The Documentary project is JAGS second largest project beside your senior capstone. This is a huge project in which you have to make a 15-to-20-minute documentary about an issue that you decide. Our group decided to focus on misinformation, one of the biggest issues in today's modern society. There are multiple parts to this documentary. You have to write a plan out, split up work, contact professionals for interviews, and learn how to edit a video. This is a huge project that incorporates numerous skills necessary for everyday life. One of the hardest parts of the project is reaching out to different professionals as you need to make sure your documentary is credible. It also teaches you excellent time management because you need to make sure you spread out the work to make it possible to have a good documentary. 

This Project represents all of the JAGS pillars but most notable are the Communicate Ideas and Recognize Perspectives pillars. This project requires a huge amount of communicating ideas and is one of the hardest parts of making a documentary. You need to communicate ideas with your group in order to ensure your group keeps up with work and is doing what they need to do. You really need to learn how to deal with people in this project and you rely on them so much to make sure this project works. You do not only need to make sure you communicate ideas with your group, but also you need to learn how to communicate professionally. We were required to have 3 interviews in our documentary. I learned how to reach out to people I previously knew like Dr. Morris from Walsh University, but I also had to learn how to reach out and interview people professionally as well. I reached out to numerous people to see if they would interview for our documentary. Dr. Ophire from the university at Buffalo agreed to interview. I then had to learn how to conduct a professional interview and to communicate with him in order to make it so I could interview. This all helped me learn how to communicate ideas in a successful and professional way. Above is an email from Dr. Ophir after he watched our documentary. I would once again like to thank him for his amazing help with this project.

AP US History was one of my favorite classes I have taken. I really enjoy learning about history. It is my favorite subject in school. APUSH was a lot of work as we had to do reading and notes each night to learn all of the material, but it was well worth it. Mr. Taray was a great teacher and we got to do so many interesting things in class. We did lots of projects and reviews in class which really helped to support our homework which we did every night. Each night we would read out of our textbook and then take notes. This was a very interesting class that really pushed me to work hard and my hard work can be shown by my AP score. 

This Class really helped me to better understand the JAGS pillar of Recognizing perspectives. History is such an important part of people's perspectives. It is almost essential to understand history to be able to understand people's perspectives today. Everything has its roots within history. This class really helped me to better understand every aspect of US history. Now when I travel I can better understand why something is that way. This really helped me to understand people's perspectives on Americans. This also helps within the US. For example, we learned all about Harpers Ferry in Mr. Taray's class. This is very cool as now when I look back on our trip there, I have an even greater appreciation for what occurred there.

JAGS Costa Rica Trip

2024

Investigate the world and Recognize Perspectives

My Trip to Costa Rica was my first time traveling internationally. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life! I really enjoyed getting to see so many different things than America. We first flew out of Cleavland to Houston. Then from Houston we flew into San Jose. We saw and did so many cool things while we were there. We went rafting, ziplining, swam at the beach, saw nature, and experienced a whole different culture. It was super cool being able to see all of this and really opened my eyes to the rest of the world. 

This trip Really helped me investigate the world and recognize perspectives. I saw so many things I never thought I would be able to see. It really helped me investigate the world and understand what is out there. Traveling is one of the best things you can do in life. It was also super cool to recognize different perspectives and see different ways people live in other countries. It really changed me as a person as now I can see what else is in the world, not just in America.

For this Chinese project we had to do a presentation on environmental protection. This was a super interesting project as we had to do lots of research about environmental protection. My partner and I decided to focus specifically on air pollution. After we decided to focus on air pollution, we then had to conduct research about air pollution within China. Then we focused on air pollution in America. After we investigated what caused air pollution in both countries, we then had to focus on how each country focuses on solving their air pollution issue. For china we talked about nuclear energy and for America we talked about the clean air act. After this we had to take action within our community on how we get rid of the issue the issue of air pollution. We found examples of air pollution within our school by taking photos of lots of cars, large construction vehicles, and unnecessary lights on. To solve our issue we then tuned off some of the lights that were unnecessary at our school. We also had to come up with a catch phrase in Chinese. 

This project represents the JAGS pillars of investigating the world and Communicating Ideas. This project really helps you investigate the world as we had to research about air pollution in China. This really helped me to understand and recognize some of the issues that China has and why it might affect the UN sustainability goals. It also helps me understand the reason that air pollution is high around the world as these are 1st world countries that still struggle with this issue. This also helped to communicate ideas as I had to communicate these very complex ideas in another language. This helped give me a deeper understanding of the issue because I truly had to understand it in order to be able to present it in Chinese.

For the Mole Project we had to choose to make a stuffed animal, paint a ceiling tile, make a song, or paint something. I chose to paint something because I really wanted to practice using oil pastel. The entire premise of the mole project was to teach us the equation 6.022 x 10^23. This formula is essential for determining the mole in a chemistry equation. A theme for the project was sherlock molmes.  I used a black marker to draw the outline of london. Then I used oil pastel to make the sky look like a sunset. Then I drew my mole making it seem like he is looking out over the city.

This project taught me how to take action. I learned how to use oil pastel well and to make sure I did the project on time. It also taught me a different way to communicate ideas. I do not have to just use words, but I can also use art.