This semester has gone by very quickly and I can’t believe that it is already parent teacher conferences. Although, looking back, I know that I have learned a lot. Whether it was from presenting during I-Week to even starting a business in class. However, instead of listing everything I learned I am going to share the most valuable experiences from my memory. First off, we began with I-Week. Coming back from summer I was determined to challenge myself the year that was coming up. I wanted to go beyond what some might believe is my true potential. Moreover, I wanted to push myself. I wanted to stand out, succeed, and prove to myself that I can go beyond what I thought was my true potential. On that note, I challenged myself to what I am proud to say used to be my weakness, presenting and taking leadership. I was the first to raise my hand up be in charge of presenting Sabes to all the students, teachers, and parents of the Innovation Academy. Now reputation had changed, no more was I looked upon as the nervous caterpillar but now as the confident butterfly of presentations. With this confidence I gained by succeeding, led me to doing well in my next presentation: Pitching my start up idea, The Spot. While pitching The Spot I began to realize that when I planned and organized what I wanted to present I was able to present as if my words were a soft brush and the audience was a rigid canvas, I had to paint them as my convincing result. Therefore, I truly experienced that with great organization and enough practice I can really paint an audience a beautiful art piece. This lead to the start of the business of BlendZ. Starting off BlendZ I was ecstatic excited to work on our logo. Although I failed several times during the making, in the end I learned how to present my work and how to receive feedback. Not only receive feedback but learn, adapt, and edit from it. This experience was truly inspiring for me because it gave me the opportunity to design which might be something I want to pursue in the future. Besides failure, after overcoming it I was able to create my fruit characters. Some innovators might say that these fruit characters are like my children because I am so proud of them and I just want to show them off. To be able to fail throughout the process and be able to create beautiful work that you are proud of at the end is priceless. It is those types of experiences that I was able to truly learn about designing logos, characters, posters, signs, etc. On an ending note, this semester I was able to become more independent because I was able to pursue my art project an dedicate myself to it every thursday from 2:00pm to 5:00pm, even passing school hours to advance on it. In the end I was able to produce the type of result I was looking for. Not only these but I organized my project step by step and even filmed throughout the process to later come out with a video during the process. I believe that this independence I have been given has really helped in strengthen my focus.
As I have learned a lot this semester I want to continue to grow in developing myself as the best student, artist, learner, speaker, leader and innovator that I can be. By doing this I need to continue to have a growth mindset in all the situations I am faced with. “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” ~ Pablo Picasso
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Let's be honest here, whenever someone tries to say the truth about something they are either too frightened or too nervous. This might be because they aren't sure of the ending result. Although after telling the truth you feel a certain extent of relief, at least this is how it works in my case. However, not only do you feel a certain relief, but you also begin to gain trust with the person you shared the truth with. Looking back at this past week in the IA, the trust I have for my colleagues and my mentor has increased immensely. Why? Only by telling the truth about each others strengths, improvements, and flaws. It was incredible to be able to open up to this level and let people not only feel good about themselves but also let them know how they can improve as classmates and as people. In the IA we strive to keep a culture of excellence and in doing so we need to make sure everyone has trust in each other. The same way friends and family trust each other to be there for one another, both in the workspace and outside.
