Category Archives: Connections

Farmer’s Markets Chicago

May 30, 2013, by LN

For our final action project in the Policy course, Students were given an option to work solo or in a group to understand better use of commons. I was happy to have the opportunity to work in a group. My group, SM, JH and HP, decided to make a short documentary, interviewing the people working farmers market. We went to farmers market to explore the actions taken to combat food desert in the urban area of Chicago. I learned that farmers market are trying to bring healthy food to all by working together with Link Up Chicago. Link Up Chicago is a program that tries to get farmers market dealers to allow LINK to be used. Below is my video and poem.

Farmers Markets: A Hoop Dreams Production from JH on Vimeo.

LN made a poem capturing the sense of our experience, you can read it below.

People walking on the ground
A ground full of seeds and weeds
A ground desperate for trees.

Trees where wind echoes like a curious hungry dog, that only becomes more hungry when a man bites an apple.

An unforgettable smell like garlic melting through my nose.
Making it difficult for me to smell anything else in the atmosphere, this is the farmers market.

162: Scouting Pitchers

May 16, 2013, by LN

For our third action project for the 162 course, we were given 5 baseball players for each student to investigate. The investigation was for us to understand what we need to look at when scouting players. The purpose of this action project was to look and use statistics to understand the overall value of baseball players. I was given 5 pitchers to investigate and decide which pitcher is more valuable. I learned a lot strategies in scouting a player by tracking their weekly and monthly statistics. What our teacher expected of us at the end was to decide which player is valuable looking at the stats. I decided that Yu Darvish from Texas Rangers was the best pick and valuable player. See below to find out why I came to this decision.

1) Justin Masterson
Is paid $5 million a year as of 2013 and play for the Cleveland Indians. He will be a free agent in 2015.

2) Justin Verlander (Tigers)
His salary is $20 million a year and is a free agent in 2019 but his salary will increase yearly because they say he is a stud.

3) Jeff Samardzija
as of 2013 jeff is paid around $2 million from the cubs and his salary in from the cubs is shockingly going down. he will be a free agent in 2015.

4) Clayton Kershaw Los Angeles Dodgers
His salary has increase from 2012 where he was paid 7 and as for 2013 he is paid about $11 million. He will be a free agent in 2015.

5) Yu Darvish
He plays for Texas Rangers and his salaries has gone up high it doubled up from $5 million (2012) to $9 million. He will be a free agent in 2018.

Argument:

I believe that Yu Darvish is the best and valuable player in 2013 for the pitchers I was given. I chose him because of his great statistics and low salary. Beyond that he is only 26 years old and performs unbelievably well. I believe that Clayton Kershaw might be the best of all my pitchers but I don’t think that I can afford to pay him $ 11 million because I can have an extraordinary player like Yu Darvish with a lot of love from fans. He is also gaining popularity which would be good for my team.

Rankings by:

Price-

1. Jeff Samardzija
2. Justin Masterson
3. Yu Darvish
4. Clayton Kershaw
5. Justin Verlander

Performance-
1. Yu Darvish (age:26)
2. Justin Verlander (age:30)
3. Clayton Kershaw (age: 25)
4. Jeff Samardzija (age: 28)
5. Justin Masterson (age:28 )

Value-
1. Yu Darvish (age:26)
2. Clayton Kershaw (age: 25)
3. Justin Verlander (age:30)
4. Jeff Samardzija (age: 28)
5. Justin Masterson (age:28)

GCE Garden

May 12, 2013, by LN

For our third action project in Policy, we had a chance to find a non-profit organization that needed volunteers. Every students had to submit a proposal that explains why they are interested in serving an organization. We had to do at least three hours of service and I am going to say, I loved. I served GCE H.S because I had some difficulties reaching out to an organizations but I was happy that I decided to work or volunteer on a garden which is a nice way to address human rights. It took the person in charge about 18 months to have her garden idea approved. Bellow is my essay along with images of me and other students.

Before I dug the ground for the soon to be GCE Garden at GCE High School, I was looking for a place to volunteer. I tried to volunteer for a non-profit organizations but time failed me on doing so. I looked for three other organizations– again time did not favor me. I couldn’t find something that I really wanted to do which that brought me closer to something I wanted and love to do. I figured out that GCE was planning to do a garden and I thought this was a chance for me to actually do something that I feel most connected to. Gardening has always been one of my favorite things to do and I was a farm boy for years too. Since the space for the garden was dry, we had to dig a bit with shelves. There were seven or eight GCE students who participated in this awesome digging. I call it creative thinking or digging for truth because the area I dug had some objects that were thrown down or buried for a long time.

While preparing the space some people passed by and they had questions: why are these teens doing this? Most of them had a thought that we were forced to do it as a punishment. I can’t blame them for thinking that way because most teens these days at least in the United States don’t care or are not interested in doing stuff like this. On the other hand people were very happy seeing us doing something that is incredibly good for the environment. I am a young man who cares about the environment very deeply. I always read about health problems that could be easily ignored if we chose to protect our environment.

