energy and place
Essential Questions:
How does energy production impact place?
How does your sense of place, environmental ethic and understanding of our energy needs influence your perception and decisions regarding energy production?
How does energy production impact place?
How does your sense of place, environmental ethic and understanding of our energy needs influence your perception and decisions regarding energy production?
Project Reflection:
To start the Energy and Place project for humanities, the class was shown different environmental ethics by looking at readings, TED talks, guest speakers, etc. Our teacher Ashley also had her own sense of place essay that was a reference for the class. In the sense of place essay we were taught to write descriptively by a previous assignment that led up to the sense of place essay where we did nature writing and describing nature in several different cases. For the energy portion of the project we listened to guest speakers that were for and against oil and gas production of energy. These speakers helped us create our own opinion of energy production. After all of this initial assignments and research we started writing our sense of place essay.
Starting this project I was skeptical with my thoughts. I know that am not a type of person who is into describing things and making things come to life in my writing, I am more of a person who likes writing about facts and statistics. This first scared me that I might not do too well on this assignment, but after the initial research and learning I had before starting the sense of place essay I created my own strong opinion on my environmental ethic and sense of place and after finding that, the writing got easier for me throughout the rest of the project. After clearly stating my sense of place and environmental ethic in my essay I was then able to go back and focus more on the descriptive language part of the essay. This strategy worked out well for me in the end.
After finishing my whole project I am most proud of my sense of place essay. I am most proud of it because I surprised myself with the grade I received in the end. The teacher critiqued a rough draft of our essay and graded it and I received a pretty low grade on it, but that only motivated me to work a lot harder for the final draft. I went back into my paper and focused a lot more on the descriptive language of the essay and ended up getting a 93% on the essay. I didn't think I was capable of creating such a descriptive and clear essay, but I did in the end.
To start the Energy and Place project for humanities, the class was shown different environmental ethics by looking at readings, TED talks, guest speakers, etc. Our teacher Ashley also had her own sense of place essay that was a reference for the class. In the sense of place essay we were taught to write descriptively by a previous assignment that led up to the sense of place essay where we did nature writing and describing nature in several different cases. For the energy portion of the project we listened to guest speakers that were for and against oil and gas production of energy. These speakers helped us create our own opinion of energy production. After all of this initial assignments and research we started writing our sense of place essay.
Starting this project I was skeptical with my thoughts. I know that am not a type of person who is into describing things and making things come to life in my writing, I am more of a person who likes writing about facts and statistics. This first scared me that I might not do too well on this assignment, but after the initial research and learning I had before starting the sense of place essay I created my own strong opinion on my environmental ethic and sense of place and after finding that, the writing got easier for me throughout the rest of the project. After clearly stating my sense of place and environmental ethic in my essay I was then able to go back and focus more on the descriptive language part of the essay. This strategy worked out well for me in the end.
After finishing my whole project I am most proud of my sense of place essay. I am most proud of it because I surprised myself with the grade I received in the end. The teacher critiqued a rough draft of our essay and graded it and I received a pretty low grade on it, but that only motivated me to work a lot harder for the final draft. I went back into my paper and focused a lot more on the descriptive language of the essay and ended up getting a 93% on the essay. I didn't think I was capable of creating such a descriptive and clear essay, but I did in the end.
Happiness and meaning
Essential Questions:
What is the purpose of your existence?
What is happiness and what makes you happy?
What does it mean to live a meaningful life?
To what extent can literature shape your personal philosophy on happiness and meaning?
What is the purpose of your existence?
What is happiness and what makes you happy?
What does it mean to live a meaningful life?
To what extent can literature shape your personal philosophy on happiness and meaning?
Native American historical inquriy
Essential Question: How can an examination of multiple sources and perspectives lead to a more enlightened understanding of history AND contemporary social, cultural and political realities?
