Personal Project

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for having helped make my Personal Project a success because had it not been for these special individuals, I would not have achieved the results that I have. The paella has been a success, thanks to all of you. I really appreciate the inspiration and help you have given me, but most importantly I appreciate all of you for being my ‘backbones’ throughout these past months.

Catalina! Thank you for having popped the main idea of my project into my mind. From the very beginning, you have taken a big interest in my project, always helping me not only with ideas and suggestions for it, but also reminding me about my deadlines by constantly asking me about them. This really helped me a lot.

Once again, you have proved to be a great big sister, always there to help me when I need it the most. Love you!

Mom and Dad! Thank you for having helped me collect the recycled materials and for having shown interest in my project! I love you both!

Raeza! Thank you for all your help! From the very beginning of our relationship, you helping me has never been an extra effort.

The finish piece turned out amazing thanks to your help with setting it up. You have really helped me a lot and have always been there for me. I love you!

Ms. Roe! Thank you very much for helping me out as my supervisor. I was very independent for most of the time, but it was always very comforting to know that if I had any doubts, you would be there to help me out. I hope that you, as a lover of the Arts, will like the finished paella. Thank you for everything!

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Mr. Holmes! Thank you very much not only for being such a great history teacher, but also for your helpful notes that kept us on task throughout the first months of the Personal Project. I really am sorry that you had to spend time on this during your summer holidays!  The new and improved deadlines helped me a lot in organizing my work! I’ve really enjoyed this project thanks in great part to your extra work and effort put into making not only my experience, but all the other students’ experiences less stressful than we had imagined. I have come up with a project that I am very proud of. Thank you!

All the students of 10th grade 2006! Thank you very much for taking the time to fill out the questionnaires I gave all of you! You are all the inspiration of my project and the project itself. I hope you are honoured, because I sure am for having such great people surrounding me in my daily life at school. Without you guys, none of this could have been made possible! You are all fantastic people and all very interesting. I hope you find my paella interesting and understand as much as I do that even though we are a relatively small grade, there are many different cultures within it. So obviously, without you guys, none of this could have been made possible! I know that I can count on all of you in anything. Together, we really do spice things up! I love you all!

Introd uction My project is about taking the international community of ICS’ 10th grade of 2006 and representing it both creatively and symbolically as a paella, the national dish of Spain, where the ingredients, instead of being food are actually objects chosen by each of the students to represent their home country. Throughout my life I have lived in different countries and attended international schools; this has given me an international life experience which I am very lucky and grateful to have.

Because of having had these opportunities to live abroad and having been exposed to the international communities within my schools, I feel that all the people I have met and the cultures I have encountered along the way, have become a big part of me and who I have become. Like a paella, they have been and continue to be the ingredients making up the international environment that I live in every day.

Therefore the paella is a metaphor. I chose this as my project because I have always been very fond of meeting new people and getting to know them and their culture. I also chose this as my project because I have always been interested in knowing which country my classmates consider to be their home country out of the ones they have lived in; home is not always necessarily their country of birth. I will carry out my project by giving out a questionnaire to the students, asking them to think of an object (preferably not food or any type of drink) 1 that they feel represents their home country and that makes them feel at home. My project is a very symbolical one.

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These objects cannot be any type of food or drink from the country because the idea of my project is to represent the paella as a symbol; if I let them choose food or drinks, this takes the whole aim of my project away.

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I have worked with symbolism before, particularly in Ms. Root’s 8th and 9th grade English classes. In both years, I completed a lot of work to do with symbolism.

Occasionally when we had read a section of a book we were reading as a class, our assignment was to choose an element 2 in that section and represent it through a symbol; symbolism. I really enjoyed doing these assignments because they were fun and different to assignments I had been given in previous English classes in other schools. What I love about working with symbolism is that it makes me use another side of my brain; it encourages me to think and see things from a different point of view. Symbolism allows me to experiment with different ways of completing creative assignments. For example in English class, instead of just using words to describe something, I can use both words and objects to do so. This helps me as well as the readers to have a clearer idea of what I am explaining; it is a good way of getting my message across to a reader. What I also like about symbolism is that there are no rules. In writing, I have to follow certain punctuation, grammar and structure rules, but in symbolism, those rules do not exist. I have enjoyed working with symbolism in English and Art classes and I continue to love it.

