My Truth

For our 2nd unit of our Who Am I class we were asked to create a dreamcatcher and to analyze our bliss and our truth. Throughout the whole unit we learned about doubt and dreams and the meanings behind them. We also partnered up and interpreted each other's dreams. I really enjoyed having my dreams interpreted even if my partners argued more than actually got work done. I was really excited to be able to create a dream catcher as I love doing hands on projects and making art. I also am very creative and I love to express myself in different forms of art. I had made a dreamcatcher before in pre-school that actually hung in my room pretty much all of my childhood. I never really have nightmares. I wonder if that's why? I thought the most challenging part was just making the dreamcatcher, and I thought the most rewarding part was seeing how pretty it looked when I was finished.

CM, Dreamcatcher, (2017)

Here is my explanation:

What is a dreamcatcher? What does it symbolize? I asked myself this question when I made a dreamcatcher for my class Who Am I. A dreamcatcher is a piece derived from Native Americans, specifically the Ojibwe Chippewa and Lakota tribes. The Natives believed that you could filter out bad dreams using a piece called a dreamcatcher. In the dreamcatcher the hoop symbolizes the circle of life. The dreamcatcher catches bad dreams and keeps them there until the sun comes up when they are burned by the sunlight. The good dreams float gently down the tassels and through the feathers to the sleeper to bring them good dreams.

In the story of The Great Spider which comes from Native American Tales, the center of the dreamcatcher is the “Great Mystery” and the web around it is the universe. This is why I chose to put 3 holo covered beads in the center of my dreamcatcher. I wanted to symbolize my one true love: Holographic Glitter. Holo glitter is glitter that reflects rainbows. I usually use this on my nails, but I like it in pretty much any form. Holo to me symbolizes happiness and fascination. When I am looking at holo, I feel calm yet excited and I feel entranced. To me, this is my bliss. Holo is the great mystery,the creator, or simply my bliss in life.

 I want my dreamcatcher to filter out stress dreams. I never really have nightmares, but since I am a performer I get stress dreams a lot and I really get upset when they happen. The dream that I analyzed in our External Investigation was a particularly stressful dream in which I was late to the show and I had forgotten to put on my costumes and my skates as well as remembering I hadn’t shown up for any practices so I didn’t know any of my numbers. I want my dream catcher to bring me better sleep and rejuvenation. This is because I am always a tired person and it seems like I can never get enough sleep and I always feel tired.

Part of my dreamcatcher design is rainbows. Holo is rainbows and I wanted to symbolize color, as I love color. I covered my hoop in grey suede and then painted it with craft glue and covered it in holo. In order to achieve the rainbow, I decided to make my web rainbow as well. To achieve this look I started weaving with pink, and then when I got all they way around, I cut the pink and tied orange to it and kept going. The obstacle I encountered was that in some tribes, they believe their should be no knots in the weave because it can trap evil spirits and can give you nightmares. However in some tribes they purposely put knots in their weave because they believe that it will keep evil spirits from being entangled. This is what I believe my dream catcher does for me. I also chose grey suede as I like the darker cloudy colors. Grey is associated with emotionless, and dingy feelings. In my opinion the holo represents my id which is the part of my mind that has the most instinctive impulses, and if it were up to me I would cover everything in holo. I believe the grey represents my ego meditating between my conscious and subconscious telling me that I can settle for a less intense version of what I want which is holo, but I also like grey for more subtle things.

Works Cited:

Shabi, K. "Dreamcatcher Meaning: History, Legend & Origins of Dream Catchers."LEGOMENON: What Is the Meaning: Online Literary Journal & Magazine. N.p., 14 July 2016. Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

CM, Knots, (2017)

CM, Center of Dreamcatcher, (2017)

CM, Beads, (2017)

Pollution is not an Illusion.

It's finally our final action project for our Fuel class. I wasn't really a fan of this course so I am rather relieved. For our final action project we were asked to write an essay on how we can reduce our carbon footprint. In unit 3 we studied pollution and how we can reduce it and how we produce it. In the Fuel class itself we learned all about energy, pollution and how we use it. I thought this AP was rather boring as this is a STEAM class and we are writing an essay which seems like more of a humanities thing. I thought the subject was interesting though because it was something that was specific to each person and how they could reduce their individual footprints. I thought the most challenging part was just connecting the whole thing together. It was difficult to answer some of the things in the rubric. The most rewarding part was seeing the essay all laid out and pretty. (That's always my favorite part.)

KVDP, Deaths form air pollution, 2012, Wikemedia

Math Problem Solving: My Experience

As the winter term is wrapping up I am reflecting on how chaotic it was. This term was much more stressful than Fall Term and I am extremely happy to be done in 2 weeks. I still have 2 action projects for my core classes but I am so excited to be done.

For the Winter Term we decided to switch it up as far as Advisory goes. Advisory was the 45 minutes between lunch and 3rd period. In the Fall and 1st elective term we had Advisory which was different classes for each grade. For the Freshman it was Digital Media, GCE 101, Community Circle, and Student Teacher Conferences. I personally liked everything about advisory and didn't have any problem with it. Other people hated it, so for our Winter Term we went with something called Workshops. These were mixed grade classes in which 2 of them we got to pick, and 2 of them we were assigned based on our grades. The only thing I like about these is mixed grades.

For one of my workshops I got put into math problem solving. This was a class that met on Mondays and was for more advanced math students. I don't really like math, but I am pretty good at it. For Math Problem solving I chose to focus on something that I like, but wouldn't overwhelm me so I chose quadratic functions and graphing parabolas. I had done a lot of this stuff back in 6th or 7th grade so it had been a while, and I would do more challenging problems. I read up on the topic and did some Kahn Academy and practiced my skills and soon found out that I was doing things that were too easy for me. I realized this issue way to late though. My and my teachers idea was to build a catapult and launch things form it and then graph them. Now we only had 5 meetings ever. I never got to the catapult because of the limited time. If I had to do this again I would pick something more challenging and I might want to use my time more wisely.

In the end I wasn't super happy with this course. I found it kind of pointless since we had to teach ourselves and I didn't really get a lot out of it.

Sean McEntee, Maths, 2011, Flickr

Solar Panels: The Bright Future

For our 2nd unit in our Fuel class, we learned all about physics and energy. We did some experiments on potential energy and also played around with systems of equations and other math concepts. Fuel class itself is all about well, fuel and pollution, resources, and energy. I learned a lot of math concepts in this unit. Most of them weren't new, but I was glad I got a chance to review them again and feel more confident. For our 2nd Action Project, we were asked to pick a renewable resource and research it to try to sell it to a company looking to switch. We were to make a 2-3 minute infomercial about the resource, its advantages and disadvantages, its history, and most importantly; try to figure out how much it would cost by using functions and graphing. I am most proud of how the video came out. I have never used any video-recording software before, but I used Screencastify which was super easy to use. My video is about solar energy, and specifically why the superstore Wal-Mart switched to solar energy. In the end I think the most challenging part was calculating the functions because they were pretty rough estimates.

Solar Panels: The Bright Future! from CM on Vimeo.