It's My God Given Right

For my first Action Project of the course “A Nations Argument”, we took a deep dive into the history of America's declaration of independence and the claims made within it. We challenged ourselves to decide if those words in the declaration were upheld today. Later on, we looked at other countries' declarations to see how people gain what they want. I saw a tendency for there being a war to get independence in most cases. Yesterday we visited Alderman Walter Burnett of the 27th ward and there we discussed his job and what his daily tasks are. We learned about his background and reasoning for being an Alderman also some fun facts about politics. Alderman Burnett stated that “politics are like a relationship and there’s always a mutual compromise.”Getting back to the course we were tasked to look into declaring independence from our on made up independent study of our choosing. By this creating an argument that we think is worth fighting for or rather declaring it. 

Topic: Music

Have you ever heard of a saying music to my ears or move to the rhythm? Well, hold your horses you were inspired by music bud. Music is everything it soothes and then all of a sudden takes over, Music is life. It is necessary that I deserve to be able to learn about music and how it empowers people on this planet. I understand that life is all about learning from mistakes and understanding that things don't always go your way. At least that's what elders tell me what it feels like every day. But I should learn about something that has been giving people joy for ages and still does today. This Declaration will help me understand why humans enjoy the nature of rhythm. Is it from our mothers’ heartbeat at birth or is it from a flame within that we cant see?

Purpose of School and Learning: 
The purpose of school is to supply the average young scholar knowledge that they can use in the future for their career or their ordinary day job. Also, provides them some type of figure to help contribute to society. If I'm undoubtedly true I feel the school is a waste of time and takes hours of my life that I can't get back. The purpose of learning, in my opinion, is to use what we learn and share it with others and use it to our advantage. Learning also makes us unique that everyone knows a little more than you do. When you learn something new it can affect you and your future.

Unalienable Rights:
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness/ I have the right to be a creative music Goddess and share with my peers.

• I have the right to be alive and breathing
• I have the right to Liberty, meaning my freedom of choice without any restriction by any means necessary
• I have the right to create my own happiness, whether that be playing video games, drawing, playing basketball or expressing emotions and thoughts through music
• I have the right to play music
• I have the right to discover more and reimage what music actually is

Guiding Question: 

How can music bring others together from totally different backgrounds? How will this affect the world?

I will pursue this study by examining the people before me in the world from different heritages and cultures. Beginning with experimenting with different instruments and sounds during this study. I also will track progression and see through my data how these different things make people feel and how it makes people more sociable. My objectives and outcome out of this study are to learn what makes music so powerful to influence and to see if branching this theory turns out to make some bound.

What is an argument: 

I’m arguing that maybe hate and fear in our world conquer people’s minds and makes them distant from one another. Things such as labels, stereotypes, and racism make up all today. But if we connect more this is destined to change. Roles in our society are as they are because of social systems put in place by people like me and you. I know that music impacts people’s lives daily. In fact, you’re probably listening to music now or was a few minutes ago. So if I could do something to change these low standards of life that we set for ourself it would be amazing.

Syllogism: 
P1- Music has been around since about 40,000 years ago
P2- Music effects peoples spirits
P3- Music gathers attention like a drug and brings out crowds of people
P4- Music makes people feel better when sad
Conclusion- I have the right to be able to study music for positive purposes for the change of our world

P1- I enjoy playing the guitar from time to time

P2- All humans enjoy music
Conclusion- Lets all rock out on Guitar Hero! :)

Historical Revolution/context:

Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in our brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. This steams for the day you are born. Music has also been linked to dopamine release found in the late 90s, involved in regulating mood and craving behavior. Music also seems to make us feel good and connect with others. The oldest discovered instrument was a flute made from a bone of an animal. The flute dated back to almost 40,000 years ago. During human, migration music played a major role in entertainment and hope to thrive to get going. Even looking into Greek mythological music played an integral role in ancient Greek society. With this, views and thoughts were changed in the process. African tribe the Mandinke what is now Mali invented the djembe drum invented in the 12th Century. This sparked a tradition for many many years of rhythm and love of people coming together and dancing.

Resource list for this Independent Study
People-Ralph Haynes, Omar Cheng, Gregg Parker, Adam Cohen, Quanzina Haynes, Deborah Moon

Musical Instruments
Guitars, Pianos, Drums, Brass, Woodwind, Percussions( maracas, tambourines, etc)

Books
The Emotional Power of Music
Music Education for Social Change

Museum

Chicago History Museum

My Official Declaration
Music is a necessity to life and to live for any creature on this planet. Music comes from the water as it ripples, it comes from the wind blowing off the trees and the birds chirping in the morning. Music is powerful and I shall the right to use my talents to bring people together.

