Progressive Project
Definition:
To move forward/past something to improve where you were before
To move forward/past something to improve where you were before
What is the "Progressive project"?
In this project, we chose a topic we really cared about and then try to help the problem. I chose to help make a change with women empowerment. with two other girls. There are many things we could try to make a change with women empowerment like equal pay wages or gender roles so we had to break it down more. After doing some thinking and research, we decided to do our project on teenage girls addicted to social media. As we went through the project, it slowly was more about teens being addicted than teenage girls being addicted. I have four younger siblings who I fear might someday become addicted to social media. It's 2017 and almost everything we do now is on the internet. Most people now have social media accounts and I know a lot of teens who deal with this addiction. I chose this topic because it really is an issue that people my age deal with and its something I want to try to fix soon so the younger generation like my younger siblings, don't go through it.
Progress?
To help make a positive change with our issues, we did it the "Standford Design Thinking" way:
Empathize & Define-
Before we took action, we needed to know more about our problem so we did some research:
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After research, we contacted different people for more information on out topic and opinions.
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The next step was to create an simulation so my partners and I would know what it would feel like to be addicted to Social Media. For two days, we decided to go on social media every 30 minutes, not matter what we were doing and post twice a day. These were the results:
Next we wanted to find the root to our problem so we did this activity:
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We noticed from our simulation and from out web, Because some teens base their self-worth on how many comments, likes, or followers they have, they create an addiction towards social media which affects not just them, also the ones around them. My group and I created a problem statement which was the following:
"Young people’s self confidence is affecting the way they behave towards others" Below my group and I created a small schedule to stay on task and this is what it looked like.
Before creating our prototype on how to fix this problem, my group and I presented all our research and our information. Below is the slide show we used.
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Ideate:
After presenting, we started brainstorming ideas on how we could help solve our problem statement. below is the first idea we came up with:
Prototype-
After going through some critiques, we decided to start on our prototype- This is our artist statement:
Social Media has taken over the way a lot of teens think about themselves. Many of those teens decide what their self-worth is based on how many likes, followers, and comments they receive. To help the teens in our community raise their self esteem, we decided to paint a mural by the breezeway with a picture of RuPaul saying one of his most popular quotes, “If you don't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”. The cork board in front of Brett's office is an appreciation wall, up the stairs to the 10th grade commons, on the first landing, the definition of Self-worth is painted on the wall and then along the walls up to the 10th grade commans, a trail of flowers leading up to the RuPaul mural. Those three walls we are painting are dedicated to help those who need that extra positivity in their lives. To help make someone's day, anyone can leave them a little appreciation on the appreciation wall and at every community meetings, we will chose some at random on the wall and read them aloud.
Below are the walls we chose to start on our prototype on:
Social Media has taken over the way a lot of teens think about themselves. Many of those teens decide what their self-worth is based on how many likes, followers, and comments they receive. To help the teens in our community raise their self esteem, we decided to paint a mural by the breezeway with a picture of RuPaul saying one of his most popular quotes, “If you don't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?”. The cork board in front of Brett's office is an appreciation wall, up the stairs to the 10th grade commons, on the first landing, the definition of Self-worth is painted on the wall and then along the walls up to the 10th grade commans, a trail of flowers leading up to the RuPaul mural. Those three walls we are painting are dedicated to help those who need that extra positivity in their lives. To help make someone's day, anyone can leave them a little appreciation on the appreciation wall and at every community meetings, we will chose some at random on the wall and read them aloud.
Below are the walls we chose to start on our prototype on:
Test-
On progressive day, that's when our prototype/mural was put to the test. On this day, we finished our last minute touch-ups on the walls and then right before, during and after lunch, we started talking to students about our appreciation wall. We talked to them about why we did it and invited people who walked by to write an appreciation to someone. We also asked them to fill out a feedback form and below are what some of them said:
Also, below are some pictures of us painting the walls on Progressive Day:
If I were to make an modifications to our prototype, I would've made a small table or shelf to place the sticky notes and pens on in front of the appreciation board and add more flowers to our murals. Honestly, I am very pleased the the outcome of our prototype.
Exhibition and Progressive day?
Below is the video we made documenting our progressive day
Reflection of Progressive Day-
Honestly, I do feel like Progressive day for my group was very good. We got a lot accomplished and I am very happy with how everything turned out. Many people complimented the freshly painted walls and even more people liked the idea of our appreciation board. A lot of seniors were saying how they wished this was done sooner and are so happy that now its a thing for the whole school. At the end of progressive day, I felt good because I love to help people and make then happy. I do feel like those two tings were done on progressive day. I do wished we had time to add more flowers on the murals but overall, it was a good day.
Self Reflection of Progressive Day:
During this project, I feel like the most challenging park of the work around the Progressive Challenge was the actual painting part of it. When we first came up with the idea of the murals we all didn't think painting those walls would take so much time. The first couple days were not so bad because I love painting and I didn't mind doing that all day. But during this project,in all my classes, I was painting something so I started to get tired of painting and it was starting to feel like a chore. To overcome this challenge, I started to listen to music while painting to make it more entertaining, set small goals for myself like "Once I finish this then I can take a break". Once again, I do love painting. It's very relaxing but after while, I got tired of doing it. What i appreciated the most about this project was the fact that all those hours I put into those walls, like the appreciation wall, I was helping someone. I love to make others happy and help them in anyway I can and the fact that I did that, warms my heart. Also when I got to see peoples smiles come on their face when I told them about the way, made me feel good inside and because of this, I learned that even the smallest things like a sticky note could make someday, week, month, etc. Besides learning that, what I learned from our study of progressivism on a academic level is what it all means to be progressive and all about the progressive periods and how we are living in one right now. This project has made me rethink about a lot of things like how I use my social media and just who/what i believe in. I always talk about what changes I want in our world but don make an attempt to make those changes happen but after this project, It has opened my eyes. Now if I really like someones shirt or think someone is a nice person, I will speak up and tell them their shirt is nice or how much I appreciate their nice heart.