Wouldn't you like some Culture Candy?

In the second course of my humanities class for junior year, I'm taking a class called A Nation's Argument. This class focuses on learning about the structure of an argument and also looking back at historical arguments that were written. The first unit of this course was called 1776 because we used the Declaration of Independance as a guide to teach us about how to correctly structure a written argument. The first action project for this course gave us a chance to write our own Declaration about which class we believe should be taught at GCE. When I first heard about this project, I knew I wanted to include travel and culture, so coming up with an idea wasn’t that hard. The only challenging thing for me was trying to display my passion for those ideas onto paper, but I overcame that challenge by sitting and thinking very carefully about which words to write. It took awhile but I’m proud of how patient I was. I hope you enjoy reading my declaration below!

I would like to declare that there be a class studying the many different cultures around the world. Knowing about many cultures and learning about how different they are from one another can teach people to accept differences, which would create a positive change in how some people see each other. There is a lot of unnecessary hatred in the world today, and most of it is because people can’t accept their differences.

The name of this course would be Culture Candy because I’m hoping people see this class as a treat. It would be a humanities course offered to the seniors during the spring term. I also want to include an aspect of traveling in this course, but to be more realistic, students would only be traveling around the city to get closer to the cultures we study. Students would really get the chance to explore and realize how many different ethnicities, races, etc have taken root in Chicago.It would be perfect for the spring term because it’s warmer outside, which makes traveling by public transportation both quicker and less painful. The guiding question is: “How will you use culture to better connect with people?”

Many people still do not understand other cultures and sometimes not even their own, and when they don’t understand, some are quick to judge. That makes it hard for many people to accept cultures other than their own. That is the one thing I want to get rid of. Once you actually have knowledge about another culture, you finally understand. Culture Candy would look into the history of some cultures and see how they developed into how they are now. 

I think this would be great for the seniors because it’s only going to be a few months before they go to college, and in college you meet many people coming from diverse cultures. There would be more cultural knowledge sticking with them. It would also work great for freshman. They’re going to be going to many different communities throughout their GCE career, so it would be cool if they had some background knowledge about some of those neighborhoods. It would also be a chance for them to learn their way around. Overall, my desired outcome would be that students come out of this class with an open mind, and instead of judging other cultures, they learn to accept them.  

To include the traveling part more, there would be 2 FE’s a week, traveling to cultural neighborhoods around Chicago such as, Chinatown, Greektown, Pilsen,etc. This would be a great chance for students to not only better connect with the cultures being studied, but to also learn their way around the diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. A teacher will accompany the students on 1 FE during that week, setting goals that need to be reached while exploring. The 2nd FE will be up to the students when it comes to figuring out what they want to do, but a teacher would still be there to supervise. 

I would definitely reach out to My Block, My Hood, My City, an organization that also focuses on the same goal as I do when it comes to exploring the city. I’d probably want to reach out to the Chamber of Commerce from each neighborhood that we visit to get some good history and background. Usually neighborhoods that are focused on one specific culture have a museum to celebrate that culture, so I’d like to partner with these institutions, as well. They can have hidden gems that are important to that culture's and community’s history. Going to libraries would also be helpful when it comes to research, because sometimes books can give you information that the internet can not offer. The Chicago Cultural Alliance would also be a great learning experience for students because they also focus on accepting cultural differences from first voice perspectives. The Chicago Cultural Center would also be a great place to partner with because of the art that exemplifies the culture of Chicago.   

P1: When you don’t understand a culture, it’s easy to judge.

P2: Once you understand, you’re prone to stop judging.

P3: Once you explore and do fun things to better connect, it’ll be easy to accept.

C: Culture Candy would be a fun class to teach and educate students on those topics.

RD. Syllogism diagram. 2016

I declare that there be a class that promotes traveling and teaches how to accept the many different cultures. This would give students an open mind and teach them to not be afraid to reach out to a different surrounding, along with getting to know other people, even if they are different from them. Imagine all the diverse people you’ll meet, along with amazing places you’ll go!

Lights, Camera, Action!

For the second STEAM course of my junior year, I'm taking a class called Light, Sound and Time. This course is giving us a chance to explore and learn how to see, hear and measure time. The first unit was focused on light and answering questions like how can we measure it? How fast does it go? And even going over what the real definition of light is. During this unit I learned that light can be both a particle and wave, depending on the situation. I also learned that light can bend, also known as refraction. For the action project, the class was assigned to build our own pinhole cameras and capture an image with it. The most challenging part for me was including the math with the project, but with the help of the teacher and some classmates, I was able to better understand it. I'm proud of how I stayed on task, and having my camera ready for the day we were going to use them.


A pinhole camera is a light-proof box without a traditional lens, but with a pinhole instead. Once you open the shutter, it's allowing light to be transferred to the photosensitive paper inside. It's important that the inside of the box is completely black, that way you won't get any light reflections. The black light does not reflect but absorbs most of it. This wouldn't be an example of refraction because the light isn't going from one medium to another. Refraction is the bending of light as it travels through different mediums.This would be an example of light equals energy because the energy (light) is letting the particles create an image with the chemicals on the photo paper. That would also be an example of particle vs wave. A lot of light waves are coming through the pinhole, so that would be an example of one part of the electromagnetic spectrum.


The object that I'm going to photograph is 25 cm tall. The height from the bottom of my camera to the pinhole is 12 cm and it's 13 cm across from the lens to the photopaper. Below, I have a drawing depicting what it would be like if I created similar triangles with those numbers, along with my calculations. I also included some pics of my camera.

RD.Calculations (2016)

RD. Pinhole camera (2016)

When we finally went to a dark room to test out our cameras, I was actually shocked with what I got. A lot of people that tested out their cameras before me, didn't really have anything show up on their photopaper, so I was a bit worried. When I finally tested it out, my shutter speed was 4 minutes. Once I went to develop it, I saw an image emerging but all I got was a checkered background. Next time I think I would place my camera a bit closer to the object I want to capture in order to actually get a full image.

RD. Pinhole camera result. (2016)

The picture below shows how the object photographed actually comes out backwards inside the camera.

Mermaids.

In the digital media class, we were assigned to post about any topic we wanted to. This will help the teacher understand whether or not we understand the correct format of blog posting. I decided to blog about mermaids because they have always been really interesting and cool to me.

Waterhouse,William John. The Mermaid, 1901.