Volunteering at Trucking Company

I spent 20 hours volunteering at Vision C & S Express Inc for one day each out of 4 months. At Vision C & S Express Inc I spent time washing off trucks that travel all over the United States to deliver shipments of products and goods. I also help clean and organize their office by moving desks, papers, and boxes around the office. I learned how to become better at organizing things and skills that I can use in the future. For example, using tools such as paint scrapers and water pressure hoses to clean the trucks. I made a difference for others by volunteering to show people in a community that money isn't the most important thing for giving back to the community. I did not take pictures of the office or the trucks out of respect for Vision C & S Express Inc.

Buttery Buttermilk Biscuits

In the second unit of "Cooking and Chemistry" in my freshman STEAM course class Food, we have been learning about the math and science behind baking foods. We also have been studying how discovering fire and cooking impacted the evolution of humans. We went on Field Experiences to Pacific Gardens Mission where we met Chef Erica Web who is head chef and an expert in baking. She taught us about the different types of bread, yeast, and leavening agents and how they work. In class, we have been baking things like sourdough and cornbread to get the feel for baking. For this AP, my class was instructed to choose a recipe for biscuits and choose an ingredient to substitute. I enjoyed making biscuits from scratch a lot. I now have more experience in baking and cooking.

Global Hunger and Malnutrition

In the second unit of "Death" in Food for Thought, we learned about global trade and "fair trade" history and colonialism. We learned about how agriculture influenced greed in people, how foods from different countries got imported to where they are today, and how resources impacted the behavior in people. For our Field Experience, we went to S.K.Y restaurant in Pilsen where we met a sommelier named Charles Ford. He talked to us about his job as a sommelier and the history behind his restaurant. For this action project, we were asked to look back on the past, literally. We looked back at our first Humanities course, SDGs & You. We focused on SDG 2 and decided on a specific target of the SDG. I wanted to focus on a target that is a symptom of hunger so, I chose malnutrition. This target on malnutrition was challenging when it came to the history of malnutrition. The most difficult part of this project was filming the video. Overall I think that I completed a great project.

Food For Thought -AP2 NL from NL on Vimeo.

“1 out of 2 children in Guatemala suffer from malnutrition. People from Central American countries such as Guatemala are coming to the United States’ and Mexico’s border seeking asylum because of issues like malnutrition plagues. Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 16 goals that we should achieve by the year 2030. These goals were created by the United Nations. I will be addressing target 2.2 of the goal Zero Hunger. This target is a global priority because due to malnutrition, people and children in third world countries are on the edge of dying. Malnutrition in pregnant women and children 2 years old or younger can affect a child for the rest of their lives and the conditions can’t be fixed as they get older. Some of the conditions are stunting in growth, being underweight for one’s age, and wasting; being dangerously thin for one’s height. A solution to achieving this target is food fortification in staple foods and condiments. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for the issue of malnutrition and bring awareness to this issue.

I chose Target 2.2, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons. According to UNICEF, “Malnutrition develops when the body does not get the proper amount of calories, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients required to keep the organs and tissues healthy and functioning well. A child or adult can be malnourished by being undernourished or overnourished.” Undernourishment is when someone can’t acquire enough food to meet dietary energy requirements. Overnourishment is when someone gets too much food that exceeds their dietary energy requirements. “More than one-third of all child deaths every year around the world are attributed to malnutrition.” The United Nations has identified hunger as a global priority because global hunger and malnutrition affects the lives of millions all over the world, but mostly “underdeveloped” countries. According to Global Goals, “Hunger is the leading cause of death in the world. Our planet has provided us with tremendous resources, but unequal access and inefficient handling leaves millions of people malnourished.”

