Power, Privilege, and the Purse
Description: Power, Privilege, and the Purse is a project the 11th grade took part in, focusing on many aspects. Aspects such as building a financial plan for possible future living, statistics representing a current issue relating to the American Dream, and info graphics supporting the issue we chose relating to the American Dream. The issue I chose for the statistics representing a current issue relating to the American Dream was stats comparing the number of working Americans with disabilities vs number of Americans working, without disabilities. My info graphic displayed the information on Americans working with disabilities, and for the Mind the Gap Symposium, my group had an info graphic with statistics supporting the evidence we had on gender inequality in the work force.
Process: Throughout the project, I completed all my work on time, and was able to turn it all in through my binder check as well. For my financial plan, I used a google spreadsheet and included all the aspects of living in the real world, and how much money I would be spending annually. I included things such as water and electricity, and money spent on pets, clothing, hair, and necessities like food and water. I used math when I was coming up with how much money I could spend annually, and had to come up with figures of how much money I was making annually. For my graphs on disabled employed Americans vs employed Americans with no disabilities, I found data online from different websites, chose the data I liked the most, which was data from every state in the US, and then put each bit of data manually into a google spreadsheet. Once all the data was in the spreadsheet, I selected the graph option on Google Spreadsheet, and it gave me two graphs. For the Info graphic I made, I took the graphs I made using the data mentioned above, and put it into an info graphic using the website Pictochart. I explained what the data meant, and sourced the website I obtained the data from my graphs from, and was finished with my info graphic. Some challenges I faced were having enough money to spend on necessities in my monthly budget, and also helping my group out when I was finished with the job I was taking care of. I was able to help them though making tags, cutting the tags out of card stock, cutting ribbon, and tying the ribbon through each tag so they would be hangable from our tree. I really enjoyed working with my group on our sign that asked "Has your gender ever helped you or held you back?". It was so much fun to get to spray paint the sign and take turns spray painting it in the enclosed space that the 9th grade teacher made us go into to spray paint, because not one person could spray paint it the whole time in the enclosed space because we would get lightheaded and did not want to breathe in the fumes so we would not kill all of our brain cells. I would hold my breathe, run in, spray paint as much as I could, run outside, catch my breathe, and then run back in to finish spray painting.
Deeper Learning: Through learning about financial concepts such as budgeting taxes, investments, savings, and debt, I learned that I need to stop spending my money on such expensive things when I do not make much money with my job, I learned that I need to invest my money so that I can make more money as the years go by, I learned that I need to put money away so it will grow over years and so that I can have money for my kids to go to college without taking out student loans, and also that I need to save enough money that if I do end up in debt, I can pay some of it off so that it won't grow too much and make me miserable having to pay it off over the years. To make financial decisions, I had to multiply my money so that I could have enough to spend on each necessity every month. I had to model my money in a way that I could divvy it up into different areas of spending, to spend on each aspect of my monthly budget.
Reguarding exponential growth and decay, I learned that if something grows exponentially, it grows at a constant rate. If it is decaying, it goes down at a constant rate as well, and compound interest is the added interest earning interest from then on. So the interest is growing exponentially by adding interest to the interest in the first place annually.
Regarding logarithms, I had no knowledge of this topic starting out. We did an activity in class where we were given a piece of paper with a logarithm on it, and we had to quiz someone else on how to change the logarithm into its other form. This really helped me understand the concept of logarithms. I still had a really hard time remembered how to change the log form, so I stayed in and got help from Ms. GC, and I finally understood it! I then took the logarithms test and I knew what to do! Finally!
Learning about how unequal women are treated in the workforce vs how men are treated really opened my eyes to the thought of working women. I have a new way of looking at working women because I learned how unfair they are treated by not being payed as much as their male coworkers, and how some working women will not receive promotions in their jobs, while their inferior male coworkers will receive the positions the women actually deserve.
"Mind the Gap" Exhibition: My biggest takeaways from the project were getting to work as a group and creating a sign together. It was really interesting to see what everyone put into working on our large sign. Preston and Mayra cut and put the sign together using pieces of wood, and I spray painted the sign gold and spray painted our letters on it. It was fun getting to work as a group and see what we could create. Another takeaway from the project was how fun it was creating our signs for our Male and Female buckets that held tags to be placed on our tree. Although my group didn't end up using my signs that I put so much effort and time into, because the buckets were too small for the bigger paper signs I made, it was still fun getting to be creative on my own and making the signs how I wanted them. I was not here on the Friday before break because I was sick, but a memorable moment from the symposium was standing with my group in the cold at night. This stood out to me because we were freezing and it was dark out, but we were still putting in the effort to explain our project and show off our final product. I did not have a specific role in the project, but I did create individual signs representing our male and female buckets like I mentioned above. I contributed to speaking to the english speakers during the actual exhibition, and my group members spoke to the spanish speakers. I believe I grew in including other people. If someone was off task and wandering around, I would call them over nicely, and would just ask them to help myself and the other group members making things contributing to our final product, such as the tags we created to give to people to place on our tree.
