This Bike Protectz You!

Hello and welcome to my last Action Project in Design and Engineering.
This ap asked us to design a bike that fits the needs of a specific persona.
For this unit of Design and Engineering, we went to WorkingBikes, Earth Rider and a representative from Divvy came to speak to us. Working Bikes was a hands-on experience breaking down pedals, Earth Rider was a hands-on riding experience and Divvy was a business experience. I think that this research qualifies me to design this bike for my persona. I hope you enjoy this project.


 



Overall this project was very fun, yet stressful. I was able to use my own ideas to make a bike that I think works perfectly for my persona. If I could change anything about my assignment I would give myself more time to make a more effective 3D model.

The Hair Issue

TN "The Front Cover" 2019

Hello and welcome to a very special action project for Rhetoric. For this action project, we were asked to create an art piece that will bring people together around a certain issue. This is based on the tribute to the Chicago Freedom Movement in Marquette Park. The piece notably featured many languages, something I thought was very important for creating my own work of art to bring people together. I am especially proud of this AP and I hope that this translates through the work that I put into it. There are 2 pieces to the artwork. First, is a commercial parody to bring light to lack of diversity in television and second, mock magazine editorial photographs to highlight the lack of diversity in fashion magazines.


                                                                           HAIR from T N on Vimeo.

TN "Nissrine" 2019
My Hair Is Fierce in French 

TN "Shanet" 2019
My Hair is Angelic in Spanish

TN "Georgette" 2019
My Hair is Good in Kirundi

Artist Statement

As a woman of color, I do not see myself reflected in the media.
Especially media that is meant to sell me something. I want to change this,
I want to change the narrative that the only time you can use a woman of color
on television or on print is when you are directly talking about problems surrounding us.
That is why I created this piece. This piece is meant to act as a mirror for women of color to be able to see themselves in spaces where they are usually ignored. When people look at this piece I want people to feel comfortable. I do not want this to feel foreign or different. This piece is meant to be art that challenges the status quo but is still allowed to be fun and beautiful. It should, however, start conversations in white spaces about why we don't see people like this in fashion magazines.
It's simply a fact that in the past 30 years only 30 women of color have been on the cover of Vogue Magazine. For scale, there have been 412 white women on the cover, and everything about that does not sit right with me. My piece is meant to show women of color as fashionable, without changing to make white Americans comfortable (hence the native languages represented). Not only are these publications racially-biased, but they are also colorist. In a recent study, 90% of WOC in magazines are either light or medium skin tones. Yes, you should feel embarrassed because the fact is that it is simply more profitable to market towards people of color, big corporations just don't want to.
I chose two media for this art piece because I wanted to show two different advertising methods. I thought photography would be best for a photo-shoot that showed these beautiful women of color editorially. The advertisement shows these women of color having fun which is a radical act in itself. It is very rare to see women of color having fun or not facing some type of adversity in mass media; this challenges that. I used Pathos throughout this art piece. The fun that is being had in the commercial appeals to pathos because it is so human. The beauty of the images also appeals to pathos. Ideally, I would want this piece to be a huge social media campaign that other women of color could add to. It would be really amazing to see all types of women from all around the world contributing to this art piece.

Citations 

Muller, Marissa G. “A New Study Shows Just How Bad Diversity in Hollywood Is.” W Magazine, 27 Feb. 2018

Neuendorf, Kimberly A. "The content analysis guidebook". Sage, 2016.


Owens, Tori. “As America Grows More Diverse, Fashion Magazine Covers Are Slow to Show Progress.” Peninsula Press, 25 Oct. 2017

Why You Shouldn't Correct AAVE

Hello and welcome to my second Action Project for my Junior humanities course, Rhetoric.