Malnutrition isn’t just a recent issue but has major issue been for many years. Malnutrition dates far as back to the existence of the ancient Egyptians. A civilization that faced malnutrition like we do today were the ancient Mayans. They were argued to fell as an empire and civilization due to drought, warfare, disease, or even political instability. Today we think that all these things played a role and were only symptoms in the fall of the Mayans. According to NASA Science, researchers used classic archaeology techniques to find that human bones from the last decades before the Mayan civilization’s collapse shows signs of severe malnutrition. The root cause was a chronic food and water shortage, due to some combination of natural drought and deforestation by humans." Their agriculture was based on slash and burn and clear-cutting methods which resulted in deforestation for fertile land to grow crops. According to Empires of Food, “A sustainable food empire can only exist if most of its farms are smallish, diverse, and serving customers not too far away.” We can learn that unsustainable methods of agriculture lead to negative impacts on land over time.

Malnutrition and hunger have both resulted in the death of millions and billions of people in our world throughout history. The Mayan civilization’s population grew in masses which led to a demand for more food. They addressed this problem by replacing their neighboring jungles with maize fields by using deforestation methods in order to get more land for agriculture. The result of these deforestation methods was that they trapped themselves into a broken hydrological cycle which caused their fields to dry up and crops to die. They also suffered from relying on and growing crops such as maize, beans, and squash together. Something we can learn from this history is that malnutrition can be prevented with sustainable practices of agriculture and food productivity.

If these global issues of malnutrition and hunger continue in the future masses of people and children around the world will continue to suffer and die. To achieve this target of ending all forms of malnutrition, some contributions would be food fortification in staple foods such as bread and potatoes, food security in poverty-stricken areas, and an increase in the prices of unhealthy foods since they are cheaper to buy compared to healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables. Large scale food fortification is the process of adding micronutrients to foods or condiments consumed regularly by the population. If we did this in “developing” countries, more people will have access to the food and nutrients they need. Poverty in areas also affect the diets of people within a poverty-stricken area. According to Global Citizen, “donors should increase long-term funding for the prevention and community-based management of acute malnutrition. This will stray away from the current short term, emergency only funding approaches.” Long term donations would help bring this issue of malnutrition to an end by giving aid to areas where there is a lack of food and resources. Malnutrition can be eradicated overtime with these solutions.

These global issues of malnutrition and hunger might not affect me but they affect people living on this planet just like you and me. My main argument is that we need to think about all the people on this planet and not only people around us where we live. Ending all forms of malnutrition should also be prioritized just as much as the issue of hunger because it affects children in their early lives. My recommendations will help achieve this goal of Zero Hunger and target of ending all forms of malnutrition by helping areas with food insecurity get the food and nutrients they need. How will you help contribute to eradicating this global issue of hunger?

Works Cited

“Feeding a Family, Nourishing a Community - United Nations Development Programme | UNDP.” Exposure, 2017, stories.undp.org/feeding-a-family-nourishing-a-community. Accessed 3 May 2019.

“Goal 2: Zero Hunger.” The Global Goals, 16 Sept. 2016, www.globalgoals.org/2-zero-hunger. Accessed 6 May 2019.

‌Nations, United. “Goal 2: End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition and Promote Sustainable Agriculture — SDG Indicators.” Un.Org, 2018, unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2016/goal-02/. Accessed 6 May 2019.

Roser, Max, and Hannah Ritchie. “Hunger and Undernourishment.” Our World in Data, 2018, ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment#definitions-of-measures-of-hunger-and-undernourishment. Accessed 7 May 2019.

“The Rise and Fall of the Mayan Empire | Science Mission Directorate.” Nasa.Gov, 2019, science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/15nov_maya. Accessed 7 May 2019.

“Underlying Causes of Malnutrition - Action Against Hunger.” Action Against Hunger, 2017, actionagainsthunger.ca/what-is-acute-malnutrition/underlying-causes-of-malnutrition/. Accessed 8 May 2019.

UNICEF/NYHQ2006-0081/Noorani. Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health Child Development and Early Learning Breastfeeding Nutrition and Growth Immunization With Advice on: Diarrhoea Malaria HIV Child Protection and More Facts for Life Fourth Edition. 2010.

