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Blog Prompt: How do your culture, family and past experiences shape your math mindset?
To introduce you to this post, my mindset around math is that it’s really hard, and I’ve learned to dread it through my middle school years. Times in my life have really directed my feelings of math towards hate. From having really poor teachers to going through lots of home life struggles, math has not been something I liked from 6th-8th grade. First of all, my family doesn’t like math much either. My mom has what my family calls “an engineer brain” where she is great at solving problems and equations. Doesn’t mean she necessarily likes math. I have a lot of past experiences that have shaped my math mindset. In elementary school, I excelled at math. I loved it. I still remember going around the class being the teacher’s helper. Then, in middle school, my teacher's assigned worksheet after worksheet without teaching anything. I got the worst grades in all of my academic careers and I altogether began to hate school. Through all of my past experiences, New Tech is a way better school, and I’ve started to love learning again. Of course, I have my moments where I don’t want to be learning. Those moments are a lot rarer than when I was in middle school. I’m reshaping my math mindset!! My culture and the person I strive to behave to include math. I aspire to be a psychologist, and through that, I’ll need to know a lot of math. Also, my culture of being a Napa California female holds a bias of me being dumb, and I really want to prove that wrong. So, I’m reshaping my math mindset. Most of my past experiences, culture, and family life is against math. However, I’m learning to love math because it is a way of thinking that makes me really happy when I’m on top of it. Slideshow above of my progress from mind map to prototype to final product.
The project “What’s in a name?” is based around showing who you are through decorating your name, and making symbols to signify who you are. My goal was to improve my artistic skills. When I started the project, I wasn’t artistic at all. Though, as I went through the process of this project I realized that I learned a lot and grew my abilities. Through using oil and chalk pastels and learning how to draw “from the elbow” I learned a lot. In this blog post, I will give a detailed process and walk through of how I made my final project. The symbols I used are a treble clef, an A+, teardrops, a road, and a luggage tag with an airplane on it. I also used a wave. I chose those symbols for specific reasons that related to me and showed my story. I chose a treble clef because music is a huge part of who I am. I write music and play the piano. I love listening to music. Music is probably my favorite thing, it’s the best! I chose an A+ because I’m constantly striving to get good grades. In the final outcome, my A+ got smudged with oil pastels. At first, I was frustrated. Then, I realized that it’s really hard to get good grades. As much as I love learning, I have my moments. This mess up eventually became one of my favorite parts of the project!! I chose teardrops because I’m a very emotional person. Nothing really to add to that, I’m just a mess most of the time; I’m all over the place. I chose a road because there are so many roads you can take in life. Constantly I’m faced with many decisions and I am a very ambitious person. I also love traveling and I’m always developing traveling plans. I chose a luggage tag with an airplane on it to emphasize the fact that I love traveling!! It’s up there with music; one of my favorite things to do. I chose a wave because I’ve always loved the ocean. The beach has always been my favorite place. I love the wind and the water and the cold. Even when I was a baby, instead of running away from the waves, I’d run towards them. I also drew the wave coming from the T, emphasizing the water and tears. I used many artistic techniques. There are 2 artistic techniques that stand out. I started developing the skill of drawing from your elbow when Ms. H taught it to me because I used a lot of colored pencils. I also used shading using tissues and pastels and rubbing with my fingers. I probably used a lot more techniques, but these are the ones that stood out. I used a lot of materials as well. I used oil and chalk pastels, colored pencils, crayons, tissues, paper, pencil, and a sharpie. The elements of art I chose were shape, color, and texture. I used shape by creating certain symbols to shape. The T and E were shapes, as well as the boxed outline/border I made for the project. I used color by adding the materials of colored pencils, pastels, and crayons to spread the color. Everyone who saw my piece was amazed by the color component. I used texture by rubbing pastels and shading colored pencils. These techniques give the effect of texture; you feel like you can touch the paper and it will feel that way. The principles of design I chose were emphasis & contrast and balance. I used emphasis and contrast by bordering the outline in a dark color to put a light on everything in the middle. I also tried to emphasize the wave by creating it to go almost off the page; that should definitely catch your attention. I used balance by making the border even and putting a line with hearts on both sides, centered. I received some peer feedback. Some peer feedback I got includes; I should format my blog differently. I was very detailed. I had a good final product. I used this feedback by putting my blog into paragraphs, rather than multiple sentences. In conclusion, I grew a lot with this project and had a great time. 1. My process and thinking for the all-consuming project was somewhat logical. I took it with the approach of making it personal and wanting to show my passions through my slide deck/ presentation. I looked at research from many different angles trying to find possible solutions. Some examples of this include going from national geographic sites to blog posts from environmental people. I made sure to double check my sources, however, I understood how I could back up my opinions with facts. My research summed up is how bad cutting down trees is for the environment as it affects the soil, our air, animals, the photosynthesis equation and carbon cycle. 2. Some iterations I tried include going through prototypes. My team had a prototype for hand dryers and social media. Through the research I did I found out that hand dryers created bacteria. I also found out that the best social media platform to use was Instagram. We ultimately chose an Instagram account with a “call to action” to use fewer paper towels. I think our solution was a success because so often we feel overwhelmed and guilty by the call to actions; my team had a simple but effective call to action. 