MN GCE Portfolio

In today's world, we are facing so many seemingly insurmountable conflicts. On a daily basis, there is a new story about another injustice. Rife with war, corruption, and hate, it is hard to imagine that there could ever be an end to it. While there is no one quick fix or cure-all way to solve all problems, there are a number of ways to view these issues, better understand their causes and how to address them. In my Humanities class, Global Peace, we studied different forms of non-violent protest. Before understanding how to be non-violent it is important to establish what is violence. When simplified, there are 3 kinds of violence, cultural, social and direct. Cultural violence is the unspoken stigmas of a community or society that can establish, normalize and justify violence and oppression. Cultural violence is part of the bedrock that creates structural violence. Structural violence is harm from a formal institution, government or any other body of power that targets and oppre

Sound, whether it be in the form of music, a podcast or radio, is a powerful media. Without the distractions of visuals video has, or the ambiguity of solid text or photography, sound can perfectly summarize the intention, emotion, aesthetic and voice of any story. For my Journalism class, a humanities course, we each selected an influential voice that has made an impact on our own lives, the people around us and others around the world and create a podcast about them. The voice I chose was John Oliver, a British writer, comedian, and host of the HBO show Last Week Tonight . For each episode of his show, he focuses on a single topic to dive deep into. Rather than only picking the most obvious headline to talk about he picks more underlying issues that are arguably more important to learn about than the surface level play by play of a series of current events. His show and how he covers stories has had an impact on a multitude of levels, from how people get their news to what qualifies

This is my first action project for my Humanities course called Journalism. In this class we studied and discussed what journalism is, what goes into the job and how journalism is the most dangerous profession here in the US and around the world. In the current political climate where the validity of journalists and reporting is being questioned by those in power one of the most essential and fundamental elements of our nation, the free press is on the chopping block. For this project we chose an issue in our own neighborhood that we wanted to look into and write an article about it. The building company MAC Properties is currently contracting a new 27 story luxury complex in the Chicago, Hyde Park area. The new apartment complex at at 1600 E. 53rd St has been met with a good deal of public outcry from the local residents. During a public meeting on April 13, 2017 more than 40 people showed up to voice their concerns on a number of topics. The first major being how the building might

This is my second action project for my Humanities class called Policy.  Policy is the course following up our other Junior humanities classes.We started with Rhetoric, where we studied methods of appealing to an audience. Next we moved to Argument where learned how to make a sound argument using premises and conclusions and the dialectic form. In this class we studied the policies of the US government, what those mean and how they are formulated. This unit was called Judicial, in which as the name suggests we studied the judicial branch of the US government. As a class we made a time line of past supreme court cases and rulings, then discussed how they connected and what precedents they set. For this action project we had to chose one of those cases to study and determine for ourselves whether the case and decision was constitutional or not. The case I chose was Hammer v Dagenhart of 1918 on child labor to determine if it infringes on the commerce clause. 

This is my second action project for my Humanities class called Policy.  Policy is the course following up our other Junior humanities classes.We started with Rhetoric, where we studied methods of appealing to an audience. Next we moved to Argument where learned how to make a sound argument using premises and conclusions and the dialectic form. In this class we studied the policies of the US government, what those mean and how they are formulated. This Unit was called Executive, we covered the executive branch of the US government learning about their power and actions. We started covering declarations of war and although the president doesn't have that power they have and can actually do so. An example of this that we discussed in great detail was the Vietnam war. We watched the movie The Post, about the Washington Post covering the pentagon papers and defending the freedom of the press. For this action project we had to choose a war to research and through the lens of the executi

This is my second action project for my humanities class called A Nations Argument . In this class we learned about what an argument is, different way forming one and defining an arguments soundness. In this unit, called 1857, we learned about the Dread Scott cases while discussing logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are contradictory or false premises that make an argument unsound. For this action project we looked through our schools code of conduct and find a policy that we believed should be amended. I chose to amend the part called "Appeal To Process". Handshake Icon (2015) Wikicommons  Policy  Any student or family has the right to appeal any decision made by the Disciplinary Council or Head of School. Appeals need to be in writing and received in a timely manner. The Disciplinary Council will consider all appeals and the Head of School will communicate final decision. Current Syllogism   The Disciplinary Council and head of school aren’t always made a

This is my first and only action project for my STEAM class called Rocket Science. In the class we covered the history of space exploration, calculating and graphic launches and designing and building aircrafts. Rather than having 3 separate units we had a bunch of what we called mini-missions. In the begin of the class we mainly focused on past space missions and the advancement that came with it, one of the most interesting parts of this was the presentations we did on the race to space. One of the mini-missions that we had in this part of the class was a research paper about a past space mission that we found particularly interesting or inspiring. After we completed that portion of the class we went on to look at calculating flight and launching. We learned a number of equations, one of them being how to calculate the hight of a throw just based off of the time in the air and distance traveled. Another concept we learned about was binary and ASCII code, a code consisting of only 1&#