This was by far my favorite project that I've done all year. Not only was this my favorite project of the year but one of the most stressful. When doing a project like this there are gonna be many major glows and grows and I had just a few.

My first blog post was very exciting to write but I was also nervous about say the same thing over and over again. When doing the research I had to look at different accredited resources that gave me great information. The problem I had with this is that most of the websites said the same thing over and over again. So it took a lot of research for me to get to 500 words in that blog post. I wish I could go back and go more into detail about different types of childhood cancer and which ones are curable and not curable.

My blog post number two was definitely the most exciting. My interview was one of the best things I've done so far in my life. I was finally able to show someone that they weren't forgotten about by the teenage community. When going into this interview I thought it would be very sad, but it turned out to be a really good teenage conversation. The person I interviewed was very down to earth and funny. This interview showed met that life is too short to walk around sad and mopey and to live each and every day like it's your last.

For my research, I wish I had found sources outside of my school, to add more information to my survey results. I also could have gotten adults to fill out my survey, because I mainly got students from the school to fill it out. I want to know to whether certain individuals reacted in a way that was different from doing nothing. Were there any physical or verbal fights, because one was simply labeled?  I only want to know that, because in the survey, I just asked how they felt, but now I want to know whether they reacted out of those feelings they had.

For my original research, I did I survey and sent it out to the girls in the school. The sad part about it is the fact that not many people took it, and ever since I added a question, some people retake it. If I were to it again, I would first make sure I have a draft of the survey, before I send it out to people. The good thing is that people took it, otherwise I would have nothing for my research.

Something I wish I would have been able to do is having actually been able to do an interview with a victim though there was, and still is, a very slight chance that could be possible. I think that if I was to be able to do this, I would of found a lot of more personal information that would of been very interesting to my audience. So what I do want to know is basically just the other side of the story. The more detailed, more visual side. But I do think that what I accomplished with interviewing an expert on helping victims, was a great addition to my findings. This gave me a sense of what goes on from the personal researcher’s point of view and I believe that was what made my argument strong.

I think my overall performance was pretty great. With the resources I had and time frame, I feel that I did well with dealing with this Sex Trafficking issue. If I had to change this, like I said before I would see if I could actually meet a victim or listen in on a conversation of an expert with the victim because of the different type of information I would receive.

My audience seemed to have a positive response towards my project and seemed to have learned a lot from it and fairly enjoyed reading about it in my series of blog posts. I will not be able to know this information, but I hope that the people who stop to read my stickers actually visit the website that is being promoted and inform themselves on the issue going on around them. I also hope that they share the information with more people so that more of the community are aware of the situation.

Over the course of this past month or so I have done a lot of research, and a lot of hard work trying to make the best You and the World project that I could. I have gone through the process of researching my topic on the internet, just trying to scrape the surface, I went through several interviews, in attempt to get a better understanding of my topic, and finally, got involved with the community, just trying to make some sort of difference in this vast issue. Overall I think that I did a pretty good job make some headway my topic, but in the end, I don’t think anything I could have done would have made much of a difference because the issue with immigration is much larger than it may appear, and it takes more than a ninth grader doing an English project to make a significant difference. However, this could send me in a new direction that can put me into opportunities that will allow me to make the change that needs to be made.

The research process was tougher than I had anticipated it to be. I kept being led in different directions, and kept digging deeper and deeper into this somewhat endless topic, and I think that there was still so much more to uncover. First off, I could have researched more into the immigration process itself, and added more about how these illegal immigrants live while knowing they are hiding behind the law. I would like to have learned more about what happens when someone is being threatened with deportation, and how they might handle the situation.

When going through the original research process I would have liked to get more perspectives from other people, and find out more first hand information from people who immigrated to the United States. Even though the interviews that I conducted went well, I would have liked to know more, and know what other people think about the issue because this is so broad and there are so many opinions that go along with it.

Finally in my agent of change portion of the project I felt like I could have done so much more, even though I know I couldn’t. The hardest part was trying to find an organization that would let me get involved, and to also find an organization that let me do something impact worthy. I feel that impact that I made was somewhat insignificant, though it might have had an impact on someone else, I didn’t feel like I did something great. I looked for an opportunity that would allow me to learn more about my issue, and help change the circumstances in some way, and I just feel that I didn’t quite complete it.

Glows and Grows

For my research portion of the you and the world project I researched the statistics of how many injuries per year does technology affect people. Some glows that I found were I found more research than I thought I would. Except that most of it was from two or more years ago. I wanted to learn more about if people are trying to find away to decrease the amount of technology being used.

For the original research portion of my you and the world pI did a field observation on a few of my friends. Over the period of an hour I took a few pictures of them and in each picture atleast one person was using technology. I thought it worked out well. I just wished I could've expanded my research and observated a larger group of people. The good thing about doing the field observation was my prediction was correct, during the whole hour everyone was using a form of technology.

Finally for the Agent of Change piece of the you and the world project I made a contest that whoever can go two days during school without using their phone would win. I don't think I made the impact I wanted to. After that I never really changed much. The real change occurred during the contest itself because Most people went out of their way to participate in my project which went well. Some of the glows were I finally had a winner and two of the contestants wouldn't use their phones at all while others lost almost within 5 minutes. That helped me a lot when it came to writing my blog post because I was able to explain the differences in what happened during my project/ contest. I am glad to have done this project in the end, it turned out to be successful!

Looking back at this project I would like to say I am overall pleased with what I accomplished. This was an amazing project to do because I focused on what I was very passionate about. This has helped me think outside of the schools and explore issues that are happening in the world and our society.

