Why our elections matter: Overview - Denise Armas

 

Why do our elections matter?

    Why should we care about our elections? How do our elections impact us and our day-to-day lives? 

    

    
 Those are questions I learned the answers to during this project that was assigned to my classmates and I, the theme project. The theme of our project was elections and why they matter. We were given topics to choose from that fit with the project's overall theme. Our choices were: Healthcare, Education, Economy, Racial Divides, Immigration and Law-and-Order and each group had to choose two topics from the list. We were also in the same groups and the same members as our last presentation. My group, group one, agreed to do Healthcare and Education as those were the topics we were most interested and knowledgeable in. The good thing was that we were already familiar with each other so we were mostly comfortable working on our own. However, we did face a few challenges along the way. At first, we had misunderstood the assignment - we believed that the agenda was related to the chapters assigned with the project. We also believed that the agenda was supposed to be the outline of the study guide for the chapters, and that everyone would present a different part of the chapter. Unfortunately, we were very wrong and it had been a few weeks already since the assignment was posted so we faced a time crunch. We had a period of confusion, procrastination, and a variety of last minute changes. Luckily, I had a few ideas for our new agenda that would relate to the project and would be beneficial for the whole group. I sent my ideas to our group leader which she executed my ideas and the ideas of her other classmates perfectly. With our new and improved agenda, we had a clearer initiative. We started to distribute our new tasks equally, we completed our study guide so it was time for our overall presentation. At first, we had a little trouble choosing our tasks since some tasks required two to three people and we were short of one person. Thanks to our group leader we were able to reach to an agreement on who would work on what. I was assigned one of the two interviews as well as my slides. I chose to work on "What can be done to ensure better education and healthcare." to be honest, it was a little challenging at first. In the beginning, both the interview and the slides I chose were difficult for me. I found it challenging because I did not know the right questions to ask for my parts of the project. I asked for advice from our group leader and she was very helpful; she even created a document for some starter questions or approaches to our slides if we were confused. Being  honest, it took me a few days to come up with questions for the interview, I did not want to burden anyone else with my concerns. Eventually, I came up with these questions: 

Teamwork

1. Have you noticed any changes in the education system before and after elections?

2. How do you think voting affects our education system?

3. What is a way we can improve our education system through our elections?

4. How do you think we can ensure permanent changes to our school system through voting?

5. Why is voting important for the future of our education system?

6. What advice would you give to students about voting?

7. What steps can we take to be more informed about our elections?

8. Why should our elections matter when it comes to the education system?

Review

As you can see, my interview was about education. I decided to interview some of my past teachers from my high-school who were usually well-versed in information about a lot of things, even in elections. I sent an email asking for an interview as I knew that they were usually busy or booked with students to talk about class schedules or DE classes. I chose to interview my AP advisor as she always encouraged citizen duties and community hours, my past English teacher because she was always informed of current events, my AP U.S. History teacher as well, she was always passionate about politics. Unfortunately, not many teachers were responding and I wanted to hear different opinions so last minute I asked my ENC professor she was quick to help. I ended up getting a response from two of my English teachers. I also asked everyone different questions based on what I believed to be suitable based on their years of experience. Their responses to the questions were very sincere and factual and they enlightened me on different perspectives on how our elections impact our education. Afterwards, I had an idea of what to search for when doing my slides. I searched for test results throughout the years as a way to see if children were getting educated properly as tests reflect on what they have been taught. I used ACT scores as an example as they test the common core subjects: reading, writing, and mathematics. Education can be deeply impacted by elections as new test policies can alter a student's learning experience, hence, altered test scores. In the same way, healthcare can be looked at. The point of my slides were ways to ensure better education and healthcare. One way to do so is to be informed about policies being put into place, and how they alter our systems. I believed better healthcare would be affordable and accessible. I included the example of the fluctuating prices of insulin and how certain lawmakers were trying to make it more affordable. I had a short mention of OTC (over-the-counter) hearing aids as an example of accessible healthcare. It was time for the presentations to start, this time group 3 would go first, they had chosen the topics of Immigration, Law and order. Honestly, I was feeling some intimidation when I first saw Group 3's slides; their slides were very beautiful and full of information. Despite all the information written on the slides, their presentation was not too lengthy per person. They had also reminded me of history lessons I had forgotten and taught me some history I did not know before. I thought their presentation was very formal, informative, and beneficial to know. The following week, it was Group 2's turn to present, they had economy and racial divides. Group 2 also had some amazing slides which were also filled with knowledge and graphics to help us understand. I also thought it was unique for them start off their presentation with their brochure. It was obvious that they did their research very well and that they were very prepared. Overall, this project was a little nerve-wrecking as there was much confusion and this presentation required some research, however, I feel like this project strengthened our bonds with our classmates. This assignment also helped us answer questions like: "Why do our elections matter?" on our own.