For this AP we looked at Op-Eds and their power. We had an FE with Troy LaRaviere, the president of the Chicago Principal's Union. This FE was very touching for me as my Grandmother is a retired CPS teacher from the south side, where Troy LaRaviere also taught. I was inspired by his speech to write about African American Vernacular English. This is a dialect that some people use as an excuse to ignore black people. I thought that it was very important to bring attention to this age of "digital blackface" and explain the beauty and uniqueness of dialects. 

                Why You Shouldn’t correct AAVE

                                

                                                            Via @ashoncrawley on twitter



Tik Tok culture has brought us modern-day minstrel shows- sans the blackface. The white folks of social media have taken trending black culture and turned it into the butt of a joke. From Instagram to Vine the most popular jokes have been “black people be like”. But, why? Why is the “easy” joke always racist? And it's not just Gen Z tik tokers who fall into this style of joke either. It's their parents too. C'mon, you can admit you've laughed at a white comedian imitating the black lady they saw in CVS or the black preacher they saw on tv. Maybe you complimented a black girl on how well-spoken she was just because she decided it was safer for her to use standard English in that situation.

So what's the problem with white folks using AAVE? There is always an assumption when you first meet someone. The unfortunate truth is that most people's assumption is based on learned racism. When those Instagram kids turn off their phones they can face the world without their stereotypes walking into a room before them. Still not convinced that it's a big deal? Let's dive deeper into it.


AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, is a dialect most commonly used in predominantly black spaces. It has been labeled by many as “incorrect”, however, learning how to dissect the dialect and “code-switch” is a vital skill. Code-switching is a necessary means of survival for all black Americans. Talking “white” is the only way we are even seen on a day to day basis. AAVE is not “uneducated,” AAVE is not “wrong,” and most importantly AAVE is not “ghetto.”

Arriel Vinson states that her classmates didn’t take her main character seriously because he spoke AAVE, though the character was extremely well educated and only used AAVE when speaking to friends or thinking to himself. AAVE is unfairly ridiculed by so many non-black poc, white folks, and even black Americans. In my own experience, in spaces like school and others, I work very hard to speak in a way that is comfortable for my listeners. I have felt the red-hot embarrassment of a slip-up, my use of “ain’t” or “finna” being taken as a joke or mocked and corrected, leaving me feeling that I have to reestablish myself as an “educated” person. There is nothing worse than walking into space, thinking that you made a good impression, and then hearing "oh, you speak so well". Yes, while this sounds like a compliment, I will ask you, when is the last time someone has to you this? My skin color walks into the room before I do, then my use of standard English. I often wonder if people who look like me ever see past my race or if I'm just the eloquent black girl.

Geoffrey K. Pullum affirms, “Those that speak AAVE don’t fail in speaking standard English they succeed in speaking African American English”.

Let's say you still are convinced that a person who speaks AAVE should be corrected. You may say "well, there is a time and place for everything."
To you I say, your privilege colors you vision, it tells you that everyone should be able to switch back and forth from standard English.
To you I say, if you work to understand AAVE you will hear that the person you looked over or ignored for being “ignorant” has a remarkable opinion covered in the deep-seated, rich, and beautiful culture of AAVE.





Addendum

In this Op-Ed, I used pathos as my rhetorical appeal. I used pathos because I felt that in order to get through to people about a culture that is different than their own it is best to use a common ground.

I used Anaphora “AAVE is not uneducated, AAVE is not wrong, and most importantly AAVE is not Ghetto.” Metaphor “I have felt the red-hot embarrassment of a slip up” and Allusion “C'mon, you can admit you've laughed at a white comedian imitating the black lady they saw in CVS or the black preacher they saw on tv.” I would like to submit this article to a prestigious newspaper like The New York Times. I know that the NYT has an audience that my Op-Ed imagines. My goal with this Op-Ed is to shake people into seeing people that they ignore, whether it be because of skin color, language, or vernacular. There are other dialects that get ignored as well like, Chicano English or Creole English. I want to express that these dialects are all so beautiful and they make our cultures so beautiful and untouchable.

Wanna Betta' Shovel?

