Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

Our mission is to start a photography team. The purpose of this mission is to make the school’s reputation better, so that we can get good reviews then get more kids into our school. The hypothesis of this mission is that if we make a photography team and take photos of students working, then people will see we work hard and the reputation of this school will get higher.

Real World Skills I’ve Learned

Three skills I have learned during this process are;

1. Sometimes you have to be persistent but not too demanding.

2. If you get rejected then you have to keep trying over and over.

3. It’s hard to find people who will be generous to donate their time.

I can use these skills outside of school in these ways;

If I have to find someone to sell to, I cant be too demanding to try to sell something or get money for a new product for someone. Some people either just don’t have time for you, or just don’t want to help at all.

Challenges We/I Encountered

Some of the challenges we/I encountered were;

1. It’s hard to find grants to sponsor our photography team.

2. Some people are already booked up and don’t have time.

3. Most photography companies are too expensive.

4. When we looked on sites for cameras, some were too expensive, like $200.000, so we looked for used cameras but there were none.

Solutions We Tried Out

Some solutions that we tried to overcome our challenges;

1. Ask for other names if people didn’t want to help us

2. Ask professionally, so that we don’t look bad

3. If we found someone, we would arrange times and dates after calling

Next Steps

The next time we need to find someone, I think we should work harder and try to get around some obstacles we find. We could also raise money to buy cameras instead of asking for some, only asking for a tutor to help us. Taking it one step at a time, not rushing ahead. When we find someone to teach us to use cameras we should listen to them and not talk over.

My favorite part of this process

My favorite part of this process was that we got to call our contacts and get to meet them, because they can help us use the cameras and get our school’s reputation up by helping us learn how to use the cameras.

Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

Our mission is to start a photo team at George Washington Middle School. The purpose of our mission is to make the community at George Washington Middle School better. Our hypothesis is that if we take pictures here and put them in news papers, then it will make other parents want there kids to come to our school. Three skills that I have learned through out this this process are that you have to stay focused and keep trying every step of the way. The next skill that I learned through out this process is  if they turn you down find somebody else because there was no point in trying if you are just going to give up after the first try. The last skill that i learned through out this process is to not get frustrated because if you get frustrated then you wont do good at trying to find other places that is better than the one that turned you down. Also, because it wont help you because when your frustrated you are going to get mad then you are going to give up and when you give up you are not going to do good .

Real World Skills I’ve Learned

Three skills that i have learned through this process is how to back up my sentence if they turn us down by asking questions, like if the person says no then I can ask a follow up question like” well do you know any other people that might want to help out”. The next skill that I learned through out this process is convince the person on the phone to say yes. The last skill that I learned through out this process is to not be Scared  to talk to a person that I don’t know because I don’t like talking to people I don’t know.

Challenges We/I Encounterd

Three challenges we encounterd are, we could not find any numbers to any stores or people to call. The second challenge that we encounterd  is that we could not find any wed sites with good pictures. The last challenge that we encounterd is that there weren’t any good camaras on the web sites that we went on.

Solutions We Tried Out

One solution that we tried to overcome our challenge was that we never gave up and we just kept looking and looking and we finally got some numbers.

Next Steps

Next, we need to make a few phone calls.

Favorite Part

My favorite part of this process was when we found numbers because it took us forever to find numbers.

Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

Our mission at George Washington Middle School 2, is to out bulletin boards up all around our school. We are doing this because, we want to help showcase our work to our schools community. Also we want to share with everyone how much we know and our amazing work. If we can get the funding or donations that we need, we can be able to show the work of our school to everyone in our community.

Real World Skills I’ve Learned

Three skills that i have learned through this process are, you have to be persuasive while talking over the phone. So you can be able to get the money or donations that you need. Also you have to be able to take rejection easily and not take things too personally. If you take it personally then you might not want to try again, so you want to be open-minded and persevere through the hard times. Lastly I learned that we can never give up. If you give up, you might never be able to see what you missed out on. I can use these

Challenges We/I Encountered

Three of the challenges we encountered were tough but we found solutions to them. One of the challenges we faces was not being able to get what we needed. It was really hard to not be able to have the things we needed, since we couldn’t make a change without them. Another challenge was when we accidentally deleted all of the hard work we had just written down. It was really annoying and we were going to have to write it all over again, which would be really hard to do. One of the hardest challenges we faced was coping with rejection. It was really hard getting turned down and we couldn’t do anything  but keep trying. It was difficult to do but we all moved on and tried hard.

Solutions We Tried Out

Some solutions that we tried to overcome our challenges with were really helpful. We really worked hard to over come all of the tough challenges we faced. One of them was, we kept trying no matter what came at us. We persevered as much as we could to get over the challenges. We also stayed positive throughout this whole process, so far. We were always positive and helpful to each other through all of our rough challenges. One of the last solutions we tried was finding a way to un-delete the work we accidentally deleted. We finally got all our work back and could keep going on and not be slowed down.

Next Steps

Next, we need to write letters to Ace Hardware to receive the bulletin boards they will donate to us. We also have to find teachers to help with the bulletins, and be able to take on the task after we leave the school in two years. Another task we need to complete is to find more grants for more of the bulletin boards we need. We also have to write more letters to our schools fire safety people to find if its okay to put up the boards where we want them to be.