The morality and politics of justice
Project Reflection
Project Description
To begin this project we learned about different moral philosophies. We learned about Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, Deontology and John Rawls Justice as Equality. We spent few weeks doing short readings, journals, and using skits to help teach the class more about the moral philosophies. After receiving a clear understanding of the moral philosophies, we took a test to show the teacher that we understood and could apply each moral philosophy easily. Then we moved on to drafting our Op-Ed with a topic of our choice. I chose to do my project on the militarization of the United States police forces. I looked at multiple websites and read a book on the militarization of police forces and came to a conclusion that militarizing police forces is not the answer to ensure security and maintain liberty in our country. After a few drafts of my Op-Ed, I began the visual piece of this project. I struggled finding a quote to put on my poster that represented my perspective of the political issue of militarized police. When I finally found a quote from my book to represent my perspective it was easier to find out what I wanted to do for the rest of visual piece. I am very happy with the way my visual turned out.
Personal growth and Perspective
The Habit of Heart and Mind that I used most in creating my perspective was evidence. I used the evidence that I found to decide whether or not I agreed with the militarization of police forces. With the evidence I found I decided that I am against militarizing police forces. Before I started to research, I knew nothing about militarized police, so I had a very small perspective on which side I should take. After figuring out my perspective and with the evidence I found, applying the information and numbers I had found was very difficult.
Self-Assessment
The Strongest part of my Op-Ed was the introduction paragraphs and thesis. My introduction paragraphs a description of a story that happened that nobody would think has happened so it really reels in the reader to want to read more of my paper. The after the introduction of my Op-Ed it flows straight into the thesis of my paper. I am most disappointed with the organization of my Op-Ed. My ideas do not flow as smoothly as I hoped they would. I switch from facts to other facts with little to no transitions though facts. To include smoother transitions into my article I think I just needed more time to work on the article. I think for my final grade I deserve about an A or a 95%. With the amount of work that I put into the visual piece and the corrections that I made to my article, an A seems fair.
Future Refinement
If I had another week to work on this project, I would have further refined my Op-Ed article. During the last week of work time, I was focused more on my visual rather than my article. Although I am very happy with the way my visual turned out, I wish I had put more of my time into the Op-Ed. My Op-Ed is still lacking ethos, and has poor transitions.
Project Description
To begin this project we learned about different moral philosophies. We learned about Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, Deontology and John Rawls Justice as Equality. We spent few weeks doing short readings, journals, and using skits to help teach the class more about the moral philosophies. After receiving a clear understanding of the moral philosophies, we took a test to show the teacher that we understood and could apply each moral philosophy easily. Then we moved on to drafting our Op-Ed with a topic of our choice. I chose to do my project on the militarization of the United States police forces. I looked at multiple websites and read a book on the militarization of police forces and came to a conclusion that militarizing police forces is not the answer to ensure security and maintain liberty in our country. After a few drafts of my Op-Ed, I began the visual piece of this project. I struggled finding a quote to put on my poster that represented my perspective of the political issue of militarized police. When I finally found a quote from my book to represent my perspective it was easier to find out what I wanted to do for the rest of visual piece. I am very happy with the way my visual turned out.
Personal growth and Perspective
The Habit of Heart and Mind that I used most in creating my perspective was evidence. I used the evidence that I found to decide whether or not I agreed with the militarization of police forces. With the evidence I found I decided that I am against militarizing police forces. Before I started to research, I knew nothing about militarized police, so I had a very small perspective on which side I should take. After figuring out my perspective and with the evidence I found, applying the information and numbers I had found was very difficult.
Self-Assessment
The Strongest part of my Op-Ed was the introduction paragraphs and thesis. My introduction paragraphs a description of a story that happened that nobody would think has happened so it really reels in the reader to want to read more of my paper. The after the introduction of my Op-Ed it flows straight into the thesis of my paper. I am most disappointed with the organization of my Op-Ed. My ideas do not flow as smoothly as I hoped they would. I switch from facts to other facts with little to no transitions though facts. To include smoother transitions into my article I think I just needed more time to work on the article. I think for my final grade I deserve about an A or a 95%. With the amount of work that I put into the visual piece and the corrections that I made to my article, an A seems fair.
Future Refinement
If I had another week to work on this project, I would have further refined my Op-Ed article. During the last week of work time, I was focused more on my visual rather than my article. Although I am very happy with the way my visual turned out, I wish I had put more of my time into the Op-Ed. My Op-Ed is still lacking ethos, and has poor transitions.