3. I overcame my struggle in collaboration. Usually, I’m not the greatest collaborator. This project I really strived to improve on it. I still am not the greatest collaborator, however, I improved some and can’t wait to use the next project to improve even more. 4. I sought feedback from different reforestation organizations. I took their feedback into account as I moved forward by; changing my prototype to planting trees, having a simple call to action, using Instagram (out of all the social media platforms to choose from). Those were all changes made based off of the feedback I got from them. So today I had the grand finale, the last hurrah for my project! My team presented to some of my classmates and a panel consisting of members of the community. There were 4 blocks of time to present. We were the first group to present in the last block of time. So, here's the story of my first time formally presenting at New Technology High School. All sweaty-palmed, hands shaking, heart skipping a beat; I walked up to the front of the room with my team. I wondered why my hands COULDN'T STOP SHAKING!!! We started the slides with an intro to the project. I had to say my "I can" statement that we constructed in English class. So already stuttering, I kept going with the presentation. We moved on to the graph Dominic (one of my team members) constructed. I explained it in Spanish for the Spanish objective of my blog. After that slide, Hannah (one of my team members) explained our target audience; which happened to be New Tech students and people on the internet. After that, I explained how we influenced our audience through social media and a call to action to use fewer paper towels. I had my audience scan a QR code I had made that led to our Instagram page. We thanked our audience and ended the presentation. The feedback I got was very critical. I needed to speak up more as my voice didn't project and I needed to sound more confident. I know I'm still developing my public speaking skills. For me, it's a lot easier to present when I'm not being graded, that way I feel there is no pressure and I don't think I'll mess up. Although I messed up a lot this presentation, it was a great building block on my oral communication skills. I can't wait to improve with the next project!! Below is me in my presentation clothes; terrified to present: It's been so long since I last posted on my blog!! I've been so busy, and I'll explain that more in depth on my freshman update blog. Anyways, my project is almost over so I'd like to reflect on it before I present tomorrow. Then, tomorrow I will post about how my presentation went. I've grown so much over this project!! Originally I chose water for my topic but I ended up with forests. However, I've made it my passion. I found how deforestation affects my life and I've learned so much. I was the main coordinator for my teams' Instagram page. We have 50 followers and have had 200 page visits in 14 days!! I've been able to influence people through my posts. Below are some photos I included on my Instagram page, all credits go to me. I'm very nervous to see how my presentation will go, I have major stage fright. However, I love growing and challenging myself ; so I know I'll be so proud of myself after I present tomorrow. Overall, I'm so proud of how much I've improved my knowledge and oral communication specifically while working on this project. We've done so much for this project! So much has happened since I last checked in! This blog post is sort of a recap to catch everyone up,
Ok, soooo since my teams' topic has changed from water to deforestation, what actions did I have to take? First of all, I had to update my research log. Luckily for me; water and forests go hand in hand. So I added more websites and articles to my research log, focusing on forest statistics. I learned a lot of bizarre things. For instance, did you know that China has led a reforestation movement in the past five years, and now has more trees than they had in 1925? While the rest of the world has been cutting down their trees at rapid speeds, China has been replanting trees at rapid speeds. This is also interesting because China is the leading manufacturing country. You would think that China would use the most natural resources. After looking in further, I realized that China did use many trees; the only difference was that they replanted them. With these statistics now at my fingertips and in my brain, I knew I had to use them. I needed to find a way to be like China. My first idea was to put air dryers in our school bathrooms. So I created a plan. I had 2 fundraiser websites set up within the next few days. I also had an Instagram business account based on stopping paper towel usage. I called Dyson hand dryers; they were setting up a way to send us hand dryers for our cause. I emailed Mr. Johnson (New Technology High Schools' Principal) and had a whole plan. I was so ready to create a movement!! Then my Spanish teacher, Mrs. Winegarner told me to check my facts. She told me I needed to find research that hand dryers don't create bacteria. Uh-oh. Who knew that hand dryers created bacteria in the air?? After consulting with many peers I seemed to be one of the only ones who didn't know this vital information. Nothing on Google could save me except a Quora blog (definitely not a site I was inclined to trust). After having a complete breakdown (I had put so much work into this!!) I started by emailing back my Spanish teacher and principal. I canceled all my plans with the people I had contacted. This was definitely a lesson I needed to take to heart; always do your research first before you take action. What was my next step? I was feeling like a broken record; like all my time and energy had been wasted. I had the idea of finding an expert of trees online, so I emailed Melissa Tedesco; an expert who worked daily with deforestation on a corporate scale in Ontario, Canada. She emailed me back and we schedule a phone appointment. I asked her what I could do. She said plant trees, plant trees, plant trees!! Her website had a competition. Whichever team fundraises the most money to grow trees ( $1 per tree) by Earth Day 2019 will win tickets to Costa Rica! After getting off the phone I was so excited!! My team wasn't thrilled. They said we didn't have a chance. Maybe we don't have a chance. However, I've realized through this project that as long as we try it'll all payout. Just educating myself through this project is affecting the world a little bit. Every less paper towel we use is a big impact. What you do does matter!! I have done a lot for the project since I last wrote a blog post. First of all, my topic got changed to forests. (Below is the new narrative I wrote)
Today in science we wrote about natural resources in Napa from this link. In English we wrote a narrative on the topic we took for our consumer project. Here is my narrative:
It begins. It begins with life. Life is every breath we take. Life i is hope, love. Life is work. We don’t have a purpose here until we find one. We don’t have a reason to keep breathing until we find hope in what we love. To live we need to nourish our minds and bodies. We need to nourish our minds through doing things we love, and focusing on the hope there is to come.We need to nourish our bodies with food and water. Though we love life, we still waste what we need to have it. Water. Without water there’s no food, without food there’s no physical life. Our world would end without physical life, and everything we have come to love will be gone. Hopefully you understand that I chose water for my topic. So excited to get moving along on this project, but I'm also so excited for the weekend to finally be here. 5 hours of school left until I can go home and sleep off my tiredness! |
My blogHi everyone!! My name's Kate Graham. Some things you should know about me; I love music, writing, school, psychology and traveling.I want to see the world up close and explore diversity and culture throughout my life. Archives
May 2019
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