GS Portfolio

Welcome back to my blog. This is the second Action Project of the Spring Term at GCE Lab School  so far but the first in my Food class for the STEAM course. Like the AP before this for the Food For Thought class, this was all done at home due to the global pandemic. This first unit was very interesting. Not only was it a new experience by not working in the classroom but we were learning from a new perspective. In this unit we talked a lot about agriculture and natural farming. We read a lot of One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. We talked about companion planting and what plants work well together and their symbiosis. We also learned how to test soil using a soil solution and macronutrient test kits. This AP was about making our own container garden. We had to create a design of a garden that we would use if we had more space and resources also utilizing what we learned about companion plants. With my small garden space I planted a handful of the seeds that were mailed to us...

Welcome back to my blog! This is a very different experience for all of GCE since we are all writing our first action project of the term from home. In fact, everything about our action project was done at home including the classwork, tests, assignments, and mini projects. Currently we are all facing a global pandemic which means self quarantining and away from our friends. Through this we have continued to learn and go on with our average school day. This spring term is all about food and this class is called Food For Thought in the Humanities course. The point of this first action project was to create a story of our life if we were a food ingredient that we chose which was from a dish that means a lot to us. The ingredient that I chose for this AP was ginger. One of our assignments before the AP was to interview someone in our family that knew a lot about our family's culture and history with food. I decided to talk with my aunt and we discussed one of our family traditions whi...

What do my dreams say about who I am? As we end the winter term we begin to work on our Final Presentations. Normally we would be giving a talking and more one on one presentation but this term is different. Because of what is going on in the world today, there is risk for our community. Instead of showing our Final Presentations at our school and open to the public, we will create blog posts about them. With the posts being a bit more public than showing it to families and fellow students that creates an opportunity to make our work more wide spread. For these final presentation we have been tasked with creating or using a guiding question based off of a certain class that we are showcasing. My final presentation is about dreams. One exercise that the other freshman and I worked on was sharing our dreams. This assignment was supposed to have us learn to interpret our dreams and understand them. We could use this analysis to think about other dreams that we had. This exercise can be...

This is the second and final Action Project in the units of the Who Am I class in the Humanities Course. This unit was called Doubt and Dream. For a decent amount of this unit we talked a lot about our dreams and what they mean. We talked more about philosophy and psychology like Continental Rationalists or British Empiricists and the Freudian analysis. There were a few Field Experiences that we embarked on such as the Continuum Center, The Art Institute, and also Cheetah Gym where we learned about the philosophy of jujitsu. This final action project was about making a dreamcatcher and explaining what it symbolizes and what it means to us. Everyone's dreamcatcher was different because it is made to represent you and everyone is different. The materials we used for the dreamcatchers were lace, string, wires, and beads. My dreamcatcher and everything about it is below. GHS, 2020 The center of my dream catcher symbolizes remembrance and acceptance of death. We all know that we...

This is the last Action Project of the Fuel class for STEAM. This unit focused on chemical reactions, carbon emissions, and inequalities. This unit was very short compared to the other two but still enough time to learn everything we needed to get to. When working on the chemical reactions we talked about how certain molecules reacted to from something else. The main molecules we worked with were oxygen (O2), carbon dioxide (CO2), and water (H2O). Since the unit was only a couple weeks long there was not much time for Field Experiences so the only one that we had was going to a water cooling facility in downtown Chicago. Here we learned about how this plant cools down water for nearby buildings by using ice. I thought this FE was really cool and it was interesting to hear about the projects that they did and how they got them done. A lot of their work when connecting their water to the buildings involves large pipes underground which can be a difficulty when in a busy city. One of thei...

This is the second Action Project of the Fuel unit in my STEAM class. This course is all about different types of fuels. There are many fuels that we know such as non-renewables and renewables. This unit was mainly talking about renewable energy sources. I learned a lot during this unit about renewable energy. We talked a lot about solar, wind, and hydro but we also included geothermal and biomass. We did a lot of math involving costs and savings or running costs and how to turn those into equations and create graphs. This project was about creating an infomercial which talked about a renewable energy of our choice. The energy I chose was solar. For this project I created a slideshow and included a voice over. In my "video" I explain the costs of solar panels and what solar energy is all about. To learn about solar energy you can listen to the audio recording while playing the slideshow. Both are below. I really enjoyed this unit because I think some renewable energy so...

The first unit of the winter term was very exciting in the Who Am I class for the Humanities course. This unit was all about truth and memory. We talked a lot about philosophers like Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. Through this unit we were also reading the book Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. This book is about the protagonist learning about some history with philosophy as a teenager. This unit was primarily about philosophy but it also included some psychology and truths. There were not any Field Experiences in this unit besides one at the very end which was at St. Paul's Church in Lincoln Park, Chicago. We talked with Pastor Matt Fitzgerald about truth and belief. I thought the start of this discussion was very interesting because Matt started by asking the class, "Do we live in an enchanted world?" I thought this was a good question because we normally have beliefs that can define whether we live in an enchanted world or not. I personally think tha...