Blog #1

Over our Thanksgiving Break, I had made the last minute decision to change my project to something that would require intrigue my interests more and connect with my passion for acting. Some of my past performances, figure 4 representing one of my shows, made me realize the lack of diversity that there is in my high school's productions. This realization made me look towards exploring other schools in the state to understand why this is and how we can find a possible solution for this. As I am working to catch up with the time, I have begun organizing some of the methods I will carry on.

I have been able to contact our school's choir teacher, Julia Dale, to guide me through this project and be my mentor. Mrs. Dale was able to suggest looking at Cherry Creek School District as they have known to have more diverse plays. Therefore, I chose to pick Cherry Creek as one of the school districts and research specifically Overland and Grandview High School. I am very grateful to have Mrs. Dale, an expert in the performing arts field, to help support me!

Additionally, I am currently finding the different ethnicity statistics for each district to get a greater understanding of what variables will reveal themselves as I continue this research. The pie charts of El Paso County, Cherry Creek County, and Douglas County, are examples of some of the population differences when in different regions of Colorado. The images represent the great disparities in different districts in terms of diversity. For example, in Figures 2 and 3 the caucasian group are the majority in primarily Douglas County but only make up 50% of the population in Cherry Creek County. This should cause a difference in what scripts are chosen for high school's in these areas to perform.

I have also created my human consent form for the interviews I will be conducting near the end of my research to provide greater support to my analysis. I will be interviewing around 2 directors from each district and ask them questions that focus around their experiences in theater. The human consent form and interview questions are linked at the bottom. Right now, the biggest question I have is how will I do my statistical analysis for this project. Currently, I am thinking of organizing a data table and line graph but I wonder if I will even be able to create these statistics as I am not obtaining quantitive values. As I progress in my research, I will be able to figure out what is best for my analysis. I am very excited to continue this project, and I am overjoyed to take you all with me!