TEDxDHS - Day 1

001[Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] good morning and welcome to tedxdhs2021 i'm mrs true mrs souza and i would like to tell you just how happy we are to have you here with us today so the tedx club is thrilled to present to you this exciting event here at dartmouth high school this is an independently organized event this year it will be broadcast via live stream as you can see by dhs tv media productions this change is obviously a major change from our previous format of having a live audience our live streamed event along with the participants wearing masks are all trying to meet the coven 19 protocol guidelines our theme this year is sociology moving forward one step at a time students from cohort a and cohort b will be presenting various topics

002that are engaging and stem from their personal passions these students have volunteered their time to the group and diligently prepared presentations to enlighten you on a variety of topics you may be thinking when you hear the word ted who's this ted guy well i'm here to tell you that ted is an acronym for technology entertainment and design the ted organization has covered many topics with ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see the same diversity in the topics being presented here today and then again tomorrow okay and let's get this show on the road our first presenters are our only presenters that are partners our first is grace george this is grace george's senior year here at dartmouth high school grace is a member of the multicultural club and has been a

003co-founder of the science club and wants to study biology upon graduation grace also enjoys reading a good romance novel and has a bit of an obsession with the bachelor franchise series grace's partner is sarah hartman sarah is also a senior here at dartmouth high school sarah is very involved in extracurricular activities she is the other co-founder of the science club is president of the key club is president of the student council and is captain of the math team additionally sarah is true president of her girl scouts troop and plays the violin she loves to bake and play with her dog sarah and grace chose their topic because both believe that learning is more important than grades and that everything that can be learned can't be measured by a grade they want people to know that

004learning is fun please welcome grace george and sarah hartman as they present what lies within the letter what did you learn in the first five years of your life i know you're thinking probably not a lot i was just a baby who was sitting at home and playing but all those things were very influential in your learning one of my favorite things when i was little was building sand castles and i never realized at the time but building those sand castles was the basis of learning about engineering and construction one of my favorite days in kindergarten was when the firefighters came to visit and told us about fire safety now i know to stop drop and roll and to use a pillow case in case i need someone to get me which can stay me

005from dying personally one of my favorite memories of a kid was playing with the medical kits i used to love those little plastic stethoscopes that i used on my family members and that was the first time i learned what a heartbeat was were you agreed on all these things that you learned as a toddler no you were entirely self-motivated and did you learn certainly so if you were able to learn when you were a kid without grades what do you have grades now well three of the main purposes of grades are evaluation communication and motivation so grace help teachers parents higher learning and even yourself see how you're doing teachers use it to see if they need to reinforce a certain topic and colleges use it to see if you're a good fit for them

006academically and also motivation grades extrinsically motivate students to work hard because they will want to focus on studying so in order to get the grades they want now i'm getting some constant grades one of the main concept grades is that they encourage the learn test forget repeat method basically you learn a unit you test on it then you forget it and i know i'm guilty of this because it's hard to try to remember everything when you have more to do groups are also very impersonal sometimes alfred comb author and lecturer about education interviewed teachers and students about grades and in this interview one student named clarissa that once the first time they were given a grading rubric they felt that education stopped being for them and became about the grade grades can also disencourage kids

007from challenging themselves and the same article by alfie cohn a teacher named mr robbins said that he noticed that once his students started picking easier topics on a project just to get an easier grade so even though they might learn more from a more challenging topic they go with the easier one just get the grade and grades are also very inconsistent teachers might grade differently so even if students have the same master level content they might get different grades due to different teachers and also methods like curving can methods like curving where a certain amount students have to get an a certain that synthetic to get a b can really not make grades about what you know but well you know compared to what if someone else knows and this picture is comparing a 10-point

008scale to a 7-point scale so even if two students get the same number grade they might be reflected differently in their report card because due to what their school uses for lettering grades can also have a bad physical and mental physical and mental effects so there's this organization called challenge success it's a non-profit and it works with schools so and they did a study in five california high schools and in the study they found out that 79 of students said that grades are a main cause of stress and 83 percent of high schoolers have stress stress-related health issues and another big issue that comes from stress is sleep deprivation one 9th grader said when asked what they would like their parents to know said that i'm not staying up late because i want to i

009know the consequences but my grades are more important i'm not trying to make you upset all i want to do is sleep so as students we know that sleep and having a good mental health are important but sometimes we let our focus on grace get the best of us grades also don't necessarily measure learning the way that everyone learns best everyone learns differently according to the american test anxiety association about 35 percent of students suffer from moderate to high levels of test anxiety so for example a student can understand the material perfectly well but then not do well on a test due to test anxiety so grades don't necessarily reflect learning differences in addition grades don't even measure the qualities that are needed to succeed for example the ability to be flexible the ability to

010manage your time collaborate with others and communicate these are all the qualities that employers look for according to an ibm survey and these qualities can't really be measured by grades so who do grades impact they don't just impact you as a student they are a part of our entire society our grades impact the way our teachers teach our parents our schools our mcas scores impact the department of education and they impact the statistics that our country uses so our society is kind of based off of grades so we can't really get rid of them so what can you do as a student right now our solution is to focus on learning first so by that we mean forget the grace for a second not forever just for a second so now when you get that

011project try to choose a harder topic or assignment because you might learn more from it and also our school just indicated this new retake policy which we're very lucky to have so when you get your first test back try to look at your mistakes and analyze them before going and getting their retake because that might help you do better by not focusing on grades that might even lead to a better grade for example an experiment that was published in the journal of personality and social psychology found that students fifth grade students who were told that they weren't going to be graded when they read an article were able to learn more from reading that passage they were able to learn for longer they had a better understanding and even more they had a greater interest

012and they felt less pressured so why focusing on grades when you don't focus on grades you'll get the same grade and you'll be happier so i know you may be thinking what should i do should i focus on learning if i may never use a class in the future well you probably will use that class remember that survey that said that employers looked at the qualities such as adaptability time management and teamwork these are all qualities that you can develop in any class you take and adaptability is so important that you're able to understand many different topics and adapt to new situations in addition um 30 percent of college students change your major at least once and the average person works 12.3 different jobs in their lifetime so even if you don't think you're going

013to use something you probably will use what you learned at some point in your 12 different jobs you never know it'll be useful to know the structure and function of a mitochondria what one well we want to leave you with is to try to learn more outside the classroom like you did and be not created like you did when you were little so there are many ways to do this you can apply for internships in a certain business or place of work you like you can join a club you can join the science club stainless steel promo i know but if you want to do your own independent research like do that in the science club and also read a book many professors researchers and experts publish books on what they know and i'm sure

014you can find something a book on something you like i guarantee you and finally do a ted talk this has been a very enriching experience experience i love being able to work with sarah and my favorite part is being able to share what i believe with all of you so please sign up for my next year according to educate edgar dale these kinds of active experiences like doing a ted talk or conducting your own research not only lead to more learning but also allow you to use what you learn in more interesting ways by focusing on learning first because learning is more important than what lies within the letter you can help the world move forward one step at a time thank you thank you [Music] thank you grace and sarah that was wonderful our

015second presenter is lavender bork lavender is a senior here at dartmouth high school who enjoys learning about many varied topics while at dhs lavender has been a member of both the unified bowling and unified basketball teams she plans to attend the community college of rhode island this coming fall and major in accounting the reason she chose her topic is because she found learning a foreign language particularly challenging and emphasiz and empathizes with those who are learning a new language please welcome lavender bork as she presents esls ells and fels what is the meaning of an acronym 300 people now that is a huge number to put that into perspective that is one-fifth of the united states population or about 20 percent that is the number of people in the united states who do not speak

016english now english is the predominant language of the united states with 78.1 percent people speaking it however the reason that the united states does not claim an official language is because if they were all our documents in official forms would be in english only so what does that mean that means that we wouldn't have any variability we wouldn't have other languages available in other forms so the united states is very special in this sense because they offer many opportunities for people who do not predominantly speak english to learn english or have opportunities to gain a basic understanding in fact we offer some of those programs here so what is an ell esl rfl now i know you're probably wondering what are these random acronyms these acronyms define a small percentage of students at dartmouth high

017school now it's not as much as the surrounding districts however but it does define a small percentage an english language learner or an ell is someone whose first language is not english so that means that they come to school and they learn english through many different techniques an esl is what we call the department well new bedford calls the department and the surrounding district called the department that teaches english it's the english as a secondary language department however here we call it the ele which is english language education a fell will be described later in the ted talk so i'm about to tell you how ells are categorized and how they are taught let's talk about wida wida is the world class instructional design assessments nada has a lot to remember and it is a