This project is linked to English and Art because symbolism is very important in these areas. In many artists’ works, symbolism is used and at many times the piece of art itself is a symbol 3. Furthermore, in many manuscripts, symbolism is used; especially in descriptive writing, where the usage of symbols is extremely useful for the author to produce a detailed piece of work, which the reader will be engrossed by. I am keen to integrate two of my favourite subjects, English and Art, into my project by combining the two in order to reveal the personal side of this project; a project that says “This is made by Emily Bingham”.

‘Symbolism. The systematic use of something in a narrative to represent something else—often the use of some concrete object to stand for an abstraction.’

- Madison Smartt Bell

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I will take the following steps to complete my project as smoothly as possible:

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I will collect relevant research that I will base my questionnaire questions on, as well as information about the different cultures in 10th grade. This research will be done in books, internet and the student questionnaire.

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I will talk to the English teachers to see if they are willing to give up a reading period one week so that the students can fill out my questionnaire 5. Hopefully the teachers will be willing to help me; I think

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This could be a character, place, time, atmosphere or text itself in the section.

At many times artists focus on political and environmental issues in their artwork through symbolism. I learned this in Art class.

4 http://ulfwolf.com/symbolism.htm 5 This is the best way to get the opinions of my classmates because if I were to interview them face to face, they most likely would not provide me with the detailed answer I am looking for.

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that this is a good choice of using the reading period because that way I am not disturbing the teachers’ class plans.

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Making the paella: This will be the most time consuming part of my project. The way I want to carry out the creative part is by making every object from a certain culture by using recycled materials that can be found in the house.

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I will then present the answers of my classmates, along with a copy of the questionnaire in a booklet form so people can read more of what my classmates wrote in detail.

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I will write a brief description of my project and present it in plaque form 6. I will also write a short description of what I found in my research; analyzing the questionnaire answers I received from the students.

During my project various difficulties may arise:

I am worried that I may not get detailed answers in the questionnaire because some of the students may not take the questionnaire seriously, and not put as much effort into answering the questions.

I am also worried that some of the students may not finish the questionnaire in class. So, I will ask the English teachers to really help me by making sure that they do. I will frequently be sharing ideas and asking for suggestions from my family and the Art department to improve my project. I will ask my family to aid me in collecting the recycled materials 7 and I will ask the Art department for different ways of joining the materials together. I really look forward to seeing how my project turns out because I’m doing something I really enjoy and hope my paella is a success!

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I will present it in a plaque form because this is how I have seen pieces of artwork displayed in museums (with descriptions on the side).

7 I will tell them to keep any materials that can be recycled; before throwing them away, they will save it for me.

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Areas of Interaction Approaches to Learning: I am interested to learn about the different aspects of culture and particularly creating the biggest symbolism project I have done. I am going to take on three roles: researcher, writer and artist. What I have learned in the course of the project will be shown in the form of a display of my paella in school8. I shall organize my time so that I have time to complete the various tasks which are required 9. By the end, I will have learned about how to improve my Art skills by using the different, possibly new materials to me, I will have learned about how to write a proper questionnaire 10 and I will have learned more about how to use books and the internet for research. In this project as a whole, I will learn how to combine the many different things I learn in separate subjects11. This will help me not just in school, but also throughout the rest of my life because in the real world, everything is connected.

Community and Service: As a final product to my project, the paella will hopefully be displayed somewhere in school. It is something which I will enjoy doing for the community as I am very interested in teaching the others about their own community and I hope that others are as well. I am teaching others; about the people in 10th grade and their cultural backgrounds. It shall also add to the "school spirit". By having students learn about their peers through a piece of art which they have been the inspiration of, it may inspire them to do something similar or just appreciate their community more.

Health and Social Education: The paella will touch subjects such as the cultural and personal differences of the students in 10th grade; the different cultures, but more importantly their different views on where they feel is their home. The project also covers the issue of personal freedom of thought. Although the objects in the paella are not objects all the students may feel connected to, they may be able to relate to many of them; make links between their culture and other cultures within the grade just as I have done, linking my English and Art skills.

Home Faber (Human Creativity): I am creating a symbolical paella in order to investigate how to combine my English and Art skills using symbolism which I am interested in.

