{"id":23,"date":"2018-05-05T04:19:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T04:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/?page_id=23"},"modified":"2018-05-25T00:19:07","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T00:19:07","slug":"zenith","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/zenith\/","title":{"rendered":"Zenith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Online form to purchase the stuffed planets from the book:\u00a0https:\/\/goo.gl\/forms\/P6p3oxhYlXd7iPp12<\/a><\/p>\n

I first came up with this idea over the summer when I was participating in a week long institute for Soulforce Leadership, a youth social justice group. A couple of my friends from the institute and I were talking about the topic of relationship abuse. We discussed how unhealthy relationships often stem from and are perpetuated by a person\u2019s inability to feel whole as an individual and their perceived need to complete themselves with someone else. <\/span><\/p>\n

Intrigued by this idea, I started researching the reasons for and solutions to this problem. I talked to Simi Kettering, a psychologist at my school who said she noticed the need for belonging as well as problems with trust and jealousy to be common themes in the dating relationships of young adults. I then asked my friends and family about problems they\u2019d had in their romantic partnerships. One friend told me about how her boyfriend wouldn\u2019t let her go out and spend time with her other friends because she could go out and do all the same things with him. At the time, she thought this was a normal sacrifice in a relationship. Which brings me to my next point: lack of relationship education in our schools has greatly diserviced our kids. <\/span><\/p>\n

Through my own experience and research, I found that health and sex education in schools greatly neglects to address important questions teenagers have about relationships. Some being: What do I do if my significant other cheated on me, is ignoring me, or is distant? The problems teens have with their partners are not uncommon and in most cases aren\u2019t necessarily abuse. I found that many behaviors that would be considered unhealthy were unintentionally damaging responses to a conflict or dispute between the couples. In some cases, a partner had an issue with something in the relationship but did not communicate it to their partner. This spurred other problems and resulted in a breakup. It seemed to me that young adults were more affected by these sorts of issues, especially in their first relationship, probably for lack of experience and knowledge about how a healthy relationship functions. <\/span><\/p>\n

Relationship education shouldn\u2019t begin and end in High School.<\/span><\/p>\n

The basis for what I\u2019ll call a child\u2019s romantic personality begins in a child\u2019s early stages of development, and is then further affected by the relationships they have as they grow older. My research suggested that a child\u2019s earliest relationships are the most influential factor in establishing relationship norms for the child. What they learn at a young age has an impact on how they behave in all relationships in the future, including romantic ones. <\/span><\/p>\n

My proposed, temporary solution to this problem was to write a children\u2019s picture book addressing the things I learned. The goal was to make a book that taught kids about healthy\/unhealthy relationships, compromising in relationships, recognizing their emotions and addressing them, communication, and conflict resolution. <\/span><\/p>\n

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I began my process with creating the backgrounds and characters (space and planets) with water color. <\/span><\/p>\n

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I made six variations of each planet so that there would be a variety of versions of the characters in my book. <\/span><\/p>\n

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If I could do the project over I would have painted only three of each of the sub characters and six for the two main characters rather than the six I did for each one. Painting six of each at<\/span>e up my time and left me scrambling in the editing room, also known as Indesign. I would have also started the writing process earlier because, as I learned very quickly, writing a children\u2019s book isn\u2019t simple and takes lots of revision.<\/span><\/p>\n

Below is the final product:<\/p>\n

MISSRelationships Pages<\/a><\/p>\n

Throughout the writing process, I asked for help from my peers, teachers and my mother. I struggled with writing a story that featured two main characters, especially since I wanted the audience to be able to empathize wit<\/span>h eithe<\/span>r and villainize neither. I had to devote equal time to the characters and to their thoughts. I was trying to show that their different needs were conflicting with each other and that was what was causing problems in their relationship. I asked my friends for help with specific things the characters could say to convey certain emotions, thoughts, and feelings in a way that children would understand. They were not too helpful with this. My mom however helped quite a bit. We were able to\u00a0<\/span>talk through the relationship between the Sun, or the mentor\/parent figure in my story, with the two main planets. Since she is both my parent and my mentor the roles were familiar to us. The rhyming was also tough. I found myself forcing rhymes that didn\u2019t flow and felt\u00a0<\/span>awkward. I got stuck in the beginning because I didn\u2019t want to start with the ever so classic cliche: \u201cOnce upon a time\u201d. I ended up listening to read alouds of Dr. Seuss’s books on Youtube as I wrote to help me get the rhythm and style of writing correct. I found myself sing-song rhyming random things to myself throughout the day. This also helped.<\/span><\/p>\n

I worked on the book all the way up to my deadline, and by the time I presented, I had not actually read through my (not perfect) b<\/span>ook with the illustrations and all. I had worked on bits and pieces of it at a time, writing the book separately in a google doc and perfecting the story, then copying and pasting it onto my pages. Before I presented I was discouraged, having worked tirelessly throughout the week t<\/span>o write the best story. I felt that it didn\u2019t quite achieve what I had wanted it to and that it was far less poetic and interesting than I would have hoped. I didn\u2019t think it\u2019d be able to hold a kid\u2019s attention or move an adult. There was too much dialogue, not enough action, and the message was not profound enough, I thought. Standing up in front of everyone and reading it made me realize that what I had created was in fact moving. The audience\u2019s reactions confirmed that. Later, I read it to my sister who by the end of it had tears rolling down her cheeks. The fact that I was able to create something that powerful in what I consider one of the most difficul<\/span>t mediums was strong affirmation that I had done my job. A good children\u2019s book story is one that everyone reading it can relate to.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe that my project pushed me to exercise the skills of risk taking, incorporating social and civic responsibility, creativity and high productivity. I feel that I took on a project addressing an issue that has a great impact on all our lives, even though many of us probably don\u2019t realize it. Like I read in my research, these things don’t just work themselves out. We need to work on them and educate ourselves and our kids. <\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Online form to purchase the stuffed planets from the book:\u00a0https:\/\/goo.gl\/forms\/P6p3oxhYlXd7iPp12 I first came up with this idea over the summer when I was participating in a week long institute for Soulforce Leadership, a youth social justice group. A couple of my friends from the institute and I were talking about the topic of relationship abuse. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Zenith”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~HallieO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}