As my project is a little less than a month away, it’s literally crunch time! Talking with snyder, I realized that I have been procrastinating a bit but I think I have a pretty good breakdown of how my projects going to go.
Ive broken up my presentation to not immigration but immigrants. I’ve been saying this whole time that I want to educate on about immigrants. I broke up immigrants into 4 categories and I am going to go in depth of the difference in all of them. I am also going to have one of each immigrant tell their story on video. I want people to think wow, they went through that? And with a video, I think they will get that impact. Im going to do my slideshow, with students here and the immigrant stories I am going to surround around my family members. I am also going to maybe give a citizenships test for fun to see how many people could pass it. I know i probably couldn’t! One of the last presentations is the ICE officer, which is VERY hard to get! Some of them don’t want to talk, or think that my project is stupid. Lastly, I was talking to my physics teacher Mr. Callow, and he told me that I should invite the news since the topic I have is so important. I don’t know how I feel about that, but maybe that is my way to get my word out. Thoughts??
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Mr. Abrams is always talking about how we can incorporate art into our projects. I recently had an idea, and I wanted to create something that could represent immigration in our school. My first idea was to create a painting, with the many different hands of immigrants around the school, but I then realized that it would have no meaning behind it. I was then inspired by Jonathan Lopez and his photography. For his senior project, he went around asking people where their families were from and he created a slideshow of the different descendants we had around the school. But I wanted to go deeper.
I then decided I would go around and take pictures of first generation American students and real immigrants around the school. Along with their picture, I would edit it and put their flag right next to them. It proves that there are a lot of immigrants and first generation American students here and every single student is affected by immigration. While I was asking around, I was shocked at some people that I thought were first generation American, but in fact they are immigrants. It taught me that we can't judge, and that is something that I want to teach with my senior project as well. So I have been thinking about some things to put into my project and I am thinking of doing some videos. Recently I have been very interested in interviewing an ICE official, and getting their point of view on immigration. I also wanted to get some point of views on students here in this school. We are very highly populated with Hispanic immigrants, but as I have been asking around, we are also populated with African and Asian immigrants more than you think! I wanna hear their stories, and how their stories differ from my parents stories. And I was thinking of maybe even getting it on film, and even having them speak their heritage language.
I want to show people that immigration is everywhere, and I want to show how immigrants go through struggles daily because of the simple fact that they want to live a happy life here in America. I can write all I want, but hearing and seeing someone's story could be more impacting, than reading something written by me. I also want to learn how ICE officials work as well, and how their personalities compare to the job that they do. It is very hard to get in touch with an ICE official, unless they are contacting you. I also wonder how they will feel with me asking them questions, and me video taping them. I guess we will have to see when I finally start recording. When I think about immigration, I know that it hits very close to home. Especially since I am a child of two immigrants. But when other people talk about immigration, it might not hit as close. So why does my project even matter to you? Why should you even care about immigration? Well, there is a couple answers to that question really, and it may shock you. But honestly, immigration affects every person that lives in this country.
Immigration affects the students at Lindenwold public schools because there is not a doubt in my mind that every student has at least one class with either an immigrant, a child of an immigrant, or a grandchild of an immigrant, and it does not only mean Hispanic. There are immigrants in this school from Asia, Africa, Europe, etc. Now, I don't have the exact statistics but I am working on getting them. In the past 5 years, Lindenwold's immigrant population has skyrocketed, and maybe you have realized it too. It's time to get educated, that why you should care. Now, if you don't live in Lindenwold, immigration still affects you. Why? Because you are SURROUNDED by immigrants in this country. For example, if you work at an office, the person cleaning that office might be an immigrant, child of an immigrant, or grandchild of an immigrant. This country was founded on Immigration. So what makes you think that it doesn't affect you? Why am I even doing this? Well as many people know, our President has a big issue with immigrants, specifically Mexicans, and I have an issue with that. If I can educate as many people as I can about immigration, and change the way someone views immigration, I will be happy. I am trying to prove that immigrants aren't bad, they are hard workers, and they just want to live free. Talking to my physics teacher Mr. Callow even got me thinking to get the news media involved, so that I can really get my word out, ESPECIALLY because this topic, is very hot in the news. |