“10 Ways to End Malnutrition.” Global Citizen, 2019, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/10-ways-to-end-malnutrition/. Accessed 6 May 2019

My Garden Plan

In the first unit of my freshman STEAM course class Food, we have been learning about ecosystems, interactions/symbiosis within ecosystems, the nitrogen cycle, the symbiosis between plants, nutrients plants need, and philosophy about agriculture. We have been studying the ecology of planting, different farming methods and how these methods affect the food we eat. We went on Field Experiences to Patchwork Farms where we learned about how they managed their farm and to Big Delicious Planet where we learned about how their catering company as a business takes actions towards being as green, clean, and sustainable as possible. For this AP, my class was instructed to design a garden, find a location, find ways to make the soil compatible, find materials or containers that we could grow plants in, and pick 10 vegetables to grow. I enjoyed everything that has led up to this action project. Here is a slideshow of all the vegetables I plan to plant in my garden and a sketch of my garden.

 

 Below are the containers I will grow my vegetables in.

4 Plastic Bins (10 plants per pin) Volume = 91356.85 cm.³

( L x W x H): 26.5 x 16.5 x 12.75 in.).

5 five-gallon buckets (5 plants per bucket) Volume = 29233.52 cm.

(11.91 Top "x 10.33" Bottom x 14.5 in." H)

5 plastic rectangular containers (3 plants per half bottle) Volume= 1577.25 cm.³

(L x W x H): 8 3/4" x 5.5" x 2 in.")

Below are my calculations for what product or supplement and quantities per 100 square feet. I need for each outdoor space.

Original Soil Quality:

Nitrogen in soil: 15 out of 40 (low amount of nitrogen)

Phosphorus in soil: 23 out of 30 (high amount of phosphorus)

Potassium in soil: 61 out of 300 (very low amount of potassium)

These are the products and need to add in order to amend the soil.

(F101 Blood Meal)     F2100 Soft Rock Phosphate           F2260 Sulfate of Potash

5 lbs per 100 ft²                   2 lbs per 100ft²                              0.5 lbs per 100ft²

5.5 lbs per 150 ft²               2.5 lbs per 150ft²                            0.85 lbs per 150ft²

10 lbs per 200 ft²                   4 lbs per 200ft²                            1 lbs per 200ft²

Ron Finley is a guerrilla gardener ad he is making a difference and impact in his community of South Central, Los Angeles. He started free and voluntary community gardening and plans to make this practice into future business and project. In a TED Talk by Ron Finley, he said, “Food is the problem and food is the solution.” To me, this means unhealthy food and food practices are the problems and healthy food and food practices are the solutions to that problem. For my garden, I planned to have it in my complex yard and in a yard at a local community college. I chose both of these locations because they are local and accessible places for a garden in my neighborhood. The dimensions of my complex yard are 10ft. long by 15ft. wide and the dimensions of the community college yard are 10ft. long by 20ft. wide. In all, the area of my complex yard is 150 square feet and the area of the community college yard is 200 square feet. I will plant cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, asparagus, corn, peppers, cabbage, beans, and lettuce in my garden. I chose cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes. I will plant these vegetables because these are some of my favorite vegetables and they also are compatible companion plants to some plants out of the ten I chose. Beans, cucumbers, and cabbage are companion plants to each other and onions, carrots, tomatoes, and lettuce are also companion plants to each other. Carrots take the nitrogen from the soil and allow the tomatoes to take in the amount of nitrogen needed in order to grow. My garden will represent the symbiotic relationships of mutualism and commensalism because my garden will be public to my surrounding community and I will have a garden where organisms will have interactions of mutualism and commensalism. For example, if a cottontail rabbit happens to eat a carrot from the garden and then produce organic waste, my garden will benefit from the organic waste and the rabbit will also benefit. I will use the principles of natural farming no chemical fertilizer, no weeding by tillage or herbicides because I feel and learned that any synthetic chemicals and addends to plants and crops will hurt the soil and land over time.

