) and try not be visible. There are many ways for you and someone to connect with the another who is going through it by asking questions, what is going with them, how are doing things at home, what are things that would want to express to you or anyone else, sometimes it is great to talk; but it is always great to listen too. The best thing you can do when you are trying to comfort your friend or anyone sentimental to you, you can pretend to become a professional with them. Having people around you is hard for people to understand what exactly someone like you is going through, because many others don’t understand you and you are who you are, try your best to be handle what you can handle.

My interview with Autumn Harvey, was a good experience to listen to what she had to say what she wanted to say about how, what. And where she was during her time depressed, I asked her this question specifically about what would you have done if you did’nt  have anyone to confess yourself to?

“She said that being in a her state of mind with guilt and having to being upset and not wanted to be doing anything with anyone or even talking but I finally had a bright chance of being able to tell my(bestfriend/sister) that how I felt and what I wanted to do to myself”. She felt hand on her shoulder seeming like she was not by herself, what informed me with an understanding to her issue and how she got through being so strong inside and outside deep down. Things that I have may have done more research about advice to talk to someone who is struggling with emotional concern through out their daily lives.

.https://www.buzzfeed.com/mhttps://scienceleadership.org/blog/print-matt/editirandalarbi/things-to-do-when-supporting-someone-struggling-with-depr?utm_term=.eyWJgm55V#.lf38zVAAk

Things that I’ve learned in my previous and present research with “How to deal with and except it”, “Express it in a more positive way every step of the way”. Speaking of my interview with  (Sara Frunzi) she told me that she did’nt exactly remember when she was first diagnosed with depression and being a child she was always to herslef and she did’nt trust people and was bullied for the way she was and looked and she struggled with that, being able to talk about today with so kind of confidence and wanting to share her story with others about what she went through and being so strong till this day and going through that suffering and “Not feeling like no one cared or hated her for a reason but she had depression and having anxiety with it made it harder” today she will always look back on today and think to her past about her life as if it was something she takes with her everyday to school to try and be herself and do her best everyday while it’s still going good for knowo on the right path. I felt touched by this specific line when she said “I don’t remember when I was diagnosed?” because that was the same thing I siad when I lashed out and broke at thing ; a sad feeling of isolating youself and how it would go on you worst days even through you already knew they were gonna be bad. Having that feeling of undesire of dealing with like and “It’s’ difficult problems that are ike banana peels every step of the way in our lives.

Annotated Bibliography

Recently, In my first blog post about homelessness, I’ve talked about what it was based on the research that I’ve done, (all links are in my annotated bibliography at the bottom of this post and my past two posts about homelessness). In my second blog post, I interviewed both my parents about their experiences with being homeless themselves. In this blog post, I want to talk about what I did to bring a bit of awareness to this issue and what I did to help a few people affected by the issue.

This past Tuesday June 6th, 2017, i set out with my mother, older brother, and younger brother along with a few of my mother’s friends, to feed a few of the less fortunate. We bought apples, bananas, pizza, philly pretzels, chips, cookies and waters to give out. We also had rags, towels, and large water bottles for them too. We ended up giving away ALL of the food we bought, and it honestly felt good knowing I was able to provide for men, women, and children whether they needed it at the moment or not. Many of them were very grateful. Many were humble and didn’t want to take.they kept their pride and made sure to stay cleaned up, so it didn’t seem like they needed anything. Only a few of them didn’t have those good traits, but not all of the homeless are bad people.

In the process of all of this I met this man. Lets call him “Leo” to protect his identity, plus he looked like a Leo. We asked him what the reason was for him to end up without a home. He said that he got laid off his job and his girlfriend ended up going to jail. He couldn’t get a new job in time to pay the rest of his bills and he lost his home. So he had to resort to living on the streets. I’m sure he’s going to try and find another job, but it can be hard. Just like my dad said in blog post two, people in businesses judge you and are less likely to hire you, after knowing you’ve been homeless. Leo also said that after his girlfriend gets out of jail that they are going to try again to get jobs. Im praying for him. \

I chose to feed the homeless as my agent of change because I’ve done it before and it means a lot to me to help these people. You learn a lot from this. Especially because both my parents had experienced this. You learn to appreciate what you have. I want to give. Even if and when I have nothing, i still want to be able to give and help out people who have less.

