Hello! Welcome back to my blog. If you didn’t read my first post, please read that first, so you will understand more about the topic that I am going to talk about. In my first blog, I talked about industries harming animals, for example, puppy mills, fur farms, pet stores not taking care of their animals. I talked about what secret industries do to animals and that they don’t tell anyone what they do to the animals. I am going to talk for them, to be the animals’ voices. This is important because a reasonable amount of people that took my survey knew about this, but not everyone. I am going to show what people know from looking from my survey. I want to show the world that animals are being harmed. I made a survey so it will help me see if people really do know if they know about this. The result were quite shocking.  

For our project, You and the World, we get to decide if we get to do a interview, survey or a field observation. For the past 2 weeks, we had to do an interview, survey, or field observations for our topic. For my topic I chose to do a survey. In my survey I asked questions like…

• If they are aware industries harming animals?

• What do they know about it?

• What do you know about puppy mills?

My results were surprising, not a lot of people know what puppy mills are or what industries are really doing, some of the results were just unnecessary or unhelpful. Here are the results below if they heard about puppy mills.

Results of ‘Have you ever heard about puppy mills?’

The survey that I made gave me a different perspective on what other people know about industries harming animals. I thought a good amount of people knew that industries are harming animals, but they didn’t know what is truly happening to them from looking at the results I received. It was proven that 84% of people were aware of industries harming animals and 16% of people didn’t know about it. In my survey, I asked a question “What do you know about industries harming animals?” lots of people said they don’t know, but there were a few people that went deep into this, “I know the fur industry can harm/injure/kill animals for their fur. Factory farms abuse animals and give them no room to move around in and have the animals live in their own filth. Puppy mills inbreed and leave dogs in small cages. I also know that zoos and circuses abuse animals to do tricks for them.” “I know that a lot of farms and and other industries that produce meat often times are where animals are sent to be slaughtered, and while they are there they are tormented, starved, squished and crowded together and have no relief. Their necks are broken, and many are fed things that make them larger but are unhealthy for their systems.” I was happy to see these informational result, but that is only a few people, I want more people to know about this problem.

I asked a question on my survey if they support industries harming animals and the results is above. As you can see 8% of people supported industries harming animals. 10% is neutral and 82% does not support industries harming animals. I want to change that and I need a solution.

Agent of Change is what is a solution or how you are going to help this situation. My Agent of change is I will be fundraising for a animal shelter. I want to do this because the government actually does not provide money to shelter which is crazy and sad. I am going to step up to provide money, by doing a fundraiser to a shelter, Paws.

Hopefully, this will be a trend, helping shelters. We will start off small then go on and help all animals around the world. I can’t do this alone so we can work together to stop this problem. For more information click here for my bibliography.

In my first blog post, I introduced the topic of my You & The World Project, which is bullying LGBT+ children in schools. You can find that blog here. I talk about the types of insults children use, the statistics behind insults, and who people hear them from. I also talk about where bullying stems from, and how it affects children from a young age. That’s all in my first blog post.

I found a new source, talking about being openly gay in high school, and still hearing homophobic slurs from a water polo team. Tony Covell still heard homophobic slurs from his teammates in the locker room. The team would jokingly use the words and look at Covell, he would blow them off and ignore their ignorance. These boys knew their teammate and who he was, but day after day they continued to use these words. So why do people continue to use slurs and hate speech, even if they know someone's sexuality? Covell says it’s about the hate behind it. That being called a “faggot” is supposed to be offensive. Covell says “The term “faggot” is degrading — it gives a derogatory term to a word that in most cases are being used as a synonym for “gay.”

GLSEN, sponsored by Celebrating Kindness, created a “no name calling week”, to reduce kids in high school from using homophobic or gay slurs. This week has no set time, and schools and does it whenever they feel necessary. They propose ideas and things to do to keep kids from using these slurs, and how to celebrate LGBT+ students in their schools.

For my project, I had to do original research to find out more about my topic. I did a survey, which you can find here, and sent it out to children who go to my school.  My topics asked about how students felt about the LGBT+ community if they’ve heard slurs against it, if they’ve witnessed bullying, and if they’ve tried to help it. It was an anonymous survey, so no information was recorded about the students.