In conclusion to this project, I learned about the history of agriculture and ecosystems, different methods within maintaining and sustaining agriculture, and the reasoning and importance behind the different ways and methods of agriculture. I also learned about why it is important to have healthy fertile soil compared to dirt for plants, why the symbiosis between plants matter, and why food needs to be sustainable for all people. If I could do this project again, I would plan a garden for a space about 500 square feet just so I can add components and factors to it.

I am Paprika!

Hello, my name is N.L. In my Freshman Humanities course class Food for Thought, we are currently at the end of the first unit of "Life". During this unit, we have been learning about the history behind food. We went on a Field Experience where we walked around the Goose Island neighborhood of Chicago with a forager named Dave who is the CEO of Odd Produce. He taught us about many plants all around this urbanized society that we can eat. Just as our ancestors used to do as foragers. We also had a Field Experience The purpose of this project is to pick one ingredient from food or ingredient passed down through my family. In the process of this project, I learned that my family really values cooking. During the process of this project, I learned that paprika, which is very popular today, has been around for many centuries. I hope you enjoy!

N.L - Family Tree, 4/22/19

Reducing Our Carbon Footprints

Hello, my name is N.L. In my Freshman STEAM course class Fuel, we have gotten into the third unit. During this unit, we have been reviewing and learning about solving and plotting inequalities, the carbon cycle, the laws of conservation of energy and thermodynamics, and balancing chemical equations. Throughout this class, I have learned a lot about different sources and types of fuel and energy. We went on a Field Experience where we walked around the Goose Island neighborhood of Chicago and looked for different forms of pollution. Pollution is when any substance is in the wrong place or concentration in the environment. The most interesting and true thing I learned is that "invisible" pollution like carbon emissions is worse than "visible" pollution like litter on the ground. For this Action Project, we were supposed to write an action plan for reducing "our" carbon footprints. Hope you enjoy!

The Ojibwe Nation and Dream Catchers

Hello, my name is N.L. I am a freshman at GCE Lab School. This is my final action project for my Humanities course called "Who Am I ?" Now in this class for our second unit of Doubt and Dream, we have been learning about the study of dreams. Freud was a cultural philosopher who had a lot to say about dreams and he came up with psychoanalysis, which is a theory to treat mental disorders. In this unit, we studied surrealism, which is an “artistic method that implies symbolic meanings”. We studied many surrealist artists and interpreted their many artworks. We partnered up with a classmate and shared our dreams with each other, and interpreted the meanings of them. For this Action Project, we were supposed to create a dreamcatcher that represents a dream we had, and the positive and negative elements we want and don’t want in our future dreams. I enjoyed making both of my dreamcatchers and learning about the meaning behind them.

N.L. "First Dream Catcher" March 23, 2019

Dream catchers originated from the Native American Ojibwe Tribe. Most dream catchers are made by grandparents and then given to their grandchildren. They believe that everything you make for the first time, you shouldn't keep but give it to someone. Since this was my first time making a dream catcher, I decided to make my first one for my two baby cousins and a second one for me. The purpose of a dream catcher is to protect someone sleeping from negative dreams. It allows positive dreams to pass through the web and reach the sleeping individual. The dream catcher works by trapping and filtering out the negative dreams and letting positive dreams go by. The positive dreams slip through the web and flow down through the hanging strings to the person sleeping. Negative dreams get caught in the web and burn out when the sun shines on them. Each part of the dream catcher symbolizes something. The hoop of your dream catcher symbolizes strength and unity. The center of the dream catcher symbolizes your “Creator,” "Great Mystery," and or your bliss. Someone’s bliss is what makes them happy and spreads joy to them.

