English
Poetry has always been a strong suit of mine. I have always loved writing poetry, and do it fairly often, but for this project I decided to challenge myself. And what's interesting about this is that I challenged myself in a realm that I am comfortable in, but it taught me a lot. I wrote my poems in a sense of dialogue/monologue(s). This was difficult for a few reasons. I have never written dialogue, but not only that, it was hard to tie symbolism and poetic aspects into my three poems since it was in fact dialogue. With help from Mr. Ward and his wise poetic wisdom, I was able to write my three poems and revise them, adding things that made them sound more poetic. This was a long process of crumbled up papers and forgotten words, but in the end I ended with three well written poems. If I could change anything about this process I would have met up with some people who are in the same situation as the people in my poems, and I would have gotten the true perspective of those individuals. I think this would have made my writing a lot more authentic, but I still believe that the perspectives throughout the poem came across nicely. I really enjoyed this project because I was able to step outside of my perspective and put myself in other's, and not only that, but I also really enjoy challenging myself. These poems ended up turning out really well, and I was able to portray my opinion along with other sides of statutory rape, which was important to me. I can honestly say that I am happy with the turnout of my English portion even through the obstacles of this challenge I gave to myself.
Social Studies
For Social Studies I decided to make flyers that could be put in girls and boys bathrooms, that could quickly be something that grabs their attention and pulls them in to read about sexual abuse. For the girl's one I chose colors that popped to a girl's eye, and added statistics that show they are not alone, because even when girl's know it happens daily, they are still afraid they will be the ones who are judged by what they had to go through. I added pictures to also draw attention and to add to the effect of my words. For the boy's, I chose red because typically that is a bold color that will draw a boy's attention, and at the top I wrote "It's ok to say no" in all caps because from doing my research I found that a lot of boys go through sexual assault because they can't say no, they think they will be made fun of if they don't just let it happen. I put some other statistics in this one as well, proving to boys that it happens to them as well, and is more common than they think. I did touch these pieces up a bit from the first time I made them, and think they would be good flyers to grab someone's attention and bring awareness to sexual assault.
Art
For art I took the side again of the younger victims, but this time I decided to show how some young kids feel older than they really are, think they can do things that typically only older people do, and this sometimes leads them to believe that they can make "grown-up decisions," such as dating or associating with an adult. I took many different shots, but these three were my best. The first is a little boy watching a show similar to "Jersey Shore," where there is a lot of foul language, sexual contact, and just adult things that a young kid should not be watching. The second picture I have a young girl grabbing for a tampon with other adult things in the background, such as a bra, heels, and a dress. I chose the rest of the background to show how young the girl is because of her toys. This is to show how many girls feel like they are older than they are, something I struggled with in other aspects of my life, but a lot of little girls "want their period so bad," because their older sister may have it, or their friends may have it, so they want to be just like them. Same goes for the next picture, where she is putting on lipstick in her bedroom. I also used different colors, saturations, and other techniques to make the pictures more eye catching.