Innovation Academy,
learning in the real world
Running
with
me, my thoughts and I
TCK Lifestyle
Community & Service,
giving back to the community
Science,
feeding my craving for understanding
Acting,
empathy at its best.
Innovation Academy
The Innovation Academy has taken the criticisms on modern day education and used it to create the best program possible. The IA is a program that offers Roosevelt students a new style of learning. In this program, we have purposeful project based units in which we challenge ourselves to become the best versions of ourselves while often times helping the community.
On the picture on the left, The entire cohort appears after we finished presenting our photo exhibition. The pictures were based on problems like traffic, lack of recycling, lack of art and children criminality. We conducted extensive research on these topics and then found solutions.
Here is a quick video that explains the innovation academy:
Running
Some people have meditation, others go to psychologists. I run. Running is a major part of my daily life; I spend roughly 5 hours a week doing this. I began this journey mainly because I cared about what others thought about me and I didn't want to be “that chubby kid” but it became so much more than that. When I run, I'm able to truly think about issues and let it all sink in. It has given me emotional stability. When I face a major problem or decision that I have to make, all I want to do is run. This adds up to what John Medina says about exercise in his book "Brain Rules"
Third Culture Kid
Here is the link to a blog post I wrote on this topic:
A major part of my life has been seeing the world through different perspectives and lenses, which has significantly opened up my mind. I have lived in Peru, Brazil and Singapore. Visiting four continents has made me respect, have empathy for others and become very adaptable
Something that I’m really grateful about living in an international community is that I speak 3 languages fluently. Spanish, English and Portuguese. They are the three most spoken languages in western society. I find this extremely useful. It has given me access to understand and interact with about 2 billion people.
Community and Service
Many define me as a caring person. Since actions speak louder than words, I am going to share a few images of my work that I have been doing since middle school up until now
I took the foto above as part of one of the projects in the Innovation Academy. We were just starting a long day of hard work in Pamplona, San Juan de Miraflores. We spend hours creating cement, passing it through the hill and then building stairs for the community so that "Señora Teresa", an elderly person, would be able to go up the hill safely. The hill was dusty, steep and quite slippery. One might be able to see this on the image on the top right. We also met with the children from the area and spoke with them. On the right one can see the picture of a kid playing with the snapchat filters on my phone.
I've been on similar builds like this one multiple times in Bridges.
On the picture on the left, my group and I from Techo para mi país after we finally finished building the house for a family that needed our help in San Juan de Lurigancho. It was a family of five and one on the way. One of the kids had a mental illness which had placed them in a difficult economical situation. This gave them a boost to get through this.
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I've been going to builds for Techo since 6th grade.
Science
Throughout these past few years, my interest in science has been growing. It has been one of the classes that I have enjoyed and excelled on the most. Since I still don't know what I want a career I want to pursue and I enjoy learning about science, I thought: "Why not join the science related clubs?". So I applied to IGEM, a synthetic biology international competition, and SNHS, the Science National Honor Society. I'm currently working on IGEM and I've been accepted into SNHS. Both are very respected and challenging clubs.
In IGEM, we traveled to Boston where we presented our long-term project. The aim of the project was to provide a solution to the issue of feather waste. This is a problem since the feather waste can spread diseases such as Avian Influenza and Campylobacter. These bacterias can cause devastating effects on both humans and chickens. Our solution was to decompose feathers, which are difficult to degrade without synthetic biology, using enzymes called keratinases.
Here is an interesting blog post I wrote that is related to questioning:
Here is a blog post where I speak about my dominant language:
Acting
Acting has played a very important role in my life. I've been growing as an actor since 6th grade and I plan to continue doing so.
In this blog post I speak about how acting really did change my life:
On the image on the left, I'm wearing the costume of the most challenging role I have done so far. I was given the secondary lead with a very complex character. He was crazy. He would rant about constellations and numbers. Although I struggled at first, I was able to understand the character and perform his role well. I even received the directors award.
Another important experience I had throughout my acting career has been when acting in Spring Awakening. This was a play that was defiant and went through various sensitive topics like: sex, homosexuality and abortion. It wasn't easy to have a secondary lead on this play when so many people believed it was not appropriate for school. I stayed because I believe that it's essential that society begins to talk about topics that might generate discomfort because if we don't, there will be elephants in the room. This was a play that had a powerful purpose and had an impact on the community.