Favorite Part Of The Process

My favorite part of this process so far is getting to know my group better. I didn’t really see me being good friends with them, it was really nice to learn more about them. One of the girls i worked with was one of my good friends so we already knew each other well, but the other girls i didn’t really know. I got to see how they really were and they are all really nice and fun to work with. I also enjoyed working with them because they helped me to be more successful in the things i needed help on.

Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

We’ve had an ‘interesting’ time with this mission. Our mission is to improve our schools salad bar. The purpose of our mission is to improve the overall nutrition and activity levels of our schools salad bar.Though has this happened? Maybe not. Our overall hypothesis is that if we improve the quality of food in the salad bar then our schools nutrition will improve. Which we do believe but can we get to it?

Real Word Skills I’ve Learned

I’ve learned a bunch of skills through the process are dealing with very disrespectful people, coping with failure, and having to persevere through laziness and writers block. Not fun right? But I can use these skills outside the classroom to learn how to get along with people and staying calm with them, understanding failure does happen sometimes and learning how to deal with it, and even when distracted, sick, or just being lazy, to know how to get persevere through it and knowing how to get things that you have to get done. But some of these happened daily which I personally would never like to deal with. But it’s reality.

Challenges we/I Encountered

Three challenges we encountered were being disrespected by a worker at an un-named company, knowing that a person you need for a project was unavailable and most likely would not want to help, having both of us becoming distracted and not wanting to work or to even proceed. I mean we’ve got our fair share of problems for awhile I didn’t even want to work on this project. Sometimes I still don’t. But I force myself to understand that this is something that’s got to get done for the health of my school. Sometimes I wonder why I even choose this. I’m not with my friends and sometimes I’m doing all the work. But it’s for my school and though I don’t exactly “enjoy” this school. I still do it.

Solutions We Tried Out

Some solutions that we tried out were staying calm, we often got frustrated and upset at our project, isolating ourselves to stay focused and forcing ourselves to work, mainly this was a problem because of the fact that our class is at the end of the day, and trying to find Jamie Oliver’s information so we can gain his help though that was one of our failures, this was very hard because is information to get any help wasn’t available to the public. It seemed almost ironic that his job was to assist people and there is no way to get assistance. I’ve realized over time, he isn’t coming. I don’t think we need him though. We can do the same thing right? Maybe. I just am trying to get through this.

Next Steps

Next, we need to contact staff within our school that can support and have power over the salad bar, create a budget that tells us the price to fund the schools salad bar with organic foods, find a grant that will give us the money to buy organic foods, find out if the schools gardening club with assist us in donations to the schools salad bar. It’s gonna be hard and I can see the ending not even getting this done. But maybe a group of students will pick up from where we left off last year and get the job done. It’s a lot to do and we already haven’t gotten much done.

Favorite Part Of The Process

My favorite part of this process is getting to create emails and call people because this got us away from being unfocused and lazy. Though it wasn’t always pleasant I do like to call people. Once we called a business in Del Ray. Though he was awfully disrespectful by telling me that “It was a waste of time calling.” He gave me some information on what would be worth calling. It also let me realize that no everyone is nice. I know I’m not. But reality right? Crazies roaming around the Earth stopping the small difference we are trying to make.

Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

Have you ever looked at the walls in your school and they’ve been blank? Have you ever wondered what students are working on and have heard visitors asking the sme question? If so our mission is to fix that. Our mission is to put up bulletin boards up around our school. Bulletin boards are a great way to show off students work. The purpose of our mission is to put up bulletin boards around our school to inform visitors what students are learning. It will also inform students about what other students are working on. Our hypothesis is that if bulletin boards are put up then visitors and students will be able to see work students have done and what they are learning.

Real World Skills I’ve Learned

I have learned quite a few skills from this project so far. There was a great skill that I already knew, but improved at. It was researching. I was researching grants that we could apply for and places that could donate bulletin boards to us. The first time few times I tried our group didn’t qualify for those grants. I then started typing it differently and found grants we qualified for. I can use this in real life in case a need to find a toy my kid wants or if I need to find a hotel for vacation.

Another skill I learned was social skills. In order to put up the boards our group had to talk to the principal. We needed to get approval from her to put up bulletin boards. I was scared our principal wouldn’t approve. The whole group talked to her and found out she loved the project. In real life I will need this to talk to people and explain something that needs approval even if I am scared.

The third skill I learned was talking to professionals. In order to talk to professionals you need to sound professional yourself. Me and another project member were calling Ace hardware store to see if they could donate bulletin boards to us. Since the person I would be talking to was a professional, that meant I needed to sound a bit formal and not use the word “like”. I’ll use this skill in real life if I ever need to talk to a big company or if I’m appling for a job.

The last skill I learned was to explain something thoroughly. It has always been hard for me do to that. I decided that for this project I needed to try really hard. I was helping with an e-mail that would be sent to the principal, the workshop teacher, and any other person we had to e-mail. In the e-mail we needed to explain what our project was clearly so they would understand. I wrote most of that and I explained throroughly what the project was and why we were doing this. I’m really glad I finally learned this because in the real world there will be many things I will have to explain in writing.