My Feedback: Positive and improvement: - " You are very optimistic and tend to change the moral of the group with you optimism and excitement." - " You have increased your effort in class and outside; although, we know you can push yourself harder." - "Your improvement in focus is noticeable" - " You have become better at public speaking, we noticed this especially during I-week." Flaws and thing to improve upon: - "Listen and wait to share your ideas, sometimes you become too excited and or carried away." - "Reflect more in your writing." - "Speak more purposefully, think things through a little more." - " Be more confident when speaking, writing. Improve on portraying more of my voice." This past week has honestly been a stressful one. Having said that, everyone on the Blendz team has faced countless tasks to complete on such short notice. However, it was an incredibly productive one. We were not only able to get in touch with a fruit supplier, whom brought us A LOT of strawberries, bananas, mangoes, melon, and even pineapple but we were also able to launch the website. If you want to learn more about us please check it out at: http://www.blendzperu.com/ In addition, we bought a freezer! So we could store all the fruit without letting it go bad; although, some of us sacrificed time during lunch, after school, and even during the mornings in order to help cut and bag the fruit. For example today, we all took one for the team; moreover, we spent our sunday night and afternoon cutting fruit and setting up for the first real full day test run. My focus last week was to complete the fruity characters that we were going to use in the advertisements based on the fruit. It was a very creatively challenging week; in other words, it was frustratingly fun. However, every day I continue to learn more about adobe illustrator and how to make designs, characters, you name it. It's kind of like a mysterious cake you find out different tastes and flavors through out the process of chewing. While designing these fruit characters, what had me falter during the process was drawing the faces. As soon as I was told to draw a strawberry playing soccer or an orange swimming I knew exactly how it would look like, I pictured it in my mind. Although the face was just not there... When you draw something on paper it can be a lot simpler because you have complete control on how thick, thin, squiggly, and shade of color you want your drawing to be. When using adobe illustrator you do as well, but it is not the same. It is very difficult to explain, however, drawing on a piece of paper and then drawing on a tablet that is connected to your computer is similar to something like never signing with a mike and then signing with a mike. It can be very different for your voice to be enhanced and louder. Also it takes time to learn how close and how far to hold the mike. The same way it takes time to get used to using the different utensils on adobe illustrator. For example for the longest time I only thought I had five utensils to chose from because only five showed up on my tool bar and then I found endless utensils, this discovery was mind blowing. After finding out these new tools I was able to picture the cartoon faces, because I tested out several of the tools out. ---BlendZ Commercial ADVERTISEMENT---After getting feedback on my first couple logos I pivoted and changed the logo completely. Again. Luckily, I am well aware that that is part of the process. Resulting in less frustration haha :) I took note that Graphic Designing is frustrating, but so entertaining all at the same time. When receiving feedback I was told to try totally new and different logo options. In that case everyone in the IA began spilling out there ideas like if the classroom were full of water hoses drowning me in logo options. I took them into consideration, however, I remembered a little snippet of advise from my friend Harry Bliss. He told me this: "Whenever I present my cartoons for the New York Times I always make sure that I like what I draw before I present it because if I like what i drew than I will make it the best I can." Remembering this valuable advise, I began creating the new Batch of logo options. Take a look -->
Option 7 being my personal favorite, I was gratified to present it to the class. While cogitating over the possible logo options I remembered one important variable, our slogan. Therefore, during this endeavor of incorporating our slogan into our logo, fresh fruits for fresh thoughts, I came up with this alternative. However, my critique feedback was an important question that I did not see coming: Do we, Blendz co, want to be referred to as a banana? Although I faltered to agree, it was an important question because even though we are a smoothie business we didn't only want be referred to as a banana. However, I did emphasize that the idea was pretty cool for a marketing campaign and to be incorporated somewhere on the website. Getting to the Results:Having been diligent through out the process of creating logos, I do have to say that I learned SOO much. For example not only did I continue to experience/learn to pivot and learn from failure, but I also profoundly learned how to use adobe illustrator. Adding onto this amazing experience of the logo creation, I learned how draw on an incredible piece of technology called the Wacom tablet. To the side is a photo of Stefan's Laboratory :) Below is the final Logo :) (However, stay tuned because the creation of the blendZ character is still being created) ------ Fun fact ------If you haven't noticed, through out this article there are several words in bold. If you were curious enough to know why this might be, it is because I am currently studying and practicing SAT vocabulary words. Therefore, in my following blog posts you might notice words that are in bold, but now you know why that might be. Follow me on twitter to be on track of how my study habits are being set forth.
