Abstract:

For our capstone, we chose to utilize our city around us. Where we grew up and continue to live is very important to use, as it is a large city which many people aspire to visit one day. We wanted to utilize our city to create our lasting legacy at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber. Our final project was a website which high school students, adults, and visitors can use to find places to learn about the history of our city. Included in each page on the website is a source of the actual place so they can do additional research. As well as doing our own research we created an ideal walking tour which the visitors of the website can use as they please. This was actually an interesting experience for us because not only were we learning more and more about places in the city and the history around us; we began to feel like travel agents planning a families vacation in a city that we are used to. As well as creating the website and conducting research, we created brochures that could be handed out around the school and neighborhoods. We hope that you enjoy our efforts to spread the love for our city and its extremely interesting history!

Bibliography:

"15 Steps to Good Research | Georgetown University Library." 15 Steps to Good Research | Georgetown University Library. N.p., 2009. Web. 06 Jan. 2017.

This source is about the steps you take to conduct good research. It states the simple things like creating a research question, planning to conduct your research, finding credible sources. To things that I learned from it, that you can revise your hypothesis and accurately evaluating your sources. (Link: http://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/15-steps)

Farrow, Jane, and Leigh Thorpe. "Tips & Tools - Tips for Developing a Walking Tour -

Jane's Walk Ottawa." Tips & Tools - Tips for Developing a Walking Tour - Jane's

Walk Ottawa. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2017.

This article was very helpful for my project. It tells us how to develop a walking tour, which is exactly what we’re doing. To summarize the article it states that you must chose a topic or theme, plan a route and research the stories, places and people you want to talk about on the way. It is also important to note the length of the tour and choosing specific points of interest.

(Link: http://www.janeswalkottawa.ca/tips-tools/development-tips)

Harris, Rachel Lee. "Weekend Miser." The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 Dec. 2011. Web. 06 Jan. 2017.

This article published by the New York Times is all about a walking tour that is available any time via text messages. This app entails challenges, like clues, riddles, photos and trivia questions to guide you to your next location on the walking tour. This is a fun self guided tour that was created in New York and can help give me ideas about my capstone. (Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/nyregion/new-york-walking-tours-by-phone-and-a-local-business-app.html)

MacCannell, Dean. The ethics of sightseeing. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2011. Print.

This book is all about how ethical it is for people to want to travel the world. He talks about the consequences of the trips that families regularly take, disney theme parks and beaches. It is just cool to see that other people are discussing traveling and sightseeing in ways other than how expensive it is.

"Step-by-Step Guide & Research Rescue: Basic Research Strategy." BYU Harold B. Lee

Library . N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Jan. 2017.

This source tells me all about basic research strategies. It entails, Finding and Narrowing my topic, finding articles and books (research), evaluating their credibility, accessing and citing my sources. This is all important information for me to know. (Link: http://guides.lib.byu.edu/stepbystep)

Other Sources:

"National Constitution Center." National Constitution Center -

constitutioncenter.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 March 2017.

"Declaration House." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the

Interior, n.d. Web. 04 March 2017.

"Events." Elfreth's Alley. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 January 2017.

"First Bank of the United States." National Parks Service. U.S.

Department of the Interior, n.d. Web. 15 April 2017.

"Franklin Square." Philadelphia - Official Visitor Site - visitphilly.com.

N.p., 24 Apr. 2017. Web. 18 December 2016.

"Historic Philadelphia." Official Betsy Ross House - Tour, Tickets &

Programs | Historic Philadelphia. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 March 2017.

"Independence Visitor Center." Independence Visitor Center. N.p., n.d.

Web. 05 January 2017.

"Jewelers Row Philadelphia." Jewelers Row Philadelphia. N.p., n.d.

Web. 05 March 2017.

"The Liberty Bell." National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the

Interior, n.d. Web. 18 December 2016.

"The National Liberty Museum - Homepage." National Liberty

Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 March 2017.

"The official site of the United States Mint." United States Mint. N.p.,

n.d. Web. 18 December 2016.

"Visiting Independence Hall." National Parks Service. U.S. Department

of the Interior, n.d. Web. 15 April 2017.

"Welcome to Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market." Home - Reading

Terminal Market. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 December 2016.

Income Per Person and Primary School Completion among Countries around the World

In America, education is a right that everyone is given. This is not what it is like around the world. Children around the world are not getting their birthright of a proper primary education. It has become depressing that some children are not being able to complete their primary education because of financial need. All around the world, there is a positive correlation that shows when the income per person is higher in a country the country has a higher percent of children completing primary school. Education is a human right that everybody should receive easily. Countries with lower average income per person have lower primary school completion rates because the countries are not funding the schools and parents cannot afford the fees.

The first thing that we must look at is what causes students to drop out. Students around the world drop out for many reasons, including having to work and help out with their family, they might be very ill, or most commonly their family cannot afford schooling. Taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization report of Education For All Global Monitoring Report, there is a paper titled School Drop out: Patterns, Causes, Changes, and Policies, “There are many factors associated with dropout, some of which belong to the individual, such as poor health or malnutrition and motivation. Others emerge from children’s household situations such as child labour and poverty.” This quote means that sometimes children drop out of school because they have to work to afford to live and get their family out of poverty or it could also be because they are too sick to continue going to school. In this graph from gapminder who collects data from various sources, we can see that there is a problem particularly in Africa, which are the blue dots. This data is collected from the World Bank and other various sources.      

