Personal Project

Investigating:For my personal project, I am chose to identify the ways in which westernization has affected immigrants in America, learn ways on how to sustain culture, teach others how to do so, and produce a book and website that others can refer and get help from. I will research, design and share through this entire project process.My culture has always been an interest and something I love about myself and my family, and it is a goal of mine to become more knowledgeable about my culture. Throughout my daily life, I have noticed it’s a lot more different than the average person living in America.

I eat different foods, act differently, and there are even 3 languages spoken around me everyday. My entire life I have just lived with this lifestyle without actually knowing how it all came to be. With this method of teaching others how to sustain their own cultures, I am able to be more involved with my culture and I can learn to appreciate it even if others think it is a little weird or different.I consider the goal of researching my culture, and teaching others about it and how to sustain it is very challenging because it isn’t just gonna be a one time thing where I do something and then it’s over. It will be an ongoing thing in not only my life, but everyone who I reached out to will be affected as well. I have to learn about effective ways to sustain my culture that will benefit my family and other families.

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My goal is highly challenging because it will also help me out with my planning skills and will force me to stay organized in order to achieve my goal. Identities and Relationships is the global context that I chose to select. In this global context you get to learn about yourself and others better. In this project, I will find a more details about my culture that I didn’t know before. I will be able to see my what I know and what I don’t know about my culture. Overtime, I can connect with other people by teaching others as well as my website.

My relationships with my community which include family and friends can grow as I continue to teach others about sustaining culture. Those who view it can tell me how they feel about it and give me their feelings about the whole idea.I wanted to achieve not losing culture after immigrants have moved to America, by straying away the American culture. One of the ways I can do this is by helping both myself and my cousins have a better understanding of my culture. In addition, I want to inspire others to do the same thing and take an effort to sustain their own cultures.

By exploring my own culture and teaching my own family, I can affect an even bigger community, not just people who have the same culture as me.In order to reach my goal, my prior knowledge is needed. Of course, I have prior knowledge of my general culture, what food we eat, what a holiday or celebration looks like, what languages are spoken. By knowing these things, it made me realize how I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. I couldn’t cook the foods that we eat, I don’t know why we have such big celebrations, and I can barely understand arabic and chaldean.

Also, I recently learned that westernization is a problem for immigrants who have come to America. They are starting to lose their culture and have started to adopt a more bland way of life. This project relates to my World Studies course in my freshman year where we learned about how westernization has affected different places around the world. Another class I have prior knowledge from is a culture class that I took in 8th grade where we studied the history of different cultures.The way to succeed in my project is by being organized and under any circumstances I cannot procrastinate.

I created a timeline where I spread out all the things I need to do and when they need to be done. By keeping everything planned out and organized, I won’t procrastinate and I will stay on track.I started my research by looking into the many sources such as gale resources, youtube, websites, and articles. Most of the resources on the gale database have either a lot of information, or little to no information on them. There are some sources where I already knew everything on that source. For example, the source Chaldean Americans by Mary C. Sengstock specifically went into detail about the history and culture, which I had already knew from prior knowledge, so I couldn’t use it to my benefit.

Another source called Greek and Middle Eastern Diet by Mohammed-reza Forouzesh was very helpful for me because I needed a guide to health and nutrition, but I wanted it to be different than other basic dishes, specifically middle eastern dishes, which is exactly what that was. Also, it is a great resource to learn about middle eastern cuisine in general. Although I had so much prior knowledge on the topic, it has encouraged me to not depend on it so much.

I was able to combine my understanding with real life and what I saw in the research. One of the ways I have applied my learning is by getting another source, my family. This also can test if my sources were reliable. My parents and everyone before them were born and raised in Iraq, so they are primary sources, which are the most reliable. I applied my knowledge of the sources by asking questions to my family and seeing if the answers match up with the sources information. This new information has allowed me to see a new world outside of my prior knowledge, and explore new skills that I will develop creativity and innovation with to make my project successful. I also think my communications skills are very important for this project because I want to be able to collaborate with my family since they grew up making my cultures food, which makes them have a better understanding of the culture.

Planning:My criteria consists of 5 tasks, I will teach others ways on how westernization has affected immigrants in America and how to sustain their culture, create a website to inform others on my topic, take various pictures of the steps in how to make the food, create a cookbook use a survey to get feedback, and create a tri-fold for the final expedition. For creating an effective session of teaching others to cook as well as making a cookbook, it needs to include details and effective research about cultural recipes that will benefit the readers. I will have my cookbook checked by my grandma and some of my relatives who are well experienced in cooking ethnic dishes for their entire lives. Producing pictures will give my audience a better visual and understanding of my product. To test the quality of my product, I will have inexperienced individuals look at my cookbook and pictures. I will make sure to receive feedback and what majority of people think I should add to improve my quality of my content and will take that into account.