Before explaining you my project I am going to give you an insight of what an IBG is. During school on mondays and thursdays from lunch time until the end of school I have been given the time to work on an interest based group of my choice; therefore, as art is an important passion of mine I chose art. During this time I am given, I hope to accomplish around 5 pieces of artwork that I can later, hopefully by second semester, try to sell or create a gallery of it. My plan is on mondays to work at school on my piece independently. And on thursdays to get feedback, learn new techniques, and be guided by my art teacher/friend, At our first class that we met, I planned the theme for my new project. Ever since I was a little boy, I was obsessed with al kinds of mythologies: Greek, Egyptian, and even Nordic. All these stories of heroes battling monsters and defeating them or even the ones who were cursed by a God, these stories kept me astonished and obsessed.
Therefore, I decided to chose my theme as mythology. Although, that is a pretty broad theme, I am specifying in making 3 art pieces based on a greek myth and 2 art pieces on Egyptian myths. My choice was to start with the greek myths first. On that note, the myth I chose to find a part of the story to illustrate is the myth of Echo and Narcissus. However, the scene of the story that I am going to paint is going to be painted as an impressionist type of art. Leaning on more of a van tough style instead of realism art. Why might I choose this story though? Three reasons…
The business is moving forward, but we are adjusting to the different changes and failures we might face. As we divide into the different management departments: CEO, CFO, CMO, etc. I find myself in the group with the CMO's. Happily with that decision, I knew I wanted to focus on advertising our business to everyone. I wanted to spread our business like a prophet, in the most persuasive way possible. However, not only was I excited to advertise, but I was ready to face the design of the logo like if it were my destiny to do so.
As I am very passionate for art, I was so happy to be able to incorporate my skills in creating the logo for the business. Having made numerous different examples over the past week I have definitely noticed growth. Although, it wasn't easy; it was rather frustrating and depressing. I began to draw several ideas out on a peace of paper of how I can incorporate different elements in the logo of our smoothie business. For example, I tried incorporating a blender because the name of our business ended up being "BLENDZ". However, that idea didn't turn out so well because a blender isn't a very cool or fun symbol. I also tried incorporating fruits in the name "BLENDZ". For example I substituted the L for a banana and I substituted the E for a sliced orange. However, this idea was seemingly complex and not basic so it was another failure. Then I tried to incorporate a basic element, the cup. However, the cup I drew wasn't the type of cup we were going to sell. Nevertheless, my peer found a cup that might be more appropriate, so we decide as a group to go forth with that one. Realizing that my sketches were a failure, honestly had me frustrated and sad at first. But I knew that because I was so passionate about the design for the logo, it would only push me forward to creating an even better design, without making the same mistakes as before. Beyond all this frustration and realization I learned several things. Even though someone might not agree with my sketch I can still present it or expand on the ones presented to me. Plus during the process I learned how to draw on the computer using something called a Wacom. A Wacom is basically a device connected to the computer, but used to draw on. IT IS AMAZING! However it took awhile to get used to because it is a little more complex to use at first than grabbing a pencil and drawing on a piece of paper. Take a look at the progression --> In the IA right now our focus is business; however, this time we will be starting one of our own. We will be investing an amount of money to the business we create in order recuperate it back from the revenue we produce. In starting to do so we have to generate business ideas that we later have to pitch to the class. As I have never pitched anything before I was pretty inexperienced and nervous. My teacher presented his vision of a business for the class to start, it was an incredibly thought out idea. Corey present his pitch first, as an example for us to be inspired by and to generate new ideas from. His idea was to create a place on the FDR campus named Creative Coffee. It would be a mimic of Starbucks, but in school. The vision for his pitch was to create a place on campus where students, faculty, and parents could all go to relax and purchase snacks and beverages —mainly coffee. The idea he had sought through for the location of Creative Coffee would to be to buy an old used shipping container and use it as a pop-up store. After hearing his pitch I was shocked, but with a growth mindset I wasn’t going to let competition threaten me, I was gonna let it help me generate new ideas for my 5 minute pitch the following class. As soon as I got home that day, I was excited to start my pitch, I began researching examples of student led school business and pop-up stores. My information