Three days before me doing this, I attended the Tedx Midwest talk. An Urban Gardening activist, Ron Finley, talked about how many people have no choice but to eat what they see or are given. This has become an issue to the well-being of Americans because diabetes is increasing big time. Us teens showing that we care about the environment is one of the powerful movements that can affect change. At the Lincoln Park Community Center, I learned that it doesn’t take the whole village to make a change but it needs the seed to become something. That something also needs the roots to help it grow strong. At GCE many are inspired to do things and they inspire others to do good things too. That’s what I love the most about doing something like this because we inspire others to make a difference and while working we forgot our differences.

The experiences reminded me that to eat, dress and survive is a hard work. When I was little I worked hard to eat and to survive but when I got here, I was civilized. I forgot that living is hard but joyful. I was reminded that survival for me or for you is something to take seriously.

Gas in Chicago: Monopoly

April 29, 2013, by LN

In the second unit for the Policy course, we were told to pick a monopoly(industry) to explore and create an infograph based on the data you discover. I had a lot interest in focusing monopoly industries in Chicago and so I decided to talk about Shell. I was very passionate about this topic because it affected my life also. In Chicago it’s getting hard to go to one place to another because of this unbelievable high price on gas/oil. Currently the Chicago public transit also is getting two times the price than it was. Below is my research with infograph for the final product.

10: Jack Arthur Johnson

April 14, 2013, by LN

In unit 1(1.42) for the 162 course, we are studying one of the biggest moments in baseball history and see how that changed our societies. We specifically focused on one of the most inspirational baseball prayer who went through a lot to succeed, Jack Robinson. For action project, we paired up in to two students each group and find someone who have changed our society in any sport today. My group-mate and I decided to focus on the first and greatest African-american heavyweight champion who changed our society through boxing. I learned that we can do a lot if we don’t back down. below is my Prezi presentation.

Water Fountains in Zone

April 14, 2013, by LN

For my Policy course,  we are studying how societies may make constructive change at 4 levels of governance –  local, regional, national, and global.  For our first unit we made  proposals to reshape a public, urban space for the better. For this action project,  I created proposal that helps teens, athletes and homeless. The best way for me to help them I had to think of something that no one has ever thought of as a problem to our community. For me creating water fountains that are easily accessible for the community was a mind-blowing idea. It was hard for to choose to who I should send this proposal.  I decided to send it to many people as I can think of so it could be spoken of. I created a 3-d sketch of a fountain to include into the proposal to show my sincerity. Below is my proposal.

Dear Mayor Rahm Emanuel,

I am LN from GCE Chicago High School and I am a junior this year, 2013. I am writing a proposal to you with care and sincerity. My proposal idea came from life experiences of mine. I am a big fan of soccer and I like to drink water a lot. When I run by over Lake Shore drive I get desperate for water and the water is always near by the parks. I noticed that water fountains are only available at the parks.

In Uptown there is a large population of homeless people who don’t have access to water. It is difficult for them to travel to the park fountains. I am not against what people may think of wasting water but now I believe that water is a wasted when it’s not being used. In Uptown, Chicago, this is a big problem even though people may not care. I care for the sake of health of athletes and homeless. Especially in summer, at least 100 people get sick because of lack of water, according to Deborah L. Shelton from Chicago tribune.

I sincerely propose that we should have more water fountains in Uptown Chicago and if possible everywhere in the city. This problem has never being brought up before that’s why I thought I should be the seed before the root. I want to help many teens, homeless and athletes who may have health problems. I believe that this problem should be resolved rapidly. If my proposal is taken seriously, it can make our community and homes more healthy. I trust that you’d think about it.

Sincerely,

LN (Junior)

Global Citizenship Experience High School Chicago, IL

Illegal Immigration Dialectics

March 8, 2013, by LN

Introduction

For my Action 4 project in A Nation’s Argument, I studied dialectics as a method of argument first proposed by Hegel in 1816′s “The Science of Logic.” In dialectics, one side of an issue forms a thesis as resolution. The opposition develops an antithesis which negates or overturns the thesis. Out of this friction, or contradiction, a synthesis emerges, which ideally incorporates both thesis and antithesis into a new thesis, thus resolving the argument. I chose to talk about one of the number 1 topics in U.S at this moment. I was very excited to talk and learn about immigration problems and see if there should be solutions for illegal immigrants in the U.S. I decided to put myself in one of the side that is for illegal immigration. Read on to see and listen to the thesis, antithesis, synthesis below.