To be honest, i really loved doing this project. I loved how I got to actually talk about something very important that people don’t always talk about. Whenever people think “homeless” they think “they did drugs” or “they didn’t go to school” and that is because our parents fill our minds with “you will end up homeless on the streets if you fail school, or do drugs” and that’s really not the case. Yes I know that there are still many people who are homeless because of those things, but there are many other reasons why. I saw homeless children that day. Not because they did drugs or dropped out, but because they had no family to go to. Many children run away from home, not always because they don’t listen. Sometimes children have a very rough homelife. There are many many different reasons people go homeless, so you should have an open mind about it. Be willing to hear them out and know their story. Help them and give to them, but don’t ever give them money, because you don’t know what they might buy with it.

My Annotated Bibliography

Hello again, my name is Louisa Strohm and this is the last blog of three about my personal experience with Mild Cognitive Impairment. If you would like to read my first and second posts, you can find them linked here. For a short summary I have discussed my personal experience with MCI and shared my story about taking care of my grandmother. Throughout the entire project I have expressed my deep passion in putting more information for at home care of those with MCI or Dementia.

I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do for my agent of change. I went through a lot of ideas but finally decided to go with making a website, so people can access my personal story and tips for living with and caring with those with MCI and Dementia. I made this website because in my personal opinion there is a huge lack of information on how to care for these people at home. This lack of information is leading to people checking their loved ones into nursing homes and assisted care facilities. Although it may seem like the best option, for some people who only have mild Dementia or MCI, it may be better to keep them at home where they feel most comfortable.

Getting back onto the topic of my website, the sites name is Caring for Cuzzies. You can find the link to website here I chose this name because Cuzzie is my grandmother’s nickname and I want people to be able to know how to care for all of the Cuzzies out there. When you visit my site you will find three tabs. The home tab, where you can find five tips for caring for those with MCI or Dementia. The next tab is the ‘My Story’ tab and here I shared my story and personal experience with my grandmother’s disease. The last tab is the Contact tab where I put my email.

The process of creating the website was pretty fun. I learned a lot of new things about how websites work and how to make them. I enjoyed writing the tips and I really hope that it helps someone who’s lost in the sea of information about MCI and Dementia. Sharing my story out there was really scary at first, but once I started writing, and realized how passionate I am about this topic, it doesn’t even phase me.

Picture of me creating the website

Doing the You & The World Project at first was very intimidating. I found that as I worked more and more, did extensive amounts of research, and put my heart into my topic, I really could make a change. Having my family, friends, and peers support pushed me to make this difference and want to help people. I think this project has made me a better person. Learning my grandmother’s full story, and help other people going through the same thing my family did, I think will make an impact on the rest of my life. This project will stay with me for the rest of my life and I think I will always remember my time at SLA through this.

Screenshot of the website's front page.

 In my first blog post I talked about domestic violence and my personal experience with it. I talked about my mother and father's relationship and how to my mom everything seemed normal. My second blog post was about an interview I did with my mother. She experienced domestic violence in her home while she was younger and again when she was adult.

This blog post is about my agent of change. For my agent of change I had the kids at my moms school take a pledge against domestic violence. A girl at my mom’s school who is only 15 years old had to have a restraining order against her boyfriend because he got drunk and punched her in the face.

I had the kids at my mom’s school take this pledge because they need to be aware of domestic violence. I know some of them have seen it firsthand with their parents but I thought that raising awareness would be something good for them. The pledge basically asks that you pledge to never raise a hand to your partner or abuse them in any way whatsoever.

This is a girl in one of my mom’s classes who signed the pledge

30 kids and 15 adults took the pledge against domestic abuse. I found this on the Women Against Abuse website. Women Against Abuse is an organization that helps anyone who needs help after getting out of a domestic violence situation or help getting back on their feet after getting out.