Process: Throughout the project, I completed all my work on time, and was able to turn it all in through my binder check as well. For my financial plan, I used a google spreadsheet and included all the aspects of living in the real world, and how much money I would be spending annually. I included things such as water and electricity, and money spent on pets, clothing, hair, and necessities like food and water. I used math when I was coming up with how much money I could spend annually, and had to come up with figures of how much money I was making annually. For my graphs on disabled employed Americans vs employed Americans with no disabilities, I found data online from different websites, chose the data I liked the most, which was data from every state in the US, and then put each bit of data manually into a google spreadsheet. Once all the data was in the spreadsheet, I selected the graph option on Google Spreadsheet, and it gave me two graphs. For the Info graphic I made, I took the graphs I made using the data mentioned above, and put it into an info graphic using the website Pictochart. I explained what the data meant, and sourced the website I obtained the data from my graphs from, and was finished with my info graphic. Some challenges I faced were having enough money to spend on necessities in my monthly budget, and also helping my group out when I was finished with the job I was taking care of. I was able to help them though making tags, cutting the tags out of card stock, cutting ribbon, and tying the ribbon through each tag so they would be hangable from our tree. I really enjoyed working with my group on our sign that asked "Has your gender ever helped you or held you back?". It was so much fun to get to spray paint the sign and take turns spray painting it in the enclosed space that the 9th grade teacher made us go into to spray paint, because not one person could spray paint it the whole time in the enclosed space because we would get lightheaded and did not want to breathe in the fumes so we would not kill all of our brain cells. I would hold my breathe, run in, spray paint as much as I could, run outside, catch my breathe, and then run back in to finish spray painting.
Deeper Learning: Through learning about financial concepts such as budgeting taxes, investments, savings, and debt, I learned that I need to stop spending my money on such expensive things when I do not make much money with my job, I learned that I need to invest my money so that I can make more money as the years go by, I learned that I need to put money away so it will grow over years and so that I can have money for my kids to go to college without taking out student loans, and also that I need to save enough money that if I do end up in debt, I can pay some of it off so that it won't grow too much and make me miserable having to pay it off over the years. To make financial decisions, I had to multiply my money so that I could have enough to spend on each necessity every month. I had to model my money in a way that I could divvy it up into different areas of spending, to spend on each aspect of my monthly budget.
Reguarding exponential growth and decay, I learned that if something grows exponentially, it grows at a constant rate. If it is decaying, it goes down at a constant rate as well, and compound interest is the added interest earning interest from then on. So the interest is growing exponentially by adding interest to the interest in the first place annually.
Regarding logarithms, I had no knowledge of this topic starting out. We did an activity in class where we were given a piece of paper with a logarithm on it, and we had to quiz someone else on how to change the logarithm into its other form. This really helped me understand the concept of logarithms. I still had a really hard time remembered how to change the log form, so I stayed in and got help from Ms. GC, and I finally understood it! I then took the logarithms test and I knew what to do! Finally!
- Discuss the Statistical Problem Solving Process and explain how you used it in this project. IN JOURNAL!
Learning about how unequal women are treated in the workforce vs how men are treated really opened my eyes to the thought of working women. I have a new way of looking at working women because I learned how unfair they are treated by not being payed as much as their male coworkers, and how some working women will not receive promotions in their jobs, while their inferior male coworkers will receive the positions the women actually deserve.
"Mind the Gap" Exhibition: My biggest takeaways from the project were getting to work as a group and creating a sign together. It was really interesting to see what everyone put into working on our large sign. Preston and Mayra cut and put the sign together using pieces of wood, and I spray painted the sign gold and spray painted our letters on it. It was fun getting to work as a group and see what we could create. Another takeaway from the project was how fun it was creating our signs for our Male and Female buckets that held tags to be placed on our tree. Although my group didn't end up using my signs that I put so much effort and time into, because the buckets were too small for the bigger paper signs I made, it was still fun getting to be creative on my own and making the signs how I wanted them. I was not here on the Friday before break because I was sick, but a memorable moment from the symposium was standing with my group in the cold at night. This stood out to me because we were freezing and it was dark out, but we were still putting in the effort to explain our project and show off our final product. I did not have a specific role in the project, but I did create individual signs representing our male and female buckets like I mentioned above. I contributed to speaking to the english speakers during the actual exhibition, and my group members spoke to the spanish speakers. I believe I grew in including other people. If someone was off task and wandering around, I would call them over nicely, and would just ask them to help myself and the other group members making things contributing to our final product, such as the tags we created to give to people to place on our tree.