Many things are required to make this concept a reality. The Connection Initiative is not possible without support from the school board, superintendent, principal at the respective school, staff that would be willing to take on the project, and the prospective students that would be willing to assist with the project. When implementing any new program, club, or organization at a school there are always many different hoops that must be jumped through to initiate the project and bring it into fruition. Coming out of the pandemic, this process should be made easier as students will need an outlet to interact in person. Students must be able to engage in programs like this because of the time that they have missed in virtual school and without human connectivity. Building social skills cannot be done if a student is isolated at their home and joining classes through a window on their laptop. Real connection is built within the classrooms and face-to-face with educators and fellow students. Simply having students next to one another to interact is essential in this process, and in the wake of the global pandemic this process became far more difficult than it once was. The need to get these students into social environments where they can build these skills is even more vital to make up for the time that was lost in their development process. The first and most crucial steps away from COVID-19 begin with the engagement of students in classrooms.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest setbacks when researching special education programs across the country is the lack of funding and resources that they possess. Wealthier communities can provide neurodivergent students with more resources to build skills and learn within schools, but not all schools have this luxury. This setback creates a barrier where students are not receiving the best education that they possibly can because of things that are out of their control. The implementation of a project like this requires a decent amount of support from the community within the school district, but in terms of funding it is extremely cheap to implement. There is no extra staff or technology that is needed to engage with students, and the utilization of community events and things occurring within the school creates the ability for these students to learn and grow within their community. This experience, if adopted by a school, is an inexpensive way to create the best potential educational environment for their students. The cost-effective program should be incorporated into schools because it allows them to retain the current special education curriculum while filling the gaps that it misses, giving the cheapest and most well-rounded education that a neurodivergent student can receive in their respective community.<\/p>\n
This network is the potential steppingstones for the foundation of changes needed within the special education system, and by implementing it on a small scale, it could greatly benefit the special education system and community.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Connection Initiative Research Question: How do the systems for educating neurodivergent students better equip them for their future endeavors? Are educators properly equipped to educate neurodivergent students in a traditional classroom setting? Background: With the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been increasingly difficult to proceed with the transition out of the virtual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3352,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-61","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":52,"date":"2022-04-14T03:27:44","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T03:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/?page_id=52"},"modified":"2022-04-14T03:48:16","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T03:48:16","slug":"reflection","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"
Summary of Team Project<\/strong><\/p>\n Throughout the course of my first year in the School of Public Affairs Leadership Program, I worked with a group of four other students in the Religion and Politics Issue Group. For our research, we decided to look deeper into the way that religion is used as a lens for conservative politics and their opinions and political stance on women’s reproductive healthcare rights. With this, we researched legislation that has hindered and helped women gain access to healthcare, looked at prominent Supreme Court cases such as Roe v. Wade, and have analyzed the ways in which different churches, such as the Southern Baptist Church, have expressed opinions that have altered the way in which conservative ideology is influenced regarding abortion and reproductive healthcare. From this research, we looked for ways in which we could assist women that have difficulty accessing menstrual products, and from here we found the organization Helping Women Period. Through the creation of an Instagram page, we were able to inform the public of our research on things such as the Pink Tax as well as raise money for our organization. Throughout the semester we recorded a video reflecting on the research that we conducted and raised over 300 dollars that was donated to Helping Women Period.<\/p>\n Growth as a Leader in Year One<\/strong><\/p>\n Overall, I feel as if I have grown significantly as a leader over the course of my first year in the program. I think that I grew the most in my attempt to be a team player, as I have never had to work with a group of strong leaders the way that I did in this program. Being able to establish leadership amongst a group of other prominent and successful individuals helped me find the strengths and weaknesses in my leadership tactics, and allowed me to grow as a leader as the semester progressed. I think that some of the most important leadership traits that have grown during this year were my confidence and my ability to facilitate and delegate work to others. I was intimidated coming into this program, but I was able to establish myself and find my footing as the semesters progressed, and eventually I obtained enough confidence to become a First-Year Teaching Assistant for the program in the Fall of 2021. I also developed in delegation and facilitation within my team, as I have always been the type of person to take things into my own hands. Having the ability to work with other people that share these commonalities made it a very prosperous environment for me to grow as a leader, and I was able to develop traits that I have been able to carry into other groups and into the real world in my job. I think that my time in the leadership program has been one of extreme personal growth, and I am excited to see where the next few years in the program take me.