dg21's Learning Journey Just another Milwaukee Jewish Day School Sites site 

1. What factors can lead to poverty?

Health is one of the factors because health conditions can usually affect poverty. Education is one because of certain situations where people can’t say the right words or the right explanation. Housing and Family are one because the shelter can affect your health and health goes into poverty if your condition is bad. Geography is one because where you are also affects your health condition. for example, if you are homeless you are weak to the cold so you may get sick faster.
2. What circumstances can fuel long-term poverty?

Things that go over a year. So things like a prison. Things like health conditions. I definitely know that Diabetes is very long term.
3. How can poverty affect succeeding generations?

It can make people not have so much success in life. If your family is poor then you as a child are poor and do not have money to pay for your own personal needs. Also, you wouldn’t have anyone else in your family with any more money. Not even grandparents.
4. Which members of our society suffer most?

I say this with great sorrow but the people with dark skin suffer the most. A lot of people still do not accept black people into our world. Because of this, they are thrown out on the streets with no homes. They are left to rot.

• As someone in this experience, tell your story.  Describe your experience. Tell us about the highs and the lows.  What were your major takeaways? What did you learn? How did you like it?  Be sure to explain your answers.

At the beginning of this unit, everyone was given a random number and got to pick a random number. Each random number had one job under the number so picking jobs was totally random. I picked the CEO of an environmental company. They called me the Chief Environmental Officer. I started as what I thought was just a simple job. My job was to make sure that garbage goes in the garbage bin and recycling goes in the recycling bin. Any time someone was caught by me putting something in the wrong bin I would get to fine them. $25 per piece of waste in the wrong bin. Later in this economy, we as the class discussed how CEO’s get 360 times more pay than the average person. I and my good friend Stella just happened to be CEO. Adon Kaufman then raised both of our paychecks to a whopping 84,000 dollars! After hearing the rest of my abilities I opened jobs for my company. Sadly before I could even get them started the economy unit was over. This unit overall was a great unit and I am glad I was able to take part in it.

• How did your character’s role/situation in the game affect your ability to take care of yourself?  Think about your income, job, rent, the amount of money you had, any loans you took out, and your health situation.

My character’s role in the game helped me in this unit because my job is one that got paid a lot. For rent, I chose one of the more expensive seats so that affected me a little bit at the beginning when I didn’t make 84,000 dollars. My health situation was fine. I did not have Diabetes and I did not have Hypertension. The amount of money I soon had changed everything. I was very very wealthy. Soon after my first 84,000 dollar paycheck, I had no problems what so ever. I was RICH.

• What aspects of your character’s life encouraged success?  What aspects of your character’s life brought about failure?  Explain how that process worked.

The main aspect of my life that encouraged success was my paycheck. It was very very large and I didn’t have much to worry about because I had enough to pay for like a year of this unit. One thing that brought some failure was my character’s ability to write checks. During the unit at some points, I would write a check wrong and I would get fined at least 100 dollars. Keep in mind this is when I didn’t get 84,000 a week and I only got 670 a week. It got a little bit constant and I ended up losing a lot of money. I also was accused of level 1 crime and was sentenced to jail for 2 lunch periods. The reason being that my P and L statement was not completely updated and I didn’t have the amount I actually had.

• What attempts did you make to improve your character’s life?  How successful were these attempts? How difficult were those attempts and why?

A Common thing I tried to do (After my raise) was to try to create some jobs for my company. I only ended up hiring two people and by the time I came up with another job idea the economy unit was over. I also tried to be as helpful as possible and to help the environment as that is what my character does. These were very difficult because coming up with job ideas isn’t very easy. It had been almost 3 weeks since when I created my first job that I found a second job idea. Neither of them was very successful and even if I started actually paying the unit would have already been over.

• In bullet points, write a list of what you learned about poverty from this activity.  Be sure to include a brief description next to each item about what you learned, explaining your learning/thinking.

• Main topic: How Real Life economy works
• Eviction – Forced to leave your house
• Minimum wage – The minimum amount of money you get paid in a state or country
• Raises – What is it like to get a raise?
• CEO’s – Chief Executive Officer
• What it is like to get a job – It is a little stressful…

1. What do you like about your initial design?

I liked how we thought about how we can keep the vehicle moving. I think that our idea would work really well if we actually knew how to do it.

2. What has been challenging about the initial design?

Most of the properties or details of the sketch did not make it in. Also, the spool was much more different than I had imagined so the materials didn’t work so well.

3. How well did your racer perform in the first race? Did it go far? Fast?

It did not go very fast or very far but it surprised me. My partner and I were both thinking there was no way this would work. Later when we tested it we were surprised that it actually went a pretty far distance.

4. How will you modify your design for the second race? What variables do you feel will affect how far and fast the racer goes? Why?

We think we have the correct design just the wrong materials. We are essentially going to upgrade our design so that the body is made of wood and not cardboard.

5. What have been your strengths and challenges during the design process?

One strength I had was I could always come up with smart ideas. that brings me to the problem. I didn’t know how to implement the changes.

6. What questions do you have?

Why is something that is not a car allowed to race? I thought it was a challenge where you needed to build a car!