Dr. Liz Gerber

On Wednesday night this week, I got the opportunity to go and watch Dr. Liz Gerber speak about Design for America.  Dr. Gerber had spoken earlier at our morning Ex, but I knew she had much more to say.  She began her story by talking about her history in her career after college.  It was interesting to hear her story about becoming a toy designer.  She talked about how she not only spent time on working with children, but she worked on the physiological component of marketing the toys to parents.  Her experience with engineering, studio arts, and psychology inspired me.  Having a dual expertise in engineering and social science is something i am very interested in pursuing myself.  Her talking was brief, but interesting and in the end she talked about her work at North Western with students.  I thought that Dr. Gerber was an amazing speaker and I am truly inspired.

Alder Planetarium

On Thursday the 23rd, I took a trip to the Alder Planetarium for a partial solar eclipse viewing party.  Because of my recent studying of astronomy, cosmetology, metaphysics, and epistemology, this was very exciting to me to actually experience something i had learned so much about.  Unfortunately, on arrival, the staff at the planetarium informed us that it was too cloudy at the moment ( 4pm).  We walked downstairs to the presentation space to watch the solar eclipse being filmed in another location.  It was very amazing to not only see it, but to hear questions being answered by the staff.  35% of solar eclipses are partial, because of the surface area of the earth the shadow hits.  The right location to be viewing the solar eclipse would have been north-west of the United States.  As we left the Planetarium, the sky started to clear up and everyone who had been inside ran outside.  For a brief second before 6pm, we saw the partial solar eclipse.  It was right above the Chicago skyline and it was absolutely amazing.  The Alder Planetarium did a great job sparking conversation about solar eclipses and making this event a inspiring for the community.

Courage

On Monday October 20th, A Parker alumni, Kara Crutcher, came and spoke to the grade about Courage, a anti violence and harassment campaign on the CTA.  She first told us about her own personal experience, where someone had verbally harassed her near the CTA.  From this experience, she developed empathy for the problem.  Kara developed Courage to support people and to discourage harassers on the bus.
      My favorite part of her presentation came next.  She gave us the opportunity to design a Courage poster to submit to the CTA in groups of 5.  In my group we brainstormed what a visual representation of courage would be.  Together we figured out that the best visual representation would be a man and woman holding out their hands to say halt.  We quickly began working on Adobe Illustrator to create a graphic around the Courage logo.    It was very cool to actually get involved with a campaign, instead of just listening to one.  We unfortunately did not get to finish our poster, but i attached the progress to this post!
    To conclude, i thought that Kara Crutcher was extremely inspiring.  My favorite part of her presentation was her speech on how to never give up on something you are passionate about.  She worked so hard to achieve her goal, and everyday more and more people are wanting to get involved or spread the word.  Thank you Kara for visiting Parker!

Today, my group and I took a trip to the south side of Chicago, particularly Hyde Park and its surrounding areas.  My group leaders, Ms. Weingartner and Mr. Amos, gave us a quick briefing on what to expect and look for.  We started by driving through Hyde Park.  It was very beautiful and was impressively diverse.  When we went past Washington Park, we came to the neighborhood of Woodlawn.  It was shocking how much changed.  It went from restaurants, high end shopping stores, and affluent houses to an area of chicago I had only previously seen on other community connection trips.  It lacked resources, and from what I saw the only places to get food were bodega like stores.  Not 10 minutes later from leaving Woodlawn we were back into Hyde Park and we got off our bus.  I was extremely shocked. How could these two completely different areas be right next to each other?  

As we continued our tour through Hyde Park, I made sure to note the differences between each of the two neighborhoods.  Hyde Park reminds of me of Lincoln park for the most part, just more diverse.  I had been down there before, but never beyond Washington Park.  Woodlawn did not even feel like Chicago to me, which was a weird and uncomfortable feeling.  It was not because I was scared or because I had never seen a less affluent area before, but because of how segregated Chicago is just by a meer border just over one street.  When we arrived to the University of Chicago Church.  There we met with an old student from Francis W. Parker.  We then had a discussion about borders in Chicago and if development was good thing or not.  I was excited to get an opportunity to ask a question about the history of lincoln park.  He told a very interesting story about how when he went to Parker in the 60s, he was one of the few black kids and that how clark street used to be primarily bodegas and Puerto Rican communities.  

Overall i thought today was a very good first experience.  As we were one the bus back to school, I reflected on all of my studies of affluence and segregation in Chicago.  It was funny to me that despite learning about these neighborhoods that were less than 30 minutes away, i had never even been to them.