Citations
Music and the Brain: What Happens When You're Listening to Music. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/your-brain-on-music/

Retrieved from https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grmu/hd_grmu.htm

Using Light To Our Advantage

In my STEAM course Light, Sound, and Time we went over light and how it affects our everyday life. We learn about the human eye, time, light rays and the power of the sun. The course begins by reading a book of our choosing and after we read and we share a lesson plan with our class. This engaged classmates and challenged one another to think deeper. We learned about the properties of light and how it acts both as a wave and a particle. Later, we spent time discovering the electromagnetic spectrum and experimented with the visible light spectrum. We did this by using a prism and focusing light at the center of it. During our short course, we noticed how similar the human eye and cameras are. So after experimenting with the idea our teacher gave us, the assignment to design our Pinhole Camera, we actually went on an FE to a dark room at Truman College. There, we got our pictures processed in a dark room and learned the thorough process of making an original picture. We had to take our light-sensitive paper from the box and place it in 3 chemicals. First, we put in developer, fixer, and stopper. After we washed the picture, we dried it and took it home. Below are images of my Pinhole Camera that I made out of a tea box.

JNL.2020

JNL.2020

JNL.2020

JNL.2020

Step by step process of building it

• Collected materials for the camera, these included (Cardboard box, Tape, Black paint, Aluminum can
• Cut out a tiny hole in the middle( I used a pen for this)
• Paint the entire box black. Either tape or paint
• Cut out a square piece from the aluminum can; Keep it as flat as possible
• Make pinhole by using a thumbtack and putting it through the aluminum
• Tape your aluminum onto the very small precise hole
• To make a shutter you can cut out a square piece of cardboard and tape over the hole
• Use a closet as a darkroom to add your light-sensitive paper with the glossy side up with tape on the bottom
• Close your shutter and make sure no light gets in 
• Now find something to capture and open the shutter for approximately 5 minutes

JNL- Math Calculations 2020

The first photo that I took on my pinhole camera developed, but looked more like a ghost than my object. At first, my object was a water bottle, but after going to the darkroom I changed my object to a tree. I think my camera was open for too long and had more exposure than I needed. At Truman, our guest generously helped us to make sure we didn't leave empty-handed. So we took at least three runs to capture some images, either by adjusting the amount of time we exposed our camera to light or to check if any light was getting through. I enjoyed learning about the process I thought it was pretty neat. A term that was brought up in our class was refraction. Refraction is the phenomenon of light and radio waves being deflected in passing obliquely through the interface between one medium and another or through a medium of varying density. It can change at different speeds and focus on certain parts of the eyes.

JNL 2020- Picture I took of a tree outside of Truman College

My Pinhole camera captured enough light through the shutter. The light captured flashes and reflects what I'm aiming at onto the light-sensitive paper. We painted our inner box black because white reflects and black absorbs. If it was white, there wouldn’t be a clear image of the photo I took. The black inside won't let any light through, so when you open the shutter a certain amount of light will come in and then close back up. The light that shines through acts as a wave, while also behaving like a particle because the light is made up of photons that can act like particles. 

To wrap things up, I think that this action project was pretty beneficial to learning more about light. We applied simple but complex lessons in class. Directly, to our pinhole cameras, it related to what we learned, which was a plus. I think to go forward another FE would be great and more experiments to get us more engaged. Learning about light this course was pretty unique and interesting. 

Cooking Part 2

 Prompts of week 2 of PIE term

--The mission or purpose of the organization or individual you are working with

The purpose of the PIE experience that I'm doing with Chef Mike is to learn the basic cooking skills and protocols to handle in the kitchen. Also to learn how to prepare a meal for yourself and other people. I feel that over these 2 weeks I have learned so much that I can use later in the future. This is actually more experience that I can put on my resume.

--How you are contributing to the achievement of that mission, no matter how big or small your role

I am contributing to our mission in the course by always asking questions and trying my best to stay on task. Cooking to me is very fun and interesting it involves lots of patience though. In the kitchen here at school it is very small so communication is key to be organized and on track. My role is to clean as needed, cutting and mixing ingredients together. Also my role is to share my feedback on how something taste.


--Your biggest takeaways from the PIE so far

My biggest take away from this PIE so far is to always taste before serving any and all food because you don't want people to roast your cooking skills. I learned to check on food less and just allow the foods to cook. Also that sometimes you gotta be open to trying new things even if you don't want to.