<\/p>\n Team Dynamics<\/strong><\/p>\n The cohesiveness of our team throughout the two semesters was extremely impressive considering the virtuality of the year. The pandemic brought about many challenges because we could not all meet each other in person, but it did not take long for the group to come together and work effectively and efficiently to get work done and develop ideas for our project. I think one of the most prominent things that our group took too quickly and made easier for the semester was our communication skills. We developed solid relationships extremely quickly and this closeness that we had as friends and a team allowed us to work better together and hold each other accountable for many different things throughout the year. This tight knit relationship was not one that I was expecting at the beginning of the year because of not being able to have in-person interactions, but being able to develop this in the virtual setting was essential to the growth of our project. Another thing that our group did extremely well was delegate different tasks so that everyone was playing a different role that was directed at the same goal. I thought that this would be difficult because we are all very strong leaders, but this was not the case. Our ability to distribute the work load and trade off taking charge for certain tasks was essential to the life of our project and the outcome that we reach, and this bond that developed over the course of a year was one that ensured that the ship was always staying afloat and that jobs were always being completed on time. Overall, the relationships that developed with the members of the team made the project a large success even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and aside from the incredible work that was done with this team during our first year in the SPA Leadership Program, the friends that I made in this team are some that will remain for a very long time, and I am extremely grateful that the pandemic and the program brought us closer together.<\/p>\n Growth as a Leader in Year Two<\/strong><\/p>\n I had an entirely different perspective of the Leadership Program from the first year to the second. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working in a group on research and the social action project last year, but being able to choose the topic that I could study changed the entire course of the year for me. I was very happy to be able to pick a topic that I am passionate about, and being able to study the special education system and the interworking of the curriculum was an incredible experience. The special education community is something that has been part of my life since I was little. My mom had always had me engaged in the community and the students within these programs at my school, and being able to carry the passion that I developed for it into my collegiate career is something that I could not be more grateful for. Although COVID-19 disrupted the plans for my social action project, I believe that the strides that I took to make a different in this community was something that was worth being proud of, and I was able to create a proposal for schools to use on their own time and with their own resources to incorporate a program like this into their own school. Being able to interview people that I used to work with in my high school and expand on the work that I devoted to my community in my hometown on a greater scale within the DMV was something that meant a lot to me, and I am happy with the work that I put into this year. In terms of the class itself, I was pleasantly surprised at the way that my class came together to try to bring the benefits of the Leadership Program into our classroom despite a year of virtual school. There was a mutual understanding of the family that is supposed to be established within the program and we banded together as a group to ensure that we were learning and growing together through our projects and the course material. It has not been an easy two years for anyone at the school, but being able to share the times in person with this class and learn about all of the amazing projects that were being worked on throughout the year gave me an extreme sense of pride to be part of the program. I am extremely happy, proud, and amazed at what was accomplished this year by myself and my classmates, and I am excited for what is to come in the future for the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summary of Team Project Throughout the course of my first year in the School of Public Affairs Leadership Program, I worked with a group of four other students in the Religion and Politics Issue Group. For our research, we decided to look deeper into the way that religion is used as a lens for conservative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3352,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-52","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":19,"date":"2020-07-06T19:37:08","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T19:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/spatemplate\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2022-04-14T03:57:15","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T03:57:15","slug":"work-sample","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/bf8026a\/work-sample\/","title":{"rendered":"Work Samples"},"content":{"rendered":" Attached here<\/a> is a policy memo for the growth in wildfires across the United States. This piece looks to address this issue that is plaguing the country by proposing two different policy actions for fighting and preventing forrest fires.<\/p>\n First Paragraph<\/strong><\/p>\n The purpose of this policy memo is to look for better solutions to combat the increase in wildfires and their severity across the country. There are many ways that wildfires pose a risk to the people and the environment within the United States. Wildfires are detrimental to air quality because of the gasses that they release into the atmosphere. While fires burn across the country \u201cthey release large amounts of carbon dioxide, black carbon, brown carbon, and ozone precursors into the atmosphere\u201d which can pose a risk to the communities in areas where these fires occur (Soloman). Wildfires also damage a great amount of ecosystems across the country. The damaging of habitats and other important locations because of fires is causing many animal populations to decline as well as plants and other forms of life. Wildfires have also posed a great danger to homes, resulting in large costs of insurance and other expenses due to damages from the flames. The safety of these communities, ecosystems, and forms of life are a top priority for the well-being of the country, therefore the government should consider these policy modifications and creations to implement into legislation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nPolitical Science Writing Sample<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Public Relations Writing Sample<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
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