IHSS Blog 2019-2020

Alex Gross Mr. Roddy IHSS 30 April 2020 Interview Blog: Sarah Yonas My interview with Sarah Yonas, the Texas regional director of BBYO which is a worldwide organization for Jewish youths was focused strongly around how to prevent and combat Antisemitism, and what I found most was that educating people on Antisemitism is the most important thing. A large part of our conversation was that many people think of the Holocaust as the only large amount of Antisemitism in one place at one time, when this is very false. Another interesting thing was that people reduce the Holocaust becuase it was “so long ago” and she agrees that some people think of it as long beofre slavery in America. In reality we haven’t even celebrated the 80th anniversary of the escape from Auschwitz, and there are still many Holocaust survivors alive today. Some other less recognized events of violent prejudice towards Jews in mass amounts include: The Crusades in which Christains went around Europe trying to...

Alex Gross Mr. Roddy IHSS 30 April 2020 Interview Blog: Ira Gross For my first interview I interviewed my dad. I had no idea that he had any experience with Antisemitism, and I was even more shocked to learn that he had multiple events of Antisemitism towards him until I introduced my topic to him. This is when I asked him to tell me more and quickly scheduled an interview with him. He started out by saying that he had not faced a ton of Antisemitism in his life, but when he had on multiple occasions it had been quite disturbing. This made him very sensitive to prejudice and he believes that this has made him more aware of the climate towards other people in minority groups. He talked about 4 different instances of Antisemitism directed straight at him that he went through. The first was in his fraternity in college when a kid who he said obviously grew up in an environment in which prejudice is accepted, and the kid asked if he had horns because he was Jewish. The second wa...

Alex Gross Mr. Roddy IHSS 4 May 2020 IHSS CP: Plan of Engagement Blog For my IHSS Challenge Project I decided to research the topic of Antisemitism, or prejudice towards Jews. After writing my essay I realized that the main problem I focused on was how unrecognized Antisemitism is in the modern world. I then realized that many people in our world have fixed opinions that can be changed but might be more difficult to change, while younger people still are typically more open, and have not formed solid opinions yet; thus giving me a target audience of: everyone, but mostly people under 18. This led me to choose to create a blog site where I will write 3 blogs about Antisemitism, include photos, background information, info about interviews, and other useful links. I am doing a blog because anyone can access it, yet young people are the ones mostly using the internet and that makes it very useful. This is such a big problem that goes unrecognized because of the small percenta...

During the course of this challenge project I struggled quite a bit trying to come up with a way to engage with the community. At first I felt like I had all these great ideas where I was going to go help out at parks and be really encouraging to the community and everything was going to be super great. Unfortunately everything did not go exactly as planned. There were two main challenges I faced while working on my project. The first was getting into contact with people. I tried calling and emailing many times and would either not get a response, or would be told someone would try to get into contact with me, but never did. This was frustrating but I was extremely grateful for the two interviews I got and think they both gave me a good perspective. The second challenge I faced was trying to find a way to engage with people and encourage them to use the parks, while at the same time making sure everyone was still social distancing and not spreading the coronavirus. I decided on an info...

For my engagement, my original plan was to make an info graphic and post it on the POS instagram page, with the post oak community being my audience. However, after emailing the person in charge of the instagram, that plan was effectively shut down. I was told they could not post it because it isn't appropriate for everyone because they may have different views than me. My backup plan is to then hang up the info graphic in my neighborhood. Something I learned from this was that when doing this civic engagement part of the project, if you want to partner with someone, they have to have the same views as you that doesn't clash with their social and public image. Which seems obvious but wasn't something that crossed my mind till later. For example, if I partnered with Planned Parenthood, then they wouldn't have to worry about how this impacts their image because they are openly on one side of the argument. However, the school as a whole has to stay neutral in these things ...

The Plight of Uyghur Muslims in China: Interview #1 For my topic of the plight of Uyghur Muslims in China, I decided to contact many organizations such as: the UHRP and the Houston Uyghur Society. Although none of them got back to me, after a long while, I was able to have an interview with someone working in Uyghur advocacy at an organization called Justiceforall. The person I interviewed was a woman named Aydin Anwar, who is Uyghur Muslims herself. Justiceforall is an organization that not only works in advocacy for Uyghur Muslims, but they also work for others as well, such as the Kashmir conflict. When interviewing her, she explained to me that her and her family have been in Uyghur advocacy and awareness since she's been in high school, around late 2015. Her advocacy has been able to make some big impacts, as she was able to create a viral op-ed about the plight of Uyghur Muslims for media outlet NowThis, and she told me she considers that her biggest success as of late....

Henry Quillin Mr. Roddy 11 May 2020 IHSS Final Blog  My challenge project is focused on the Obesity Epidemic in America. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I can engage with this issue. I came to the conclusion that this is a huge problem and it would be pretty difficult for me to have any impact, however, while there is nothing I can really do to help bring down obesity in America, I can positively affect people in my local community. To me, my local community means my neighborhood. I chose to engage by educating people in my area about how to live a healthy lifestyle. I did this by creating a digital infographic that shows which foods are healthy and why. My interview notes from my interview with Dr. Gordon, who is an expert on physical activity and lifestyle-based research related to obesity, were very helpful when making the infographic. I also used my interview notes from my discussion with Drusilla Rosales, who is a Registered and Licensed Dietitian, for the nutr...