11th Grade: 24-25

For my English class this year, I was in AP Lang, and one of the main projects we did was to create a 10-15 minute long podcast. I was partnered with Sofia Rafique on this project, and this project took so much work, and we had multiple weeks to work on it. We ended up discussing the rise of technology with Gen Z kids. This project is heavily related to the JAGS pillar of communicating ideas, as we had to find multiple experts, and we set up meetings to talk to people from Nebraska and Australia. Although this project was tough, we felt accomplished once it was completed. 

This project followed the JAGS ideals as we had to communicate ideas with people who lived in America or far away from us in like Australia.  One of the challenges of this project was when we got Mr. McCrindle, he lived in Australia, so it was hard to set up a time that worked for both of us, so that Sofia and I could interview them. We were able to do it in the afternoon after good communication from both sides, and we got a good perspective of what an expert thinks of Sephora 10-year-old.

For Model UN this year, I participated in the big Schmun Model UN conference. Rory and I were partners, and we went to Walsh University together. This was a whole day Model UN event, and it was actually really fun.  This was the most one of the most JAGS-involved events that I have ever gone to. It was fun and I was able to make a lot of connections with people from other schools. The notes that we passed in that conference were very funny and were a way I was able to stay involved in the conference. 

This conference embodied the pillar of communicating ideas and the pillar of investigating the world. We had to communicate with people we did not know about huge issues in the world that we had to investigate.  There were so many interesting current events that we had to research and talk about, and this conference overall was really fun, and it made me like the conference a lot.

For my science class this year, I took forensics. Forensics is a really interesting class for me, as ever since I was little, I loved watching Forensic Files, and with this class, I can better understand true crime and how people died based on clues. The project that had the most significance was the Innocene Project, which was done. We were tasked with a person who was wrongfully put away and had to research where the prosecutors went down and exactly what happened in the crime that was mistaken. 

This project represented the JAGS ideal of recognizing perspectives as we watched many videos during this project and realized that innocent people were wrongfully out away and it weighed those families down.  We also investigated the world during this project because we learned that the Inoocene project has thousands of cases each year and cannot accept most of them. After all, there are simply too many. It helped us realize that forensic evidence in the past wasn't certain and put way too many innocent people. But the Innocence Project is working on freeing these people and putting the guilty ones behind bars instead. 

For Spanish this year, the most important thing that we did this year that helped me grow as a student was the discussions we did during the 1st and 2nd nine weeks. We would have a partner and have to pick a topic that we wanted to talk about. Kate was my partner, and we talked about social media. This helped me grow as I answered almost every question, which helped me feel confident speaking Spanish.

These discussions really emboldened the JAGS pillar of communicating ideas, as we had to answer open-ended questions that would sometimes spark debate. These discussions helped everyone easily speak Spanish and get rid of their fear of messing up. This was so important because these decisions were able to help our class speak Spanish. And it helped me realize that you do not have to have perfect Spanish to converse with others, as native speakers usually understand what you are trying to say. 

For math, the most significant thing I did was going to an AP Calc workshop with Alleigh to help study for the AP Calc AB exam. A Perry teacher hosted it at Kent State University, and it was 3 hours long and went over everything that the end-of-year test may have covered. It was also completely free. What surprised me was that not many people signed up; Aleligh and I were the only people from Jackson there. 

This workshop really helped me recognize perspectives and recognize that some schools may not be as good as Jackson. For example, we were learning volume under a curve, and Alleigh and I already knew that, but most of the other people there had no idea what that was or how to do it. This was very shocking to us, as the AP test would be the following Monday after that week. We realized that we got so lucky to have such a good teacher who has been teaching it for a long time, who was very good at spacing out when we would learn things to make sure we were prepared for the AP test with plenty of time to review.