"I Represent Myself"

 I have never liked being misread, misunderstood, or misrepresented(EVER). This action project was perfect to explain that point because we are looking to make our voices heard. We were asked to find a piece of potential legislation that our representatives are looking at and advise them based on our opinions. When I look into certain decisions they can get complicated, whereas others should be no brainers. The piece I found feels as if it should be a no brainer with several contributing factors (this will be explained in the letter). I am addressing Illinois State Senate member Kimberly A. Lightford about an amendment going into the Children with Disabilities Article of the School Code (HB2748). The letter reads as follows:


Hello Senator Lightford,

I am a high school student from the city of Chicago that needs your help. I believe you and the Assignments Committee are looking at an amendment on the Children with Disabilities Article of the School Code labeled as “HB2748”. To give a quick refresh on it, as a part of the code cuts off student support from the special education department at the age of 21, the amendment states that anyone who turned 22 while having had been away from school grounds for learning for three months or more special education support will still be given until the year 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seeing as how e-learning has been difficult for all students, and having certain disabilities could make it ten times worse(physical and mental), as well as this being a very restricted support beam (only for this year and only for a small group of students), what's the harm in not only helping give students what they need but giving work to those who may not have had much this year so far. (People need work to support themselves)

Just think, you’re in your most crucial year of school and everything could have gone your way and been honored top of your class and then COVID strikes and it's all ruined. Few would not be affected by the initial shock then have to sit at home staring at words on a computer screen 10x more than before. Though I am not in special education, it's already hard enough for students in regular education to work in quarantine(average comp. junior class score being: 49%) so imagine special ed students who have it harder than us. I am a student who can understand the struggles of not being or feeling supported enough in my work. I don't have any physical disabilities but I do have mental ones that can make paperwork the hardest thing to do.

Frankly, there is no easily legitimate reason to not approve as more people would get laid off of work for various reasons (primarily COVID) you couldn’t claim that it would be too much work to handle. If you need proof of said drop in work, unemployment rates of 2019 to 2021 show a drastic change.

To summarize, please vote for this amendment, it gives room for lots of growth with little to no consequence.

Thank you for your time and I hope to hear back from you if possible.

-CDH

Thank YOU as well for your time and I hope you understood me. I had a confusing time with this AP with a bit of a roller coaster going from one subject to the next this term so far but I did find some enjoyment in the topics. Please have a good day, night, or whenever you read this.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tools: Upgraded

Image
 In the first STEAM class of quarantine, "Design and engineering", we have studied basic tools, advancement of tools, several design processes, math concepts surrounding materialization of said designs, and the unexpected opportunity to have not only one but two FEs this unit. For this action project we were asked to design garden tools that benefit the elderly as much as possible. With the help of my partner CJH, we started our process with picking a tool to redesign, we chose garden shears. The next step was to have an interview with my Grammie; An elderly woman who as been gardening for years. We discussed several questions, mostly about tools and her experience with them. Coincidentally she owns a pair of shears, so obviously I asked her about them. She told me "They are hard to keep sharp and are sometimes much to short or to big." When we went to revise our ideas, thinking empathically, see to properly understand the physical hardships of the elderly we must t...
Read more

Light Work

Image
In the first unit of my new class "Light, Sound and Time" (LST) we spent most of our time looking at light and waves though again, we are still in quarantine so some things were a bit complicated to communicate. First we took a look at the class as a whole, talking about light, how fast it is/ its "unique" properties(wave particle duality), the visible spectrum and the electromagnetic spectrum as a whole. Then throughout the class started answering questions. "Why do we see things with certain colors?" Well white light is shined onto objects and the color we see is the one that said object reflects the most. "Would you see your reflection if you were traveling at the speed of light?" Even though there are plenty of theories, this question proposed by Albert Einstein can not be answered yet. "What are reflection and refraction?" Reflection is light bouncing back in a direction based on the angle of the shined light; and refraction is the...
Read more

Second Final Presentation!

Image
As spring break approaches, so does final presentations for this term. With “guiding questions” (or GQs) as the theme, all students were asked to form their own guiding question relating to a class, unit, or project they have worked on this term. I chose “How can questions change the world?” as my guiding question, relating to the first unit of my class Forbidden Books. In this unit we studied Socrates and the Socratic Method, that is what my question is based on. To get into this project first, I think an introduction to the Socratic Method is in order. In the BC era, during the life of/created by the Athenian philosopher Socrates, was the Socratic Method. The basic definition is that it is a "method of inquiry and instruction" but to describe it, I would say its a way of asking questions to find your true meaning. That may sound complicated but its really just a positive way of questioning a person’s beliefs and/or morals; When you ask the how and whys of a perso...
Read more