Research Paper(Comida Con Causa)
This project was about immersing ourselves in Latin American culture. In Spanish class, we cooked authentic recipes from our Latin American country. And in Humanities, we researched the background of this country. We also researched the food we made, food injustice, and how farming influence our designated Latin American country. All of our research revolved around the overlying question, How do poor people historically inhabit rich lands?
I wrote a research paper on the history of Chile. I focused on women's influence in Chile's politics overtime. With an emphasis on the Allende presidency and the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. I found amazing articles and books about this research topic and delved deep into early feminism in Chile. The book, Radical Women in South America, was so useful and amazing! I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested. The book had everything that I was looking for and gave me all the information I needed to know. It was so rich with knowledge and I learned so much from every single page that I read. I also read an article from The New York Times that also gave me really rich information on what I was looking into. This article did a great job of uncovering the truth about the United States involvement in the coup of Salvador Allende. It seriously exposes people and it is so interesting and almost makes you feel dirty to read it. Such a cool article and I think that it is amazing that journalists in this country aren't silenced and are allowed to publish works like these. This article is linked to the button on the right. I went through many drafts of my research paper and it came out to be work that I am able to be so proud of and it makes me feel really accomplished to have written a professional research paper. I am most proud of my conclusion paragraph because it is very effective and states my thoughts really well. Throughout this project, I mastered the creation of thesis statements because I revised mine so many times to be as purposeful as possible. If I were to do this project again, I would definitely work on time management. Producing a research paper at that quality takes a lot of time and you have to be laser-focused. This was really difficult for me. A really awesome moment during this project was when I finally turned in my final paper and felt relief and joy. I would be crazy to not to be nervous about my grade after turning it in because of how much work went into it. |
Planter Box
Our class built planter boxes this semester to raise food injustice awareness and grow food for the City Heights community. This was a really beneficial, charitable, and prosperous project because not only did I get so much out of it, but other people were able to benefit from our class' work. This was also a very hands on project which is what High Tech High is all about, and it was very fun to get our hands dirty.
My planter box drastically improved overtime because of the critiques we received and the standard my group held ourselves to. We really wanted to produce professional and fine/polished work. A lot of our critique was to scrap our idea and not make a fork shape because it would be too difficult to build. I started believing it by then, but my group kept with the idea and because of that perseverance, we have an amazing final product that is unique and professional. I think it will really stand out at the City Heights location, Fair @ 44. I am most proud of myself for using the big table saw. This was really scary and when I first saw it(get it, "saw" it, haha), I promised myself I would not use it. And then I found out there is a participation grade for the building process and part of it was to exhibit ourselves going out of our comfort zone. So naturally, I stepped right up there and used the damn thing! It was exhilarating, and I ended up really liking it so I continued to cut the rest of the wood for my group. My group collaborated really effectively on this project because we all were willing to put in the work. Every one of us was out there working. Although not all of us could be out there at the same time to build on it together, we all put in work to ensure it would be finished by the deadline. We all pushed our weight and I think we all had a lot of fun doing it! This project helped me gain perspective on building and word-working. This was a great immersive experience because we got hands-on very quickly. This helped me learn about the world because doing hands-on projects like these give you so much more knowledge and perspective than learning in a traditional way from a textbook. It's a way of being cultured in a sense, as well as simply gaining experience in such a unique way that I think benefits you and provides you with more scholarly perspective. I think that I mastered collaboration on this project because my group persevered no matter what obstacles came our way and we functioned so well as a unit. I obviously also learned a lot of hard skills within word-working which might come in handy on my next house-building trip to Mexico! The soft skills that were developed during this project include going out of my comfort zone and not only talking, but working with new people. As in, brand new people that I really haven't had any experience with in the past. It was really cool to work with totally new people and see what it is like to "work with strangers" which you might have to do in a job setting. And, it was a total success because we worked awesome together I think! If I were to do this project again, I might change the time frame of it because my group's planter box required a lot of work because of it's unique shape and build process. I think we could have succeeded more and added graphics to the wood if we had more time and used our time more wisely because we had to make a lot of material runs to Ace hardware because we weren't totally prepared when we got to a new step. A key moment in this project was definitely when I first used that table saw as i mentioned before, it was just such an exhilarating feeling. As well as such a proud moment for me because I put myself out there and tried something new and refused to let fear stop me or push me away from my project goal. That was a big moment for me because it showed me that I can conquer my fears and I can do things that I may think are impossible for me, and it is so rewarding to feel the sense of pride that you do after stepping out of your comfort zone for that single moment and how much of a lasting impact that has on you. |
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Food Justice Project/Plaque
This project focused on a variety of food injustice issues around the globe. Initially, we learned about food waste, factory farming and the mistreatment of animals, food insecurity, food safety, immigrant farming, and poverty which in turn leads to the issue of "world hunger". I learned that food insecurity and hunger is only a symptom of a much bigger problem. And that problem is poverty. I focused on the food safety and insecurity in prisons and detention centers. This was a really big issue in my mind and that is why it appealed so much to me to be my main research and social awareness topic. In my research, I got really deep into the constitution and the specifics behind "cruel and unusual punishment". I learned so much during this project and it connected very deeply to our planter box project because the plaque we displayed on the planter box was made to raise awareness about food safety and insecurity in U.S. prisons. My group interviewed the founder of an amazing organization that combats food insecurity in San Diego, called 'Kitchens for Good'. This interview was so enlightening and so awesome to hear what the organization does for community members all over the spectrum of issues they might be dealing with. They do an amazing job combating so many social issues in San Diego all at the same time.