018lot to it's a lot of words they have a test called access for children k through 12 to learn english access gives a score and places them into six different levels of english learning so access tests and ell's learners basic understanding or english proficiency and we are one of the 40 states in the united states who's offers wida there are 10 states who don't massachusetts is one and here at dartmouth high school we actually have it i'm pretty sure you've seen the pro the posters all over classrooms i've never taken the time to read one because it's a lot of words but if you were to take the time to read one you'd learn a lot from it there are six levels of wida language proficiency level one being entering two beginning three developing four

019expanding five bridging and six reaching so someone who is a level one may just be starting out with english for instance they may just be learning the alphabet or such level two may be that they can match words with pictures however i will be referencing the 2007 english language uh proficiency standards from wida the standards have example topics to follow and the standards fall under umbrella of five categories ell students at a level one like i said usually are learning the alphabet level three could be described as like putting putting like having a sentence starter and filling in the verbs level four and five are usually when they're able to start working on their own their english comprehension is developed more than it was at level one or two or three and reaching is when

020an ell is moved into a fell category which will be explained later students are also put into four subcategories writing listening reading and speaking these categories help classroom teachers understand how the ell learner understands the subject that they are learning now you're probably wondering what is the once a student reaches a level six on the wida scale they and score the requirements on the access test they are known as a fell a former english learner these students can form sentences do well with comprehension and can write essays with minimal grammatical error at the high school teachers are sent forms twice a year to access how a fellow learner is doing with learning english and how they're doing in the subject that they are in in order for an ell to be exited from a program

021they must get an overall score of 4.2 or higher on the access test and a score of 3.9 or higher on the literary portion of the test the school also looks at other things like mcas report cards or progress reports to consider moving an ell to a fell classroom environments differ from country to country i bet you didn't know that in spain around 1 or 2 p.m they usually take a 30-minute lunch break sometimes it can be up to an hour for a nap and also to get lunch because it is considered sacred in spain meanwhile in the united states our classroom environments differ we have different social instructions we have different things and i bet if you were to go if you were to go to a different country you wouldn't know the etiquette

022of that country's classroom or anything now english is one of the hardest languages to learn if not the hardest english is often the hardest class for the ells the reason being that there are a lot of unspoken words unspoken rules for english for instance the way we word the great big dog we use rules of adjectives rules of word placement and honestly it can be confusing especially if you didn't learn it from a young age in fact most of us still struggle with their there and there imagine having to learn the same word spelt three different ways that's pretty hard however if an ell has a strong understanding of their first language they are more likely to understand english better but overall learning a whole new language from the start isn't easy in any situation

023i'm pretty sure at the high school we have spanish portuguese and mandarin we have a lot of issues when we first start out with spanish and portuguese in eighth grade imagine learning english now math already is its own language math has a lot of complex terms that most english native speakers struggle to learn like i've really struggled with trigonometry now imagine sitting there in that same lesson having to translate most words to a different language trying to keep up with the teacher because you don't understand what's going on that's pretty hard but there is a connection with the numbers that are used in many foreign languages so there was a research project done by our a al-sheri for his master thesis about the correlation of learning chemistry well-being well being unable to speak secondary english

024most of the ells in the research project could not draw a correlation and distinguish the point of the lecture and the point of the experiments due to the complex nature of the information being presented when presented with certain things like a beaker a thermometer they couldn't identify it instead they had trouble identifying it in english most of them said that it was what it was in their first language and it's very interesting because science is really hard and it shows how much we take for granted because we thankfully have a basic understanding of english and we are basically we are taught from a young age about english meanwhile someone who comes here has a lot of issues learning it and it's a very hard language to learn the language of social studies tends to be

025a tad bit easier in some instances due to the fact that while someone in france might learn french history from a young age as we learn american history in elementary school they will have a basic understanding of world history meanwhile when they come here they won't have the fundamentals for american history so world history tends to be the easiest class for an ell to understand or at least a tad bit easier than some of the other social studies classes now here is an interesting thing let's look at it at a local perspective in the whole district there are 55 ells and 64 fells to put that into perspective at the high school there one out of 200 students are an ell and one of 120 students are fell dartmouth does not have a high number

026of ells or fells compared to some of the surrounding districts dartmouth is actually considered a low incidence district which means the number of ells are below 100 students the plan that dartmouth puts into motion at the elementary level is the pull-out motion of ele instruction now i'm going to remind you that ele stands for english language education an ele certified teacher pulls the ells out of class for 30 to 45 minutes a day in order to give complex instruction to them or they push into the classroom if needed depending on the schedule needs and depending on the time requirements and they help the student out with complex instruction as i stated before but it also depends on the level and needs of the students however in new bedford they use the same method but the

027situation is a bit different at dartmouth it is called at dartmouth as i said it is called english language education instead of esl miss duart the head of the ele department was very helpful in providing this information about ells in the district ms rr is a third grade general education teacher at alfred j gomes school in new bedford she has taught there for many as many years as i've been alive so about 17 and has taught both first and third grade she is bilingual and speaks both spanish and english when speaking to her she told me that she was currently speaking she's currently teaching 29 students out of those 29 23 of them were bilingual she has taught many children some of them did not speak any english though and were level ones on the

028weed of scale for instance she said the most students that she had taught that was a level one on the weda scale was seven in one year she praised the esl department at alfred j gomes elementary school and she praised the teachers that she works with when i asked her about how she teaches her students who do not speak any english and are considered a level one she gave an example of sequencing so the native english speakers they are given a paragraph in which they must put the sentences in order to write a story well the level threes are given a little more structured like for instance they may just have to fill in the verbs well level ones would be given pictures and they'd have to put it in order she said that the

029esl department has the same method that we use at dartmouth high school the pull out method they push in the classroom to help with instructions or pull the kids out of class to give more structured intensive instruction i actually was once a student at alfred j gomes elementary school and however i did not notice this because i was very young at the time but when i got to hayden mcfadden i noticed that i was in a class with a lot of children who spoke who were bilingual and spoke spanish now will talking to msr she mentioned the dual language immersion program which is a program in which let's say a class of 20 to 30 kids are put together and there's one teacher speaking in english teaching the lesson in english while the other is

030speaking in spanish and teaching lesson in spanish so that basically the children who are learning english are learning english while also learning spanish at the same while the english-speaking children are also learning spanish at the same time so it's a little bit of teaching them spanish and so it's kind of like teaching a foreign language and also like helping them um so it started off in 2019 with kindergarten and every year they add on a grade 2020 was first grade 2021 was second grade so that the children who started off in the dual language immersion program in kindergarten will graduate elementary school in that program it follows them now the reason that alfred j gomes has it and dartmouth does not is because aj gomes is one of the highest constant has the highest concentration

031of ell's learners in the district in new bedford dartmouth however like i mentioned is a low incidence school in district so we don't have we don't meet the requirements for the ell learners and the dual language immersion program because you need at least 20 kids who speak the same language and at dartmouth we do not have that because our numbers are below 100 kids in conclusion the united states is a melting pot of different cultures and languages that is the key factor in this the united states provides so many opportunities for non-english speakers and their children but the issue at the end of the day is that there are not enough esl teachers who can provide education for these children so much so that the united states has started searching abroad esl teachers are the

032teachers that are unheard of they do so much behind the scenes and you never hear about the impact that they have so if you know an esl teacher thank them today if you know an ell or fell offer them help with their essays tell them you'll look over the grammatical errors because most of us are lucky enough to have english as a native language and this informing you about english language learners and how they are educated is how i'm moving forward one step at a time thank you lavender that was really great all right our next and final presenter for this particular period is jaffa heria dunno jaffa is a senior here at dhs and plans to study aerospace engineering upon her graduation jaffa is a member of the dhs tennis team and enjoys playing

033the sport very much she chose her topic because she loves fashion shopping and clothing way too much as jaffa put it i can empathize she has found that most people don't understand how important the fashion industry is to the economy as a whole and how it impacts both our environment and our society as well please join me in welcoming jaffa haridano as she presents the price we pay a look into the global fashion industry [Music] so i'm going to ask you all to take one look at yourself and then i'll look at someone around you and think of one thing that you all have in common well from my point of view it seems that everyone in this room is wearing clothing thankfully the world of clothing it's something that we don't think about all

034the time but it's always there and it's always changing and then trying to keep up with the rush of our own lives we fail to notice how every time we walk into a store there's about 100 different new products but why is that there why do we have so much stuff well it wasn't always like this you see in the past having a closet full of clothes to choose from and a different outfit for every day of the week was practically unheard of and this was because clothing was super super expensive to make the process of taking something raw like cotton and then turning it into something wearable like a shirt took a lot of time and energy and that also meant that it took a lot of money and frankly a lot of money