This graph shows income per person, GDP per country and Primary School Completion for the same country. Income Per Person is the explanatory variable in this instance and primary school education is the response variable. This is because primary school completion is dependent on income per person. The size of the bubble represents the population of the country. Green represents the Americas, Red represents Asia and Australia, Blue is Africa, Yellow is Europe. This graph shows a small correlation between the income per person and the primary school completion, but it is evident what is happening all around the world. You can see the trend, where countries that have less income per person means there is less primary school education. Overall, there is a pattern but if you look at the trend within specific countries there is not a trend. This can be backed up with my reasoning that students drop out of school to work and make money for their family.

All around the world, there are barriers to education. The biggest barriers would be a lack of funding of education, not having a classroom and/or lack of learning materials, hunger, and the expense of education (formal and informal fees). From the Global Citizen, an article titled 10 barriers to education around the world there is a quote, “In many countries in Africa, while education is theoretically free, in practice ‘informal fees’ see parents forced to pay for ‘compulsory items’ like uniforms, books, pens, extra lessons, exam fees or funds to support the school buildings.” This quote is specifically mentioning Africa and the fact that education is free but there are hidden costs that hit the family hard. These fees are necessary and commonly send families into a cycle among generations of poverty because of them. This happens because if a family is spending an overwhelming amount of money in hidden fees for school they will not be able to crawl out of poverty. This means that their children are going to have to live in poverty and then have children and having to pay their hidden school fees. There is just an overall lack of money going towards a proper education for the children in these countries.

As we follow few countries on the graph we begin to see how each individual country follows the standard of more money more school completion.

For example, Bermuda, the green trail (which means that it is in the Americas) to the right of the graph. You can see the as the income per person rises so does the primary school completion, as well as Columbia. While there are some countries that do not follow this trend and this is because of other things happening within the country, like war. In Qatar, if you follow the trend you see that as income per person goes down primary school completion goes down as well.

Financing education is very different to for some families around the world. While education is free in many countries around the world, families still cannot afford to send their children because they live in extreme poverty. From an article published by Our World In Data titled Financing Education, there is a quote “The second half of the 20th century marked the beginning of education expansion as a global phenomenon. Available data shows that by 1990 government spending on education as a share of national income in many developing countries was already close to the average observed in developed countries.” This quote means that during the 20th-century education became expanded to underdeveloped countries, like those in Africa. These underdeveloped countries education systems are now similar to developed countries. Although, there are still children unable to complete their education.

To answer my research question, How does income per person affect primary school completion in countries around the world? I graphed income per person as the explanatory variable, and primary completion as the response variable. The explanatory variable is on the x-axis which is on a logarithmic scale and the response variable on the y-axis which is on a linear scale. The data shown in my graph was collected by the World Bank and put together by Gapminder. The size of the bubbles represents the population of each country. Looking at each country separately you could say that some have positive correlations while others have no correlations, there are sharp increases and decreases in each of the countries. When you look at my graph you can see that there really is no pattern as to where they start, they all start at the amount that a person is making per year. You can see that Albania and Hong Kong, China follow the same kind of pattern which is no correlation between the two variables. You can also see that Columbia and Bermuda follow the same kind of pattern which is a positive correlation between the two variables. A positive correlation on this graph would mean that when the income per person rises, the primary school completion rises with it. You can conclude that countries that make more money have more students finish primary school.

In conclusion, It is more likely for a child who lives in poverty to not complete primary school compared to a child that does not. This is because of the overall lack of money that parents can afford for formal and informal fees, the fact that some children have to quit school and work to provide for their family, or that some schools do not have enough funding to create a good enough learning environment. This is important to learn about and do more research because there are a lot of things we can do to help the children in need of their human right to a proper education. We can donate money, or even travel to these places to help the children learn and grow. We can see that governments in countries all around the world are starting to give more money to education but it is still not enough for some people.

Works Cited

"10 barriers to education around the world." Global Citizen. Write To Learn, 2 June 2014. Web. 10

Jan. 2017.

Roser, Max, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina. "Financing Education." Our World In Data. N.p., n.d. Web.

10 Jan. 2017.

School Drop out: Patterns, Causes, Changes and Policies . Tech. N.p.: United Nations Educational,

Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 2011. Print.

Shah Follow, Jamal. "Causes and effects of dropouts at primary level." Share and Discover

Knowledge on LinkedIn SlideShare. N.p., 13 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 Jan. 2017.

