SR GCE Portfolio

Welcome to my action project for my winter independent study! For this independent study, I decided to pursue an idea of mine that I have been wanting to bring to life in the summer of 2020. For this independent study, I chose to create a Christian clothing brand called, Refined Apparel. My faith is super important to me and is something that I have battled and struggled with, but 2020 opened my eyes to so many things and I found myself growing my relationship with God! I am in love with designing, art, and fashion so I decided why not collide the two and spread the glory of God to others. Throughout this independent study, I have been designing the first collection of Refined Apparel and really dived deeper into what this clothing brand actually means. For more information about the process of starting up this business, read down below. I hope you enjoy it! 

Welcome to the final Action project of my senior STEAM class, Social Entrepreneurship. For this unit, we dove in deeper on how we are able to grow our business. For example, marketing strategies, focusing on our targeted audience, how to reach customers, legal structure, etc. For this unit's field experience guest, we welcomed Matt Nicklin into our classroom. Mr. Nicklin is from First Analysis and spoke to us about investments and gave us advice when starting out a business. It was a super interesting and intriguing experience! For this action project, we were assigned the task to create our own business plan and to come up with a social business! Before taking this class, I have had experience with starting my own business so I was super excited to implement my new business into the picture. I decided to take the opportunity to design and sell clothing, surrounding the Christian faith! You can read all more about exactly what is brand of mine is about down below. I hope you enjoy ...

 Welcome to my first Action Project for my first senior class, Economics! For this first unit, we have learned and studied a lot of different economic terms. For example, opportunity cost, supply and demand, incentives, etc. These special terms are prominent in Econ and provide great importance. We then dove straight into math concepts, that are super interesting to discover that are also very valued in the Economic world such as compounding interest, matrices, etc. We have used these concepts and terms in our action project and can really use these new and distinguishable ideas in the real world. Especially, when it comes down to thinking about your career! That's exactly what we did for this action project. Here's a video for more explanation of what else you will be discovering through this blog:   When I look into the future I see myself as an aspiring Art Director and entrepreneur surrounded by innovators, scholars, and intellectual thinkers. When choosing my career and...

For this final term of STEAM for the year, we focused on how we are able to reconstruct the city. We dove into the deeper meaning of a better city, and what that exactly looks like. Throughout this unit, we had watched a series of TED Talks speaking upon the importance of community, architecture, and a number of other things that are necessary to create a successful city for the citizens who live in it. These TED Talks also spoke about the "laziness" and inequality that can be found in many cities, suburbs, and minority neighborhoods/areas. By watching and deeply understanding these TED Talks we decided to become designers ourselves! I was able to pick any area around the world where we were able to redesign and make changes in the space. I focused on where I live, and the changes that I would personally like to better the area as a whole. To conclude, this was a very interesting and creative action project. I was able to find the importance and meaning of what creat...

In this second unit of Urban Planning we dove deeper into the use and innovations of electricity. We first started by learning about the history of electricity, and how it came to be! The earliest time that electricity was being utilized was when the "War of Currents" had occurred this involved Nicholas Tesla and Thomas Edison in making the type of current, Direct Current (DC) or Alternating Current (AC). We then learned about circuits, and how they are used and what each function does. Circuits include resistance, power, switches, batteries, motors, etc. We then learned how to draw each source on a circuit diagram, and what the units are for each component. For this action project we decided to utilize our circuits by applying what we know to make an energy efficient device. I decided to create an electric car that solely uses solar power energy to power the lights of the car. Lights in general take up a lot of energy, and I wanted to dive deeper on how much light and energy...

In our fourth and final term of the year, we are taking a class called Urban Planning! We looked into what it's like creating a city. Specifically, bridges, and how they are an important factor when living in a busy city like Chicago. We dove deeper in trigonometry and triangles this unit. The reason why we learned so much about triangles is that triangles are actually the strongest shape for bridges, which is also why we built truss bridges for this action project. For our Field Experience, this unit our STEAM teacher went out to Downtown, Chicago. We connected with him through Google Meets due to COVID-19. By going on this Field Experience we were able to actually take a closer look and observe the city, and the positives and negatives of it. For this Action Project, we were asked to make our own bridges out of popsicle sticks and glue. We had to make sure it was sturdy enough to carry a gallon on top of it. We also had to think about SDG #11, and how it relates to what we are ...