--How this experience will help you achieve the next step in your college or career path.

This experience has not helped me in my next step to college or my career path but has given me insight on how the cooking industry would be. College is still up for discussion for me because I want to do more than one thing in my life I wanna be that guy that works as everything.

Cooking Part 1

What is one unexpected thing you learned/experienced this week?

How did Week 1 work toward the goals/learning objectives you created during PIE Prep?


Over the first week of my PIE, I was introduced to basic culinary skills. One expected thing was doing work I knew it was busy. One unexpected thing that I learned was that cooking takes a bunch of time and you need patience. I experienced making my own seasons and recipes. The first week worked toward my goals of communication because I feel like I'm more comfortable sharing my opinion. I'm hoping to learn how to cut better and my measurements.

What Can Art Do?

For my course Rhetoric, I was challenged with the task to use art to express an issue.

This course has gone on for about 1 month and we looked at a few examples of how powerful art came to influence people. Going back in time colonists in the 13 colonies used images of all sorts to bring others together to revolt against Great Britain. They were successful in conveying a message to give people to interpret in there own ways. This plays a role in our world today a lot in protest against certain agendas. During one of our FEs, we actually visited a monument made of clay for Dr. MLK showing how segregation was a problem but some didn’t wanna face it. The course was made basically to get what you want no matter bad or good. The outcome is what we focus on. So without further ado, I present my art piece.

J.L 2019

Artist Statement
My name J.L, and in this art piece I decided to make this on an experience that affected me. So I picked racial profiling. I chose this topic because it's something that happens to me and family members often by police officers. In the artwork, I decided to go simple so I can better explain it. The scenery takes place on the south side of Chicago at sunset. There’s a foreground of apartments, small businesses, and liquor stores. The main focus is a police car racing down a one-way street were two black kids happen to be crossing while passing a ball. This is conveying how the system is nonfunctional and why it needs to change. I also added a caption on the side of the car saying, "see them". Mostly because that's their reaction seeing a black male. Then in my imagination by portraying a revolt against the police I adding a monster truck to run over the police car. This in my mind demonstrates a strike back against it. I wanted to show something.

I believe that by looking at this people will shake their heads for a sec like dang this still going on. People that are black should care the most because this is a tactic used to keep us down and under self-conscious mind control. The power over my image reflects sadness, rage, and anger. Racially profiling has always been a problem though it occurs every day, in cities and towns across the country, when law enforcement and private security target people of color for humiliating and often frightening detentions, interrogations, and searches without evidence of criminal activity and based on perceived race. This is not only affecting blacks but many other minority groups as well. Most of the time in stop and search about 85 percent of the time people don’t have anything. Could you imagine, just to be stopped searched and harassed based on an assumption that society makes of your ethnic group? Crazy right. I myself have been stopped and searched 12 times this entire year. It takes a toll on me mentally and sometimes I don't even go outside to prevent any altercations.

For my art piece, I chose to draw on a big thick piece of a poster so I could color and express myself the way I felt best. Most of my materials included a drawing pencil, markers, and color pencils. This piece was rushed, I didn't take my time to add details. Art takes time to develop it’s a process that I have to learn to be more patient. My message is getting across by displaying younger kids and stepping into their shoes for a moment in time feeling that uncertainty of what's gonna happen next. I mostly tried to portray emotions in this by adding children because they are so fragile and innocent. Ethos was on the top of my list Logos came in next by showing how racial profiling should stop because it is wrong. My artwork for this project would be effective if it was posted around Chicago near schools and police stations. I feel like the more eyes and attention on a particular subject the more things get done. Also if the youth can see something that impacts everyone they will do things to make a change because they are the future.

Cited Sources

Natarajan, R. (2019, March 1). Racial profiling has destroyed public trust in police. Cops are exploiting our weak laws against it. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/15/racial-profiling-has-destroyed-public-trust-in-police-cops-are-exploiting-our-weak-laws-against-it/.

Yan, H. (2018, May 11). This is why everyday racial profiling is so dangerous. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/11/us/everyday-racial-profiling-consequences-trnd/index.html.

Rusty Supreme: Bike Design

Over the course of three weeks in my class Design and Engineering, we have been learning all about bikes and why they are important for people all over the world. We went to two bike shops, Working Bikes, and Earth Rider. There I discovered that in some countries bikes are a necessity and without them, people couldn't survive or make money. This term itself went pretty fast but I was able to obtain some knowledge. We found out that designing a bike is a difficult challenge. We first looked at examples of how to sketch ideas and then catered towards an audience for the bike. Random groups were chosen and we were given a person to design a bike based to fit them. The process was quite a struggle but we got through it. Here's a slideshow below with some further background info.