Lyza Newbern

Mr.Hussey

U.S. History

April 26, 2016

2016 Primary Election

On April 26, 2016 the people of Pennsylvania exercised their right to vote in republican and democratic primary election. The Primary Election is the election when you vote to who you want to see on the ballot for president in November. As a high school member of the Committee of 70 it was my duty to visit as many polling places in the 21st ward of Philadelphia, help voters with any questions they had about the ballot, collect sample ballots and ask voters

(Photo taken at the Andorra Branch Library)

after they voted unbiased questions to help better the government in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. We asked the voters five questions after they casted their ballot, (1) Would you support allowing voters the option to request and submit absentee ballots before Election Day without offering a reason or excuse?; (2) Would you support allowing voters the option to vote for a certain period before Election Day at a select number of early voting locations?; (3) Would you support amending the PA Constitution to create an independent Citizen’s Redistricting Commission's responsible for drawing Congressional and state legislative districts?; (4) Would you support allowing independent and third party voters to vote in primary elections?; (5) Would you support allowing young people aged 16 and 17 the opportunity to pre-register to vote? (Voters must still be 18 or older to cast a ballot)? Something that was interesting to me was when I introduced myself and told a woman what I was there for and asked her if I could ask her questions she asked me what kinds of questions I had. I then told her I was with the Committee of 70 and that it was a non-partisan group, she then answered the questions. I thought this was interesting because she would most likely not have answered biased questions. Something else that I was excited about was that the voters knew how to answer the questions I asked and did not need a background to them. In Ward 21 I went to 4 different voting locations, Cook Wissahickon School, Andorra Branch Library, Houston Recreation Center, and Saul High School. I had the best experience at the Recreation Center because of the people that were also their outside of the polling office. They informed me and my group that there was an African-American male that was furiated with the Proposed Charter Change Question #3, which we decided was worded incorrectly and could be threatening when read by an African-American male but not threatening when someone from a differently ethnicity and/or background is reading it. There were only two people out of 24 would not stop and answer the questions which is a lot less than what I was expecting.

(Photo of the ballot taken at Cook Wissahickon School)

Keith Pompey

By: Lyza Newbern

lnewbern@slabeeber.org

Born in the Frankford part of Philadelphia, this beat reporter answers questions from 7 of Science Leadership Academy @ Beeber’s students during an hour long Q&A. Questions like ‘When did you start writing?’, ‘Did you ever run out of things to write about?’, and of course ‘Who do you think will go home champions from the NBA championship game?’ It was an hour of laughter, memories were shared and made.

He talked answered questions about the hardships of working on the beat, considering the hours he had to put into it during the 2013-2014 season. Pompey, being the reporter for the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers and their record beating 26 games in-a-row losses he has dealt with a lot of different feedback and reviews from his readers. He stated that this is the “age of twitter” and that he has to keep up with his competitors more now than ever because of the internet. One of the students asked a question that went along the lines of “How did you never run out of things to say while writing throughout their losing streak?” he shed some light about things that he knew with the student and the overall goal of what he did while this was going on. He said that he knew he always had to tell a story, he knows that the game story becomes old faster now because of the internet and that he knew he had to write about something else to keep people interested and entertained. While writing throughout the NBA all-time high record of straight loses he wrote about them as if they were the Heat. Not thinking about the loss - or win - he wrote because it was his “duty” to keep his readers happy.

“Let’s face it the heat lost to the sixers.” was his reply when asked who his prediction on who will win the NBA 2014 championship. He stated that the - predicted - winners of the final game have the “Best Bench in the league.”

Abstract -

The interview contained topics and people such as Elktin Maryland, Segregated schools and Martin Luther King Jr. Elktin Maryland is one of the most northern townships in Maryland which means that it is closer to Philadelphia, New York and New England. It is completely different from Cambridge, Maryland which was well known for it’s amount of racism and civil rights issues. Elktin was a much more kind environment for everyone in it - including African Americans. Another topic that was discussed was segregated schools, the interviewee did indeed go to a segregated and did have fun. There were no fights and everyone got along in her school. In 1956, 61% of Northerners and 15% of Southerners believed that whites and blacks should not attend the same school. It took more time and more protesting for most of America to become fond of segregated schools. The last important topic that was mentioned throughout the interview was Martin Luther King Jr, he was called a man of god, and smart. His death impacted the interviewer emotionally.

Research -

Martin Luther King was a great man that only tried to do good things. He believe in God that was peace and love. His murder was sad to everyone that believed he was trying his best and only wanted good in the world. MLK jr, was someone who always did the right thing for his people and for things that he believed in. His death saddened people who could not believe that someone could hate MLK jr so much for doing the right thing. Historically, his death was very sad and did hurt a lot of people. He was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement and wanted equality for everyone. He was someone who everyone looked up to. He was assassinated at the young age of 39.

Sources -

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elkton,_Maryland#History

2. http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-25-spring-2004/feature/brown-v-board-timeline-school-integration-us

3. http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement

4. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/more-subjects/history/us-history-ii/america-in-the-fifties/the-civil-rights-movement

Transcript -

Rules:

1)Think about what you are doing. Is what you are doing acceptable for the president to see.

2)Always be responsible!

3)Would Grandma allow what you are about to do? If the answer is no then do not do it.

4)No food and/or liquids around your machine.

5)If you need a parents email to sign up that website is not for you. Ask me.

6)Do not bully anyone (bullying includes spamming and/or being a troll).

7)If you are being bullied or think you are being bullied get an adult, immediately.  

8)Always ask an adult to download something before you do.