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I will have to talk to the Arts department to see if I can do this.

Researching about the different cultures, writing a questionnaire, collecting the recyclable materials and finally creating the objects.

10 The mistakes I make now in my questionnaire will help me learn for later on if I ever have to make a questionnaire for another project. I looked at a tutorial about how to make successful questionnaires to aid me in making mine. This tutorial can be found in the Appendix 1.

11 In this case the combination of subjects consists of English, Art, Geography and Social Anthropology. Because of experiencing combining two subjects together, in the future, it will be much easier to do between other subjects; I will apply my knowledge from one subject to another; link the two together, to help me get a better understanding of something.

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Description I started the project by consulting family and peers as well as teachers. I knew that I wanted to do something which either involved Art or English, but the idea of combining these two subjects together did not immediately cross my mind. At first, my project was a totally different one; I was going to design a one bedroom apartment with one kitchen, dining area and bathroom with all the decoration used in each room being from different time periods. My peers and Ms. Roe said that it was a great idea and that it was very unique. They did suggest that I could instead of decorating each room in a different time period, decorate each room in a different style 12 as most people today do not think of decorating their homes in different time periods but they do think of different styles. So during summer I did just that; researched the different styles. However, when August came around, I realized that I was getting tired of this idea because I did not feel that it was ‘personal’; as I was reading through the books I was using for my research, I realized that they were all basically doing the same thing as I was; telling people how to decorate their rooms. I just did not feel that my project was unique anymore. My sister Catalina suggested that I still do a creative piece of work to represent the international community of ICS, considering that I love art and that our family has been an international family for many years. I liked the idea very much and I went for it.

At first, I was interested in representing the whole of ICS as a painting by gathering information such as how many nationalities there are in the school.

However, I thought about this carefully and decided that a painting would be too hard to make in the amount of time I had for the project 13. Finally on August 20th , 2006 I got my inspiration of making the project as a paella 14. The next step was to make the questionnaire 15 the students would fill out. To do so, I did as Mr. Holmes and Ms. Roe recommended and kept my ideas and plans recorded in my journal.

Once I had all the completed questionnaires handed back to me, I listed the names of the students, the country they chose as their ‘home country’ and the objects they chose as one table 16 that way I would not have to go through all of the loose papers when it came to making the objects. I then started gathering recyclable materials 17 from around the house to make my objects with. Once I had gathered all the materials, I started to build the objects18.

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Modern, minimalist, classical, oriental, western, etc.

I would have to learn different techniques of painting; this would have required a lot of time and I could not afford to use the time I had left in making such a complex project.

14 I also decided to just focus on the students in 10th grade because after all, it’s the people that surround me the most! Look at Journal page 19 for more information.

15 Look at Journal page 20.

16 Look at Journal pages 23 and 24.

17 Bottle caps, dried seeds, Kinder cases, broken jewelry, Styrofoam trays from certain foods, empty glue sticks, bottles, string, corks, perfume bottles, dice, vitamin/medicine packaging, shampoo bottle caps, doyleys, ribbon, plastic spoons, magnets, wire, old clothes, etc.

18 Remembering to keep photo records in my journal!  Photos can also be found in Appendix 2.

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Throughout the course of this project I have used internet, book and questionnaire 22 sources to aid me in getting my project together. I started out reading the completed questionnaires about each of the students. I then used the information included in the questionnaires to research about the different countries and cultures that can be found in 10th grade in encyclopaedias and the internet which really was a helpful resource23.

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Analysis I am doing this project because I really love learning about different cultures, about the people around me and relating the two to each other. Integrating two of my favourite subjects seemed liked the most enjoyable and worthwhile project I could do for the Personal Project. English and Art are definitely not subjects that I thought I would easily get tired of. To make my project more of a challenge to me I decided to take a different approach to Art than I was accustomed to. Instead of only being the sculptor I am also now the researcher and writer of the symbolical piece.

In the past, I have always really enjoyed working in English class with symbolism 25.