The center of my dreamcatcher symbolizes the “Creator” because it represents the balance of good and evil in our world. In my dreamcatcher, my superego and id and the good and evil forces of my mind are fighting against each other. The “Great Mystery” in my life is the bliss of having relationships with people I love, the feeling of love, blessings I receive from God every day, sports and music. I chose to put a yin-yang symbol in the center of my dreamcatcher to symbolize good and bad in my life and to symbolize the balance of good and evil. The three different colored feathers hanging from my dreamcatcher represents the Pan-African flag which symbolizes the goal of encouraging and strengthening bonds of unity between all people of African descent. The center of my baby cousins’ dreamcatcher is a heart which symbolizes the love I and my family has for them. The two different beads and different colored thread represents both of my baby cousins and their differences. For my dreamcatcher, I want positive dreams of my late (past) family members and of good memories from my life in the past, wishes of success, protection over me and my family, and the elements of peace, love, and bliss, and “good” to pass through my dreamcatcher. I symbolized these positive elements in my dreamcatcher by having a red thread in my dreamcatcher’s web. For my baby cousins’ dreamcatcher, I want the positive dreams of family, wishes of good health, and the elements of peace, love, and bliss to pass through their dreamcatcher. I symbolized these positive elements by making the ring of the dreamcatcher red. I used the color red to represent strength, passion, and love.

N.L. "Second Dream Catcher" March 23, 2019

I want my dreamcatcher to filter out the negativity of negative minded people, negative or evil energy from demons in my unconscious/subconscious, fears of dying, and killing. I symbolized these negative elements by putting one side of my web white and the other black and also putting a gun on my web. I want my baby cousins’ dreamcatcher to filter out negative memories of trauma and conflicts in their lives, negative or evil energy from their unconscious and subconscious minds, and the fears of the things they’re scared of. I symbolized these negative elements by putting on the ring of the dream catcher.

We went on a Field Experience to the American Indian Center where we talked to Fawn Pochel and I learned about some of the different Native American tribes and nations and their some of their beliefs that differ between tribes and nations. I was very interested in learning as much as I could not only for a future grade but to expand my knowledge. She also gave us some tips on making dreamcatchers. Another Field Experience we went on was to the Art Institute of Chicago where we looked at artworks from surrealist, abstract, and cubist artists. The Ojibwe thought that dreams were very important. A psychologist named Freud came with the theory of psychoanalysis therapy, which is to release repressed emotions and experiences or to make the unconscious in your mind conscious. The unconscious mind is your thoughts while you are unconscious. These two things factored in with artists in the modern time of Surrealism. Surrealist artists were obsessed with Freud's ideas because they believed leaving an open door to your unconscious mind opens up a gateway or path to creativity and new ideas. In class, we did dream sharing and interpretations. I interpreted my partner's dream as a horror-filled dimension where murdering a masked killer was the only way to get out of the loop. If I were in their dream, I would’ve felt stuck inside of a place similar to hell. If I kill the masked murderer I will wake up from the dream. These were the two "if" statements I interpreted from my partner's dream. I recently had a very realistic dream recently and it has been on my mind for a while. Everything was so perfect. My family was one huge happy family at my grandma’s house, but then all of a sudden that vision started to fade and I woke up. I feel some factors in this dream could be the rationalization of the dream and repression of negative things that I might have been on my mind in this dream.

In conclusion to the class "Who Am I ?," I learned that truth, memory, doubt, and dream make a person. Experiences and beliefs can be determined as truths and doubts as well as memories and dreams. Learning about different people's history, knowledge, and wisdom has impacted me to appreciate different cultures and educate myself about different cultures. I have really enjoyed the many discussions, field experiences, and experiences in general in this class.

Solar Energy VS Fossil Fuel Energy

Hello, my name is N.L. and I'm a freshman at GCE Lab School. This is my second Action Project for my STEAM course, FUEL. During the second unit of this class, we visited a Tesla showroom to learn about the difference between electric battery cars and gasoline and diesel fuel cars. In class, we have been learning about slope or rate of change not only in lines but in things like products. For this Action Project, we choose a renewable resource that we wanted to make an infomercial about. I hope you enjoy this video.

Works Cited

“Where Is the Best Location on Earth for Solar Energy? – Sunmetrix.” Sunmetrix.Com, 30 Sept. 2013, sunmetrix.com/where-is-the-best-location-on-earth-for-solar-energy/.