035was just something that people didn't have so this meant that fashion was something only for the rich that is until the 1950s so 1950s america reveled in a time of post-war prosperity amongst other issues however people want to treat themselves to commodities such as clothing because they could finally afford it and this is why there are department stores like sears that start showing up everywhere because people could finally buy clothes now this happened to coincide with the invention of synthetic fabrics which are man-made textiles that are infinitely cheaper to produce than the raw stuff like cotton or silk now these technological advancements paired with the stable economy of the time are what allow normal people like you and me to buy lots and lots of clothes and that's exactly what they did fast forward a

036few years later and now we have a whole new market as of now fashion is more popular than ever clothing is not something that we just wear on our backs it's no longer just a necessity it's a creative outlet an art form and an industry all thanks to a new revolutionary business model known as fast fashion cheap clothing being rapidly mass produced by large retailers to keep up with the latest trends so up until now fast fashion seems kind of perfect finally all people are able to wear what they want buy what they want but i think at this point in our lives we all know that some things are too good to be true so then what is the problem with fast fashion if we are paying so little for clothing then what is

037the true cost in 2013 the rana plaza and clothing factory in bangladesh collapsed killing 1134 of its workers the factories were run by and manufactured clothing for major fast fashion brands including adidas american eagle and h m now all of these buildings were not made to manufacture clothing they were actually built on old residential areas that couldn't handle the weight of the production process so we have a couple of engineers coming to the building to inspected structure and they see how poorly it was run and they say this is a terrible idea if people work here they're going to die so they go to the managers of these factories and explain to them that if they want to run production you're going to need to spend more money to support its structure however all of

038their all of their concerns were basically ignored not a single one of the 1134 workers at the plaza were aware of the fact the very floor beneath their feet could crumble at any second and to add insult to this injury there were no safety precautions taken to make sure that people could get to safety if disaster were to strike and obviously it did strike there were no fire extinguishers no fire alarms not enough exits for people to escape now this paired with the structural shortcomings of the building are what led to one of the deadliest structural failure accidents in modern human history however this is not the only one rhona plaza 1134 dead staka konwig factory 117 dead karachi fire factory 300 dead and lahore shoe fire factory 30 dead what i just named are

039just a few examples of clothing factory tragedies all of which run by fast fashion companies all of which happening in the last decade yet most importantly every single one of these was preventable if worker safety was taken over priority then streamlining costs because the truth is fast fashion does have a cost it is paid for in the atrocious environments we put workers through the havoc it reeks on our environment our planet and the fact that it has masqueraded itself to allow us as a society to let it continue so i think we all realize by now or speaking of the environment an article published by the new york times credits the fast fashion industry for releasing 1.2 billion tons of co2 into the atmosphere now this is more than all emissions from any international flight

040or shipping combined and to add on to that the burning of these fossil fuels stems from incinerating 2.5 billion tons of clothing that's a billion times to free up landfill space since these synthetic materials will never biodegrade naturally so i think at this point we know that fast fashion is bad and obviously no one wants to support killing the environment no one wants to hurt people so you're thinking maybe what brands can i avoid buying from if i don't want to support this well this is where things got a little bit difficult but i'll try to help you out as much as i can so on screen i have a few brands you can start to avoid to not support fast fashion and there's also these and these and these and it just keeps going

041and going and going now you might be thinking with so much of the market being saturated by brands who are committing these atrocities is there anything that we can do to not buy and have a guilty conscience well the truth is basically any clothing brand that isn't making clothes by their hand in their kitchen table has done something that's ethically questionable but obviously if something is broken there should be attempts made to fix it and the world of fashion is very very broken so what are we doing as of now to try and solve what seems like an unsolvable problem the answer seems almost intuitive i present to you slow fashion defined by oxford international as clothing produced using high quality resources in an ethical environment now at the 1987 general assembly the un formally

042defined sustainability as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations which is us to meet their own needs today slow fashion has evolved into something that has a lot more structure so in 2015 which wasn't that long ago the un established 17 sustainable development goals a coalition of 17 global goals designed to be i quote a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all of us among them is goal number 12 ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns this includes making the distinction between any fast fashion companies and slow fashion companies and trying to get as many of the latter in the industry as possible now i know that sounds like a lot of words and seems really confusing but thankfully slow fashion can be divided

043into four very easy principles the first of which we have transparency so this means that major companies are being honest to us the public about their production process they're disclosing to us exactly what they're paying their workers how they're treating them and how they're making their clothing so the more that someone knows about how a brand makes their clothing the more accountable that brand is going to be held and make sure they do things the right way and with this accountability will come change now from transparency we can ensure that brands are participating in what's called the ethical production of clothing our second pillar of slow fashion ethical production means clothes are made in a way that is humane workers are being paid livable wages and factories are designed with regulated ventilation systems fire extinguishers

044and enough exits to make sure that events like rana plaza never have to happen again because they don't have to happen again and of course we can't talk about sustainable clothing without talking about helping the environment which is why our third pillar is making sure the production process prioritizes environmental health now slow fashion requires that clothes are made using materials and processes that won't permanently damage the earth that we love so much you might already be seeing instances of this in your own clothing so if you check the back of a tag and something says 100 organic cotton that's actually a really good sign because it means that shirt can be recycled and it probably was made with way less water than that of fast fashion clothing and finally we have mindfulness now this might

045be one of the most difficult steps to complete because it involves reversing decades of thinking of clothing as something that is merely disposable however at the same time it is the easiest to start to work on and that's because it starts with you guys so to be mindful means to educate yourself on fast fashion which is what you've been doing and to understand the benefits that we have by moving a more by moving towards a more sustainable clothing world it's to understand the value of good quality clothing and to make this the standard so slow fashion seems like such a streamlined solution something so easy that we can implement but if it's so easy then why is fast fashion still an issue well we have to remember why fast fashion was up by it became

046popular in the first place and that's because it was really cheap and everyone could afford it and honestly this is not something i can say the same about for slow fashion so on screen right now i have a couple of examples from some products for what's known as one of the largest sustainable clothing brands as of now reformation and that cardigan and tank top on your left cost 228 dollars now as miss true stated before i love clothing but i do not love it enough to spend 228 dollars on a shirt that's about the size of my hand and frankly i don't think any of you guys are willing to do that either but the important thing is that there are plenty of people who cannot afford to do that and now this brings up

047a dilemma of only the people who can afford it being able to dress sustainably and the rest of us have to choose between two bad options either we continue quote-unquote killing the planet by buying from fast fashion companies or we just stopped buying clothing and that's not really an option thankfully as slow fashion continues to grow brands have realized there needs to be a balance between high quality clothes and what is affordable so i have on screen right now are what are deemed as some of the most affordable slow fashion brands now anything up here will run you from something between like 25 to 30 dollars now obviously this isn't as cheap as buying a five dollar shirt from river21 that's the point you don't want a five dollar shirt from forever 21 because if

048something like that only costs five dollars then the chances of it being made ethically are extremely low now there are also other options too if you don't want to buy something that is brand new you can do what's called thrifting or buying second hand second loved clothing so i'm sure all of you guys are familiar with stores such as goodwill or salvation army and places like these are gold mines for buying high quality vintage clothing for prices that are even cheaper than those of fast fashion companies and obviously right now it's going to be a little bit hard to go out and go thrifting yourself so you can go online to stores like thredup and depop and poshmark which are user-run marketplaces in which people like you and me are selling their own clothes and

049because it's people like you and me selling their clothes the chances of you finding something that you like gone up astronomically now it's good to hear that even brands who are considered the most worst offenders in fast fashion are starting to do things that will help the environment so for example we have h m who released something called the conscious collection a part of their brand that only sells sustainable clothing now does this make up for all the things in the past is h m and angel are they perfect well obviously not but that's the thing you don't have to be perfect you just have to try because even making the tiniest bit of effort is helping push towards the future and that's why i want to leave you with this the world of clothing

050it's always there we don't notice it but it's always changing our world is always changing even if we don't realize and in a world where things are always changing it would be nice to have something even as small like a shirt to just last a little bit and that's how we can move forward one step at a time thank you thank you jafa and this concludes our period one presentations uh teachers we would ask that you hopefully spend some time debriefing with your students and we'll see you again period two thank you [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music]

051do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] welcome to our sixth tedx to ehs event mr and i are thrilled to present to you this exciting event here at dartmouth high school this is an independent organized event this year will be broadcast via live stream by dhs tv media productions this is a change from our previous format of having a live audience a live stream event along with participants wearing masks has been updated to meet covet 19 guidelines our theme this year is sociology moving forward one step at a time students from cohort a and core b representing various topics that are engaging and stem from their personal passions these students have volunteered their time to this group and digitally

