A Letter to Save City Council

Dear Mayor Rahm Emanuel

April 27th 2016

Imagine walking into your local city council meeting and while the meeting is happening and they are  discussing the death of a young man due to police brutality. Aldermen are getting up and walking around and laughing and having side conversations when others are trying to discuss an issue that has plagued our city since the start of law enforcement. But this is not the only issue not getting properly addressed by the city council.

The city council is a very important gathering. It gives us a time to get a look into every part of the city and discuss how we can better get them to work together or even the playing field for people in higher risk neighborhoods. This can help people gain access to basic things like fresh, healthy food. This is also a time when aldermen should network.  The more communication the better, but more specifically.  communicating in a way that makes every one’s ideas clear will lead to the most clarity, revealing solutions to deep rooted issues in this city.

A prime example of how a lack of effective communication has led to the failing  of  the Chicago public school  system. The CTU and CPS have not been able to come to a consensus about a contract, which is keeping students out of school, negatively impacting their education. This is shown clearly in how some CPS schools are well equipped to have students learning in a safe productive environment with teachers and students who care. Yet across the city there are schools that don’t have books, enough teachers,  proper heating, or air conditioning; they may not even have computers.

Another reason why education opportunities are unequal in this city is when it comes to applying to high schools. There are only handful of good high schools for thousands of students that need a good education in order to be successful. I am a strong believer in the idea that education is major key to success, and if our education system CTU and CPS are willing to take away valuable days of instruction over a contract that CPS is clearly unable to carry out, then we need to find away to keep students in a place where they can keep learning the same content that they have been learning.

I am writing this letter to clarify the importance of these meetings, every time someone contributes to this meeting it can help further the growth and unification process of the most diverse and segregated city in America. At the last city council meeting when we all welcomed alderman King something that really stood out to me is when another alderman told her the only way to be successful in this job is to remember it is a job of service and always put the people first.   If you guys are really serious about putting the people first, you will stop acting like you don’t care what each other has to say during important meetings that affect the communities of Chicago directly.

Sincerely, JB

Bridges

 For this action project we were encouraged to create a bridge that would be able to support 10 pounds. I created my bridge off of a model of some example pictures we looked at online. We also went on some amazing FE in the downtown Chicago to get a feel of what real bridges are made of and what makes them work. This also helped inspire us to make really strong bridges but we had a challenge. Our bridges could only be built out of at the most 50 popsicle sticks. This presented a challenge because popsicle sticks are not only weak but they do not hold together very well with the glue that we are provided with. This pushed the class to further expand our creativity and how to make the bridges work this involved using some very important equations like law of signs and lots of cosines we also had to calculate force and wait. At the end of our calculations and bridge building we tested our bridges. And unfortunately our bridge failed but we learned a lot on what makes a bridge successful.

JBs Service Blog - Circus Aerial Coach!!

I taught circus arts, primarily aerials, to kids who were between the ages of five to twelve years old.  I helped them to understand that in order to increase their skills on their apparatus, they need to work on flexibility, strength, endurance and technique.

I volunteered as a coach at MSA Circus Arts, teaching classes every Wednesday and Saturday to about 10 kids for each class.  I kept track of my hours over a ten week period of time, between September and November of this year to fulfill my service requirement.  I have continued to coach during the last 4 months and plan to continue volunteering until the end of the year.

By coaching I was able to improve my own skill. I was pointing out small details that I wouldn't notice if I was doing the skill myself.  I definitely would recommend that everyone volunteer as a coach or teacher because it helps improve teaching skills and allowed me to become more articulate. I also learned that I enjoy coaching and hope to pursue it in the future.

This is a quick update on my circus coaching experience, this spring term has been awesome. I have gotten a lot of new students so that always means new challenges. This class that I now teach seems to have a really hard time stretching but they're all very strong students. I'm also finding that dancers and gymnasts who come in to start taking area class are much better than the kids who come in without any experience. This is challenging me and my fellow coaches on how to bridge the skill gap in our classes. I have also been doing a lot of experimental aerial tricks in my more advanced classes. We try to teach aerials like learning the ABCs which is learning basic technique, and then we are able to create words and understand them. This allows aerialists to invent their own vocabulary and style.