“Hello, Sunshine: See Target’s Latest Solar Installations Take Shape.” Target Corporate, 2017, corporate.target.com/article/2017/04/solar-power-update.

Richardson, Luke. “The Pros and Cons of Solar Energy: What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Going Solar?” Solar News, EnergySage, 2 Feb. 2019, news.energysage.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-solar-energy/.

Wind, Northwest. “Northwest Wind and Solar.” NW Wind & Solar, 2015, www.nwwindandsolar.com/solar-power-in-seattle-and-the-northwest/how-do-solar-systems-produce-energy/.

“Solar Panel Cost 2019 | Current Avg. Solar System Price by State and City.” Solarreviews.com, 2019, www.solarreviews.com/solar-panels/solar-panel-cost/.

“What Are Solar Panels Made Of? | Greener Ideal.” Greenerideal.Com, 3 Mar. 2018, greenerideal.com/guides/0613-solar-panel-basics-what-solar-panels-are-made-of/.

United States and Venezuela Oil Production

Hello, my name is N.L. I am a freshman at GCE Lab School. This action project is for my STEAM course "Fuel". In this class, we have been learning about energy and energy density, renewable and nonrenewable resources, slope, and the elements of the periodic table. A field experience guest speaker named Christa from Nicor Gas company talked to us about what her company does, many different and interesting energy resources, and how important carbon emissions are. For this action project, I made a slide show showing oil production between two different countries by using slope or rate of change.

Awareness Podcast

Hello my name is N.L. I am a freshman at GCE Lab School. This is my first action project for my Humanities course called "Who Am I?"In this class for our first unit of Truths and Memories, we have been learning about many Greek philosophers including Socrates, Descartes, Plato, and Anaxagoras. We also researched the many philosophers and their influences to their thinking and their philosophy. We've had an guest speaker named Katie Moody come in and talk to us about her work in dog training. She explained how behaviorism is demonstrated through the basic training of teaching a dog to sit or go near a certain place. She discussed the many different techniques people use to train not only dogs but people and other animals. I hope you enjoy this podcast.





Podcast Script

Awareness, yes it is an important principle in survival, but what does awareness truly mean when broken down. Awareness to the world and to our lives. Hi, I am N.L., a freshman in high school. I have come to the realization that some people are not aware of much going on. Not only in their lives, but also in the lives of other people. I want to prevent misunderstanding of awareness and teach the truth of awareness. I believe the ideologies and importance of self-confidence, success, and heritage. I value contributions toward positively impacting my society and neighborhood. I seek truth and knowledge.

I believe that "awareness" or "being aware" is a principle of survival in life. When I say awareness, I mean being truly aware. Being aware of your surroundings, the people around you, issues, conflicts and problems of all people. Not being scared of everything by watching everything around you but recognizing the presence of other people, the risks of specific actions, and the consideration of others and their feelings. Awareness is introduced in our lives through conflicts and trauma. You experience conflict or trauma which awakens a skill which can be mastered over time. Awareness can be an utmost important undervalued skill for non-privileged people. And an overlooked, underrated, and slept on skill to privileged people. Now obviously looking down at your phone while walking through a busy city only makes you aware of what is on your device's screen. But walking around a busy place while looking around makes you aware of many more things that are on your device's screen.