led me to what I decided to name “The Spot”. Catchy name right? Have you ever had an idea of a dream business, or a dream place you see can happen at your school? One of those ideas that you just can't wait to share and see what people think? Well let me pitch you mine, similarly to when I had to pitch it to my entire class. However, first I am going to paint you a canvas-- a little scenario in which you go to a school where recently it has become all healthy. By this I mean that no more sodas are sold, no more candy, and no more junk food. Slowly the school food system is being over run by a horrendously evil monopoly named Charlotte, mwahaha! Where the food and the beverages just become endlessly repetitive and your desperate for a hero to your daily meals at school. Therefore, I present to you The SPoT. A new hero in town for your daily scholarly meals. Imagine your out and about at school with your friends and one of them asks, " Hey Stefan where do you want to go?" All you have to respond is, "Let's go to The SPOT!" Now what is the spot? Well I would be delighted to inform you. It is essentially a space on campus where students, faculty, and parents can come relax and purchase some delightfully seasonal beverages. However, the year-round golden beverage would be the all natural and healthy smoothie. And where would this smoothie stand be located? Hold up right there speedy Gonzalez, after numerous amounts of research I found out three important places where you might find a pop-up stores. Below are some intriguing pop-store examples--> Narrowing my research I came down to three possible setting for possible places where the spot could be held. 1) Vacant space in malls or other commercial storefronts. This gave me the idea of: what if the spot could be in an unused classroom on campus which the IA could remodel and use for THE SPOT? This might be something interesting to investigate and talk to the school board about.
When starting the spot every IA member would have to break up in to teams/roles. These roles vary through out the project. These are the roles--> Ending with three key components do you find this pitch: Desirable? Feasible? Viable?
Today marks the end of the first week of school. With that in mind, I thought of a question in relation to my goal for the year.
¿Did I challenge myself? did I apply the growth mindset that I learned and am still learning by experience? Never have I ever been so glad to say YES! While we were assigning roles during iWeek, I remembered hearing one of my colleagues say, "Who wants to present?" Immediately, I froze. I felt every inch of my body tighten and shy away. I felt like a squeezed sponge, now small and hidden. At first I rejected the Idea of presenting, like the water squeezed from the sponge. Nevertheless, I quickly remembered --> WWAGMD (What would a growth mindset do) In the midst of shying away I shot up like a rocket and the words came out of me; I knew it was my growth mindset speaking, "I would be willing to try". All my peers that had been with me the year before knew how much I got nervous while presenting. However, I knew this time I had to step up for the challenge. The only way I could ever become a better presenter was to keep trying, not caring if I failed but knowing that I gave it my best effort. Stepping up for the challenge to present resulted with me being in charge of the presentation. Filling in these big shoes, I had to act like a leader. "A leader is a dealer in hope." ~ Napoleon Bonaparte Dealing hope to those who believed in the presentation itself and in me presenting it. Also to those who were presenting beside me, I had to step it up! I practiced and practiced, the night before, the night before that, and even right before the presentation. Although some may say to practice to much a presentation before might confused you, I know myself. There's never a limit to practicing, at least I have noticed this in myself and that practice paid off. I felt like a natural! SABES! iWeekTo start of the new year, the IA family has increased. Now having around 50 students or more in total between the three grade groups: 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th grade. Seemingly chaotic, the three grade groups got together to be put into 3 mixed groups. With the focus of solving a problem that new teachers, high school students, and incoming middle school students might face. The goal was to, by the end of the week, come up with a disable, feasible, and viable solution to each of the problems. The group that I was put in faced this problem: Like in any company, everyone has there specific tasks or roles to follow. Therefore, we tackled our problem by assigning specific roles. Surprisingly, we all broke up into these roles pretty naturally; as if we were an actual business.
I learned a little something about taking leadership during iWeek -->
❝Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers.❞ ~ Robin S. Sharma |
BloggerMy name is Stefan Stangl and I am originally from San Francisco, California. Currently, I am senior at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosvelt in Lima, Peru. My passions are sports and art. Personal: @Stefan6 School: @fdrinnovationacademy ♫Tweet me ♫
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June 2015
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