GS Portfolio

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the first Action Project of the Humanities class, Policy. In this first unit, Legislate, our main focus has been on the United States legislative branch of government. The legislative branch is described and introduced in Article 1 of the Constitution and to start the class, we did a little research on that. We also looked at the process of turning a bill into law, making sure to examine every step, and of course watching School House Rock. Following this, we looked at some of the laws that were made by the U.S. government from 1803 to 2001. Keeping up with the history, we learned about the United States' colonialism and its emergence as a colonial power on the world stage. Towards the end of the unit, we began to look at war policies like those made for the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. For each of these different wars, it was important to examine why the United States declared war and what influence it had before an...

 Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the first Action Project of the STEAM class Urban Planning. In this first unit, Load, we have been studying bridges and how they can support different loads. We looked at the four main bridge types: beam, truss, arch, and suspension. Each of these bridge types has its own means of supporting loads. Truss bridges for example can be helpful to support a distributed load. It does this by distributing the forces of tension and compression into its trusses. Suspension bridges distribute the forces into tension in the cables that transfer into compression at the piers. For math in this unit, we learned about vectors, forces, force body diagrams, and Newton's Laws of Motion. For Field Experiences, our class walked down to the Chicago Riverwalk and looked at the bridges that connect the city's North and South sides. Chicago's bridges use the truss design and act as drawbridges. Another FE was a visit by Drew Valentine from GMB Architecture...

Over my junior school year, I have been working on obtaining civic engagement hours. At the start of the year, I was told that I need 200 hours of civic engagement to graduate from GCE. I was asked to try and complete at least 50 of these hours in my junior year. For this school year, I have completed these hours at a few different locations. The first is Elgin's Hope for the Holidays from the fall, and up until now, Chicago Wildlife Watch. In this post, I will talk about the service work I did and my experience with it. Elgin's Hope for the Holidays Leading up to the holiday season of 2021, I participated in a toy drive in Elgin, Illinois. This toy drive was being run by the Salvation Army and I was able to attend because of a family member who works with them. This event works by families signing up to get toys for their children by the time of Christmas for free if they need to. Toys that have been donated by citizens of the community and event organizers can be looked throu...

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for my elective class Digital Fabrication. In this class, we have been looking at all things digital. More specifically 3D printers, silhouette cutters, CNC routers, and laser cutters. 3D printers are machines that can create three-dimensional objects from CAD models by layering filament to create shapes. Silhouette cutters are small electronic cutting machines that can take a file on a computer and cut it out on vinyl, acrylic, paper, and more. I have used the cutter to create stickers on vinyl. The CNC router we used in this class was a machine called the Carvey. The Carvey uses a drill bit mounted on an operating system like a 3D printer to drill into wood, foam, and other materials to create designs or molds. For each of these machines, we learned how to use their programs and later work with the machines to create things we made on the programs.  Last but definitely not least, laser cutters. A laser cutter is a machine similar to the Carve...

 Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the third Action Project of the Humanities class, A Nation's Argument. In this unit, Synthesis: the 1960s, we have been studying the 1950s to the 1970s. We started by taking a look at the Jim Crow era and the effect it had on people of color. We then watched the documentary, Thirteenth , directed by Ava DuVernay. We also looked at the era of lynching in a video interview of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, from Democracy Now . Because this was a shorter unit, we started getting into the details of the Action Project that would come a bit later. This included the dialectical method of argument created by philosopher Georg Hegel. For Field Experiences, we met with UIC sociologist Andy Clarno, who has done some work looking at Chicago's gang database and the CIA-backed software Oracle . Chicago's gang database was made to have a system where all gang members of Chicago would be identified and kept under watch....

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the third Action Project of the STEAM class Light, Sound, and Time. This unit, Time, has been all about how we perceive time and what it actually is. We first questioned when time originated and why we believe time began directly after the Big Bang. Then, we looked at older methods of telling time such as using the position of the sun for a sundial. We also looked at longitude and latitude and how we determine our position because of it. For determining latitude, you can use the North Star if you are in the Northern Hemisphere or a sextant which is a device that uses mirrors to find the angle of the sun to the horizon. For determining longitude, you can use time zones and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). To continue our examination of time-telling devices, we spent time studying pendulums and the Foucault pendulum which is a pendulum that can rotate 360 degrees and show how the Earth will rotate beneath it if it were at the North Pole. For Field Expe...

Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the second Action Project of the Humanities course: A Nation's Argument. In this unit, we have been investigating how a nation contradicts itself. We started by looking at the United States Supreme Court and valid and sound arguments. We then moved on to logical fallacies and the Scott versus Sandford Supreme Court case from 1857. For Field Experiences, we spoke with Northwestern Law Professor Paul Gowder and met later with 40th Ward Chicago Alderman Andre Vasquez. For Prof. Gowder, we talked about the rule of law in the United States and Critical Race Theory. We talked with Alderman Vasquez about what being an alderperson means and "consent of the governed," which the United States is based on. For this Action Project, we have been asked to look through GCE's student Social Contract in the Family Handbook. In this Social Contract, we are looking for something that we find is a contradiction or want to amend. One section I fou...