Senior Project Reflection

1. In my senior project I couldn't be more proud of myself that I was successful in finding different meaningful answers for my essential question , which was my goal. B) I'd give myself a P I learned so much that I'm going to take with me to my new girl scout troop. With my research in my service learning all the books and articles I read, I really dug in deep and found different ways to help girls build self esteem and it really helped me during my 2 hour presentation , giving me the ability to interact with the group. I used my own research and build up a healthy self esteem for myself and was able to give a very good presentation. Nine months of research along with my independent component one and two, service learning, and interviews taught me that every girls different but at the end of the day we all come together as one and are alike in many ways. Again with my research and experience I will take it to my girl scout troop that I will be starting , to Share my experience with young girls. 2.For my 2 hour presentation I was extremely proud of myself that I got through it all. As well as getting to teach what I wanted to teach my way and everything went perfect and ran smoothly. A) I'd give myself an AE for my presentation. I had never been more proud of myself in my four years at ipoly high school. I did it all on my own, 9 months of research really helped me get through every second of my presentation. I stood up tall, talked with confidence, made eye contact, met 35 minutes of talking time, had creative activities, along with a creative wall set up. I engaged my audience and made really made them feel what I was talking about. I have clear understanding of my three answers and made my audience feel welcomed as if I were talking to them personally. I couldn't be more proud of myself and with that I am strongly asking for an AE. 3. What worked was my service learning , even though I didn't get to 50 hours , I learned so much with Debbie Head. She taught me what she's learned over the past 18 years being a girl scout troop leader. She gave me books to read, articles to read, videos to watch and really expanded my knowledge for out self esteem in teenage girls. 4. What didn't work was telling the students to sit where they wanted to sit, I wanted them to feel comfortable but they were too comfortable. I had a few groups talking with Eachother, so that didn't work. 5. My goal was to find different answers for my essential question, that were meaningful to every girl. I found those answers and made them work with my activities. After my whole experience I'm taking it to the next closest level , which is finding girls for my own girl scout troop. I want to take all my knowledge about self esteem in teenage girls and teach young girls how to build their self esteem.

2 hr lesson plan

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BznZ8zNXpjXPDz5TQmOLfF2ab7g4f9P8VXpnCKg6J60/edit

Service learning

1) Literal : Debbie Head Interpretive: I gained the answer to my product, which is to become a female leader in my community as a girl scout leader. My service learning advisor was my girl scout leader, she taught me so much about self esteem and how girls can Gain healthy and high self esteem. The most important thing is to change the way you feel about yourself. I felt that Debbie was my role model as a female leader and taught me so much about making a girl feel beautiful and that is what I wish to do to other young girls. I think it's important to show young girls how to appreciate themselves and care for themselves and having a female leader to lead you in the right direction is significant. Applied: Being taught different ways to gain young girls self esteem and how important it is to have self confidence really helped me answer my e.q because I had so many answers and I found the best one to complete them all. I worked with my girl scout leader Debbie Head with my fellow girl scout friends. Learning why girls have low self esteem, how they can gain it, what are the pros and cons of high and low self esteem, effects on school related activities and events, What different sports can do to self esteem, what specific ways girls can gain high self esteem etc. My essential question is what is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem? Self esteem as in the pride you have in your self. The best way is to write down your positives and negatives. Admiring your positives daily and learning to love your negatives . Taking what you've written down and going over it daily. Admiring your pros so that you never loose love for them, and work on your negatives. Either by learning to admire it or talk with a female leader in your community someone who can change your mind about how you feel about yourself and show you how special you are.

Helping 2013

Kayla Cruz :

1) What ideas do you have for your senior project and why?

 Kayla: Something with flowers

My feedback : I told her that, if she really enjoys it to do it, but if isn't something she loves then don't do it. I explained to her that you want to choose something you know your not going to get tired of if really interests you. So that by April your not ready to fall down a cliff or anything like that, you need something that is going to motivate you to the end.

2) What do you plan to do to complete the 10 hours of service learning (working with an expert) which is due prior to senior year starting?


 Kayla: I'm really not sure


My feedback: I asked her if she enjoyed anything other than flowers and heir textures. She explained to me how she has a love for mythology and I said why don't you do that. If you really love that subject you can make it work. Knowing that you have a love for your project really means you won't get tired of it easily. As well as that saying if you love what you do , you'll never work a day in your life. That is what you want for your senior project something that is going to interest you the whole year.