Many women and men experience things such as financial abuse from their partner. Financial abuse is a method abusers use in order to control their partner. It limits the victim's access to their own money. They can gradually take more and more control of their partner's money leaving the victim helpless in the relationship.

Most of the time when people speak about domestic violence you hear about men hitting their wives or you don't really hear  about it at all.   

I would like to complete my you and the world project by saying that domestic violence is overlooked a lot of the time. Both men and women suffer from domestic partner abuse. There is not only abuse physically but mentally as well, in some situations abuse can be one partner having all the control in a relationship. Domestic abuse is never the victim's fault but in some relationships there are signs that it is an abusive relationship. Signs include your partner being extremely jealous of your other relationships. Making you feel bad about having friends or controlling where you go and who with.

A really big sign of an abusive relationship is when all the blame for everything is assigned to one partner. Blame for anything that goes wrong should not all be assigned to one partner. Being constantly blamed for having feelings is another method of mental abuse. Abuse comes in many different ways and need to be recognized. Mostly physical abuse is what people see but, different forms of verbal and mental abuser can also be damaging.

Annotated bibliography

It’s Time For A Change

My name is Kyla Gladney-Enos and in the previous blog, I talked about an interview I conducted about deep poverty. In this blog, I’ll be talking about how I’m going to make a change for my interviewee. This is the last main section of the You & The World project. I’m really excited to talk about what I’m going to make for the women I interviewed. I’m going to talk about my change and why I picked this change, but before I do that, I’m going to summarize the last two blog posts.   

In the first picture, I’m searching on google museums that allow people to pay with their EBT card. I clicked on the first link that brought me to The Academy Of Natural Sciences of Drexel University admissions page. If you click on the picture and scroll down on the website, you’ll see that you can pay $2.00 for each person if you have an access card (EBT). Since 2011, the number of people who are using EBT cards has increased by 46 million people in the USA.

 In Blog post #1, I talked about what deep poverty is. Deep poverty is when someone is living under the income of $6,000. For new viewers, you might be wondering what’s the difference between deep poverty and poverty. The difference between the two is that you would have to be making under $20,000 a year to be considered living in poverty, whereas to be considered living in deep poverty, you’d have to be making under $6,000 a year. Something I said in the last blog post that surprised me was that even though Philadelphia has the highest number of people who are living in deep poverty within the Nation’s most 10 populous cities, it has a low range of homeless people living on the streets. About half the people living in poverty are living in deep poverty.

In Blog Post #2, I talked about what I did for my original research plan. I interviewed a 26 year old African American woman. The conversation in the interview talked about her personal experiences and how she felt about things. I started off the interview by saying my name and what the interview was about; Kyla Gladney-Enos and deep poverty. I then told the time and the date; 7:19 PM on May 5, 2017. I asked her simple questions like, “How long have you lived in deep poverty and what was your experience like?” The lady answered since she was 16. Her original words were, “Umm, I’ve been living in deep poverty since I was about 16. It’s kind of hard, but if you know how to make it work, then it’s not as hard as you think it is.” I asked her another question like, “Did you ever experience hunger? If so, how did you manage paying your bills and feeding yourself? If not, what did you do to help yourself not be hungry?” She basically said she has experienced hunger, but she knows how to manage her bills.

  &  These pictures show my google doc of the resources I found. I did this because it made it easier to keep track of everything that interested me while researching different things.

For this blog post, I’m going to be talking about the change I made for the lady I interviewed. For my Agent of Change I made  a care package for the lady I interviewed. In the care package I included things I think will help her. I included a lot of museum admission information in the care package because if she shows her access card, she’ll get to pay $2.00 to get in. Plus, she has little kids. When I was a kid, I remember going to a lot of cool museums that educated me on little things. I decided to do this because I felt like it would be more effective for me to give someone in need a care package than to give a presentation to my classmates. I also put a map of free clinics in Philadelphia because after the interview, she told me a story about one of her family members, so I thought this would help. When I decided that a care package would be my agent of change, I felt like it wasn’t that hard of a task, but when I was completing it, it was mildly difficult to find museums for children in Philadelphia that allows people pay with their access card. I was effective in making this care package because I was creative and thoughtful when finding information. My creativity really came in hand when I was making the pouch to put the information in.