052prepared presentations to enlighten you on various topics you may be new to ted and you might be wondering who is this ted guy well i'm here to tell you that there isn't a person instead ted is an acronym for technology entertainment and design the tech organization has covered many ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see this same diversity and the topics being presented to you here today for this period we will have three presenters that will talk about music mental health and steam for our first presenter our next dhs presenter is ryan aruda ryan is a sophomore here at dhs ryan is a member of dhs marching band indoor percussion he plays a variety of instruments his favorite being the piano ryan loves winter and dreams one day of visiting norway

053he plans to attend college upon graduation ryan chose his tedx dhs talked topic because of his love of music and how music has inspired him and brought him joy he wants to share his passion for music with you please welcome brian neruda as he presents music effect on emotion [Applause] thank you today i'll be speaking on music's effect on emotion here we have six different common emotions that people feel day-to-day such as happiness sadness fear disgust anger and surprise you may felt very extreme forms of these and they are obviously songs can produce these emotions as you listen to them but the question comes up how how are your emotions impacted when you listen to these songs before we go into that i'd like to define music music is vocal or instrumental sounds or both

054combined in such a way as to produce beauty over form harmony and express of emotion now a little bit about my personal experience with music as you heard i am involved with the band and percussion but aside from that i am a very large and huge fan of classical music and their amazing composers and one especially claude debussy who has shaped my life and you are listening to his song now which is clear next we have the beginnings of music they are produced with the banging of sticks and stones and young while this has obviously advanced over time we can see the early forms of music were made to to convey a certain form of emotion as we saw before anger happiness or sadness but let's take a quick look at the timeline of music

055here we have the many classical eras of music medieval renaissance baroque classical romantic and the 20th and 21st century in the medieval era we have such great such as bangin bird in the renaissance and some of the more well-known ones as we go forward bach and the baroque vivaldi and hendell in the classical we have hayden mozart and beethoven and the romantic we have chopin list and chewbear and the 20th and 21st which is possibly one of my favorites we have st sands debussy and city next up i'm going to talk on the scientific viewpoint on music heat is completely positive in the scientific field as seen by a study in scl health dopamine levels are proven to increase and those who practice positive listening find their moods improving in just two weeks music can

056improve your mood your quality of life and self-esteem but it's also used in therapy it's seen as extremely safe non-invasive easily accessible and on expensive many studies occurred and scientists found that happier music obviously produced a happier form of emotion it helped people have better physical health higher income and greater relationship satisfaction here we have a chart on treating depression with music therapy so we have a control group and a group that went under music therapy and psychotherapy and the control group also went under psychotherapy alone but within six months of six months of treatment excuse me the depression score has dropped significantly along with the music therapy here we have six scientific scientifically proven songs to make you happy with such grades such as don't stop me now by queen dance in queen biaba

057uptown girl by billy joel i'm a believer by the monkeys i'll survive by gloria gaynor and walking on sunshine by katrina and the waves and now i'll i'll talk a little bit more on how [Music] we have different keys and chords and major keys and chords produce the happier feeling like imagine by john lennon minor chords produce the sadder feeling like some parts of bohemian rhapsody by queen the two other chords we have are diminished chords in which those are used as transitions into the minor and major and augmented chords which usually lead to the resolution now i'd like to discuss a little bit more about the recent times when how you can use music now especially during covert 19. the world has been hit by covid and it's affected us for about a little

058it's we're coming up to a little over a year now and we've had lockdowns and quarantines and music therapy was a way people come back to them but it did obviously have those people that did not use music therapy and those people that possibly couldn't have finded it and here we have a study by the cdc in late june of 2020 40 of us adults reported struggling with mental health or substance abuse and within those we have 31 percent with anxiety and depression symptoms 13 percent started or increased substance abuse 26 with trauma or stressor related disorder symptoms and possibly one of the most shocking 11 seriously considered suicide so this was done by the cdc this was only in late june of 2020. this number has frequent this number has obviously gone up since

059then but we have to think of ways to combat this and we have to find ways to fight this and one of the ways that people have been doing that is with music therapy once again in a study by npr and therapist filipio giordano music therapy was used with frontline workers and doctors and quote it reduced the stress and improved the well-being of those people so we can see by the studies before and right here that music therapy works and this study was actually conducted in february of so it's a fairly recent study and not only do we have covert distractions but we have things such as news distracting us and it's not just locally but it's around the world bbc world service npr cbc which is a canadian news channel euro news douche well

060fox news and some more well-known ones to us locally in massachusetts univision rtp and global we find ourselves listening to these things and the things we hear on them we may agree with or we may not but it usually causes a lot of stress as especially in the news recently there have been a lot of stressful events but one thing that i ask you is that you tune out with the news and you tune into music you tune into the serenity you tune into the peace and you tune into the hope you can we you as a person can come together with your friends with your family come together as a world one global community and get through this together because if we band together we are unstoppable we just all must find a way

061to get through this and one of those is with music and right now you're listening to arabesque number one but [Music] that is one of the many ways that we can get through this and this is how we must move forward one step at a time thank you okay for our next presenter our next tedx dha's presenter is jacqueline minlin jackie is a senior at dhs whose futures plans are to attend the university of new haven to study criminal justice jackie plans to focus her studies on criminal analysis jackie's part of the casting crew of dhs theater company and is also vice presidents of her jewish youth group hanid usy she is also a cheerleader coach for dyfl please welcome jacqueline minlin as she presents a look at mental health [Music] mental health everyone has

062it whether it's good or bad we all have mental health mental health is directly defined as a person's condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being and since the pandemic has started mental health has the struggle with mental health has increased astronomically mental health first aid is a major help in helping those who are struggling with mental health some of the things that you learn when learning mental health first aid is the risk factors some risk factors include genetics those who suffer from depression anxiety schizophrenia bipolar disorder things like that can get passed down to their offspring so that's a major risk factor if you have mental health do you want to have kids do you want to risk that another thing that you learn when doing mental health training is how to assist

063you learn how to listen you learn how to validate those who are struggling and you learn the hotlines you learn the numbers you learn what to provide for those depending on what you're struggling with and you also know the warning slides which i will address in the next sign some warning signs of suicide and suicidal thoughts are talks of suicide in today's society it's completely common for teens and youth to joke about suicide whether it be through snapchat instagram ticktalk we either make jokes about it on posts or comment on posts and it's just completely pushed away a teen can post on their snapchat private story i've had such a bad day i want to kill myself and we all overlook it as if it's nothing but this is a warning sign thoughts like these

064are warning signs and it's something that we need to pay more attention to hopelessness another feeling a feeling of hopelessness is a huge warning sign for thoughts of suicide during kovid a lot of our seniors are getting their thoughts of graduation taken away our prom taken away our last homecomings our final hockey games football games and that provides us with a feeling of hopelessness it's hard withdrawing from loved ones it's very common for many who are struggling with mental health to withdraw themselves from loved ones they may not go to social activity events they may withdraw from their extracurricular activities they may stop using their phones delete their snapchats delete all their social media stop texting their friends and that's a major warning sign mood changes changing from being happy to being sad being tired

065all the time to being energetic all the time sleep deprivation all of those things are major warning signs now you may be wondering how can i help my friend who is struggling how can i help my sister who is struggling from my personal experience the major way to help is just by listening validating no matter how big or small someone's struggle may be to you it's big to them and all that they need is to feel validated in their emotions to feel that they can feel the way that they feel also providing information whether it be hotlines therapists ways to get help any of those professional help doctors guidance counselors which i'll discuss in the next slide teachers any of the above are major help here at dhs we have guidance counselors and we have

066social workers if you're struggling you can reach out to miss heath mr mr mcgrath miss fitzgerald mr wright or our social workers miss thomas miss callahan or miss no khan from my personal experience i personally reached out to our teachers when the pandemic hit i felt extremely alone i didn't know what to do with myself i'm outgoing i talk to everybody and anybody i make friends with 50 year olds at target so not being able to see people that took a hit on me and the way i solved that was by emailing the teachers i loved the most i emailed miss pavlik and i emailed miss lassie and i said hey can we set up a zoom call can we set up a google classroom meet i just need to talk to somebody and of

067course they both were completely willing i spent hours talking to ms pavlick about what was going on in my personal life i spent hours talking to her and just ranting to her about all the silly drama going on in my life and i just talked to her like she was my friend and she was there for me when i needed her and she also was able to provide me with sources throughout the school miss lassie also took a hit she loves her students anybody who's had miss lassie knows she loves her students it is why she does this job not being able to see her students was a major hit for her and so by connecting with her to help myself i feel as though i helped her too and i think that everybody can

068benefit from reaching out to a teacher and making those connections since the pandemic hit cdc has reported that anxiety and depression rates have gone up by 31 substance abuse so nicotine alcohol marijuana that's all gone up by 13 and suicide and suicidal thoughts have gone up by 11 percent in america suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death so here's what puzzles me the most why do we care about physical health so much more than mental health why is it that when a kid falls we immediately grab the antibiotics grab the band-aids slap it on and let them heal why is it that when we're growing up drink at least eight ounces of water a day make sure you're eating three meals a day you're always taking care of your mental health your