3) What do you hope to see or expect to see when watching the class of 2012 present their two hour presentations?

Kayla: I want them to know what they are talking about and keep it interesting at the same time know their subject well.


My feedback: I told her that she needs to find one that interests her so that it will make it interesting rather than boring. And to really pay attention to things so that you won't be lost. Take notes if needed, things to keep you interested. Being that the two hour presentation of Atiana Price , shaped my senior project this year. And it really made me hooked at that topic the second I walked out of the room , which made my summer stress free.




4) What questions do they have about senior project?  What additional recommendations would you give the 2013 student about senior project? 


Kayla didn't have any questions, she said she knew what to expect and that obviously it wasn't going to be easy. I told her just really do something you love or really enjoy. I came into my project super eager to find out why girls have low self esteem and to this day I love learning new things about it and that is what you want to feel when doing your project. 

independent component

I, Amanda Gutierrez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work. Which was my song team, teaching girls how to dance and how to be one group. Love one an other and respect one an other, at the same time having fun.


I had so much fun getting to know these girls and working with them. At the beginning of Independent Component 1  , I had about 12 girls in my team. But I now have 6 amazing girls. The other six we're all sophomores who were best friends and one left , which left me with a domino effect. But it was great because I taught the rest of the girls how to deal with the loss of team members. You just have to dust yourself off and move on. And even if it's hard to move on or let go you need to remember life goes on. It was extremely hard to preform because of so many of their schedules being in different things. Especially trying to get the uniforms , girls weren't turning in the money and things like that made it harder to preform. So I made it work but practicing in front of the tennis courts so that when people walked by they had courage to be who they are , and it worked. I also made it more of talking with the girls and telling them it is okay to be shy but the biggest  fear you can have is the fear of not being yourself in front of others. I explained to them that dancing isn't just about having fun and always being on point. It is having the pride in yourself in the ways that you do. My third answer is " dancing in the way that makes you feel the most content". And that was my mission to these girls, not necessarily having them dance infront of a crowd, but being able to dance and be themselves. When I say " dancing in a way that makes you feel the most content", I mean not caring what anyone else thinks about you. Thinks about the way you dance, and their negative opinions. At the end of the day it all depends on what you think, and that is what I taught them. Unless it is a compliment , it goes through one ear and out the other. Girls need to be strong and be one, so that their isn't all the drama and fights. Not caring about the drama is very important, it all matters about your own opinion . It really helped me answer my essential question " what is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem"? Dancing in a way that makes you feel the most content, because being content with yourself helps you build your self esteem. 

Answer #3

- What is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem?

- Surround yourself with supportive and positive people, so they make you feel better about yourself not low of yourself.

: surrounding yourself with positive people is always better than people who always have negative comments. Negative comments about themselves or yourself doesn't help you feel great about yourself.

: Supportive people as in family or friends help you gain confidence and believe in yourself.

: Having positive people around a girl at a young age help them grow easier and happier. The more positive they feel the healthier their self esteem is.

- My service learning with Debbie Head.

3 collumn chart

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvMY9h2GWlf4dDhaaFVqTEI3bWF0MFU3aks1UEVyWWc

Room creavity

1) my idea at the moment is to cover the room in black posters and mirros to have a dark effect. I want one one my activities to be a post it activity which consists of the girls writing down any rude comments anyone has ever said to them. Then they will get up and cover the black posters . It will be a sign of letting go all the negatiives and leaving them in the past. Another activity will be having mirrors and each girl will go up and look in the mirror and write down on a posit things they don't love about themselves and post them on the wall as well. Filling the wall with tnegative feelings that they will leave on the black wall.

