LIDIA VAZQUEZ
Pol
Based on your POL experience and after hearing feedback from your teachers, what are you going to do differently as a student and as an individual next semester? What have you learned about yourself through this process? What new goals will you make for yourself? What areas do you want to improve upon?
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After what I heard in my POL, what I am going to do or enforce next semester is to have group meetings to share out the reflective and deeper things that they could expirience. Also to make sure that my group mates are leaving all those really nice things that I am experiencing to make sure there riding the roller coaster of emotions and lessons I am riding. Also listening to Iza's POL I want to work on bieng a better group member and walk beside my peers not infront or behind. Well I have learned that i can be a very reflective person, because at first I felt that my POL wasn't that deep and reflective, but once presenting it to the teachers I realized that it was because I was bieng honest and sharing everything I had learned and reflected on.
The goals I want to set my self is to be able to learn how to be a group mate that walks along-st side the others, and also to xperimnet with diffrent group exercises, and to impuls my group to get deep .I also personally want to improve school and life wise in my organization, and spelling, in english as well as spanish.
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POL INTRO
What is our meaning in life? Is my life really only meant to succeed in school and get a job and succeed in that? Am I that selfish? Is “Lidia” only made for that? I reflected a lot through this year, and I have realized that I’ve always been very fortunate: I had a beautiful infancy, I was always loved, I have always had a strong loving family. Life has always been kind to me, “Lidia”. I am thankful for this, but maybe as a result, I have always have had a challenge with empathy, and I am afraid of coming out of my bubble of conformity and take risks. As an artist, I am very sensitive to feeling, emotions, I think I have been afraid of coming out of that bubble of beauty and all things good. Or at least that's how I saw it.
This is a series of paintings that I had made this summer and this is the significance of them.
This project was the best to allow me to see the side of the outside world. In the first day when mr.s Dalia said that something we were going to do this year was be uncomfortable , and take risks and push each other from fears. And then Mrs. Marisol told me that we were taking public transportation to our different communities. I was shocked, triggered. I was not prepared to walk in the outside world and take public transportation and walk with a group of kids and explore a new community. I was mortified, I tried so hard to convince, Mrs. Marisol to let my grandmother take me. Visiting every community I fell in love with all of them, I had passed through all those places by car, but once walking and exploring, I was there I entered their environment, I was able to appreciate this little family restaurants and stores that If not for this project I would have never known about and never taken the time to appreciate. Know, I am not afraid to walk outside in the streets I'm not afraid to explore outside, I am not afraid of breaking the and I am not afraid of breaking the monotony of the locations I go to. And now that I see this painting I see it with different eyes it’s significance is much more different and I truly thank you for this.
This is just one of the realizations I had. Since last year was a difficult year something I got out of it was the habits of heart of mind, the habit ‘i needed to work on was empathy, It's not that I was incapable of empathising it's just that I was focused on my goal of doing good in school, concentrated in the future, and university and well, I was blocking out the human part, My goals weren't set on enjoying life and other people, I was focused on succeeding in this system of “life”. Not only was I being selfish, but also that path was not going to be the best use of “Lidia”. And this realization was all theoretical until it finally sparked, the last day of our project, when all hope was gone where I was questioning myself whether we had even made a change, whether micro changes were just like an effort award. Because I had always seen it like that. It was until the last moment when My group had been able to get 11 middle school students to read to first graders. Iza and I were so Proud We put our hands up like the end of the breakfast club to celebrate our victory. But it was until I walked into the classrooms and observed, what all that effort and hard work had created. All of it was worth it. Every single , stressful biography every professional email, every project proposal refinement. And that is when I realised that I wasn’t about whether this change would look good in a college application. What brought this sudden realization. I am a visual person so
I was able to appreciate micro changes.
This was the cutest thing seeing how we were able to help, how we were able to spark a smile through reading. It was just so wonderful seeing how this middle school student were also feeling the same about it with this first graders and seeing how dedicating, an hour to reading to them can give such great results. “ a great result” is not meant like an increase in reading comprehension,I am referring to a great “result” as in seeing the enthusiasm and joy they brought to those adorable little humans by reading to them. What I took away from this was the true significance of why I should do things in life as that christmas song says
It's so important to
Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy;
Make just one heart the heart you sing to.
One smile that cheers you,
One face that lights when it nears you,
I honestly believe it .
