I have taught Sunday School at my church for the past 4 years. I started off with a class of 1st graders, then 3rd, 5th, and finally 7th graders. My last class was two weekends ago and to think that that chapter of my life, at least at that church, was closing was something I didn’t know how to deal with. When my teacher asked me to do some service and think about rights, I decided to use this as an opportunity to take the director of Religious Education at my parish and help her rework some of the curriculum and the teaching methods they suggest.

A catechist is typically an older woman with a child in the class, so being a teenager having to control, educate and relate to a group of fifteen to twenty kids can be pretty difficult. I spent the last four years taking it upon myself to teach individuality and the importance of consciousness of choice in what we believe and how we do it. I offer a fresh perspective as someone who recently went through Sunday School and knows what’s engaging and what is not. As a freshman, I didn’t come in as the most qualified candidate to have my own class, but I was given a chance and now have a lot to offer.

We spent hours pouring over binders of crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blank worksheets, art projects, game ideas and so much more thinking about what was most effective. Outside of religious beliefs, Sunday School was always a place I could just have some fun. We did our best to remember that and to try to bring that in to the curriculum and lesson plans. Teachers and students should be able to connect and talk about things that have happened to them and function as a small community that’s also learning about God and whatever else is in store for the day. The object I have chosen to represent my four years and the final service I did especially for this class is one of the stacks of cards from a game of Jeopardy I made for one review class. I made tons of decks over my four years because I always found them connecting best to the content and paying the most attention when there was competition and rewards (doughnuts) involved.

The work was really rewarding and provided me with a strong sense of closure, even though I know I will still miss waking up early to see the energetic, uncontrollable smiles of my students.

My infograph shows the large number of black men who are affected by the U.S.’s overzealous imprisoning behaviors and a glimmer of hope for our future with the rate of imprisonment decreasing. In addition to creating the infograph, I also sent it to an organization called The Sentencing Project for use if they so choose. The research and process of making the infograph was difficult but rewarding. See it below!

Here is the response I received from The Sentencing Project when I offered them my infograph

We built our bridge out of bamboo and binded it together with a variety of items such as duct tape, staples, super glue and clay. This process was labor intensive and involved a lot of hard work to make it all come together, but rewarding, even though we really wanted our bridge to be a lot stronger.

Below is the video of our bridge, it crashes after 18 pounds of weight.

To Whom It May Concern;

Winnetka currently has quite a few empty storefronts in it’s two main shopping areas, Chestnut Square and Hubbard Woods. Over an extended period of time, store after store has closed down and very few of these spaces have been claimed for new business, or even temporary community use. All of these empty storefronts make for a depressed looking shopping area that does not encourage people to enter the stores or for businesses to occupy the spaces.

Nothing had been done with these spaces so far, they’ve let them stay empty, except for a few small businesses coming and going from time to time. There is a lot of foot and car traffic in these areas so the space should be utilized to unite the community. Renting out the spaces for events or temporary use, like exhibits of student art or fundraisers would let them fill a purpose useful to the community. An example of this could be engaging people in discussion around important topics like suicide and depression through the local charity Erika’s Lighthouse with meetings and activities to spread awareness and build stronger support networks for at-risk teens. Alternatively, if we could devise plans to help and encourage small business owners to open and, more importantly, maintain their stores, we could foster a more vibrant, thriving shopping quadrant. One could be used to sell local art or other homemade things.

These spaces are full of potential to give so much back to the community and deserve the chance to be revitalized to surge energy back into these areas. I strongly suggest that, as a community, we look for ways to better use these spaces to build community and encourage local economy.

Sincerely,

C A

Sign and support!

http://www.change.org/petitions/congress-and-the-house-committee-of-armed-services-pass-h-r-430-protect-our-military-trainees-act

Thesis (CA):
I believe that the closing of certain Chicago Public Schools is wrong. It marginalizes communities and disrespects their basic right to public education and the proximity of it to their home. It takes away a structure of it’s community and a place where the children and parents can meet, learn and build a neighborhood. Schools are a huge part of a region’s connectedness and deserve resources and respect from the government. On top of that, the neighborhoods that receive this cuts and closings, are often already disadvantaged and not getting the resources and respect they deserve generally speaking, not just with schools.

Antithesis:
The school closings are undeniably unfortunate. It is unfair, but sadly the financially responsible thing to do. If Chicago cannot give those students the resources they need if they’re at that school, then consolidating the schools to maximize resources is the most sensible action to take. I do not believe this to be a personal statement against any one neighborhood or group of people, but rather a realistic division and cut so that everyone receives the education we all inherently deserve.