R.C#14

I: To have self efficacy in a career is very important. It shows a lot of character and shows how you want to apply it to your work. When you have special characteristics in your work you preform better as a person and a person to work with. When you know what your talking about you feel confident and it makes you feel good about yourself. Schools and teachers really affect the way people work and how they feel about how their preforming in the classroom or outside of school. L: Similarly, Massey and colleagues found that the extent to which students have positive experiences in high school has important implications for their self esteem and plans to pursue post secondary education. I: Even though I do believe that people with positive attitudes in high school are going to have a positive experience but the way that they carry themselves is also very important. You can have high self esteem but if your not trying to be with the crowd and enjoy your last minutes in high school your going to be the negative person that has negative comments for everything and its just going to ruin all the free time and memories you'll ever have.Those people never get far in life they just want things to be their way but the truth is if you can't have positive thoughts and attitudes their will be no one that is going to  be willing to work with or for you. Yes sometimes those people end up being our bosses but those jerk of a bosses always end up alone and at the end of the day who wants to be sitting at a cafe eating dinner alone all because of the way we treated other people. If you have high self esteem your more likely to respect the people around you with compliments and being caring, which are good factors to have. They also talk about different social and ethic groups being either the dominate successful group or the not so successful group.Does the color of your skin determine how you will preform in the classroom , no because there are tons of people in the world or dead that have made it clear if you put it to your mind you can do anything. Not simple but its never impossible. In the end they did an experiment randomly picking different races of high school seniors and surveying them on their goals and their parents education level and it showed up the way that everyone though or knew it would. The white families had the highest level of education and it was suppose to see whether those races had an actual high self esteem and if that is why they had such a high level or education. 

RC #13

What is the relationship between low self esteem and eating disorders? : Self esteem has recently been defined by silver stone as " the sense of contentment and self acceptance that stems from a person's appraisal of their own worth, significance , attractiveness, competence and ability To satisfy themselves. It is how they respect and love themselves , and be proud of their accomplishments. When kids are teens that is when they are trying to figure out who they are and how they will become who they want to be and why they want to be that person. (Wilfiams 1993) said that low self esteem has a lot to do with eating disorders. When people have low self esteem they are always constantly in bad moods and not loving life not living the way they should be. Researchers in the early 90s did a questionnaire trying to figure out if low self esteem and sting disorders had a connection and to their standards it did. The kids that has eating disorders were the ones not feeling good about rmselves and having a lot of time where they felt depressed. Without a strong positive sense of identity young girls will fall into the traits of I'm not good enough to be the person I want to be because others don't except me. When little girls grow up and don't feel excepted by others around them they think That it is because they aren't perfect that they aren't skinny enough and they aren't good enough to be around the people that they want to be around. So therefore they fall into I won't eat or eating a lot will get me fat and fat people don't have friends things like that. When girls are growing up they think they have to be something their not to fit in when the truth is every young girl is trying to fit in and their all doing the same thing but others do it better and the ones that think their doing it better tend to be harmful towards others feelings creating little monsters filled with low self esteem and not being proud of who they are becoming. They will start starving themselves and doing things to there Boyd because they don't feel like they have what it takes to be the popular person in school. Girls start dieting exercising excessively and doing so much that they start puking or things that get their weight down. Which is sad because when your young everyone is trying to fit in but those girls that's have such high confidence have the traits to go so far that they end up hurting the people that don't have such hi confidence. And it ruins lives of young girls causing them to hurt their bodies and try to fit in and make themselves feel more attractive to others around them. If they feel more attractive then they will be liked is what they think but in order to feel attractive they need to actually feel attractive without damaging their bodies. That is pretty much the problem within young girls is trying to be someone their not in order to hangout with specific kinds of crowds. Especially when going through puberty is the worst part of adolescence . Your body is changing and different things are happening to it that you feel a sense of I'm turning into a fat person and I look disgusting but the truth is their growing into beautiful young women. There's a difference in eating right to be healthy and not eating anything to be skinny. Guys go through puberty and go muscles and become stronger and more successful with their bodies, but young girls go through so many changes it scares them. Stress is a lot when it comes to growing girls. Fights with their friends, figuring out what to wear, how to dress to impress, how to be smart in class so you don't look dumb all this has a big effect on young girls it damanages their brain but it is also important to go through it because it can make you stronger and feel more confidence when you deal with the problems again. Information about self esteem : All people have a mental picture of themselves , their strengths, and weaknesses . ( self concept/self image) The idea that self esteem and self image are related to how people behave in in society, preform at school, react to peer pressure, and interact with others has received a great deal of attention from psychologists and child development experts beginning in the 1980s.

Answer 2

EQ: What is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem? Self esteem meaning the pride you have in your self, and how you feel about yourself. Answer 2: Learning how to dance in a way that makes you feel the most content. Evidence : 1. Dance helps younger girls feel good about themselves because they are accomplishing something or Improving their self confidence. 2. Accomplishing a new physical activity such as dancing is important growing up, but your opionion about the way you dance is most important. Not the way others feel about how you dance. 3. In order to have high self confidence you need to care about your opionion and no one else's. If you feel good about the way you dance, that is all that matters. Sources: Interview with Atiana Price Interview with Debbie Head.