069physical health why is it that it's so much more difficult to reach out and get a therapist why is it shamed upon to get put on antidepressants why is that a bad thing why is it that we teach our youth that your physical health is important but the second your mental health comes into play you'll be fine it's just a bad day you're just you're just sad right now why is that the situation your life matters your mental health matters recently someone i love dearly tried to take their own life they were put into a mental hospital they almost didn't make it someone i know someone in my life this has happened to me personally and this isn't the first time and if i just thought about mental health and mental health first aid a

070little bit more i could have been there to help but i wasn't and that's okay it's not my fault this took a toll on me this set me back this experience you know i stopped doing my schoolwork i started failing a couple classes i almost didn't have this ted talk ready and but in sentence for her i pushed myself to get better i pushed myself to do what i needed to do in her name while she's okay now that experience will live with me for the rest of my life and you may be wondering about my story why am i up here talking to you about mental health what is my credibility i've struggled with anxiety and depression since the fifth grade i faced a major move put me into a depressive state i was

071probably one of the worst fifth grade students you'd ever seen and i've struggled with eating disorders i have struggled with ptsd i've struggled with it all i finally reached out for help when the pandemic hit i finally realized that enough was enough and i finally reached out to my teachers ms pavlick and miss lassie who then said hey maybe talking to your doctor isn't the worst idea maybe you should talk to your therapist and i finally got put on three different antidepressants and i actually have my first meeting with my therapist on march 22 which is a huge goal for me so finish that shampoo and conditioner at the same time finish your toothpaste in your mouthwash at the exact same time finish a chapstick without losing it pet all of the dogs and the

072cats and all the animals in the world there's so much more to this life and this is how we're moving forward one step at a time thank you [Music] thank you jackie for presenting such an important topic to our presentation here our next tedx dhs presenter is faiza achilova faisa is a junior here at dartmouth high and this is her second tedx dhs presentation and we are excited to have her joining us again faizal loves the violin and fencing and plans to measure an esteemed area upon graduation but dreams of working for doctors with our borders and helping to develop in countries she is passionate about the importance of steam since it combines the study of humanities and science and leads to a more rounded future learners please welcome faisal achillova as she presents why

073the world needs steam as the world and society races towards new innovations technologies and creations we're turning a blind eye to the further implication it has on the fabric of our society and how it cultivates systemic racism on how it cultivates discrimination now our lives are quite literally being engineered so there's this portrayal of this fantastical facade of this modernized world well underneath there's so much more there's so much bias there's so much racism there's so many problems and what we need is steam in order to tackle these problems we need the um we need to emphasize the importance of humanities in the arts into science technology engineering and mathematics therefore steam so now i want to talk to you about this man here his name is jul robert julian bortchock williams so one day

074he was at work and he received a phone call and a guy was saying telling him that he was going to be arrested so to come down to the police station so i don't know about you but i wasn't aware that police officer just hit you up and asked you to come down and get arrested so obviously he thought i was a prank but on the day he came home and upon driving up to his driveway two police officers followed he was arrested and handcuffed on the spot his wife meanwhile and two young daughters for watching this all take place he asks them sir why why am i being arrested and they reply and i quote larceny and a felony warrant so his wife asks them where are you taking him they respond google it

075so much help right so anyways he gets to the police station he is interrogated for hours and stays there overnight eventually the police officers showed him this photo this is a surveillance photo taken from a shoplifting incident at a nearby boutique they asked him is this you in the photo and he replies do you think all black men look the same so no of course this wasn't him and i don't know about you but i cannot distinguish any discernable features from this photo so how is it that they connected shoot two seemingly unconnected photog photographs the answer is simple facial recognition technology now facial recognition softwares are increasingly increasingly becoming more common using the criminal justice system but here's a problem technology does what we tell them to do we're in control right and there

076lies the problem humans are the epicenter of bias and bias driven data no surprise that softwares are similarly driven now i'm going to come out to this point later but the conclusion of this anecdote is that it illustrates and exemplifies not just the racism and just and just utter utter disrespect to robert by the law of enforcement it shows the problems in the system itself in technological context now this system is severely flawed but here's the question who is the wii who are the creators behind these softwares right who are the engineers and computer scientists creating these and here's the here's the simple answer is behind most of this is generally predominantly white men to put this into quantitative context nsf found in 2015 that 49 of workers in stem were white males while black

077men black women hispanic men hispanic women totaled to about maybe 10 while asian men and women accounted for so now this we're seeing so facial recognition technology tends to target or is unable to discern the features of black individuals but yet the creators are predominantly white it's kind of interesting right i don't know so anyways to kind of talk about the topic i'm going to show you this hypothetical situation between two candidates so let's say you're in charge of hiring the new director for the board of education in massachusetts so you have two candidates you have a candidate a and candidate b so canada a has grown up her whole life in a low income middle class household and she's attended public schools her whole life she's worked in low-income communities and public schools so

078she has experience right can it be on the other hand she has grown up in a higher income family she's attended private schools her whole life and does not have the same experience as candidate a now i'm not saying their credentials are different i'm not saying one is about a person the other but i'm asking you if you wanted to tackle the issues in the public school system who would you choose threw up to me i would hire candidate a why well i want someone who's going to understand the issues at hand connect with the students connect with the people right and just give a better and broader understanding of the problems we're facing now why is this applied to everything why isn't this applied to science so if these technologies are targeting a specific

079group why do we lack so much diversity and not just that so many of these workers are so divided into their own fields and they don't explore other ones now if we had a diverse and well-rounded group i feel like this could be very different i'm gonna expand on this point but first how does this relate to steam and like how how does any of the things i said relate to the arts and the humanities well the a as i said previously stands for arts so steam stands for science technology engineering arts and mathematics we're seeing now more than ever the importance of incorporating the humanities and the arts into our education system and the importance of interdisciplinary studies now the humanities allows us to better understand the world the societies cultures religions around us

080it allows us to manifest deeper thinking and empathy right it builds creative thinkers understanding people um and isn't that what the world needs isn't that what science needs right now the well-rounded people the people that understand their fellow people so policy makers scientists engineers or let's say civil rights activists it doesn't have to be so divided into two groups right oh stem versus the arts or let's say like an ethics professor versus a biology professor we should immerse ourselves in what's considered unconventional knowledge right we should instead of focusing so much on core curriculum classes that are really important but also emphasize the arts right so make it instead of so dichotomous interdisciplinary we should shift our focus beyond these and have a chance for balance and perspective because that's what's necessary for all fields

081now before we even sensationalize the idea of stem people who are already anticipating the impact the lack of arts and science would have on the world now when we think of let's say a really quote smart person we think yeah this girl or guy super super nerdy so good at science or we think yeah this person is a really great writer like huge book nerd we don't tend to correlate the two we don't say wow this mit student is actually studying biochemical engineering but he's also majoring in ethics but if you think about it the ethics could really help him in the field he's planning on pursuing so in 1959 um this man here charles p snow a british novelist physicist and chemist delivered a famously controversial lecture and basically what he talked about was

082this divide between the science and literary world so basically what he said was that um scientists proudly can't quote shakespeare while literary nerds let's say can't tell you the second law of thermodynamics now i'm going to share some information and examples pertaining to the lack of morality and the issues regarding racism and discrimination in a.i but i want you to keep in mind how could this be different if we did incorporate the arts and humanities and did emphasize steam so the ai and the justice system so now we're seeing more than ever the incorporation of artificial intelligence and technology into the criminal justice system especially when it comes to sentencing individuals and determining how long they'll serve and whether or not they're more likely to commit a crime in the future so these are all

083based off of data and if we know anything about data it's that it's so biased driven right it tells it they take what we give them so in here the data is actually being weaponized against black communities and i'm not saying these systems are using race right they're not saying okay you're black you are gonna sense you're gonna you're gonna spend more time in jail it's way more complicated than that they look at where you live how much money you make and those tend to be communities that have greater popular that have greater densities of black individuals so in 2013 in wisconsin a man named paul zilley stole a lawn mower so we stole a lawn mower and he pleaded guilty so they had this deal with the judge right but the judge turned to

084a software system called compass which was going to determine okay how long should he serve and is he likely to commit a future crime so this compass system it ranks you from 1 to 10 of likeliness to recommit a crime and the severity of the crime so zilli was found to actually be more likely to commit an extremely violent crime for stealing a lawnmower all right so the sentence was originally one years and this went up to two years and you can think oh it's only it's only one year but any extra day in prison is already so much more treachery to endure in our current system it's heart-wrenching to think that his blackness may have contributed to this or possibly his residency or how much he made now i want you to recon i