By writing about the different cultures as well as working with symbolism in greater dimensions, I have polished my English and Art skills. Once I had chosen to change my project from a bedroom designing booklet to a symbolical paella, my aim for the project was the same as I had for the paella, but with one more factor added to it; once I had gathered the information from the students and known which objects to make, I wanted to make the objects using an art technique or style from the country they chose. Had I carried out this aim, I would have learned even more about the different cultures within the Class of 2009, but because I changed my project idea late into the year, I realized that I would not have enough time to go further into my research and learn how to carry out the different techniques26. Considering this, if I

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Finished objects on basic paella structure. Photo by: Emily Bingham, January 10, 2007.

Paella structure half painted. Photo by: Ibid, January 12, 2007.

21 Paella structure completely painted. Photo by: Ibid, January 17, 2007.

22 Students’ questionnaires 23 This resource was really helpful because nowadays you can find almost everything!

24 Photo from: Emily Bingham  25 Ms. Root in 8th and 9th grade would at many times tell the class to draw a symbol to describe either a feeling, passage in a text or a character in a book we were reading.

26 If I had actually tried to both learn and perfect my skills in using different art techniques, I would not have had enough time to write this Written Report and also make the actual Paella! That would not be good  20

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would have another chance to do this project again, I would have made the extra effort to learn new art techniques and apply them to my object making 27 My overall goal for the project is well covered by my research; my aim for the project is to learn more about the different people in my grade, their culture, their feelings about where they come from, as well as show all of this symbolically, combining my English and Art skills. My research applies to the Areas of Interaction in the following ways: Approaches to Learning: I learned that giving out questionnaires and getting the information you expect is not always possible28; this is because although the questions you write in a questionnaire may be excellent and crystal clear, it does not mean that the participants will necessarily take time to read the questions carefully. This happened in my questionnaire; many people put answers that had nothing to do with the question; the question that gave me the most trouble, funny enough was the most important one in the questionnaire: “If you had to choose an object from your home country (not food or drink please!) to represent your connection to your home country (i.e. emotions, feelings, memories, patriotism maybe? ) what would it be?”29 For this question, I got several answers which I had to later go find the students to redo their answers30 because they had not read the question properly and had chosen food and drink instead of objects. For example, Fernando Garrido-Lestache wrote about the contrast that could be found within Spain; this is not what I expected as an answer.

Community and Service: After working on this project for many months, I have also learned about Community and Service. In the past years that I have been at ICS, I had to do the recycling in 7th grade which was obviously a very easy way of getting Community and Service. In working on this project, I learned that the older I get, Community and Service has become more difficult to complete due to the amounts of work that increase from year to year. In 7th grade, I knew that recycling was good for the environment and the community, but I never found it particularly fun 31. Because of putting on my paella on display for the community and teaching my community about the people surrounding them, I have found a new way of giving something back to my community; this type of Community and Service32 has been very fun to do since it has been on something I love, but it has also been a different way in the sense that no one else has come up with the idea before.

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This would also help me learn more about the cultures because even though the students chose the different objects to represent their country of choice, it doesn’t mean that they are reliable sources for me to find out more about their cultures; this is also because many of them who have lived abroad like me, have not lived for several years in their country of choice, meaning that they wouldn’t necessarily know their culture that well.

28 Approaches to Learning! I learned through my own experiences that retrieving something you are looking for is not always easy and that there is room for improvement in terms of methods in which that something is retrieved.

29 Questionnaire page 2 30 Completed questionnaires from Maria Jaquotot Alejandro Usobiaga, and Carlos Ezpeleta.

Can be found in Appendix 3 - 5.

31 As I’m sure many of the 7th graders today will agree on this with me.

32 Also, Community and Service should be meaningful according to the MYP guildelines.

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Health and Social Education: From creating the questionnaire in order to investigate the objects I had to make, I have learned about Health and Social Education. I have learned through Mr. Pairaudeau that when you give out a questionnaire to people, you should first explain what it is about and verify whether or not, especially in this case, the people are willing to give their personal information. During the process of giving the questionnaires out to the students, I must have been asked the same questions at least thirty times or more; this really got on my nerves. From this, however, I learned that to administer a simple questionnaire, patience is important: you have to be patient with people; otherwise they may not wish to participate in your activity. I think I could have avoided some clashes with students if I had taken time before giving out the questionnaire to first explain what my project was about and answering all the queries in one go instead of having to be asked repeatedly the same questions.