I learned from the students that most people thought the slurs were moderately hurtful, mostly heard them from students, and heard them in school. None responded that they disliked the LGBT+ community. This information helped me understand how a group of high school students feel about the LGBT+ community. It also helped me see that people sometimes don’t think that the slurs are hurtful, and some even said that they don’t hear the slurs at all. Personally, I think that the “hurt” of the slur depends on the person. It all depends on your experience with the LGBT+ community, your supports, and the type of people you’ve been around. I’m not affected much by homophobic slurs, but I do know people who are bothered by them a lot.

This image shows if people have seen bullying towards people in the LGBT+ community, taken from my survey results

For my agent of change in the real world, I’m not sure what I want to do yet. I was thinking of fundraising and giving the money to organizations who help prevent bullying or make safe spaces for teens who are LGBT+ and not supported. Or I wanted to fundraise and give the money to organizations that make “care packages” for Transgender teens who can’t afford, or whose parents won't let them buy clothes that make them feel comfortable. Those are some options that I have.

In my first Blog post, I did my best to inform you on what my topic was. I discussed the possible dangers in how technology has/will advance, the theories behind these dangers, and a proposal on how to delay/stop it. I looked at opinions from some of the world’s leading minds such as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. I looked into the way computers process information and how they could be integrated into technologies such as smart eye contacts. Since that post, I’ve sent out a survey with 41 responses (so far) and conducted an interview with SLA’s own Mr. Kamal. The interview was recorded on video and is planned to be integrated into a longer video in the future.

The Survey showed me a few things. While most people have computer technology heavily integrated into their lives, few of them feel an emotional connection to it. In my responses, I found a few incredibly in depth answers from people I could tell cared a lot about the subject.

Improving The Care For The Youth

Hi, I’m Niya and for some time now, I have been doing some research on Problematic family. Basically I am going over the problems that happens in family homes such as abuse. It talks about how children are affected by the family homes and feelings they may come across while in a group or foster home. We aren’t really aware of what happens when no one is around. What if these problems are still going on in the oster or group home the child is staying in? Some people don’t really care or think about it as much as people like me. This can become a bigger problem and here is nothing changing to make sure children are safe and in a great group or foster home, To read more about go read my first post.

In my first post, I didn’t include something which would be very important to this project which is DHS. ( Department of Human Services) DHS is a child care system what protects children from bad parenting or abuse in homes. These people are big responders to any type of harm to children in their homes. Social worker play a big role in taking children from abusive homes and putting them into new group or foster homes. If you are interested in child welfare, there are people that will come to your home to see if everything is fine for a child to stay there with a gurdan.

Yes being in a group or foster home can be very stressful. So me children don’t believe that they should be there and they choose to run away from their foster or group home. In Oklahoma City, children were sexualy asstulted and after running away from state custody. You would think, why? Why would they run away just like that? This says that something is going on that others who care are not aware of.  Check out this situation about the abused runaway children.

I have recently interviewed a friend of mine named Orlando. Orlando is 15 year old  has been in 2 foster homes in his life for about 3 years. He says he has never liked foster homes . The first time he has ever stepped foot in a foster home was when he was only 6 years old and he says he didn’t feel comfortable and they didn’t not treat him like he was wanted there. He was also scared and had lots of problems that he can’t explain. While in foster homes, the only person he said he could count on was his sister who was also in a foster home but at the age of 17, it wasn’t required for her to stay there so she had left. Orlando says if he was one of the most important people working for the foster care system he said he would “Talk to kids privately and see if they are experiencing any problems in the group home. Mainly just talk to them and see how their foster parents and siblings are treating them.” You should see more of this interview with Orlando.

Also if you are looking for more information, I suggest you go check out my annotated Biography!

Hey there! I am Sarah Son, a freshman at Science Leadership Academy. In my previous blog post, I introduced my English project, which is called You and the World. My main focus is animal cruelty. In my previous research, I found a lot of alarming information about my topic. The results of graphs that I have found were very surprising. Recently, I interviewed a volunteer from SPCA in Philadelphia and her answers to my questions were very helpful.

In my original research, which is the interview, I found out even more about animal cruelty, mainly in the area of Philadelphia. It was quite shocking to hear what Sandy, the respondent, had told me. Her responses were so detailed and clear, it made a great interview. The first question that I asked her was, “When animals are found, how do they react towards people? Or in other words, how do they act when they are being pet?” She replied by saying “... it depends on the situation. Sometimes the animals that we find don’t like humans, really. They have a hard time adjusting to humans and then others are perfectly fine with them and they are willing to interact with humans.” She also told me that they once found a dog that was chained up and was very skinny. Once they took care of him, he was actually one of the most playful dogs they have seen in the SPCA. I’m quite glad that she even gave me an example.