085want you to reconsider the idea of um robert and his situation with his false arrest so now imagine that the software used for um the determination of his photo and the surveillance photo was actually curated by a very diverse team right so it included majorly black individuals it included ethicists it included professors of sociology and included professors of ethics and it and it um also included policy makers it included activists and they all came together and made this system and actually he was never falsely arrested so imagine that right the thing is we don't we don't need to imagine it it doesn't have to be imagination it can be real and i'm not saying all policy makers should be scientists we're all scientists should be policymakers but rather we need to include the we have

086to include the world of policy into the world of science and really think about the social impact it has on with the projects i've mentioned we should credibly think about and discuss the impacts on the rest of the world we need people we need well-rounded people right we need interdisciplinary studies we need these scientists to also have a passion and learn about the humanities we need empathetic thinkers we need understanding people creative thinkers so these problems don't keep reoccurring right this racism and discrimination will only go farther unless we actually do something to stop it unless we actively try to change something and this starts with our education it starts with the young kids our future leaders right from a young age we need to we need to say steam steam steam the arts we

087need to vigorously train and tell students to also embrace the humanities to embrace the arts and pursue what they want to pursue we need to create these well-rounded people we must mainstream the idea that ethics and responsibility when exploring fields such as science and technology are so important and the arts and humanities offer us a door to these and solutions to the problems now this isn't just food for thought right humanities are not just food for thought there's so much more they're an extension to more nuanced thinking understanding thinking that we need in science right now so this thing i talked about today i think you just could go in one year and out the other but i want you to know that we say oh one person can't make a difference but if you

088think about one one person things the reason we have our iphones today is because of one person's idea the reason we have our laptop is because of one person's idea it takes only one person one person to make an impact any of us any of us could go on to do something so great right it takes one person and that creates such a cascading effect so we shouldn't have this like constricting idea that i can't do anything because you can do something because it all starts with you so i implore you to explore steam and really think about how we can all incorporate the humanities into our daily lives as we go on to college right what can we do so please let's plow forward with steam thank you [Music] thank you faiza for such

089an important topic that is happening now and will be important for our future so we like to thank our presenters for this period also we want to let you know that you can view these ted talks throughout the day and in future days coming or using the same links there will be available to you to watch [Music] later on as well okay so just use the same links for to view the ted talks thank you [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hello dhs and welcome back to the third period presentation of our dhs tedx event i'm mrs true and mrs souza and

090i are happy to welcome you to this event this is our sixth tedx dhs event and we are thrilled to present this exciting event here at dartmouth high school this is an independently organized event this year it is being broadcast via live stream by the dhs tv media production and this change obviously is a change from our previous format for those of you who have participated where we are normally in front of a live studio audience our live streamed event along with the participants wearing masks have been an update that we have put into place in order to meet covid19 standards our theme this year is sociology moving forward one step at a time students from cohorts v will be presenting various topics that are engaging and stem from their personal passions these students have

091volunteered their time to this group and diligently prepared presentations to enlighten you on various topics since you may be new to ted you may be wondering who's this ted guy well i'm here to tell you there isn't really a ted guy instead ted is an acronym for technology oops technology entertainment and design so therefore the ted organization has covered many ideas worth spreading in various fields of study you will see the same diversity in the topics being presented to you here today our first presenter for the third period presentations is emma fernandez emma fernandes is a junior here at dartmouth high school she is a member of the dartmouth high school theater company and plays the violin emma has chosen her topic on portuguese culture because her grandparents have relayed various stories to her about

092their personal immigrant experience and she has wanted to delve deeper into what brought them here to the south coast region please welcome emma fernandez as she presents portuguese culture and politics cramming your life's belongings into a bag choosing and deciding which part of your life is valuable valuable enough to keep and bring into the new world you're looking out not just for yourself but for the little one that soon will arrive you're looking out for a place with more potential a place where you can grow and prosper you want your child to grow up not having to worry about when their next meal will be not having to worry about sharing a single size house with 13 siblings and not having to worry about using their imagination when playing with vegetables pretending those vegetables are

093dolls you're moving to america the land of the free and the brave a foreign place where foreign sounds come from people's mouths the story of my grandparents i love to tell it but even more hear it i've been hearing this story since i was old enough to understand the older i got the more i wanted to know i bombarded them with questions every time i visit the one that always seemed to pull me was why here my grandparents had the whole united states to pick from but like many others they choose to build their life in new england but nevertheless she answers my question she said that she knew a portuguese household that would sponsor them in america to immigrate to america immigrants had to had a family that would sponsor them this sponsor family

094was responsible for all the money the housing and would help the immigrant families establish a life in their new house i further had wondered why there was such a large community of portuguese people in the new england area well have you heard of the whaling industry people have been wailing for thousands of years but in the 11th century portuguese people started to get involved in the whaling industry hunting and trading products like blubber and meat over time whales migrated from portugal shores to the atlantic islands of azores madera and cape verde wales continued to migrate and whalers continued to follow whales continued the migration led the portuguese whalers to north america but particularly the island of nantucket as it was located close to the whale the whale migration routes but in the 18th century 1800

095sorry nantucket shower harbor and upstroking ups structuring sand bars and dangerous shore led to the decline of the whaling port in nantucket and it was later focused in new bedford massachusetts in 1830 new bedford became the leading port making it become the main focus of portuguese immigration whaling in the united states hit its peak in 1870 and 1880s with the portuguese immigrants not only arriving at new bedford but also traveling to the west coast traveling to california and hawaii most of the portuguese immigrants had been sailors on the whaling ships but eventually settled in a number of coastal stations where migrant whales were spotted and pursued during the last two decades of the 19th century the whaling industry diminished as fossil fuels became more reliable than whale oil by 1971 the u.s officially outlawed whaling

096industrial became the new forefront of portuguese immigration and urbanization growth in the 2 2018 report by the world atlas the states with the largest portuguese population is as follows california massachusetts rhode island new jersey florida new york connecticut and hawaii in the same world atlas report states california is ranked the highest population of portuguese americans home to 346 thousand portuguese americans portuguese have been arriving in california abroad american whaling ships the portuguese have traditionally preferred to follow articulature pursuits where they are especially active in the state's dairy industry in san jose in the tuna industry and san diego california captures the culture of the portuguese people that immigrated there with local portuguese community activities such as the holy ghost festivals and the portuguese cultural center the report states that hawaii had a population of 48

09748 000 portuguese americans in the 1800s hawaii had a large scale of production of sugar which required many workers which require many workers but due to the western diseases the hawaiian population had just had decreased by 1870 there was already approximately 400 portuguese in hawaii who had left whaling ships to establish a life primarily in our culture one of them is mr pereira a well-respected owner of the dry goods store recommended that the hawaiian government bring portuguese workers and their families to the hawaiian government bring their families from madeira as they were skilled and working in the fields he then agreed to recruit workers that were skilled and working in the field recruit to work workers and arranged for their transportation mr pereira agreed to represent the portuguese when they landed in hawaii massachusetts is

098home to the second highest population of portuguese americans with a total population of 296 thousand the portuguese culture has drastically mixed into massachusetts to the extent that portuguese is the second most spoken language in the state portuguese immigration increased in the 1900s new immigrants were attracted by employment in the textile factories and in industrial towns of southern eastern new england new before provided many industrial employment but other large portuguese communities developed around the textile factories such as fall river and providence in 1960s we saw a vast number of immigration coming to massachusetts from mainland portugal the azores madera and cape ford some of the increasing numbers of immigration were due to the cause of devastating volcano eruption in fayal and the portuguese dictatorship under antonio salazar later in the 1990s and early 2000s there was

099an increase of brazilian people immigrating to the area many of the portuguese immigrants planted roots and close-knit communities where they will run their businesses among themselves and observe cultural festivals that reflect their connections to their homeland as many of you may know there's a thing that goes on an annual thing that goes on every year called the madeira feast it is one of the most popular festivals in the portuguese community the madeira feast is some may know it is the portuguese feast of the blasted sacrament it's the biggest event in new bedford every year with this year being the hundredth and sixth annual celebration as the name says the feast originates from adera a portuguese island off the coast of africa in 1950 formendarian immigrants wanted to create the festival for their homeland with a

100four-day celebration of entertainment a carnival a parade and a 5k race and of course food as the as the feast without food in the portuguese culture is unheard of portuguese people have a rich culinary culture living in this region you must have heard molosadas that fried dough with all the sugar poured on top well portuguese americans influenced the way the land we have countless portuguese restaurants that serve traditional dishes such as chicken alajana and caldovid there are many aspects of the region that the portuguese have influenced like food education and the creation of the portuguese american caucus established in 1995. this caucus is responsible for the attempt to add portuguese language programs to the advanced placement curriculum the portuguese all flow influence and the one that is focused today is the political impact on the