Thesis

The U.S government should allow all illegal immigrant to pass the border

Illegal immigrants also referred to as illegal alien, illegal immigrant, undocumented alien, undocumented immigrant, undocumented worker are said to have threatened the American societies, economy, national security, and other things that is American. Illegal immigration to the USA( mostly from Mexico), who crossed the borders are been blamed for issues that Americans have had for years. Being a immigration myself this seemed little unfair for the U.S government to rocks on illegal aliens. Recently, I applied for a job and got it, and since I brought in my legal documents for the first interview; i thought they didn’t need it for my job train. I left everything home and they told me to bring it next time. Imagined how that situation would’ve gone into a different direction in places like Texas. For me, the country has seen its rich culture and civilization being shaped out by talented, ambitious, and hard-working people from around the world. And when I thought about it, even American founders came in illegally, why shouldn’t others have an opportunities that we once have been given.

Antithesis & Synthesis

…

Listen to my voice-recording that explains my antithesis & synthesis:

Free Pass For Class Excuse:

February 22, 2013, by LN

For the Nation’s Argument course, we created our own GCE amendment to make the school system more fairly and healthy. We proposed our own amendments and presented to the group so they could vote whether it passed or failed. The voting was held on a Haitian restaurant because the country was the nation had trouble in building a constitution and has probably has the most amendments. We had fair votes on which amendments to pass and my was one of the 9 out of 12 amendments that passed. I had to find a problem that the school has and provide a solution. Below is my proposal and the constitution GCE Junior/senior class made.

Abduction in Action: 

Result: The majority Students who are currently attending GCE are experiencing and facing tough time getting permission slip for understandable excuse and complicating student and teacher relationships in some way. This particular problem corrupts the class and the school system because both student and teachers misunderstands the situation.

I propose that there is an easy way for both students and teacher in creating a happy, better and healthy GCE learning environment.

Rule: GCE created Code Of Conduct (CoC) that made the school system for both fun and good learning Experiences. In life known to man, there has always been things to improve and things to improve more. My amendment or proposal are methods that can support existed codes.
One is to create a permission or late class excuse that makes things easier and for the sake of time, to avoid any misunderstandings between teacher and student. Two is to install alarm clock for every class duration to avoid the situation in the first place. There can even more solutions for this problem, I hope in the future it could be upgraded.

Case: With this new method, a huge problem would be eliminated and avoided. The outcome for both students and teachers would be a great opportunity for us to create a trusting and healthy community. A new system that allows students to not be late or accused for tardiness. A systems that allows students and teacher to understand each other. For people who are running late, have copies ready to sign in the instead of wasting useful time.

Hurricane Season crew, Hurricane Season, GCE, Chicago Illinois, 2013.

Free Pass For Class Excuse:

February 22, 2013, by LN

For the Nation’s Argument course, we created our own GCE amendment to make the school system more fairly and healthy. We proposed our own amendments and presented to the group so they could vote whether it passed or fail. The voting was held on a Haitian restaurant because the country was the nation had trouble in building a constitution and has probably has the most amendments. We had fair vote on which amendments to pass and my was one of the 9 out of 12 amendments that passed. I had to find a problem that the school has and provide a solution. Below is my proposal and the consitutution GCE Junior/senior class made.

New Constitution

Result: The majority Students who are currently attending GCE are experiencing and facing tough time getting permission slip for understandable excuse and complicating student and teacher relationships in some way. This particular problem corrupts the class and the school system because both student and teachers misunderstands the situation.

I propose that there is an easy way for both students and teacher in creating a happy, better and healthy GCE learning environment.

Rule: GCE created Code Of Conduct (CoC) that made the school system for both fun and good learning Experiences. In life known to man, there has always been things to improve and things to improve more. My amendment or proposal are methods that can support existed codes.
One is to create a permission or late class excuse that makes things easier and for the sake of time, to avoid any misunderstandings between teacher and student. Two is to install alarm clock for every class duration to avoid the situation in the first place. There can even more solutions for this problem, I hope in the future it could be upgraded.

Case: With this new method, a huge problem would be eliminated and avoided. The outcome for both students and teachers would be a great opportunity for us to create a trusting and healthy community. A new system that allows students to not be late or accused for tardiness. A systems that allows students and teacher to understand each other. For people who are running late, have copies ready to sign in the instead of wasting useful time.

Hurricane Season crew, Hurricane Season, GCE, Chicago Illinois, 2013.

German East Africa: LN

February 15, 2013, by LN

The 2nd unit in the integrated English & History course, A Nation’s Argument; focused on deductive reasoning, we looked at how deduction could be applied to pre-World War I (whether Germany is right or wrong to colonize). A trial was held in class to change “your” nations appeal, with representatives of various European and African nations arguing for their causes. The country I represented was German East Africa, that includes Burundi,Rwanda, and Tanzania. To learn and increase my knowledge for this project I had to understand the cause of WWI, through an amazing book by Henri Barbusse; The Under fire. I recommend you to read it to understand what is like to be in a war. Below is my visual presentation