Annotated Bibliography

If you’d like to listen to the interview, click here!

Note for Ms. Giknis: There are few hyperlinks in this post because there is more in the first.

This is an image of a paper of the free after school programs that have been offered by the Penn University to help people with autism.
Annotated Bibliography

Hi, I’m Ruby. In my previous blog post, I introduced a research project about palm oil that I am doing. Palm oil is found in many common food and non-food items. It is usually produced in a way that harms the environment. In producing palm oil, palm trees found in Indonesia and Malaysia that provide habitats for animals are cut down, leaving the animals to become endangered. This is a major problem and most people don’t know that this is even happening right now. My blog post also introduced something called sustainable palm oil; a version of palm oil that is produced so as not to damage the environment. My goal is to promote and popularize the use of sustainable palm oil within my Philadelphia community and everywhere else possible.

Since I completed my previous post, I have learned so much more. I have done more research about the impacts that palm oil production has on people and on the world. In particular, I have learned more from The Union of Concerned Scientists about how palm oil contributes to climate change. When the forests in Indonesia and Malaysia are cut down for palm oil, there is a lot of carbon that is released. The Union of Concerned Scientists writes, “That's equivalent to the emissions from driving an average car from New York to San Francisco and back 76 times.” This information provides yet another reason why palm oil production needs to stop. Even though animals dying may not affect everyone, climate change definitely will.

I have also added to my knowledge of sustainable palm oil, which has continued to appear as an excellent alternative to regular palm oil. According to GreenPalm, there are eight steps that must be followed in order to make palm oil certified as sustainable. These steps address laws and regulations, economic and financial viability, growers and millers, biodiversity, individuals and communities involved and affected, new plants, and improvement. If followed, these steps will create a more healthy and vibrant product and environment.

Now, in addition to all of this, I have also gathered new information through a survey that I conducted specifically for this project. I surveyed 50 people--most of whom are high school students within Philadelphia--about their knowledge of palm oil, their contribution to the problem itself, and their interest in sustainable palm oil. One question asked participants to check off items that contain palm oil that are found regularly in their homes.

The answers I received were very interesting and informative. Only 4 of the 50 people (8%) stated that their homes do not contain a single one of the items listed. This means that 92% of those surveyed usually have at least one item containing palm oil in their home. This just shows how common palm oil is. Furthermore, participants were asked, “On a scale of 1-6, how much does the use of palm oil bother you?” In response, 70% of the people gave an answer of three or less. This means that those 70% were somewhat to very indifferent. I did not expect an answer like this, especially right after explaining that palm oil is a big issue. Even after all of my research, however, I still wonder how I can raise awareness about palm oil.

My secondary goal is to convince as many people as possible to try buying products with sustainable palm oil, rather than regular products. To accomplish these goals, I plan to create a presentation that will summarize my research thus far. I will then present this to one or two groups of students. I will also provide these groups with a taste of food containing sustainable palm oil, with the hopes that they might fall in love with the product.

Finally, make sure you stay tuned for my third blog post! And if you’re interested in further exploring the issue of palm oil production, visit my Annotated Bibliography to learn more!

Hello my name is Benjamin Rivera and I’m Doing a Project for my English class called You & The World which involves me studying a problem in the world and gaining evidence with pictures and sources from the internet like videos and articles about youth violence. My project choice was youth violence in Philadelphia which basically involves me and all the high school students in Philadelphia as  we are all affected and actually the cause of this problem in the city of Philadelphia. I want people who live outside of the city to see, review, and join the movement to stop youth violence everywhere. I spent some time doing research about youth violence and I found two sources from the internet and one source as an interview.

I spent some time looking for somebody to interview for my project. I found a Police Officer who was generous enough to make the interview possible. We had a conversation on the phone and I asked questions that involved gender equality, home environment, and school environment and if they played a key role in youth violence and caused attitudes and actions of high school students to change in a bad way. He answered yes and the youth violence he witnesses is getting worse and worse everyday. I also included a topic that approached after school dismissal and the safety of our community. He answered and implied that Philadelphia as a whole isn’t safe after school hours because the students are causing problems and people are getting hurt. The interview gave me the knowledge that the police witness youth violence and it can be so bad that even they cannot control the situation. As I shared in my first slate first, mobs can be up to 100+ kids and can easily get out of hand.

