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...

Welcome back to my blog! This post is for the class Rhetoric in GCE's Humanities course. In this class we have been studying rhetoric and how it is used in politics and speeches. To analyze these speeches rhetorically we learned about the rhetorical situation which includes a speaker, audience, purpose, context, genre, and occasion. We have also observed the appeals a speaker should make to their audience such as logos meaning logic, pathos meaning emotions, and ethos meaning credibility. Lastly, we studied rhetorical devices which are literary devices that can be used to persuade or convince the audience. Using all of these tools we watched and analyzed many debates such as the Nixon versus Kennedy 1960 Presidential debate, the James Baldwin versus William Buckley debate, and compared the 2016 campaign advertisements for Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. For our Field Experience this unit, we were visited by Julia Kline from ILVote, where she talked about her organization and their wo...

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the Orientation 2021 Action Project. In this AP we are asked to recreate a classroom in our school building to make an effective learning space. Earlier in this orientation week, we looked at classrooms from different time periods and discussed if they were good learning spaces. We also had an Field Experience at the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago to see the Sonic Pavilion Festival. This FE helped us understand how sound can travel around a space and if it can be used in a classroom.  The first part to developing an effective learning environment was to establish a successful student and teacher. The students and teacher should keep up a social contract that explains the expected behaviors of participants in a classroom. I think a successful student would be someone who participates, asks thoughtful questions, is respectful to other students and teachers, and is hardworking. A successful teacher would be someone who is open to feedback, encou...

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the Orientation 2021 FE Reflection. As GCE moves back into in-person learning, Field Experiences become available. Recently the school went down to Millennium Park and listened to different sound pieces in the Sonic Pavilion Festival. Of the six installations I listened to two and was very impressed by them. These pieces were played in the Pritzker Pavilion which is built like a dome with speakers all around to let sounds travel and move throughout the space. Each of the installations are twenty minutes long and use a variety of instruments to display imagery in the listener. By experiencing the installations we can work towards our Action Project to make a good classroom. In this reflection we had to choose one installation to talk about and investigate. The piece I chose is called Sonorous Admittings by Kioto Aoki. This piece uses taiko drums to create an "acoustic resonance" that flows around the pavilion. The taiko drums are a ran...

Hello and welcome back to my blog. This post is for the second Action Project in the STEAM class, Cure. In this class we have learned about different kinds of treatments and medications. Because of the current global pandemic, we were not able to have someone come into the building and teach us about CPR. However, we were able to go through an online course that taught us about it and how to deal with emergency situations. In regular times we would be able to get CPR certified but that can wait for now. While learning about different medications, we talked about their functions and what each medication's designated purpose is such as pain relievers and how they interfere with pain messages sent to the brain so your body doesn't register pain in a certain area. For this project we had to create a patient with some illness or injury and develop a patient profile in a medical folder or other medium. This profile is shown below as if I were a doctor giving information to my patient...