In my first Action Project for my Junior STEAM class, Design and Engineering, we took a deep dive into empathy. Empathy is understanding and caring about another person's situation. This is an idea that designers use when making objects for consumers to use. This is what we did for this AP. Along with my partner LHM, we designed a shovel that was made to work for senior citizens with empathy in mind. To prepare for designing, I interviewed my mother while gardening to see what tools she likes and which tools she would change. As a class, we went Home Depot to see how consumers buy tools and how businesses accommodate the supply and demand.



Our new tool is a shovel that allows you to get leverage without compromising your balance.
It does this by having a place for your knees to be able to push into the shovel allowing you to dig deeper into hard soil without lifting your feet.
The additional part is the knee rest, this allows for better leverage and greater ability to dig into the soil.
This is an example of innovation and efficiency because the shovel has a new part that allows senior consumers to be comfortable and have the confidence to shovel without losing balance.
These are the ways our tool is better than the competition's:
Our shovel has a sleeker more “modern” look, it allows for better leverage than the average shovel and it allows the older consumer to not be worried they will fall while shoveling.
How? Our shovel uses a lever as a mechanism to access the knee rests. It is a first-class lever because the fulcrum is in between the input and output.


 


In my opinion, I really enjoyed this project. I liked being able to design and customize a tool that will work for almost every consumer. If I could change anything I would change the way that using the knee rests may ignore a potential consumer that cannot use their knees.

Pete Buttigieg Loves Rhetoric!

DISCLAIMER- This Blog Post Does Not Reflect My Political Views


Hello and welcome to my first action project in my junior year for Rhetoric. In this class, we discussed rhetorical devices and situations. We also went over Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. All of these are appeals that people use to persuade and convince someone to, for example, buy their product. Or, in this case, vote for them in the election. In this AP, I studied Pete Buttigieg one of the people running for the nomination in the election. I went through most of his public speeches on gun control and learned what his plan and ideas are. With that information, I used Logos and Pathos to explain his opinion on Gun Control and hopefully persuade young people into being on his side.







Here is the script. I have highlighted and explained which rhetorical devices I used.

Speech Script TN 2019

Citations

Britton, Bianca. “What Other Countries Do to Stop Mass Shootings.” CNN, Cable News Network, 6 Aug. 2019, intl/index.html.

Follman, Mark, et al. “US Mass Shootings, 1982-2019: Data from Mother Jones' Investigation.” Mother Jones, 31 Aug. 2019,

Patient Profile- Lung Cancer Prevention

Hello and welcome to my final STEAM AP of my Sophomore year. Of all of the Action Projects from this year I think this is one of my favorites. In this AP we are called to create a patient profile of a character. I chose the disease risk, gender, sex, familial risk, etc. This AP goes really in depth and combines everything that I learned this year in my Disease and Cure courses. I really enjoyed how this AP really wraps everything up and allows us to take control and lead with everything that we know about the subject. I am especially proud of the story path that I chose to go on with this character. Giving the character a backstory farther than just was required by the rubric really made me connected with the patient and I really felt invested in everything I wrote for them. I hope you enjoy my final Sophomore action project

Beneatha's Moment In The Sun

Hello and welcome to the last AP for my Humanities course, Drama. This is the last Action Project of my sophomore year. I am very excited to close this chapter of my academic career and move on to new things next year. In this year I explored many themes that all were centered around storytelling in some way. From the most literal way of creating my own creation story to writing our own short play. I was very challenged to make my writing better this year. That was very exciting to me because I  love to write. In this AP we were called to become a chorus for the play A Raisin In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. In Greek theater, a chorus is a group of actors who comment on something that is happening in the main action of the play. They do this by singing, dancing, or reciting a chant. In our version of the chorus we are calling out good, bad and educational parts of the characters actions in the scene of our choosing. Please Enjoy.





Script


 



Music Credit: BenSound Romantic Jazz

Excerpts taken from A Raisin In The Sun