Being American means that we never give up, despite all odds, never give up, despite all odds, never stopping no matter what everyone else around us says. It means that we fought for our place in the world, that the idea of rags to riches is actually possible and not because of a miracle, but due to hard work and dedication. Being American means we all have a reason to be here, that everyone has an equal chance to make it big, and that success isn't random, or due to luck, but by someones hard work. The American life is the perfect equilibrium. You are always making more than you are spending, you abide by the law, and stay out of trouble. American life is always having the ability to achieve more,  limitless potential. A very simplistic idea of being American is just being born in the United States of America. Everyone has an equal opportunity and everyone can act as they see fit.

This is a picture of our project. Although much could be improved, the rose is supposed to symbolize the idea that power can take multiple forms. 

         Everybody can see, everybody can smell, everybody can touch, everybody can hear, everybody can taste, everybody can feel, and everybody can think. These are all irrefutable truths, but what we see and what we hear is up to our perception. The "real world" and the "dream world" are at the same level of reality. In both worlds, the only thing that truly exists is you and what you CAN do. Being able to "do" something is for sure an irrefutable truth. It's effects and whether it is ethical or not is up to one's perception. 

Our abstract art represents what exploration is. Exploration isn't going in one direction knowing where you're going. It is going into the unkown to see what lies there. Christopher Columbus went one direction expecting to get to India but he never made it and instead ran into the Americas. Everyone in the world was going in one direction but Christopher Columbus decided to go in the other direction and make his own trail.

After several hours of enlightenment, courtesy of my teacher, I have learned more about what "I think, therefore I am," truly means. Existentianalism has baffled mankind for centuries and really since the beggining of time. Philosophers have tried again and again to explain why we exist or if we actually do exist. No one explains it better than Rene Descartes. He doubted everything that wasn't proven beyond doubt. The only thing that he was certain of was that he existed. If he didn't exist, he would never have been able to doubt his own existence. What it truly means is that if you can think, than you exist. That is an irrefutable truth and there are only a select few of irrefutable truths. Some are being able to see, being able to smell, being able to hear, and so on. What you hear or what you see changes depending on perception. Perception is also affected by culture, tradition, and the authorities. I think, therefore I am is an irrefutable truth, but what it means is up to perception.

Flowers for Algernon is a short story about a man with a mental disease. He temporarily becomes a genius , but whether or not this is ethical is up for debate.
​Social Media Essay - My essay about whether or not social media has a good effect on someone's life.

​Michael Martinez , Jesse Muñoz, Ricardo Canales
Park ELA Period ⅞
8/31/2016

Growth v. Fixed Mindset

    Mindset is significant when it comes to education & learning. To prove this, there are people who have a different point of view of this, and the growth mindset has contributed to how teachers instruct today.  Carol Dweck mentions that the only route for any student to improve in any aspect of life. This involves school, jobs, politics, family, and so on. Dweck was experimenting for about 20 years, and she concluded that people with growth mindsets don't give up as easily as fixed mindset people. People with a fixed mindset see a challenge as something impossible, whereas people with a growth mindset see challenges as only a bit harder of a problem. There was one said experiment where one group of students was put into a room to solve a math problem, where one group of scholars was put inside with a professor coach who pushed the students to not give up and that every time they were getting closer and to solving it, which was the type of growth mindset. The other group of students was just standardized and they just had to answer the question and give up if they wanted to, which showed a fixed mindset. The results show that the people with a growth mindset had better results than a group with a fixed mindset.
    A fixed mindset is what most people have as a mindset. People with a fixed mindset tend to believe that intelligence can not change over time. People with a fixed mindset see challenges as an impossible thing to do. Schools and education use a fixed mindset because they have students reach a goal instead of making them think that there is no limit and to go beyond. However, if schools don’t have any goals for students, they may not do anything at all. This can result in students learning absolutely nothing at school and not slowly get better over time. If students do set goals for themselves, they will be more likely to reach it on their own. Finally, the best thing to is to try to maintain a positive and growth mindset, because of the tests and exams showed on students, it makes them more successful in life.
    A growth mindset is usually symbolized by a growing tree, whereas a fixed mindset is symbolized with a brain inside a locked cage. As we show both mindsets battling against each other, the growth mindset easily surpasses the fixed mindset, because it mainly shows the qualities that “successful” people have. The carriage mainly symbolizes how effort eventually leads to success. The road to success is paved with failure.