This is my Action Project for my class called, Light, Sound, and Time. In this class, we conducted a lot of activities to understand the connection between the three elements: Light, Sound, and Time. For this unit, we only focused on sound and how it travels to our ears along with, speed, pitch, wavelength, frequency, etc. For this unit, we had a field experience to The Chicago Hearing Society where we were able to speak to people who have trouble hearing or can't hear at all and use what we learned in our first class, empathy. It was an interesting way to get a different perspective on sound and how it affects someone's life. So for this action project, we put all the elements that we have learned throughout this unit and make a diddley bow. Similarly, to the pinhole cameras, we made to study light. For this action project, I found it super fun and also challenging at the same time. It was my first time making a diddley bow, which looks simple but also hard to make. ...

In this second and final course of the term in Design and Engineering, we were assigned to design and create a bike according to a specific person's needs. Throughout this term, we have been learning about the purpose of the functions of a bike. We took a trip to Working Bikes where we were able to get the bikes "ready" to be shipped to Jordan for those who are in need of bikes. While we were there we were able to conversate with our host Anna about the importance of bikes and how they are built in many different ways and used in different mechanisms. We also visited a bike shop called Earth Rider. We rode some electric-powered bikes and tested out what made them so different from regular bikes. Through this process, we thought about the possible ways we can change and shape a bike to make it unique while becoming useful and easy when riding it. So for this action project, we were assigned to create a bike that fit a specific person's needs based on their environment,...

In my first unit for my STEAM course Design & Engineering, we started off the year with going to the garden, picking up trash, and planting some flowers. After we completed that task we talked about what it means to use tools and the different things that we are capable of when using them. We went on and discussed how we can calculate the area, volume, and surface area of the garden we were working on. By doing this we also learned about vectors, Pythagorean theorem, and SOHCAHTOA and implemented these concepts in our work. Now, going into what we learned about tools, we discussed what simple tools are and how they make up different day to day objects and what it means exactly to be a designer and engineer. Throughout this process, we compared and contrasted different tools, pointing out how some parts of the tools contain simple machines inside of them. We paid close attention to this because we thought back to the tools we used to use and the common tools we see today. Some examp...

For the second unit of our STEAM course, Cure, we learned about medications and treatments. We took a look at how medication and drugs are different and how they alter the body in different ways. An interesting way we learned this was by completing a lab using miracle berries. To give us a better understanding of how a drug changes our bodies, we consumed a miracle berry. This type of drug basically cancels out our sour receptors and reveals the sweetness of the food item that is originally sour. This helped us have a better understanding of how a medicament works. A medicament works by targeting certain receptors to cancel out pain or nerve activity. For this action project, we had to choose a symptom to learn about and research a medication that is prescribed, an over the counter medication, and another type of treatment that is easily accessible. I chose a common symptom, which is a cough. By demonstrating our research, we had to produce what we learned into a medication box. I deci...

In this first unit of our STEAM course Cure, we learned about cell biology and the functions of a cell. We started off this term reading, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This book is about how HeLa cells came to exist. In the 1950s, Henrietta Lacks was a woman who was diagnosed with cervix cancer. After she passed scientists discovered that her cells kept on reproducing. By doing so we also learned how cells multiply and the importance it has in humans. For this course, we also learned about different surgeries and how cells are affected by the many different procedures. For this action project, we had to conduct a slideshow about a specific type of surgery following the procedure, the cells affected, what type of surgery, post-operation, etc. For my project, I chose to learn about an enucleation which is the removal of the eye, and the process of it contains behind the operation. While conducting this project I learned so much more than I expected to. When picking t...