Challenges We/I Encountered

There were a few challenges our group faced. One of them is that we didn’t communicate. It made it really hard to know what each person was doing. Another challenge was that it was really hard to find a grant or a donor that we could apply to. It was a challenge because there were many grants we didn’t qualify for. Also, a hard challenge was that we were all a bit disorganized. This made it hard to find research we had written down. The last challenge was that we didn’t write down what needed to be done. Since, we didn’t write that down we never new what we had to do and we didn’t acommplish much.

Solutions We Tried Out

Some solutions were to talk before we even started. This helped us know what to do. Instead of searching for grants we looked at hardware stores and found ACE. We are now getting 3 boards from there. In order to become more organized we decided to keep everything in folders and to label the paper or document. Our final solution was to write down everything that we still need to do and prioritize. This helped us know what really needed to be done.

Next Steps

Our next steps our to get the bulletin boards. We also need to find out the building regulations of putting things on the walls. We are going to talk to Mr. Gaines, the building engineer, and find out. Also, we are going to email all GW2 teachers asking if they will take care of the boards. This way the bulletin boards we always have work on them.

Favorite Part of the Process

My favorite part of the project was being independent. I like this because I love to be on my own but still have people for help. It was really enjoyable to not follow teachers directions. We got to find things on our own. I’m a person that likes to do creative projects and this was one.

Mission Topic, Purpose, and Hypothesis

Our mission is George Washington Middle School(GWMS) Photography Team.  The purpose of our mission is to attain funds from an organization in order to start a photography team.  Our hypothesis is that if we take pictures of a variety of students working and show the hard work done by the students at GWMS, people will start to notice and see that kids at this school actually have a future and that the teachers work hard to help them achieve their goals.  Our project means a lot to us because not only are we making a difference in our school, but a difference in our community.

Real World Skills I’ve Learned

Three real world skills I’ve learned through this process are professionalism, communication skills, and problem-solving.  By professionalism, I mean that there is a way to present yourself and show who you really are.  Showing who you really are is showing what you can do when you’re put in the spotlight.  Whatever you may do at home or in your personal life should stay in your personal life.  You could be an entirely different person when you leave a professional environment, but as long as you leave your personal life and your profession separate, you will be okay.  By communication skills, I mean that there are certain things that you should and should not say to anyone, not just someone in a professional position.  For example, I was just about to promise someone something in this project when my teacher read it and stopped me before I got myself intro something that I didn’t know I was getting myself into.  Communication skills should not only be used with people in  a professional position, but with all people in general.  You shouldn’t be rude to someone just because they’re not your mom, dad, teacher, or employer.  Be kind to the people that don’t ask for respect but still deserve it.  By problem-solving, I mean that when you are facing a problem, don’t immediately go call someone to help.  People have their own problems.  First, try to move to a solution on your own instead of focusing on the negative.  Your parents are not always going to be there to help you with everything. I can use these skills outside of the classroom to get where I want to go in life.

Challenges We/I Encountered

Three challenges we encountered are finding someone to contact, keeping in touch outside of school, and answering some of the questions that would be easiest for the teacher to answer.  Finding someone to contact was the first part of the project.  We needed to find someone to help us start our photography club and we couldn’t do it without financing and support.  We soon found the Alexandria Photography Club and their president decided to help us.  Once they decided to help us, we needed to work on progressing in order to accomplish our mission and keep our sponsor. We would have to keep in touch outside of school so that they wouldn’t be waiting for long periods of time over weekends and breaks.  Spring Break was a real problem.  Spring Break came upon us in the middle of communicating with our sponsor and Spring Break is a time to relax and let your mind wander.  Another problem was answering some of the questions that the Alexandria Photography Club would need answered.  We would have to try as best we could to accomplish this mission with the least amount of help from the teacher as possible.  We have accomplished a big part of our mission so far, however there is still much more to come.

Solutions We Tried Out

Some solutions we tried to overcome our challenges were searching smaller, more detailed subjects in order to find a sponsor, notifying our sponsor about breaks and when we would be able to contact them, and brainstorming together to think about what we wanted to do and how we wanted to handle the hard things.  We’ve discovered that if we work together and support each other, we will be able to accomplish more and quicker.  We’ve worked as a team to get the big things done and communicated well with each other and our sponsor in order to get to the point that we’re at now in our mission.  Our solutions have worked, we have been problem-solvers, and our mission has advanced to the point where we know exactly where we’re headed and we have the rest of our mission planned out.

Next Steps

Next, we need to get these cameras up and running, gather people to join the photography club, and find a teacher sponsor.  We have specific dates to have these goals accomplished.  We will do this by getting the word out around the school about our photography club and asking people to join and help us make George Washington Middle School a better place.

Favorite Part of the Process

My favorite part of the process was communicating with the sponsor.  It’s such a big feeling when we accomplish what we want to accomplish.  It makes you feel like you can make a  difference in the world when you get things like this done.  We hope that we can get people to join our club and help us give GWMS a better reputation.