Project Description: In this project we began by going way back into history when the conquistadors first came to what we now call The United States of America. We then progressively moved through U,S history to see how we got to where we are today. A big focus of this project was how our country has and has not lived up to the Declaration of Independence. After doing extensive research, we each chose a part of the Declaration of Independence that we believed was hypocritical or is not true today. With this quote we chose what area it was affecting and made that the base of our political cartoons. Some examples of topics chosen by students are black lives matter, police brutality, gay rights, gun control, and immigration. The last requirement of the project was to write a C-E-R on the statement we were portraying in our cartoon. We also read the book Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, the story of an Iranian little girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution.
Final C-E-R on Police Brutality:
Process of making a political cartoon:
The first thing we did for our political cartoon was to closely examine the Declaration of Independence. Each student chose a quote that they thought was not true or contradicted the way we live today. In other words, were we thought the United States hasn't lived up to the Declaration of Independence. My quote was "The King of England has a long history of recurring abuses and seizing freedom by violent threats." I believed this was hypocritical because in today's society, the police who are meant to protect citizens, "have a history of recurring abuses and seizing freedom by violent threats," to unarmed black men. So from this, my topic was police brutality and black lives matter. After this we created three different thumbnails of ideas we had for a piece that would portray our opinion for this topic. From these three thumbnails we chose the one we liked the best or that we though had the most potential. Then we did research, more research, and even more research. To create a solid opinion and a well informed piece, we had to find out all about our topic and the different perspectives. Once we had a good amount of resources, we were allowed to work on our first draft. After completing our drafts we went through a series of critiques so that we could start fresh with our second draft. Once our idea and stance was clear in our second draft, we began to learn how to hatch. Hatching and cross-hatching are a style of "coloring" used very often in political cartoons. It is essentially just lines crossed and layered to shade and give dimension in the same way coloring with colors would, but in black and white. Finally, after getting our hatching and drafts approved, we were allowed to start our final piece. For our final piece we thought we were done about a million times but each time we showed Mr.Phil or Mr.Joshua to approve, we were given another thing to add or improve on. Although the process was long and intense, it produced a beautiful piece I am very proud of.
ORIGINAL THUMBNAIL FIRST DRAFT SECOND DRAFT FINAL PIECE
Growth: During this project I grew a lot in being able to provide good evidence. To make sure not only my C-E-R was bulletproof but that my cartoon made sense, I had to do a lot of research to find evidence that was reliable, true, and backed up my claim. For the political cartoon there was a lot of small things that we had to research to be able to have a put together piece. In my piece I was looking at a lot of different protest signs from the shooting of Alton Sterling, pictures of shattered c.ds, the way Alton Sterling was shot, so that I could have a very detailed and factual piece. The claim or message I am trying to portray in my piece is that unarmed black men are shot an alarming rate with no justice. To be able to create a credible argument, I had to look deeply into the other side of the spectrum that are against black lives matter. I also was looking for very specific pieces of evidence that backed up each point I was making in my piece. I grew the most in evidence this project because I really learned what it meant to create a strong argument and how without strong evidence, your argument will crumble.
Struggle: A struggle for me during this project was refining my work and seeing where I can improve. I am not a natural artist and drawing this political cartoon was a challenge for me. This project was run on limited time and I feel like because of this I compromised my work and instead of refining what I was creating, I ran with the first decent idea I got and didn't stray far from it. For getting critique and really working to address the critique I really struggled. The only time I got critique was when it was required of the whole class and after that I never asked my peers or teachers how I could improve my piece. This definitely limited where my piece went and how much it could have grown. The small amount of help and critique I got was very useful and was almost all included in my final piece. In my writing I always make sure to get as much critique as possible and I will keep in mind that same idea for all my classes and projects.
Takeaway: The biggest thing I took away from this project was how much evidence and information I need to get an informed and solid opinion. To be able to make a good CER that was a credible argument, I had to make sure that each source I was getting my information was not only credible, but as unbiased as possible. I also had to do very specific research so that the information I had backed up my claim and my cartoon accurately. The other hardest part was needing to address my counterargument and find evidence that countered it as well. This project really allowed me to see how to take my opinions, remove my bias, look at the facts, and form a new opinion based on the facts instead of any prior biases I had.