101south coast area with high numbers of portuguese population the portuguese would be considered a powerful contributor to the community's politics but observers say the portuguese population could do so much better at their political engagement where 50 percent of portuguese americans become u.s citizen of that 50 percent there are 50 newly citizens that are registered to vote and of the 50 percent of the red server voting they participate in voting the lack of portuguese participation can be seen at local levels as in new bedford where there are only a few portuguese american mayors one of them is george rogers he was the grandson of a portuguese immigrant in 1970. to help civic participation of the portuguese descent a non-partisan group called the portuguese american citizens project was put together the project ran from 1999 to 2016

102and involving itself with 52 religious groups and social welfare organizations a woman who lives in fall river stated voting in my church went up 40 percent to 72 percent thanks to the campaign even though this campaign helped the civic participation in 2016 the portuguese american citizen project was terminated by the board of directors this project took resources away that needed to be redistributed but even though the portuguese american citizens project is no longer in fact today it is still important to be promoting civic participation as we live in the portuguese influence community where portuguese americans want their voice to be heard you can vote for a politician that will understand and see the importance of portuguese culture we see the influence portuguese culture has on our community encouraging a strong civic participation not only benefits

103portuguese americans but the whole community and then to ensure a better future and that is how we are moving forward one step at a time [Applause] thank you emma that was wonderful so glad that we're talking about portuguese culture okay our next presenter is sean allen sean is a sophomore here at dartmouth high school originally from colorado and georgia sean brought his love of music international politics and science here to dartmouth he plays both the guitar and the viola sean has a passion for space and he hopes to one day make that a part of his career when he becomes an aerospace engineer please welcome sean allen as he presents heartless headlines [Music] in the 21st century there's never been a more important time to stay informed now one of the biggest issues recently is

104the fact that there's so many different viewpoints to take into account therefore it's hard to determine which sides are biased and which sides are more reasonable to look at informative so today i want to address some of these concerns and hopefully help everybody become a better reader so here i have three examples of some news articles and opinion pieces and i want everybody to kind of look at them and review them and try to pick out which one of these has bias here we have a article from the washington post regarding amazon's work ethics we have a article from fox news talking about trump's response to the january capital riots as well as a article talking about the benefits of going vegan from the vegan society now bias is any personal affiliation with one side

105of an argument that is not associated with the evidence and reasoning that is being presented so whether it be at a grocery store just talking to somebody or at a heated debate on your political or your on your dinner table vices all around us and it's very important that we recognize this so we can help combat it to become a more fair argument and make the world a better place in general now almost as important as bias itself is identifying how we can find it in things so there's multiple forms and types of bias so i think that going over them will help all of us identify these so one common type of bias is funding bias any modern media or even small time forms of communication require some outside investment in order to stay

106afloat these things require money and in most cases the money for these companies is going to come from large corporations whether it be entertainment companies like disney or at t that own all kinds of different entertainment companies or outside investors like the shell oil company and amazon the problem with this is that because there's so many places that money comes from these people who fund them uh have some influence over what data is going to come out of these and this can generate a problem as the news source while playing to stay informative is also playing to the roles of their owners oh sorry i flipped twice the next type of bias that i want to address is viewer bias so every form of information and media has always had an intended audience now this

107goes back to the 10th century you look at magna carta talking about how kings should respond to their own laws and even nowadays when you have things like fox news who appeals to a more conservative audience cnn appealing to more liberal having bias towards your audience is beneficial which is why it's so common when you address a certain audience over another one you have a more consistent viewer base however one problem with this is that if you address only a certain media base then you're going to uh intentionally exclude different sources of information to more put forth something that's more appealing to somebody people want to relate to one idea and when that happens companies are going to do that to get more views but then you lose truth personal bias now personal bias is

108a much more common type that we see outside of big media personal bias can be i mean i have personal advice over all kinds of ideas personal bias is not as threatening due to the fact that you can personal biases change and people who have personal bias always pretty much always express it as an opinion you know when you're talking about an idea or an issue and you have personal bias you're not going to tout that as fact however the problem is when you have people who are using personal bias while doing research these ideas can bleed into it and people are going to take an already determined point of view regardless of evidence now these types of bias are all important but it's also very important to see how these types of bias are

109put in how they employ these ideas with different tools so connotation and tone is super common to see now connotation is addressing any word with a positive or negative feeling in order to portray an opinion now connotation you'll see all times in books and stories but you'll see a lot in the news applying connotation gives informational pieces opinions but the problem is that when they have opinions they generally start to sway from truth and when you're trying to portray truth uh error we're trying to portray an opinion as truth it's not reliable and it's misinforming another type of tools that people use for bias is blatant lies now blatant lies are not as dangerous as certain other types do the fact that blatant lies are easily uh deniable when somebody's blatantly lying it's easy to

110determine that as it's not supported by evidence you know maintaining a reliability with your audience is very important and blatantly lying about this would damage that now an issue with blatant lying sort of comes up when it's not so blatant when you inlay lies within positive and true evidence it gives it a feeling of reliability which it wouldn't otherwise have and you see this all the time in news adding small lies to big true pieces creates a another point to bounce off of to push forth an opinion that seems like fact but it isn't and finally we have removal of context now arrow of context is so common to see because it's so useful removal of context is removing any type of background or outside information that would be relevant to putting a point forward

111now this can include cutting up quotes and pulling out certain words to change how somebody said something or change what they said even as well as just making somebody seem vilified based off something that they partially said but they weren't actually expressing themselves removal of context becomes so dangerous due to the fact that unlike the other two it's not opinionated and it isn't generally deniable removal of context when they have cut up pieces it's still true and the issue with that is that when it's true you can't tell sony that they're wrong for saying something just because they don't include background however if they remove context it gives it a bad tone and you can add reasoning to true evidence now i have some some more examples right here so i think we can help

112pick these apart and uh kind of see how this is used in common media here i have a article excerpt from a cnn health talking about the kova 19 vaccine um it's a good example of how they use connotation inside of article titles johnson johnson's covid19 vaccine gets the nod from the cdc uh getting the nod could be just portrayed as receives approval or pushed forth however adding the positive connotation of getting the nod appeals to the generally liberal and um uh industrial and um like political accepting groups uh that cnn applies to if you trust the institution then seeing positive connotation is going to be appealing to you because you can relate to that um now here i have aps from fox news um talking about also the covet vaccine however here you can

113see that they have used a quote from a non-factual piece catholic bishops are a piece of evidence however they are strictly opinionated as it's not it's not defensible uh like uh factually you know if you are catholic then you can look to quetzal catholic pastors and catholic bishops for guidance and for opinions that apply to you however this is not scientifically proven and because of that using it in a scientific context is dangerous it adds reliability to it to a subject that is not otherwise scientifically defensible now i want to come back to these first three articles we looked at earlier and point out some of the types that are being used here now right here we have the washington post talking about amazon both the washington post and amazon are owned by jeff bezos

114and you might notice that a lot of the articles about amazon are from the washington post now this is of course no accept or no unbelievability because of the fact that you know he owns both of them why wouldn't he talk about himself but the problem is a lot of these are mildly negative now this is what i like to call controllable criticism by applying a bad uh tone towards something that that you control you're already putting in your viewpoint people are going to take you as reliable because they can see facts for themselves you know it's undeniable that amazon has had a rough history with ethics and employee treatment but putting it in a negative tone gives reliability to something but you can still control how it's being said you can reduce the severity

115and redirect viewers eyes from other viewpoints as other news stations are not going to pitch in an idea that is already being thoroughly reviewed and here we have another article or the first article from fox news talking about trump's response to the capital this is what this is a good example of removal of context they are not incorrect in the fact that trump did say that he hated to see what unfold on january 6th however removing this from the context of other trump trump's quotes uh regarding the event might sway people's opinion uh over the actual history as he has sort of gone back and forth originally toting that he believed in their ideas but not their actions and finally we have the vegan society's article on veganism now they have personal bias as i

116think it's fair to assume that everybody who works for the vegan society is vegan uh they have a personal interest in getting people to come to their news source for search and veganism so they're not going to purposefully portray veganism in a negative light especially when they're touted as being reliable on the source um veganism is a group and people have an incentive to bring themselves in so is this true and are these real points yes however this is not the full argument um pieces like this should be taken as purely opinionated and not informative as all the points that are seen here are purely positive which doesn't mean that there isn't negative points on another side of the argument now i think it's important now that we recognize where bias is seen in media