& This is the final product of the care package. After I was sure what I wanted to put in the care package, I printed the pages out, cut each individual item up, and rolled it up to put in the little pouch.  

I felt really calm while completing this project. I wasn’t really stressed when it came close to the checkpoints because there was so much time to do each one. Usually with a benchmark, the deadlines are so close together that it gets so stressful, but with this project, there was a lot of time to complete checkpoints without feeling that stressed out. I learned that I didn’t know a lot about poverty. Like, I knew what it was and what it looked like, but I didn’t know the facts. I think I could have found more sources about poverty, because the more I know about something, the more I can understand it. For my project, there isn’t anything else to do. Some things people have done to raise awareness is asking their local community to give up one thing they enjoy (make-up, phones, food) on a particular day. Others have petitioned for a poverty reduction. I honestly think signing petitions and protesting is a good idea because when we fight for what’s right, it brings attention to the issue. Everyone will know about what’s going on if we protested about poverty. Thanks for tuning in, see you later!

(P. S. Check out my annotated bibliography for more information!)

Attempts to Help the Public Defender System

Hello, my name is Payton McQuilkin. Recently in my English 1 class we have been doing a project on an issue in the world that we are passionate about. I choose to draw attention to how overworked a public defender is. Throughout my first blog post I realized so much more about the actual job of public defenders. I found that they have tons of cases and get more and more everyday. They have such little time to even talk with a client before appearing in front of the judge, and unfortunately in some cases, no time. In my second blog post I talked about how I did some original research. By this, I emailed an actual public defender in Brooklyn. In this interview I got a closer look in on the system. I was able to tell his goals, such as being able to get the court to see the clients as people not just criminals, and more about the job and know it was correct. I also interviewed my sister, Taylor Rogers. She had an experience with a public defender I thought she’d also be a good source.

Public defenders aren't a big topic in the world and no one really draws attention to how overworked the public defender's can get. The system is quite out of control. Especially in Louisiana, the public defenders are so overworked. Their pay is based off the traffic tickets and fines. My opinion is that people need to start standing up for the issue. So many people are affected everyday and nothing is happening. People need to take a stand and getting the information out there. Hopefully informing people will raise attention. Drawing attention will then raise awareness. The more people you have behind you supporting you will help. This is me working on my blog post!!

For this portion of the project we had to put our effort in to make a change to the issue we chose. My agent of change was putting the information out there. I created a website with the facts on how much a public defender actually does. I thought this was important because it gives more people the information they were unaware of. I raise attention to the website by showing my peers, family, and friends. I think informing people on the issue was helpful because if their ever in the need of a public defender they are now familiar with the system, they know more about and hopefully some people will have a passion to help raise awareness and get this system turned around. This is my website.

Throughout my project I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed informing people on how important this is to me. I shared a touching story, that was personal and I think showing how much it meant to me was special. I learned a better understanding of the system and it answered some questions I had with my experience. I learned the true facts of a public defender. It was also really amazing to hear what others were passionate about and learn further into their topics. People did touching topics also and it was interesting to see each one. I appreciate this project because it helped me a lot in so many ways. I am going through a lot with the system now and learning more about everything, educating myself to better understanding what would happen with my sister was spectacular. I think there is still much to be further done with the overworked public defenders, because giving the information across is only half the battle. I think once the courts start taking it in consideration and the system needs help. Of course I can’t fix it all, baby steps help!

Throughout this project learning about the different things a public defender goes through is amazing. I really put my all into the blog posts and put all my thoughts in them. The experiences I had is something I will never forget. This project gave the chance to gain information to  case of my very own sister and helped my understanding of where my sister is and what happened during her case. Here is my annotated bibliography of the sources I used throughout my project.