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C.J.Abenes: Future Mayor?
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Written by India Woods
C.J Abenes has been selected to take part in the City of Pittsburgh’s 1st Civic Leadership Academy. This program will be run from July 6th to August 10th and has been devised to help the participants learn about the city, its programs and services. As part of the program, C.J. will be able to visit city offices and establishments. Thursday I interviewed C.J and asked him all about this program.
Q: What does this selection mean to you?
CJ: It means a lot to represent the school, and it’s a great achievement
Q: How do you go about getting involved with the leadership academy? Did you have to apply?
CJ: First I went to the mayor. I saw a flyer and gave it to my parents. They said I should sign up for it, and I just went with it. Yes you have to apply, and give them a resume with at least 2 letters of recommendation.
Q: What will you do as a member of the academy?
CJ: Just try to learn as much as we can, and apply new learning. It would be a good opportunity because we are becoming a new school.
Q: What other summer plans do you have?
CJ: I would love to get a job, try to get my driver’s license, and start looking at colleges.
Q: What college would you like to attend and what career path interests you?
CJ: I was planning on going to the Air Force and I’m still deciding on what colleges, but may go to CMU.
We believe that C.J. will represent the school well this summer and look forward to hearing about his experiences with this new program.
The Civic Leadership Academy is a free course about local government that was
created by Mayor Ravenstahl to build a ” more informed, effective and inspired community and civic leadership.” It includes tours, hands-on demonstrations, and fun activities that give an up-close and personal view of how the City is governed and run. In each session, participants learn about a different city department and the services that it provides to make for a safer, more livable City. Joining CJ as Obama representatives will be Don Crawford and Kenya Harper.
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One young man’s IB project: good intentions, hope for positive change…and the rumor mill
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Written by Dynae Shaw
When you think of personal projects you may think of building models, programming games, fund-raising etc. You probably don’t think about a questionnaire that is, unless you’re Max Okabayashi. Max designed a survey for all 9th and10th grade students at Obama to find out their opinions of our school. There were various rumors going around about his survey being secretly designed to attack (through complaints and criticism from the parents) the school’s officials. I got a chance to sit down with Max Okabayashi to get the story from the author himself.
Q: Explain what exactly your personal project is.
Max: My personal project was to create a survey to get an idea of what the kids thought about their school.
Q: Why did you pick this as your project?
Max: I was inspired by the news reports survey results. I wanted to make an accurate survey, instead of going from word of mouth.
Q: What were your intentions with this project?
Max: My intentions were to show Dr. Walters (principal) the results– as well as other school officials– to get a positive change.
Q: How did you come up with the questions?
Max: Actually they were real basic questions and my supervisor as well as other contributed questions.
Q: What process did you go through to get the job done?
Max: Basically, I had to create the survey and get it approved form our principle.
Q: Do you think your project was successful, and why?
Max: I believe it was successful, I got back 213 surveys.
Q: What were the results of the survey?
Max: The results were very mixed. I’d say about 60% of the students like the school. However, there were many that did not.
Q: Rumor has it that you shared the results to secretly attack school officials. In addition to that there is also the rumor that Dr.Walters didn’t approve the version you handed out. Rumor also has it that you showed the results to numerous parents and they went up to school officials complaining about their child not being happy or satisfied with their school. Is any of this true?
Max: Absolutely not! I haven’t even released the results yet, and I would never do something like that. I think that’s unethical. That is a ridiculous rumor that is not true. Dr. Walters completely approved the survey that everyone took. This survey wasn’t designed to attack anyone at all, there were no names on the survey and the questions were completely generalized. If anyone felt attacked from reading the questions than that is something they are doing wrong, not me.
Q: What were the results used for?
Max: Again the results were not released yet. However, besides using them for my project presentation, at this point I not really sure what I will use them for.
Max is going to give us the results as soon as they are all calculated. So look for them in about a week from now.
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