Based on this belief of awareness and being aware, I have not always believed in this "ideology". My childhood innocence factors in with not being aware but as I have grown and am growing, every day I have become more and more aware of many things. Based on this belief of awareness and being aware I realized that there are many scenarios that can relate back to awareness. This experience contributes to my belief of awareness. I was taking the CTA Red and Purple Line trains to get to my art school. While on the Red Line train I noticed these three kids about my age, one younger and another may be a little bit older than me. I heard them plotting on stealing someone's phone and one of them even pointed at the person they were going to steal from. I interfered in them stealing one innocent woman's phone by telling them that her phone was not the iPhone X the group of boys thought or portrayed it to be. Two boys scolded the boy who pointed at the woman for not being able to tell an android from an iPhone. They proceeded to exit the train car to another. As I transferred to the Purple Line train, the same group of boys were on the same train as me. Crazy right. I knew they were up to no good once more. I sat further away from them compared to how close I sat by the when I was on the Red Line train. As soon as the train came to a stop, I looked up and it happened. One of the boys had snatched a woman's phone right out of her hands ripping her earbuds from her ear. The boys ran off the train luring the woman and her friends to go after them but at the same time making an escape by returning to a different train car as the doors closed. At the next stop, I got off and went to my destination. Another experience that happened on the same day was when I was coming home from art school. I saw my train had just got to the station so I ran to catch it. When I jumped down those last stairs to get to the train doors, there were three women walking behind each other, all of them face down into their smartphones. I had to bump into them in order to get their attention and to fully get into the train car. This experience made me fed up at the time with how people look at my generation as always on our phones when adults walk around with their faces sunk into their devices. These truths of not walking around blind but seeing deeply and not addressing a problem but looking deeper than noticing a problem or issue contribute to my belief of awareness. My belief of awareness connects to the ideas of Descartes because the two elements of self-awareness, the awareness that one is thinking and awareness that one exists played key role in Descartes' epistemological project. Another philosopher who had a philosophy of awareness is Franz Brentano. The Brentanian theory was called "Awareness of Awareness." According to this theory, "all conscious experience is in a certain fundamental sense "self-intimating"; all conscious awareness constitutively involves awareness of that very awareness."

My belief in awareness implies that I am a very thoughtful and cautious person. Awareness has influenced me into making the right decisions in my life and to also look out for others. This belief relates to my culture and me as an individual because being a young teen and an African American in the United States' society. This means that I will always have a target on my back. That is where awareness comes in. Growing up with these targets on my people's identities make people different from us feel superior to us. My people's cultural unconscious is still very real in our lives today. We really had no other choice but to be aware due to all the pain and suffering we have gone through in this country.

I have come to finalization of my concluding thought that awareness can become something you do unconsciously. I also wonder how does the belief of awareness relate to our collective unconscious starting from early human existence and throughout different times. How have we inherited this "principle" or factor in our lives? The group of three young African American males who took that white woman's phone were aware of almost everything around them. The woman who was sitting with her two friends while on her phone and listening to music was not aware of the boys' actions until her phone was snatched out of her hands. We all have the thought process that, "nothing will happen to us", but we also believe that anything is possible supporting the thought " anything will and can happen." That is why awareness is very important.
End of Podcast Script

Citations

"Awareness of Awareness: The Brentanian Theory." The Brains Blog, 31 Jan. 2017, philosophyofbrains.com/2017/01/31/awareness-of-awareness-the-brentanian-theory.aspx.

Smith, Joel. “Self-Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford.Edu, 1 Jan. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-consciousness/.

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Space Travelers Board Game

Hello I am a freshman at GCE Lab School. In my STEAM course Game Changers we've been learning about and playing many different games. Mostly card, board, and dexterity games. We also learned about the elements of a game and how you would play it. We also got to meet and talk with game designers.My teammates and I made a game for our class and the game we’ve created is called Space Travelers.

Space Travelers is a game where players are placed on earth, choose what planet they want to go to. Players have to go around the game board and pick up resources from different planets such as Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Neptune. In order to win the game, each player that feels like they have enough resources in order to return to Earth with, they stay. The player with the most resources who comes back to Earth wins the game.The audience that might utilize our game are groups and organizations who are interested in space. A lesson that our game can be used to teach is making strategic decisions.