The Product

My product is " Personal growth as a leader". As well as improving my own self esteem and my song teams. We dance better as a group and as individuals.  It was important to improve my self esteem so that I can teach the girls how to improve their self esteem. I feel better about myself working on what I thought were my flaws. Working on your feelings towards yourself really helps you grow as a person. Accomplishing  increasing my self esteem  has help me become a better leader , to the girls in my Song team. Which helps the team and our dancing, dancing as one group instead of one person brings everyone together in a great way. I make sure that I go over what I did to build up myself esteem, ( going over my "flaws", and changing the way I feel about them. It helps them to know they can do it too, and feel better about themselves and the way they dance. At this point in my project I feel accomplished knowing I helped teenage girls feel better about themselves and that I improved my leadership skills. It has done great to my project.

Fourth Interview Questions

1.  Why is high self esteem important when growing up ?

2.  How does self esteem effect the person you end up becoming ?

3. How can high self esteem go to your head?

4. Why should young girls have a healthy self esteem?

5.  Why is it important to know how to keep a healthy self esteem?

6.  What is the best way to gain healthy self esteem?

7.  What are reasons teenage girls blame their parents for having low self esteem?

8. Why is it that teenage girls in this day and age have lower self esteem than previous generations?

9.  If physical activity is suppose to raise self esteem why do so many young girls have low self esteem even though their active?

10. What types of sports can raise girls self esteem ?

11. Is there a type of physical activity that young girls should start off with , instead of going right to the difficult sports?

12. Why do you think young girls should feel better about themselves before they start doing sports to increase their self confidence?

13. What is the difference between self esteem and self confidence, what makes them alike?

14. How is it possible that more active teenage girls have lower self esteem , than  girls that are no active?

15. How can teenage girls raise their self esteem?

16. Does having young relationships decrease self esteem, dealing with certain emotions that their hearts aren't ready for?

17. Can having a male best friend increase your self esteem more than a female best friend can?

18. Does the people a girl hangs out with effect the person they become if they have high self esteem?

19. Does low self esteem make it impossible to preform better in school and outside of school?

20. Why is it that some girls take their low self esteem and become bullies?

Independent component 2 plan approval

I plan on continuing my independent component 1, which is my Song team. Teaching the girls in my team to dance and come together as a team, helping their self esteem grow in a better way. I will have weekly practices , teaching the girls new routines. As well as coming through with my project and having at least 2 to 3 performances second semester. My essential question is what is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem. At the end of my project I would like to have "dancing in a way that helps a girl feel most content" as an answer to my essential question.   

Independent component one

I , Amanda Gutierrez Affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work. Literal : I created a dance team called song, song it a cheerleading like team without all the stunts. I created this team to prove that dancing helps girls feel better about themselves, helping them raise their self esteem. I was used to hip hop or jazz like dancing so I wanted to step out of my element and see if it was just a type of dancing that made a girl feel good about their selves or was it any type of dance. What I got out of it was that it is any type of dancing if you eleven something new and accomplish it you start to feel better about yourself, a sense of fulfillment. Interpretive : From the 22nd of November to the first of February I taught 13 girls how to dance in a way I wasn't so familiar with. We practiced every Tuesday and thursday except for the week before we went off spring break, we practiced everyday. I taught the girls a routine to the song " Moves like Jagger" by Maroon 5 and " Turn me on" by Niki Minaj. Every week we learned something different or went over what we had learned the week before. I had been a captain of my color guard team in the eighth grade so I knew the approach I needed to bring to the table. To work with teenage girls you need to have a lot of patience . As well as giving them the right advice in the right way about dancing. It is also important to form a bond with your dancers because it helps them understand you in a different way . I got to know all the girls and it was a great experience because I told them to put their issues into their moves because it shows when you dance. I taught them to take those words " can't , suck, fail, etc" out of their vocabulary. In order to step further in learning something new you have to bring a positive attitude. So I made it clear that not only were they there to learn how to dance or improve their dancing but they were there to have a positive attitudes. I came across tons of difficulties such as having a hard time getting the girls to purchase the uniforms. I didn't want to preform without the uniforms because I think uniforms are an important part of being a team. If you look like a team you dance like a team. What I learned from teaching the girls in my song team how to dance , is it is true practice makes perfect. I saw such a change in their dancing on February first. They danced as a team but at the same time danced as one. It felt good knowing I helped them accomplish what they didn't think they could. Applied: What is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem? Having the girls in my song team grow as dancers really helped me answer my essential question. One of the best ways to help a teenage girl build self esteem is teaching them how to dance in a way they feel most comfortable. But comfortablity isn't always important its getting your dancer out of their comfort zone. But once you pull them out of their comfort zone they fell better because their not scared to try new things. I have read in several articles that learning how to dance is a way to increase your confidence. Dancing can be a big part of life especially growing up. So when you have the ability to dance or try your best to learn how to dance it feels good. I was in the fifth grade when I saw the movie Honey and from that day on I tried my hardest to learn the routines in that movie. Over the years I ended up making up my own routines and felt more confident when it came to dancing I front of big crowds. It's a sense of filliment and accomplishment. Accomplishing something that not everyone can do makes you fell good and increases your confidence level which is never bad.

