9th Grade: 2022-2023

English

Edward Bentler,
Genius Hour Project,
Quarter 3; 2023,
Mrs. DePriest,
Investigate the World; Communicate Ideas,

The genius hour project was an assignment with the goal of allowing students to choose a topic or skill that they wanted to study or learn, but didn't have free time to devote to it, then allow them class time to do so. Each Friday for 10 weeks, we were to spend the entire class learning about our topic, although we were expected to make most of our progress outside of class. We then had to present what progress we had made and what we had learned at various points throughout the project. For my project, I decided to study Foreign Exchange (FOREX) trading, a form of investing that involves trading currency pairs.

I believe that this project developed my skills in the JAGS pillars of investigating the world and communicating ideas. Both of these skills were inherent in the project; due to FOREX trading's globally oriented design, any success in the field requires the study and research of foreign markets, foreign currencies, decisions made by various global governments, and more. Due to the genius hour project requiring everyone to present their findings throughout the project, communicating ideas was an essential skill that I developed throughout the duration of this study.

My method for learning about the FOREX market and various trading strategies was to complete the entirety of the most prominent online FOREX trading course, the FOREX course offered by babypips. The course had a total of 372 lessons (although not all of them were entirely crucial to my study of FOREX) and my project took place over 10 weeks, and as such, this project taught me a lot about time management and also how to approach the study of new topics. As I continued learning, I started using additional programs to practice trading and apply the knowledge I had learned. These programs allowed me to use real world data and imaginary funds to further study FOREX trading.

Overall, I believe this project made me more globally competent because its immense international nature and the study of which that it required of me allowed me to become much more knowledgeable of international economies and currencies, as well as various countries and their governments.

History

Edward Bentler,
GO Night (Global Opportunities Night) Presentation,
Quarter 2; 2022,
Mr. Marlett,
Investigate the World; Communicate Ideas,

JAGS freshmen complete two main projects each year, one of which being their GO Night presentation. This presentation asks for each group of four students to pick two countries and present information about their history, culture, economy, leadership, as well as compare and contrast the two countries and find a global connection between them. Specifically, the requirements for each country were to present a major historical event, a major current event taking place in that country, and information about the country's imports, exports, natural resources, economy, annual GDP, and current leader/government. This project was in the form of two posterboards, one for each country. My group selected China and Brazil primarily because of both countries being members of the BRICS organization.

I believe this project developed my skills in the JAGS pillars of investigating the world and communicating ideas. The purpose of this project was to promote investigating the world, and was an extremely effective method of doing so. The fact that the information we had gathered then had to be presented to various parents, teacher, students, and anyone else who attended GO Night made this project a wonderful way of developing my skills in communicating ideas.

My group's method for completing this project was mainly divide and conquer, where we split ourselves into two groups of two people. One group then researched and created the posterboard for one country, and the other did the same for the second country. Our two groups then worked together to find and implement research into how the two countries were related and to compare and contrast the two. Our group was notably efficient compared to some of the other groups when it came to time management, so we had plenty of time to make our posterboards look appealing and practice our presentations. My friend and I researched Brazil, which certainly taught me a lot about various aspects of Brazil's government and economy. For our current event, we decided to present about the upcoming presidential election in Brazil, which became world news a couple weeks later after an insurrection that followed the results. 

Overall, I believe that this project made me more globally competent because it truly allowed and forced me to research and learn more about life within and the societal functions of another country.

Extra Curricular

Edward Bentler,
Heifer Global Village Experience,
Quarter 4; 2023,
JAGS,
Investigate the World; Recognize Perspectives,

Each year, JAGS freshman are offered the opportunity to take part in school trip to Heifer Global Village. During this I was able to visit various historically significant locations such as civil war battlefields and Harper's Ferry, which was where the famed abolitionist John Brown made his raid. The most important part of the trip, however, was the stay at Heifer Global Village. The village offers a "third-world simulation," where students who attend are taught about various third-world areas and countries and are informed about various issues such as poverty and food insecurity in those areas. Then, students are assigned to one of the many third-world countries, and must spend 24 hours simulating life in the global village.