I feel that our game is the outcome of hard work and teamwork. Thinking about game as an idea then making the game was a pretty good start into the creation of the game. Creating the game started as an idea, got into visualizing the game by drawing sketches of the game, then from there we started physically putting our game together. The first time we play-tested our game, we noticed many things that we can improve, change and take from our game. The play-testing went good and we got some descriptive feedback. During the play test, some people enjoyed playing our game and some got uninterested in our game. The revision process of our game was very critical towards inventing our game. We made a lot of changes to our game. We changed the size and shape of the board, discarded of our cards we made and added small blocks into the game, changed the icons of the spaces and we added more planets to the game, and we also changed some of the rules to the game. Overall the making of this game took a lot of work and effort and I think our group succeeded in making a game people will enjoy. 
Space Travelers is the first official game that I have ever made. Including myself, I worked in a group of 3. I feel that I personally put as much work into the whole process of inventing a game as my teammates. Some of my personal contributions to this game are being open minded to new ideas for the game, making multiple game boards by cutting paper and cardboard, making game pieces such as meeples, getting materials from the “Waste Shed” for the game, making cards that were for the original version, finding time to work on improvements for the game, and just overall participating in group work and activities. I am most proud of all the hard work and teamwork that resorted to our game being a representation of something that started off as an idea and then became reality. I feel that I have the most room to improve on the game board of the game and some of the factors to the game. I feel that if I have resources that I need, I can improve the quality of our game board. Some of the factors I would add are things like low gravity airs on the board and more player interaction features like the taking resources factor.

#20ShotsForChange

For this elective term, I am taking the class Global Peace. In this class, we have been learning about  Gandhian principles such as Sarvodaya (the uplift of all), Swadeshi (local economy), Swaraj (self-rule), and Satyagraha (the power of truth). We have studied different types of violence. They are structural, cultural, and direct violence. Structural violence is injustice and exploitation that is built into a social system. Cultural violence is the prevailing attitudes and beliefs. Direct violence is a combination and the outcome of both structural and cultural violence referred to as one-to-one. Sharp's Methods are a list of more than 190 methods on non-violence actions. For this action project, we selected an issue we have noticed around our city and society, and I chose to address the issue of homelessness in Chicago.

  N.L.#20ShotsForChange.1/14/2019
N.L. #20ShotsForChange.1/14/2019

Works Cited 

“Cornerstone Community Outreach.” Cornerstone Community Outreach, 1 Jan. 2014, http://www.ccolife.org/. 

‌“Homeless Facts - The Conflict - Warriors Center.” Warriorscenter.Org, 1 Jan. 2012, http://www.warriorscenter.org/the-conflict/homeless-facts/. 

‌Zacarias, Michelle. “Chicago Residents Losing Their Home under a Major Viaduct.” People’s World, 24 Aug. 2017, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/chicago-residents-losing-their-home-under-a-major-viaduct/. 

Rokhaya Diallo: Peace Activist

For this elective term, I am taking the class Global Peace. In this class we have been learning about  Gandhian principles such as Sarvodaya (the uplift of all), Swadeshi (local economy), Swaraj (self-rule), and Satyagraha (the power of truth). We studied the different types of violence. They are structural, cultural, and direct violence. Structural violence is injustice and exploitation that is built into a social system. Cultural violence is the prevailing attitudes and beliefs. Direct violence is a combination and the outcome of both structural and cultural violence, referred to as one -to-one. In class we used a conflict iceberg and analysis tree as ways to look at conflicts differently. The conflict iceberg allowed us to view conflicts from  The conflict analysis tree allowed to view conflict from 3 levels, the conflict itself, the cause of it and the effect of it. Sharp's Methods are a list of more than 190 methods on non-violence actions. People all everywhere use these methods but might not even know it. For this action project, we had to choose an activist to learn about.

The activist I chose to study for my research paper is Rokhaya Diallo, who started the"Les Indivisibles". In conclusion, I learned a lot about how the United States' and France's society have similarities in racism, similarities in perception of minorities, and I learned about how problems aren't just in one place but global. The most important thing I learned from Rokhaya is that anyone can make a difference and be the change. This action project was not only to learn about someone new but to also reflect on who fits the characteristics of the Gandhian principles and a peace activist.

Gwyndon. Rokhaya Diallo, March 17, .2018