A great portion of my project it my website which will display all the recipes that are being put into my cookbook. I will evaluate it with family members who are unfamiliar with the IB criteria. Lastly, I will create a checklist for items that I may or may not want to put in my cookbook as well as on my website.My action plan is having a to do list and getting everything done on time and avoiding procrastination. In the future if I need to change it, I will add more or less to it as I obtain a better understanding of how my project it going to play out.

Towards the beginning, I have put down some basic tasks that need to be finished and are essential for the foundation of my project. This will be over the course of a couple months because my actual project it going to be done during December. To manage my time, I made deadlines for every single task so I can little by little instead of one big task, and make sure to follow it. As I said before, these deadlines will give me assurance to get it done and not put anything off. At this moment, I have the website made but I still have to find what recipes I will be putting in my cookbook and website which it very important because I want to have popular, cultural recipes that many will love.

Many time I have edited my to do list to make it more detailed and effective to benefit my project. By adding more things it will give me more organization and more stuff to do, however it will be difficult, especially having school work other daily activities, which will have to change for the project.It will be hard to maintain motivation throughout session to push myself to have a good attitude while teaching my cousins. I reflect throughout my project and it pushes me to realize what things I have been doing wrong and not putting much effort in. Reflecting makes me ask myself more questions about the outcome of the entire project improve a lot more. With reflecting it made me go back and reanalyze my decisions and make sure it is valuable to my project.

I can address my thought process to improve my project even more.Taking Action: The goals in my project and the global context work hand in hand, my global context is Identities and Relationship. The goal of working out and finding out how much I really know about my culture will bring out the Identities part of the global context. The relationship part of the global context is taken place in the part where I create my blog and connect with other people who view my blog. The global context guides me in the process of my project. It has helped me in my research process, when making my cookbook I consider my strengths and weakness and what is realistic for people.

It makes me think of things in more a realistic ways instead of an idealistic way. In the process of designing the cookbook, I made it more interactive so the relationships between my viewers and myself will grow. The criteria of designing a cookbook, creating a blog is very supportive of the overall project of learning how to cook ethnic recipes and teaching others how to sustain culture.Through the process of designing of my cookbook, I used my thinking skills and thought of realistic ways that would benefit all types of cultures.

I am open-minded and believe that I was able to design a cookbook that will be flexible for different ethnicities around the world. People can use it as a way to gain more recipes or even try to sustain their own cultures. The website helps everyone who’s looking for quality recipes find it when researching. The tri fold I will create will have the main highlights of my project. It shows my thinking skills of being organized.

In my project I used excellent communication by expressing my ideas to my teachers and people I know who are from other countries. I’ve had meeting with many of my family members who help me edit my cookbook and make it most effective but something that is capable and efficient to be done by people. I will speak to my grandma especially and see what I should add that would heighten the experience of the overall project. My collaboration skills has improved over time since I worked with many people and put effort into taking in as many ideas as possible into consideration.Reflection:My first criteria was to teach others ways on how westernization has affected immigrants in America and how to sustain their culture. I believe I have achieved the criteria to a great extent because I was able to inform my cousins on how countless immigrants come to America and lose a substantial sense of their culture. The next criteria was to create a website for others to access.

My website had a variety of cultural middle eastern recipes which could inspire many to take part in sustaining their own cultures. My third criteria was fulfilled to a great extent because my survey easily showed that many people are being affected by westernization. My next criteria was my cookbook. I think my cookbook was very efficiently executed and it is a great source for my family and I to use.

In addition, it is a physical object that can be passed down for generations. My tri-fold poster achieved my criteria to a great extent because it presents the all criteria for the written report, as well as pictures of me taking action. Overall, all of my criteria have been achieved.

While researching my project I became aware of many different other religions and ethnicities in the middle east. Firstly, I learned that there are many Christian monotheistic religions in the middle east. Opposite of what I and many others think, Chaldeans are not the only middle eastern and Christian religion culture, Chaldeans only reside from Iraq. Another key learning I obtained from this project is how I am now aware of how much people are losing their cultures, and I will continue to make efforts to sustain my own.Throughout the project, I got substantial knowledge from my global contexts. I learned that identities and relationship focuses on exploring yourself or others and what their identity is, how did they come to be. The relation between the global context and my project helped me understand personal and cultural expression more.

My project consisted of me using my culture to express my creativity through cooking and teaching others.As an IB Learner, I developed a lot after completing my personal project by becoming a more knowledgeable student. Prior to my research, I was unaware of the significance of the how westernization is affecting families throughout the U.S. With research I was able to gain knowledge on this topic and I think everyone should take an effort to sustain their cultures.

Through becoming a more knowledgeable student, I am now able to inform others about westernization.