I believe this opportunity developed my skills in the JAGS pillars of investigating the world and recognizing perspectives. The purpose of this trip was to promote these two schools, and I feel that this purpose was well-fulfilled given the depth of knowledge I gained from it and the amazing experiences I had while there. We had to make our own fires, trade with other groups, and cook our own meal authentic to our country. The country I was assigned to was Kenya, which entailed living in a simple but very small shelter with a sperate cooking shed nearby. Our group was the only one supplied with firewood, and we had to negotiate with others in order to trade our firewood for a long list of ingredients in order to make our cultural dish. Overall, the whole experience taught me a great many things.

Overall, I feel that this project made me more globally competent because it, although I was certainly aware of some of the issues and struggles within many third world countries, this opportunity really did open my eyes to how people experience life in other countries and what work needs to be done to resolve issues that they face.

World Language

Edward Bentler,
Clothing Culture Project,
Quarter 3; 2023,
Mrs. Beltowski (冯老师),
Investigate the World; Communicate Ideas,

In my world language class this year, Chinese 3, I worked on a group project called the Clothing Culture Project. The unit we had just learned was about clothing and various adjectives, and the final project for the unit was to split the class into groups of four, and each group would create an informative slideshow in Chinese about culture-specific clothing in our assigned country. The exact requirements were to introduce the clothes of our country, say what materials the clothes were made of, explain the function of the clothes, explain the meaning, and explain the cost of the clothing.

I believe this project developed my skills in the JAGS pillars of investigating the world and communicating ideas. The whole purpose of this project was to research and investigate other cultures, and I would say that this project taught me an immense amount about investigating the world. The fact that  we were then required to present our research, in a foreign language no less, certainly correlates to the pillar of communicating ideas.

My group was me and 3 of my friends, and we split up the work somewhat evenly. Two of our group members didn't get very much work done (and would go on to quit the Chinese program the following year), which left most of making the slideshow to me and my remaining partner. I took charge to find and arrange most of the visuals and graphic design on the slides, and I also did the research and writing for the introduction (介绍) and materials and colors (材料和颜色) slides. This project did teach me a few things about time management and taking charge in group projects.

Overall, I believe that this project made me more globally competent because it was designed in a way that would teach me not only more about Chinese, but also about other countries across the world. Being able to research and find information about niche topics in other countries is a skill that may not be used often, but is still a very useful one to have.

Science

Edward Bentler,
Summit Night Presentation,
Quarter 4; 2023,
Mr. Preston,
Investigate the World; Communicate Ideas,

Similar to the GO Night Presentation, the Summit Night Presentation is the second major project all JAGS freshmen participate in. Summit Night is a JAGS event with the purpose of celebrating the JAGS seniors and welcoming the incoming freshmen by showing some of the amazing things JAGS students learn. The project required that each group of 2 freshmen choose a country, then present information on the country, identify 2 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and how they relate to issues in their country. Basic information that was required was the country's government, their main exports and imports, their GDP, and their workforce. It was also required that we research an endangered species in that country, how the country was trying to resolve the issues we identified, and how people in our local community could take action to resolve this issue on a global scale. Overall, it was a very scientifically focused project, and required that we think in a very scientific and environmentally focused way.

I believe this project developed my skills in the JAGS pillars of investigating the world and communicating ideas. This project, much like GO Night, required the research of another country followed by the presentation of the information found. The amount of information that we were required to find required that we investigate the world to a large extent, and we then had to present this information to anyone who came up to us during a 1 hour stretch at Summit Night.

My partner's and my method for completing this project was to split the research evenly, and divide and conquer. We would then present the information that we had researched during Summit Night. Additionally, the visuals and most of the arrangement for the visuals were entirely designed by me. We decided that we would split the research for section of our rubric in half so we would each have a greater understanding of each topic in our country, and if one of had to, they could fill in for the other. This proved to be quite an efficient and intelligent way of dividing the work.

Overall, I believe that this project made me more globally competent because it allowed me to, like the GO Night presentation, fully research another country in great depth. The research portion of this assignment taught me a lot about climate science and more obscure impacts of climate change, and the presentation portion of the assignment allowed my partner and I to learn more about presenting to large audiences.