The song has a very key word make just one someone happy. One heart to heart, make one simile. I have learned that micro changes are as important as huge changes, Even though my teachers expressed this since the begin I never understood it I was like yes of course that makes sense, but to be brutally honest I didn’t feel it, I have always thought of the bigger picture, in the beginning of this project the word impact meant something a dramatic change, something important large at scale. Now when the word comes to mind impact can be so many things, i could be microscoping changes or huge changes that might affect a various range of people I see as impact something from a civil rights movement, to a smile, now I know I refer a lot to smiles and they are important. I refer to a smile , because a sincere smile is a facial expression that communicates so much then verbally communicating your sudden strike energy and happiness, it's much more powerful than words. When someone smiles, they don’t just express themselves it also impacts the person that makes them smile or the person that gets to witness it. And I Have grown to understand and value all of these things. ‘And this is what makes me aware that I am capable of being a Changemaker, then it’s just up to myself to continue it.
What responsibilities do you think students have in creating challenges for themselves?
I think the student is responsible for challenging him/herself. They should not rely on the teacher to challenge them because their parents and teachers won't be pushing them their whole life. A student needs to develop the skill of self discipline and setting personal challenges or goals. Since elementary I have always challenged myself and asked for teachers to challenge me, In this particular project I personally know that I could have challenged myself much more I know what I am capable of and that was my responsibility to push myself. And I have reflected on that and well I usually think out of the box and push myself to do those things, like in my art and several projects in the past. What I have learned is that teachers can only challenge you to a certain extent, only you know truly what you're capable of. Also this year with this huge project I have experienced that sometimes teachers are very busy and don’t have time to think of ways to challenge each and every individual, so that’s when the student should step up and challenge themselves. I personally love being challenged because it allows me to progress and when I am challenge, the results and the final products are worth all those hours and all that effort. And that's when I truly take pride in my work.
In this specific project I don’t feel like I truly challenged myself I know I could have done much more, this semester it was like if I was in this trance a annoying slumber of being tired 24/7 and complaining about everything. I wasn’t being my productive self. I finished all the requirements for Faces of Change but I did once push myself, and gave the extra in the beginning. That day that Iza and I went after school to a City council meeting we took initiative and also went to the library to interview more people from the community. That is an example of Lidia trying.
If you were able to design a project for you and your classmates to do, what would you do and what topics would you explore?
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A project themed math, Purpose:To open student’s eyes of how math can be beautiful, and no one is truly, good or bad at math, and how we all learn at different passes but if we truly set ourselves to learn something you can. In humanities we would read Fermat’s last theorem and talk about the history, if some people are really interested in women's rights, they could create some artifact or poem or spoken word about all those women mathematicians and how they struggled. In chem we could review a project to also show how much math helps and is a large contributor of chemistry. We could also combine art in it. I have the general idea kinda of but I still need to develop it more and find ways to draw interest and actually make the purpose come through.
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Project Purpose: The student will have an understanding of plants and nature the science behind the something from that category. As well as an understanding of character development.
Deep meaning: That even the smallest of things can be so intricate and bring this sort of interest. To view the world through a different lens.
First,The student would begin by learning about photosynthesis, as well as look into microscopic beings and principle, as well as the small beings that we see but don’t always appreciate.This is similar to the project I did in 8th grade were you go outside and see nature with magnifying glasses It allows the student to see the tiny wonders of our world. The creative portion of the project the student will be able to pick from multiple options that were eye catching for them personally or that they found interested in. Once plant or something from nature they find a close up shot and/or one thing that's microscopic. Then the student will be able to incorporate art by taking what they liked about that certain thing and creating a character (the examples are below). The student will also get to learn about character development, and for the humanities section the student, Will create a writing piece that could be a background story of their character or a poem.
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This idea could also work for different animal species like cnidarians, and their qualities they posses.and stuff that will come in handy next year for the sat.
How do you create meaningful take-aways for projects that are assigned to you?
Something I learned in my communication class is how when you're using verbal words they can mean noting the we are the ones that give the words purpose for example the word apple means a shiny red or green fruit. We are who gives things in life significance. So how do you create meaningful take aways? You give them meaning, I believe to give a project meaning apart from just educating oneself is when you make it personal, when you are empathic, when you put yourself out there, you pop your bubble of comfort. You make it meaningful when you're working with actual people and get to see there reaction, of all that hard work that's when it’s worth it. That's when it creates meaning and thanks to that there is a memory that will be unforgettable and will motivate you to continue doing things to receive the same result. I have learned this with the Faces of Change project. This project felt much more real than others because it pushed me to get out of my comfort zone. And to speak to people emphasize it was a project with a lot of depth.