Persona: A 12-year-old boy from a small town rides his bike to and from school. His commute isn't that
far. The only problems he faces is riding down narrow streets and carrying his bike up and downstairs.
Since he lives in a populated tourist attraction he worries about people doing things to his bike.

Need: For the average rider to and from school. Lightweight but strong going to support rider on a rough surface.

Benefit: Easy access transporting, Less risk of vandalism, easy carrying up and down the stairs, Inward handlebars so he won't bump anybody.

Reason to believe: The process to design the bike took over a month and concluded many trial and error experiments. We did a lot of research and made adjustments based on personal fits

In conclusion, the Rusty Supreme design sparked off the idea that it already looked like a piece of scrap. The process that went into designing the bike was pretty challenging since I was paired with someone who had completely different views. Things that ultimately went well was our brainstorming of ideas and are concentration on what would work and what wouldn't. I feel this project was rushed and we needed a bit more time. From the project, I would take away that communication is important without it you are in trouble.

Hope Is Still Here

“Pinterest Climate Change 2019.” Pinterest.com

For our second unit of Rhetoric here at GCE, we focused on the question, how can we use rhetoric to change the status quo? We had a few guests come in that have challenged or had even altered the status quo as of today. Ugo Okere, 22 year old ran for Alderman and nearly came close to win but fell short in the run. His views matched the people and he was very passionate in his words. Also, Troy LaRaviere, the president of the Chicago Principal's Union came in and discussed his views on how things can change with one person’s action. He was a principal at a Chicago school and saw the impact on the future of society, and he wanted to change the result. He wrote an Op-Ed that made major headlines drastically changing his school’s system. I felt that I didn’t learn as much as I thought it was just things I herd already rephrased differently. Overall hearing others talk about change most definitely change my thought process and make me begin to wonder. What do I want to change?

My Op-Ed
Over many years and recently there has always been this stigma on climate change. Is it real? Oh no, that’s fake something made up by uneducated people. This drastic yet inevitable issue that we are facing is serious and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. The forces of mother nature are showing its power more frequently than usual, from hurricanes off the coast to catastrophic flooding.

You may be wondering why should I listen to this teenager from God knows where. Well, I’m here to tell you that I will most likely have to deal with the consequences that have been caused by major corporations and ordinary people. You reading this, on the other hand, will be of old if not dead. Believe when I say this there might not be a future for this place we call Earth if things continue.

The other day I was reading this article that talked about how doing simple things won’t change the climate. How constantly repeating yourself won’t change anything. This sparked an idea.... umm, it would make a difference if everyone would do something rather than just talk about it. But by making noise on an issue you get a lot of attention which can turn into action.

One person, in particular, Greta Thunberg has literally taken the world by storm. A 16-year-old Swedish teenage environmental activist caused a lot of controversy over her speech at the UN. “ People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” This quote stood out to the adults there more than the facts of the global temperature rising. Shocking yes indeed.

I feel that as a country we have failed to understand how our actions result in the future. Nasa has recently uploaded an article containing jaw-dropping info.” limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.” Hearing the facts from scientists tells people that it’s ok to do nothing because the task of reversing climate change is near impossible. Although these heavy-hitting heartbreaking words may be somewhat true it’s not too late to try.

In Chicago not too long ago, there was a strike for the climate that brought thousands of young people together just to show some hope. The strike on the other hand probably tripled the amount of Co2 emissions in one day from such a large gathering though. Imagine how my generation may feel, that their future children won’t have a pleasant life because of your actions of today. Picture droughts all over. Picture crops not being able to grow. Picture all the animals that we know and love no longer. Ask yourself do you want that on you?

Ways that we can try and change this is by taking action. It may sound like pie-in-the-sky but try walking to places, cycling, or using public transportation. This can somewhat help decrease carbon emissions. Also, you can reduce your waste and recycle. It makes no sense to disagree with the facts and just rather face them. For every argument there is about this time is being wasted. I believe that if everyone is on board then we can change the future. But only if everyone comes together.

So let’s get on track and save our home today people it’s now or never.

Addendum 

In my Op-Ed, I tried using pathos as my rhetorical appeal. I used pathos because I felt like I needed to reach the audience by making them feel guilty and to think about their children's futures in order to get through to people. I also used Logos by providing facts and Ethos on explaining why they should listen to me.

I used Metaphors, Alterations, Similes.