Homo Faber (Human Creativity): From creating a symbolical paella in order to investigate how to combine my English and Art skills using symbolism, I have learned about Homo Faber. I have learned that making a creative piece of work is not always as easy as it seems. When I was making the objects, I came across some problems33. At many times, I could not use certain materials for certain parts of the objects because they were either too heavy, or too complex to keep in place.

Whenever I encountered this problem I just searched for other materials that might be better suited for the objects. I think I could have avoided this problem by researching different ways to put things together. This would have speeded up the creating process as well as improved the quality of the piece itself.

The success of my project will be tested both in the process of its creation when it is displayed. If people do not show interest 34 in the paella, then how can it develop? The fact that this project has been put together not only by me, but by the students because of their personal opinions expressed in their questionnaires will make this project really special.

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I was using superglue, which ruined my hands at many times.

This interest will determine if the students are interested in the backgrounds of their peers as well as their interest in help me, one of their peers, in completing my Personal Project.

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Conclusion The project that I chose to do gave me a new perspective regarding the amount of time, effort and work that has to be put into projects as big as these. I devised a creative piece of art that I am very proud of and I organized myself in a very efficient manner. I observed the due dates, so I never felt pressured during the course of the project.

If I were to do this project again I would have liked to have had the idea of making a paella earlier because I felt that with the first idea I had about designing the apartment took up time I could have used for this project: summer holidays. Had I decided to change my project earlier, I could have finished the questionnaire earlier, got my information back earlier and spent more time on planning out the paella itself. I would have also liked to have consulted more people on what they thought of the project. However, the research process of the project turned out to take a much longer time than I had thought; I expected creating the paella to take longer, but I was wrong.

This project has been an extremely valuable learning experience. Believe it or not, even after all the work behind this project, I am grateful for having had to complete it because I feel it will really help me when it comes to completing my thesis in university; it will be something that when the rest of the students in university are stressing out on their thesis, I can look back on and use as a guide to not stress out over mine. In completing the Personal Project, I have proved to myself that I can organize my time in such a way that I will be able to work on something as big as the Personal Project as well as have a sufficient amount of time to keep up with other school assignments. I am extremely satisfied and proud of myself in knowing that I have managed to finish my biggest project yet. I enjoyed the Personal Project; it kept me interested from beginning to end and I think it will have the same impact on the community.

Having moved from an American system to the IBMYP was hard at first for me, but over the years I have been in ICS, I have grown accustomed to the new system; I now have a better understanding of the IBMYP. Because of the Personal Project I feel more confident with planning out my time and work. Next year when I start the IB, this will help me a lot as I will come across many similar situations in which I have to deal with different assignments. I now have it clearer than ever that the only way to get them done in a ‘stress-free’ way is by organizing myself as much as I can. This way, I can carry out the work laid before me. I was able to include Approaches to Learning, Community Service, Homo Faber and Health and Social Education into my project. They all seem to be clearly visible in my project, making it quite complete in the aspect of Areas of Interaction.

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I also really enjoyed working independently. Again, I feel this was a valuable experience for me. Until today, I have always liked to work in groups, but have always found that I organize myself better if I work on my own 35. Spending so much time on my project also made me realize how much I enjoy writing and making art.

It was interesting and quite fun to see the different objects the students chose. This project helped me show myself that I can come up with good ideas, which is important, but even more so, that I am able to carry out my ideas. I am very proud of what I have come up with and the months working on the Personal Project, instead of being a stressful period of time, turned out to be quite entertaining as I was doing something which I really enjoy. In general, what I have really found out about the Areas of Interaction in my project is the following; they are not as easy as they seem!

Bibliography 1) Internet For the Questionnaire: Date given to students: November 9th , 2006 during English reading periods.

1. Survival Statistics. http://www.statpac.com/surveys/surveys.doc Author: David S. Walonick. Published by: StatPac, Inc. Last updated: 2004

For other information: 2. Symbolism in Fiction – Author Quotes. http://ulfwolf.com/symbolism.htm Author: Lulu. Published by: Lulu Inc. Last updated: 2006

2) Graphics, Pictures, Photographs 3. Britannica Books Photo (found in Description section). Author: Emily Bingham Date taken: October 23rd , 2006

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I do not have to be looking after, hunting down others to do their parts if they are lacking to do so; by working alone, I know all the parts will be completed not only to my taste, but to the requirements and the deadlines.

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