GS Portfolio

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the second Action Project of the Humanities class, The Art of Rhetoric. In this second unit, we have continued looking at the rhetoric used in history. This includes analyzing the Doctrine of Discovery written by Pope Alexander VI, Bartolomé De Las Casas versus Columbus on Spanish cruelty in the colonies, and King Ferdinand's letter to the Taino-Arawak people. But one extremely important topic in this unit was the origins of slavery in the United States and the history behind that. This was introduced by reading Howard Zinn's, A People's History of the United States which talked about how slavery came around to the American colonies. We also had the chance to talk to Ugo Okere, a Democratic Socialist who ran for Chicago Alderman at the age of 22 in 2019, and 25th Ward Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez about challenging and accepting the status quo. For this Action Project, we have been asked to write an Op-Ed about a topic of our

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the workshop class, The War on X. The War on X is a new elective class at GCE this Fall term that focuses on current events that their own small battles and large levels of importance. Some topics that were up for discussion were the War on Afghanistan, the War on Immigration, and Critical Race Theory. For this first unit the majority of the class decided to talk about the War on Immigration. More specifically we focused on the United States-Mexico border and the situation there. We looked into the history of a border and eventually wall being at the border in the first place and moved on to examine more recent events from the presidency of Donald Trump. We also looked at the entry process for immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees to enter the United States. In this small Action Project we were asked to choose one of the three groups trying to enter the US and look at their entrance process further. I chose to study refugees more because the

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the first Action Project of the STEAM class Design and Engineering. In this class we observed garden tools and learned how they are only fit for a specific audience. We examined a few tools and investigated how they could be remodeled to consider empathy and serve all customers. Empathy is putting yourself in another person’s situation and sharing feelings with them. We planted some flowers outside the school building to see how different tools have a certain purpose and later had a Field Experience at Home Depot to help us choose a tool that would be the core of this Action Project. I also interviewed a gardener who does hydroponics and he talked to me about the tools he uses and how they could be made better. This AP was asking us to redesign a tool so an elderly person would have an easier time using it. An elderly person is a unique audience because there are not many products designed for the elderly and it may make gardening a little easi