117how we can combat this now the biggest thing that we can do is recognize the fact that everybody has bias no matter what form people are going to have their own opinions and that's going to influence how they take in data searching for different sources for one event can be extremely helpful in getting a more thorough and true recount of what happens to base your own opinion off of now we need to remember that new sources goals are not strictly to inform people they're to make money and because of that they're not going to put out ideas that are negatively impacting their station or their audience by by touting ideas that their directed audience or the people who review their articles and who fund their company don't like they're going to lose money they're going

118to lose viewers and that goes directly against their main incentive so by purposefully excluding opinion and biased recognizing where it is and removing it from information being able to pick apart reasoning and facts is super important to building your own case and each day if we choose to go to multiple sources we can become a better society and move forward in order to become more informed and fight misinformation that is how we move forward one step at a time thank you sean that was very informative and our last presenter for the cohort a day of our tedx dhs event are actually our first presenters back again so again we have grace george and sarah hartman grace is a senior here at dartmouth high school she was the co-founder of the science club and wants to

119study biology in college grace also enjoys reading a good romance novel and has a bit of an obsession with the bachelor franchise series sarah is a senior also here at dartmouth high school and is very involved in a variety of extracurricular activities she's a the other co-founder of the science club president of the key club president of the student council and captain of the math team additionally sarah is true president for her girl scouts troop and plays violin she loves to bake and play with her dog sarah and grace have chosen their topic because both believe that learning is more important than grades and that everything that they have learned can't be measured by a grade they want people to know that learning itself is fun so please welcome once again grace george and sarah

120hartman as they present what lies within the letter [Music] think for a moment what did you learn in the first five years of your life i know you're thinking probably not a lot all i did was sleep play and eat but actually a lot of those things you did during your play were learning one of my favorite memories of childhood was building sand capsules with my siblings and i didn't realize at the time but actually building those sand castles taught me a lot about basics of engineering and construction i remember in kindergarten when the firefighters came to visit and told us about fire safety those things they told us are so important to our life now i know to stop drop and roll and to use a pillowcase so i need a firefighter to reach

121me which could save my life if i ever get in that situation personally one of my favorite toys as a child was the little medical case that you can get and i remember that little plastic stethoscope i used to pretend to use it on my family although i couldn't hear the heartbeat i did learn about a heartbeat were you graded on these skills that you learned when you were a toddler no you were entirely self-motivated but did you learn certainly so now if we were able to learn without grades when we were a kid why do we have grades now well three of the main purposes of grades are evaluation communication and motivation so teachers use grades to see how their students are doing and they can have a lot of students to not do

122not too good on a particular question they can they know to reinforce it again and colleges use grades to see if you are a good fit academically for that school and grace also extrinsically motivates you which means you're motivated to get the good grades illegal study and do your work now while grades have some benefits such as a helping motivate and they help teachers and colleges see where you are they do have many cons graves enforce that learn test forget repeat method so basically you learn a unit you tested it and you forget about it and they know with all the pressure we have to get to learn it's really hard to remember what we learned before because we need to get that grade and grades can also be very impersonal alfred co alfie colin

123sorry who is a author and lecturer who writes about education interviewed some students teachers and students and he found out that a student named claire quoted that she felt that the first time she was giving a rubric she felt that her education was more for her grade and less for her grace also encouraged the fear of challenge and that same article by alfie cohn a teacher named mr robin said that when he noticed his students that when we delivered a project picked the easier project instead of taking the harder one even though challenge might teach them more they came about the grade and grades are also very inconsistent here is a picture comparing the seven point scale to the ten point scale so two students might get the same number grade but their letter grade

124would be different their port cards because of their school system and also teachers even in the same school teachers grow differently so students might have the same level of mastery in the same topic but they might get different grades because teachers grew differently and also methods like curving where a certain amount of students have to get at a certain amount of students have to get a b and so on what's that you're great it's not fair someone you know but what you know compared to others and as we all know grades have a bad take it bad to warn our physical and mental health child success which is a non-profit that works with schools did a study in five california high schools and they find out that 79 high schoolers said that grades are a

125main cause of stress 83 of high schoolers said that they have stress related health problems and one big problem that comes from the stress about grades is sleep deprivation i know there's times where i put my grades on my sleep and i'm going to read you a quote about a 9th grader in that article from channel success and when asked what they what they want their parents to know it's i'm not staying up late because i want to i know the consequences but my grades are more important than my health i'm not trying to make you upset all i want to do is sleep so we students know that sleep and are mentally important but sometimes with the pressure of grades get the best of us grades don't always measure learning the way that everyone

126learns best according to the american test anxiety association over a third of students experience moderate to high levels of test anxiety so that means that a student can understand the material perfectly well but due to test anxiety their grade doesn't reflect that everyone learns differently and our grades are all the same in addition grades don't even measure the qualities that you need for success according to a 2018 survey by ibm the main qualities that employers look for are the ability to be flexible the ability to manage your time collaborate with others and communicate effectively these types of skills aren't necessarily measured by grades your grades don't define who you are so grades don't only impact you they impact our entire country they impact your teachers your parents our mcat scores impact our school and our

127state and our grades reflect our entire country so if we have a society that is based off of grades what can we do right now as students we can focus on learning first so by that i mean forget about the grace for a second not forever just put them away for a second now next time you get a project try to take the more challenging topic because although it might be harder you might learn more from it and also our school justin stated this new universal retake policy for the whole school which you're privileged to have so take advantage of that and when you get your test back for the first time try to analyze it and see if you understand it even before the teacher gives a test back see if you understand it

128without that you're telling what to do and then if you feel you can truly do better and you learn more go ahead and do the retake i mean obviously do whatever you want but that's my advice not focusing on grades may actually leave lead to better grades um in an experiment that was done in the journal of personality and social psychology fifth grade students who are told that they weren't going to be graded on an article they read were able to learn more from that information they could retain the information longer and they had a greater conceptual understanding of the material in addition they had a greater interest and they felt less pressure than the students who were told that they were going to be graded so why focusing on grades when if you don't

129focus on grades you will learn more and you'll be happier so i know you might be thinking if i'm not focused on grades and i'm focused on learning what if i will never use a class in the future well the truth is you probably will use that class um think back to that survey the main quality that employers looked for in a person was adaptability every new class you take will give you a new perspective and you will learn to adapt to new material in addition other skills time management critical thinking communication these are all things that you can focus on and develop in any class you take if you focus on learning also things change college students 30 of college students change their major at least once and the average person works about 12

130jobs in their career so even if you don't think you need to know about the structuring function of the mitochondria right now you might need to use that in one of your different 12 jobs so yeah so what we want to leave you with is judge write a learn outside of the classroom where you're not graded just like you did when you were little here the many ways to do this you can apply for internships whether it's at a lab or a store or basically any business you like try to reach out and apply you can also join clubs here at dartmouth high school we have the science club i know shameless self promo and in the science club or you can do your own independent projects or you can do that outside of a

131science club test talk to a teacher maybe do after school during a pace also read a book there are many books about many different topics i know most of you don't read but i guarantee you if you talk to a librarian or even just google something you can find a book you like and finally well we're all here for do a ted talk this has been a very enriching experiment experience i loved working with my best friend sarah and miss true and medusa and all of my other presenters to learn about and talk about topics that i care about and topics i didn't even know about and i hope you all do it next year according to educator edgar dale these types of learning experiences where we get to design our own experiments or do

132our own presentation will not only lead us to learn more but we can use what we learn in more impactful ways and by focusing on learning first because as ms true says learning is more important than life within the letter we as students can help the world move forward one step at a time thank you for listening to us again thank you [Applause] thank you grace okay so this actually is the conclusion of our cohort a presentation for today however before we um leave you obviously as you can tell this is a huge undertaking that involves a substantial amount of people and we'd like to spend a few minutes just saying thank you to all the people first to each of our presenters we are so proud of you so to grace george sarah hartman

133lavender bork jaffa hiroduno ryan aruda jaclyn midland emma fernandez fayza anchalova and sean allen thank you for reaching out to us and for working with us and for showing us how amazing you are thank you to mr peratti and peter chase obviously we couldn't have done this live streaming event without you sound was wonderful mr peratti is in the back helping us out as well thank you so much to our dhs tv media crew kaden lisa and jp kearney who have been behind the scenes working on all the stuff that i don't understand but they do thank goodness and to emma derek who is our unsung hero behind the scenes as well as our tech crew here helping us out and so certainly you know we obviously this is a huge huge group effort and

134we appreciate everything that you have all done thank you so much tomorrow we will be bringing you cohort b presentations with new topics and new students please use the cohort b live stream link to access each of these presentations tomorrow thank you for your support of tedxdhs we hope that you are inspired and enlightened in a new area of interest and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow on our second day of tedx dhs 2021 thank you [Music] you