Past Featured Student Posts

For my independent study, in addition to transcribing poems of Fernando Pessoa, I have been studying different ways of archiving and organizing libraries. After reading related texts and visiting libraries, including the Newberry Library and the Poetry Foundation, I created my own (sadly hypothetical) library. Even once I had my plan, it was a long Read More…

This is a project for my Food For Thought class. The purpose of this project was to write an autobiography in the first person as if we where an ingredient. In this project I learned a lot about my ingredient which was the meat from a Cuban dish (ropa vieja) also known as flank steak Read More…

For my Hurricane Season course, we were asked to research an unnatural disaster that is meaningful to us. Our requirements were to find an unnatural disaster happening (or that happened) both  here in the U.S. and somewhere around the world. After finding and comparing the disaster we had to create an annotated bibliography explaining our research. Another requirement for this Read More…

Currently we are in our civic engagement unit which is a four week course on learning about how to be civically engaged in our own community, Chicago. This year’s focus is on making short films having to do with each of these four values; Autonomy, Accountability, Purpose, and Gratitude. We were split up into groups Read More…

I did this project for my great pretender art class. The point of this project was to make a sculpture of our power animal’s movement. I learned how to have confidence in my work and how to keep trying no matter how many times I fail. Click the link below for the blueprint I used Read More…

For our first unit in our ‘Counterculture’ class, the assignment was to create our own shout-out or invocation poem. The project of an invocation poem usually involves calling attention to the little things, or aspects of everyday life that sometimes are purposefully ignored. This poem was the first I’ve ever written and I can truthfully Read More…

For my first project as action in my art class, I made a sculpture depicting the movement of my Power Animal along with a human and mechanical movement that resembled the original one. The basis for this project was the theory that the movements of our Power Animal could be used to show our own Read More…

From July 2011 to June 2012, I participated in a study abroad program in Brazil. The program, American Field Service (AFS), placed me with a host family, and I spent my junior year attending a Brazilian high school. I lived in a small town called Aquidauana in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Apart Read More…

For a field experience, our Student Enterprise class went to Sandbox Industries. Sandbox Industries is a foundry that supports start-up businesses. The purpose of our visit was to gain experience by presenting the progress we’ve made on our individual business plans. During the presentations, we discussed the key points of our business: why we created Read More…

The purpose of this Endurance challenge was to endure 12 hours of work towards accomplishing our mission. I decided to exercise my ability to focus and specifically hone it for basketball, and school work. These challenges ranged from different tests of mental endurance in accomplishing school work, to doing different workouts for basketball — and Read More…

The purpose of learning about Kautilya in Endurance is to formulate a strategy for ourselves to realize our missions. Back in 300 BC, Kautilya created a structure for administration, economic policy, and military strategy that continues to hold its influence in political science. Kautilya left us with a template and questions to consider the importance Read More…

For our global health cure course, we are examining frog organs to better understand treatments. Frog organs are very similar to human organs. For example, human and frog livers are similar. Researchers study the liver to see how humans respond to various drugs and to find cures for liver disease (Brown Med, 2012 https://med.brown.edu/gastroenterology/LiverResearchCenter). Dissecting frogs, I learned that frogs have thick skin, three lobes on Read More…

For a field experience, the GCE Catalysts went to Orbit Media Studios. We went to direct questions to professionals on what web design and development entails. We met the CEO, Todd Gettelfinger, whose responsibilities include ensuring customer satisfaction and financial management. He wants clients to find value in every dollar they spend with Orbit. Our Read More…

For our second Forbidden Books Milestone, we were asked to create a memorial of sorts to go in the site of the Twin Towers that would help to facilitate peace, especially between Christians and Muslims. When I first got this assignment, I was so overwhelmed. I drew for an hour trying to figure out what Read More…

People should read the book The Golden Compass because it is a book that can put you in whole new worlds of imaginations; I wrote “imaginations” in the plural, because the main character adventures herself between world worlds, full of fantasy. From this podcast, I learned that this book’s idea of how the daemons (animal souls) Read More…

 Please take a moment to view my video! For my Org. Systems and Models class, we built a NASA-funded robot to develop a better understanding of systems and models, how parts fit in to a whole, and why we use models to understand larger and more complex systems. Robot technology inspires systems and models because Read More…

Our ‘Education in 8 Movements’ (Integrated English-History) class studied “Colleges & Universities” as post-secondary learning options. We looked at various iterations of the classical route to better jobs through higher education, and used effective research and analysis to achieve a fact-based understanding of the broad array of intelligent, post-secondary schooling options. Below are a few Read More…

Yesterday, the GCE “Citi Zens” had their 1st bout on the Louder than a Bomb event in Chicago, the biggest poetry slam in the world. It is the first time GCE joins the event and we are so inspired and thrilled about it! By the way, we got a few TENS! 🙂 Watch our group Read More…

Here is my proposal to rebuild Ground Zero: it has a lot of space for everyone to play, to think, to congregate… the plan shows the tower on only one side of “ground zero” and trees around the building; the trees make the place look beautiful, because it looks green instead of gray; this shows Read More…

In order to understand how to think about scientific processes and theories, we need to be able to know how to organize. In my Organizational Systems and Models, we created examples of how organization tactics work as a flow chart … Continue reading →

The purpose of this piece was to choose a problem that is going on now in my community and to protest this problem through a poem or a song. I chose topsoil removal and conflict minerals, because they are everything: … Continue reading →

I saw the element of change to be very important in connecting the Kabuki music with Japanese history; so, I wanted to make a video that captured the idea of harsh changes. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came to mind when I thought of difficult times in Japan, and, by then, I had already […]

I chose to study the rhythm Pow Wow to understand how it feels when you gather with people to get more connected. Every single element of Pow Wow is very important, because if one is missing, the others wouldn’t exist. … Continue reading →

The following project expresses my feelings at 12 stops, on 5 CTA trains, while an EKG-like pulse measures my experiences and conveys my Vitalogies: Stories for Life. The following project connects my journey in story ( The Adventures of Shed #12) to my GCE Chicago High School Field Experience, Vitalogies class trip aboard a CTA […]

Crimes Against Humanity is a course that not only goes into the historical aspect of culture, but it also sheds light on what can be done for future societies. It is as if we are looking at problems to figure … Continue reading →

Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement, passed away yesterday, but what did not pass away were the 40 million trees in Africa rooted on her inspiration. Since I first opened her Unbowed Autobiography, I wanted to meet Dr. Wangari. Unbelievably, somehow she “met” me first, on one of the happiest humblings of my […]

Running_With_the_Bulls1 Above is a powerpoint I made, click to download. Why do I attend GCE? I get asked that a lot after telling people that I went to school in a basement with fifteen other kids last year. It’s often really hard to explain as you really have to spend a week here to really […]

Pilsen View more presentations from epatlan. The people who control the look of a neighborhood and the messages that are conveyed are the members of the community. Although higher powers can attempt to gentrify a neighborhood, ultimately the people who live there have the control. The members can either take the initiative to give an […]

La Corrida View more presentations from epatlan. “Imagination is the highest accomplishment of consciousness and the highest accomplishment of imagination is empathy.” – Dean Young In Crimes Against Humanity, we looked at Picasso’s eleven developments of a bull. As an aficionado of art, my honest opinion is that the first bull was my least favorite. […]