20 min rough draft lesson plan

My iPad isn't letting me open up the google docs, I will fix it tomorrow. But here is the draft. Essential question : What is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem? Objectives , classmates will learn about Demi lovato and why she is such a strong model for young growing girls. Introduction : Introduce myself. State my essential question " what is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem? State plan, which is to show the class why Demi lovato is a great role model and activity . Verification : What characteristics do you think a girl should have to be a great role model for young girls? Go over why a great role model is good to have when growing up. Time : 2 mins Important sources : http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/09/demi-lovato-a-role-model-for-girls/ Body: Literal: Why Demi Lovato is such a good role model, talking about the difficulties she grew up with. Such as the pressure she had to become as thin as the models she saw on magazines. Interpretive: By having a positive role model that you look up to, you too will become a positive person. If you have someone to look up to who is taking care of themselves your more likely to do the same. Applied: When a little girl is growing up especially in today's day in age their more likely to look through magazines and find a role model who they think is the best person to look up to but if they know what to look for they'll have a better chance when growing up and dealing with problems. Time:10 mins Visuals : power point Activity : Play a game , have 3-5 different role models , and groups will pick the best one. I will have pictures of different celebrities ,and show their different characteristics Time: 10 mins Visuals : PowerPoint Conclusion Main point of what I went over today My most important piece of research My end goal Time: 2 mins

Answer #1

1. My Essential Question is What is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem? My first answer will be " changing the attitude you have toward yourself as a person". Meaning if you feel your Worthless or something to that negativity , change your game strategy with the way you feel about yourself. Take the time to find things you love and enjoy about yourself. Take the time to find your strengths and make your weaknesses your strengths. 2. Say a girl thinks she's fat or ugly or any nonsense such as that. She would stop putting her self down and work on her self esteem. She could exercise such as running or dancing. Write down things she loves and dislikes about herself and work on her dislikes. Taking the time to appreciate your positives and not Oxus on what you think are the negatives . 3. The place where I find the most evidence is with my independent component "Song". The girls came in as okay dancers and after a few short weeks , working with them and not giving up on them helped them grow into better dancers. You see when a girl can dance shes not afraid to be herself on the dance floor, when your dancing you put your own personality into it to make it you. As well as learning how to dance, I teach the girls to say positive things, instead of saying " I can't, I suck, it's hard, I'm ugly" any nonsense like that I give them ways to positivity , taking those words out of their vocabulary. Having a positive role model , helps a girl grow better. When you see someone with talent or a good self esteem , you look foward to working with that person. Every little thing counts.

Service Learning

For my first few hours I started off by talking to my Service learning advisor Debbie Head about my senior project and the things I need to accomplish . She gave me resources such as our girl scout acivity book , showing me what sort of things I can do with the girls in my troop. I also did my second Interview with her, learning new stuff about her and her profession as well as what she knows about girls and their self esteem.

Third interview questions

1. What is the best way to help teenage girls build self esteem? 2. Do you think when girls are active they have high self esteem , or if they are not active do you think they have low self esteem? 3. Do you think bad influences growing up shapes a girls self esteem? 4. What is a huge problem girls have growing up in your opinion ? 5. What issues in the world do you think effect female teenagers with their self esteem? 6. In your opinion why do you think girls have low self esteem? 7. If a girl has low self esteem , what do you think someone can do to help them love themselves? 8. Do you think being confident means your conceited and if no why? 9. What are things girls can do to keep a healthy self esteem? 10. Is there any activities such as sports , that you think girls have the best self esteem?