A big event that happened in January of 2016 gave me the perfect story to follow up on my interview. An 8th grader was caught trespassing at a high school in las vegas and it ended tragically. When a police officer came to arrest the middle school student, his sister got involved.Then a crowd swarmed around the officer’s  swat car and a student threw a rock at the officer's head. He then took out his pepper spray and the students scattered with burning eyes and throats. This officer is right for this because he was alone and he was just doing his job and the students needed to stop and mind their business. This is police isn’t brutality this is students starting a flash mob and started violence with a police officer because they have the numbers to get away with it.

I found another event that involved a crowd of young teenagers watching two girls fighting out on the streets of NYC and this is just sad how a group of people just surrounded and watched these two girls fight. Throwing each other on the floor, grabbing each other’s hair  while people just stood there watching the blows. The girls were teenagers fighting with pajamas in the middle of the street. One brave adult stepped in and stopped the fight. That women is an example of how everyone should act. To believe there should be peace and love in our youth community. Why do we have to fight? Why can’t we just be friends or walk away from a problem?

Since blog post one I learned that students and teenagers in general are careless when it comes to other people. They react and act ignorantly without thinking of the consequences of their actions. We need more heroes in the world. n my next blog post I will inform you of the heroes and people who take charge when they see youth violence in their community, and how they responded to the situation. If you want to find other sources you can check out my annotated bibliography and do some more research.

In my last post I talked mainly about facts and some percentages of Autism affect. I would like to dive more into this subject by expanding the facts. Thanks to my survey on Autism and the response I gained helped me with my project and I thank them. So I would like to talk about the responses first and talk about my new made research after I talk about my survey.

The responses to my Autism survey have really given me a great look at how people care and think about Autism. The vast majority know one or two or three and some even know 20 to 30 people with Autism or more. Many thought that the National rate of Autism was 1 in 39 but it’s actually 1 in 67, but, many also chose 1 in 82 or 1 in 99. They also picked 16% of people with Autism in the world but it’s actually 1% of people have Autism in the world. The 16% had the most people pick it. The true or false question is where many get divided. 38.3% thought it was true and 61.7% thought it was false. The real answer is ‘’false’’ because you have to ask the insurance companies to pay for it and 50% won’t pay for it. The scale chart was very pleasing to look at to see 21.3% of people feel strongly towards Autism and 34% are close to that 21.3% of people. But 40.4% of people feel neutral towards Autism and that's alright. But, what caught me off guard was the 4.3% of people who felt that Autism wasn’t that big of a deal. The yes, no, maybe question is by far one of my favorite ones. What surprised me was that 10.6% of people said ‘’maybe’’ to the idea of Autism getting more support and the ones that said yes were about 89.4. Through this survey, I have learned that many people know about Autism and help support.           

People who have Autism don’t look any different from anyone else. They just act, talk, learn, and think differently from others. Some people with Autism have different measurements to how much help they will need which goes from gifted to severely challenged. Some signs someone has Autism is by avoiding eye contact, having trouble understanding other people’s feelings or talking about their own feelings, repeating actions over and over again and having unusual reactions to the way things smell, taste, look, feel, or sound. These facts were found on CDC which is a disease learning website.

There is no cure for Autism as of right now. But there are many therapy sessions you can go to and try to raise them different to decrease the chance of serious symptoms. There's something called ‘’early intervention‘’ which is when you give your child therapies. It involves many different types of therapies including occupational and physical. Therapist will come to the house to give the child a safe environment and because they are young and still don’t trust unfamiliar faces. Info from PA DHS and  Child Mind Institute.

Hey everyone its me again. This is more information on my You & The world project. If you don´t remember my last blog post you can read it here on slate. Previously, in my first blog post I talked about the rates of suicides in different countries. Furthermore the disorders people may have that cause them to commit suicide. Disorders are bipolar, mental health, depression, and etc.

Next,to further my research I interviewed my  guidance counselor Ms. Siswick. Ms. Siswick gave me very good information on my topic. A question I asked her was ´´What are the symptoms of  a kid who may be thinking about suicide?´´.  Her response was drug use/alcohol increased, depression, change in behavior, domestic violence, and Violence overall. We also discussed different techniques on how to talk someone out of suicide completely. The different techniques are therapy, trusted friends, confiding in someone. For more information you can listen to the interview here.  

adult are: divorce, job loss, and substance use. People commit suicide because they think that´s a solution to end their pain.

For more information check out my annotated bibliography!.