Synthesis:
It may be true that CPS has no other choice than to close schools due to budgetary constraints and if the best way to get children the education they need to succeed further down the line, then the closings must be done. Then the school building should be used as something to still facilitate community gathering and neighborliness, even if this is not organized through CPS. Schools as a place are an integral part of a society and they foster important relationships and no area should be denied that. These communities already feel marginalized and are often treated as though their needs are secondary, if even that, so giving them a way to still use the space for themselves would not only help to alleviate that feeling but also build a stronger sense of connection.

My time telling device is modelled after the hourglass. It uses three different hourglasses of three different sizes to measure seconds, minutes and hours. The hourglass on top measures seconds and once 60 seconds has passed it is half full and a weight sensor causes it to empty into the minute hourglass below it. Similar to the first hourglass, when the minute hourglass has 60 minutes worth of sand in it, it sends the sand into the hourglass below it. The bottom hourglass keeps track of hours, up to 12. Once it is full, a vacuum sucks up the sand into the sand container and the cycle continues. The sand container holds more sand than is needed for 12 hours so during the time that the lowest hourglass is being emptied, the process can continue and not have to wait and become increasingly inaccurate over time. The container has a filter to only let a measured amount of sand out per second so there is a reliability in the amount released.

Below is the math that I did to figure out this. I used pi and the Pythagorean theorem. I had to do a lot of work measuring the volume of cones so I knew how big each of the hourglasses needed to be to accurately measure the amount of time passed and hold the sand that represents that.I’m not sure this is the most precise or efficient way to tell time, but I think it is a creative use of the hourglass and could be very visually appealing and interesting if designed correctly. It is a imaginative expression of time made with a lot of thought and care for details and precision. I chose to do this not because it’s the most efficient way to tell time, but because it is innovative and involves the use of a lot of math and accuracy to build and run it.

Citations

“Surface Area and Volume: Cylinder, Cone, Pyramid, Sphere, Prisms.” About.com Mathematics. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

“T & K YOUNG.” Hourglass. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

Time for Time. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

On a national level, I looked at Arizona HB 2281 which prohibits the teaching of certain classes that promote “ethnic solidarity” and other requirements as detailed in my project. The law was only imposed upon the Tucson’s Public School’s Chicano Classes. The African-American, Pan-Asian and Native American history classes went completely untouched. The removal of these courses is hugely detrimental to the Mexican-American students of Tucson. Students involved in these classes had higher GPAs and were more likely to go on to college. 

On an international level, I examined the land problems that the Guarani Indians of Brazil have been facing. Even though Brazil’s Minister of Justice made a ruling for them to be able to keep the land they had a while back, legislation and ranch owners have deprived them of this right and other rights guaranteed to them. This has forced them into many different types of horrible working conditions without labor rights.At first sight, I understand that my project may not seem hugely related, but after the research and time I have spent on this, I believe the exact opposite. I think part of understanding oppression is seeing how it doesn’t always come out in the exact same way, if it did, we’d be more able to fix it and move forward. It shows up in different ways for different types of people in different people and the solidarity and isolation that imposes further prohibits them from receiving help. Cultural extinction and minority marginalization are massive problems across the world, and my project covers two issues and links them up with themes such as voicelessness and denial of their ability to succeed and achieve to their fullest capability. My project lacks one succinct word or title that can sum it up, but the world’s problems lack that as well. I have believed from the start of this project that if it were simple to name, it wouldn’t be worth examining because it would have already been examined and connected. The treatment of these people, although not the same in means, has the same roots and end results.  

This project was most rewarding for me in the challenge I had in exploring. I did not want my project and the relationship to be easily identifiable with two articles because I was looking for a challenge in understanding the systems of oppression imposed on minorities globally. So I chose that I thought could be united under a broad title and explored the depths of their misery and pain and the different levels these problems were being forced on them by. Everything I learned was deeply rewarding and really enjoyable. I am really proud of my final project.

Our General Argument:
All of the nations have a right to enter into Africa because we can all bring culture and diversity and spread the light of Europe into places that don’t have that yet. We have profited immensely over the years and this is our chance to spread that further. Belgium was the first nation to enter into Africa with the assistance of Henry Morton Stanley and we aimed to help them learn how to become a community and create functioning and productive societies in ways that have worked for Europe for many years. In order to help instruct Congo on our ways, we set up a very clear system of how communities work together to produce something, such as rubber. Division and organization helped to manage the resources, land and people; a territory that was 76x bigger than what Belgium has in Europe, it helps make things manageable in terms of teaching new ways to the Congolese people as well as building smaller communities.:

The Other Side:
We brutally killed and harmed 4 to 8 million people and then destroyed the records of it in 1908, post-annexation. We took the land so Leopold would have something to individually rule and feel his own power as king because Belgium is a country with a parliament system of government. Leopold never visited the land, but was caught on multiple occasions divulging his true intentions of dominating and subjugating the people so he could be considered more of a world super power.