In this unit of Population, we have been talking about evolution and the changes in organisms and how they adapt to the environment around them. In this action project, we are hypothetically creating a different environment and habitat for the organism we chose. I decided to choose the Bolivian Gray Titi Monkey (Callicebus donacophilus ) which I worked on in my previous action project. Since we had to create a different environment, we are observing the organism to see if they can survive through the changes and how they might actually evolve so that they can survive to the new habitat. Throughout this unit, we were luckily able to go to the Field Museum. With this experience, we were able to go in depth of evolution and really analyze the history of many organisms and how they have changed throughout time. It was a very interesting and engaging being able to look in each exhibit and be able to relate what we saw to what we were learning in class. The Evolution Of The ...

In this unit we have been talking about GMOs and how they effect us. Not many people notice that GMOs are everywhere. In class we watch a video about the "Green Revolution" which is basically about using modern science to grow our food supply. We also talked about supply and demand and how when making the food we usually will grow more of one thing such as corn or soybeans. For our AP in this unit we have to decide if we are either anti-GMOs or pro-GMOs. To help decide we went to a Farmer's Market and were able to see different perspectives about the pros . and cons about GMOs. It was a very great experience being able to speak to different people.

Throughout this unit we were able to learn the origin of foods but at the same time we were able to learn our families food origins. Through this process we were also able to speak to family members to get an insider perspective of how they interpret their traditional foods. The purpose of this Action Project is to not only explore the process of foods but to also explore your own personal process of special family foods that signify your family and culture. SR.FamilyTree.2018 Overall this unit was very important we were able to see other traditions but also ours and the meaning of our food that important to our family. I enjoyed this AP because I feel like it got me closer to culture and family talking about different dishes and different foods that are important and meaningful to us and relatives.

Throughout this term we were studying natural farming and the techniques that we should use. By doing this we read “One Straw Revolution” by Fukuoka. When reading this book we were discussing the principles and the reason behind Fukuoka’s theory. The this AP we are pretending to have a garden and how we would sort the plants out for their health and growth we also leaned onto Fukuoka's theory for inspiration!                                                 Overall this AP was very useful for us and the environment. We are now able to better ourselves when it comes to gardening and the purpose of gardening too. I believe that the most interesting part of this unit is learning about how plants interact with others. I really enjoyed this AP because we were able to show what we learned in our own preference. Citations- Old Farmer's Almanac. Companion Planting Guid...

In the freshmen class, Fuel we learned about how fossil fuels effect the Earth. We also learned what types of fuels are better to use for the environment. In class we were assigned a project where we were pretending to sell fossil fuels. We were able to choose from natural gas, oil, and coal. I chose natural gas as my fossil fuel we also had to record the usage of natural gas that the US uses and also choose another country to compare them. While doing this we also learned how to calculate our slope and our equations we used to graph our data. While learning all of this we went to visit Tesla. The reason why we went to Tesla is to see other types of energy we can use besides fossil fuels. It was an amazing and fun experience to learn about fuels that are able to use that are better for the environment.

In class for the 2017-2018 elective term I took the STEAM course, Rocket Science. Through this experience we, have studied about the history of space engineers and the history of spacecraft and rockets. In class we have decided to create water rockets. So we made our models and designs out of watercolor which was a super cool experience. I made my rocket and named it "Nut"; it is an ancient gods name. Through this experience we also learned a lot of math and science that we put into this project. We also went to really cool FE's which was a really good learning experience. In conclusion, in our Action Project we were given a $1,000,000 budget and we had to create a water rocket that we had to launch at the end. We included lots of mini-missions to help us complete these tasks to make our water rockets. It was a bit difficult trying to manage my time and manage the materials and the budget but, finally we launched and it was a super fun experience. We also looked at som...

This is my blog and I will be talking about abstract art. The reason why I am focusing on abstract art because I really love it and it is something I really enjoy doing. Abstract Art.    Pexels.com Abstract from Adrian Olguin on Vimeo .