I found many sources that carried me through this project and unlimited my understanding of the issue and through this, it allowed me to get very passionate about the project and fired up to raise awareness about the issue. Those articles themselves were awareness campaigning and in turn, that inspired me and my group which lead to more social awareness and allowed for those statistics to be displayed on our plaque that is going to be looked at everyday. I am really proud of this. My favorite article/source was from the Atlantic and this is the text that got me inspired in the first place because it was the first thing I had ever read about the topic. The author did a great job of incorporating everyday things like shows/tv(Orange is the New Black) to allow the reader to relate which is what really turned me on to the article. I have this article linked below. Our plaque went through many stages. The first draft I had quickly jotted down on paper with all of the components that I wanted included on it. I think I had the ideas all in my head for the plaque, so I would say I took the creative lead on this but the execution of was due to a collaboration with my group mate. We got a lot of critique on the plaque over the few weeks we had been working on it and a lot of things got scrapped and we had to size down the amount of information that I had initially wanted to include on it because it ended up looking cluttered time and time again so that was the most frequent feedback we got from our teachers and peers. I am really happy with the way it turned out and it very clearly gets the point across. I think it looks really nice and I'd say my favorite component on the plaque is the quote from the found of 'Kitchens for Good'. It also highlights and promotes their organization very well so hopefully people are inspired to get in touch or get involved with them.
I am most proud of the initial research I did on the topic because this is what got me so invested and involved in the first place. I even did extra research in my own time because the project just inspired me so much. I think that it is amazing that I go to a school where the project that I am assigned in class is so interesting and inspiring that I want to use my free time to continue learning about it. That is what is so unique about High Tech High and I'm super grateful that I get to go here otherwise I would have never had the opportunity to do this project or even thought about these food injustices that get me so fired up! I collaborated very effectively on this project because this plaque required a lot of team effort and a lot of eyes to be on it to ensure it was clean and professional enough to be displayed in a public area for a long period of time. This forced me and my group mate to sit down and talk abut each component on the plaque and make sure it was perfect because this had summarize all of our learning and had to do so professionally and very briefly. This project probably gave me the most world view and perspective because of how empowering the basis of the project was. We watched videos about very difficult and sad things in the food industry along with poverty and hunger. The statistics are staggering and this got people in my class talking and that is what made the project so humbling and allowed for our small minds to put things on a worldly scale. I think this project was a great way to gain social awareness. Throughout this project, the key components of mastery for me were research and the use of the computer program, Illustrator. This project also allowed me to work on social skills within working with a new group and new people because this was the same group as the planter box project(obviously, because our plaque went onto our planter box). If I were to do this project again, I think the class, as a whole, should have focused more on the research component in class because there wasn't much of that nor assignments from the teacher asking us to immerse ourselves in our research topic and then make a more effective plaque because of the more extensive research we might have done. I think that a lot of our class time was used for research for our research papers and not the food injustice issues which might have been more important to me to research as a class assignment. Although I am very happy with my plaque, I am not sure that other groups have the same research to back up their plaques and the best final product because the content could be improved and furthered. A key moment in this project for me was definitely the interview we did with Chuck Samuelson, the founder of 'Kitchens for Good'. I got so much rich information from this and I believe that this is really the best way to learn because you are going straight to the source and getting the absolute best information. This was also a very mature and coming-of-age moment because I felt like this was a very grown-up interview and an ultimate point of growth for myself this year. He had so many great things to say that exponentially benefited our project and I would not trade that experience for any other because it was a perfect moment and example of scholarly work. |