For the Research Part, I wish I would have found more statistics, primarily in 2015 instead of 2014. I know it was just a year ago, but so much has happened within 2015 and I wish that I would have been able to capture that data. Some things I want to discover through my project on  gun violence in Philadelphia was to find out more about was how many of the families are dealing with the lost of a loved one because of this brutal action. I think that would have taken my project over the top and made the research very interesting.

The Original Research actually went well. I think I had enough people to take my survey to make a point.  Although I wish I found more information, I think I could have done an interview instead of a survey. It would have been great  to know what  a police officer or a family member who had a loved one shot or die because of gun violence felt, and how they cope with it knowing that this violent act is still taking place in our world.  But overall, I am pleased with my survey and happy that it went the way I wanted it to.

I had the impact that I was hoping for in my Agent of Change piece. A lot of people have been noticing the posters around the school, and I actually seen people taking the time out to read them and that is something I was hoping for. I think that having them around the school is something that can also impact other youth of what is going on in Philadelphia and that we need to support the movement for it to stop.

With closing, I would like to say thank you to Ms. Giknis for having everything planned accordingly and the project flowed with all of the due dates. Also for letting everyone do what they wanted to do and even giving extensions when needed so we can do what we really wanted to, and be passionate about it. I think that this will make me do more outside of this project maybe doing things in my local community to have more people aware of this situation. I may start by reaching out to the families who have suffered from the tragedy that gun violence brings, maybe by giving out care packages so they know I care.  This project was by far the best and I hope throughout my life I will have more opportunities to do things like the You and The World Project.

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/abuse_neglect/

I am choosing animal abuse because there are a lot of people around the world abusing animals. There are too many people using animals to take advantage of them just because they may make one small mistake. Some people would make up an excuse saying that they would hit their pet just because they were not listening to their owner. Also thousands of animals would be abused each day just because they were with the wrong owner. The most abused animal is the pitbull. This one pitbull, she was a girl and she was homeless until one night a stranger had came up to her in an alleyway and tied a wire very tight around her mouth. Her nose had to be surgically removed. It is really sad that humans would be so cruel to hurt or attack a sensitive animal like this.

Now wouldn't you like to see a dog happy, not sad? Why would anyone want hurt a poor little puppy or kitten?  Some people say that it's hard to train an animal or they don't like how their pets react to certain things. That's why ASPCA would help. Nobody could ever make up an excuse to hurt a dog physically or mentally. The main reason why I chose animal abuse is because too many people think that animals shouldn't be treated as well as humans. Sometimes I really just wonder why humans would take their anger out on poor little animals, and why would they do that?  Why hurt little animals at least you could confront the people that hurt you instead?

You can actually help the fight against animal abuse. You can spot animal abuse by just walking down the street. If an animal has untreated wounds it can get infected.  An owner could be seen giving it's pet dirty water. If you look closely at a dog's neck, there might be a scar on it's neck from the collar being too tight. I think animal abuse should be stopped by arresting the owners that abuse their pets. It is not fair to the animals that have to deal with this in any time in their lives.

Blog Post #2: Original Research

• interview recording

                     Animal Cruelty

What do you think about animals being abused

Have you ever seen animals being abused

Will you ever stop an animal being abused

Tiana's response

1. I think that is very wrong for animals to be abused people should be locked up for that.

2. No

3. Yes I will because it is wrong.

Blog Post #3: Agent of Change

• presentation slides

• recording of presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HIP0RA8D0j3So5g1r-j3LElueBfC0Rv72-DSqACLj_4/edit#slide=id.p

In the first blog post (which by the way you can check out here) the main things that I went over were things like teenage stress levels by the percentages which shown to be higher than those in adults, a brief summary of why stress really comes in to anyone’s life, and an explanation of what the project for the class was about. These were the main points that I brought up in the blog post #1, if you want to see them more in detail you can always just check it out from the link above.

And in the second blog post I went over just all of my research and findings from my original research that we were required to do. And I was able to pull up and notice a pattern in some of my research that was somewhat significant. If you are interested in reading the whole thing though, you can check it out here.

For my agent of change part of my project I made a bunch of homemade stress balls at my house to give out to the teenagers at my school well to help them relax in the time of need. But is a part of the way that I was able to get the word out let people know about teen stress and how important it was because I gave them out I told people about my project and why it was important to me. And my whole object to raise awareness to teens on some ways that they could reduce how stressed they are.

What I decided to pursue for my agent of change was a way that I could help teenagers be less stressed but have it also be a way that they could do in school. Because based on the research from my last blog post things that a lot of people did when they were stressed you can’t really do in school. So these would be things like: Sleep, get on social media, cry, etc. So an idea that someone gave to me that I decided to follow through with was making stress balls that they could use in school.

This image shown below is showing a student that is reading a book for class which they probably weren’t enjoying, so they whipped out the stress ball to make everything better!

I feel like my agent of change worked for the most part while it lasted there were some times when the stress balls backfired and actually just caused more reasons to stress because some peoples broke and it was just a mess every where. But I think that they generally helped people, even if people weren’t actually using the stress to squeeze to death, but some people were satisfied by just having it because it was cool I guess.

What I did wish that I could’ve done better was been doing all of this stuff earlier and planning it all out better. Because in the end I needed an extension on this project mainly because when I got stuck with my project and needed a bit of guidance, I didn’t really follow up with that and just waited until the last minute. And then even after I got an extension I waited until the day before necessary to get the agent of change ready, staying up until past midnight and what not. And I wish I would have done that earlier so that I could have thought of a way to maybe keep the balloons from popping a notable problem.

Extra pictures from agent of change: