Upon approaching the end of the school year, Annabel elected to conclude her work as she began it: with a blog post meditating upon her work and time in Edge. Presented in its original wording, this piece speaks not only to Annabel's experience but also to the environment of Edge more generally. Thank you, Annabel, for sharing your wise words. You are braver than all of us.
The definition of a pattern is a repeated, decorative design. The first thing that you normally think of is paisleys, optical illusions, jagged lines, a lot of circles in circles that are in circles, etc. I joined a program, and for a full year I looked at the idea of patterns beyond the obvious. This is what I have learned. I am going to electrocute you with knowledge. This is my last and final Edge blog post for the year, and I want to make it special. So I thought of a couple of things, which will tie everything together. Everything here does connect.
Conspiracies are big. They can go from a well-known president being shot to who caused 9/11 (or who took down the World Trade Center). Conspirators are people who look up information and go more in-depth with the knowledge they seek. They find certain spots that seem to connect everything together and say, “This is it! Here is my point of view on the story.” One of the conspiracies I want to debunk right now - because my peers and I have been told and asked about this many times - is this belief that Edge students do not do any work. Edge kids do actual work. We do more work than what is expected from typical classroom habits.
One of the many qualities of human nature is neophobia, or the fear of trying new things. People think that children must be sat down in front of a teacher and learn everything only according to that hierarchy, not allowing the child to go and figure out the information for themselves. This idea of a child being free can seem like the end of the world. The apocalypse. This must seem like doomsday to most teachers, parents, and traditionalists. Well, we Edge students do sit and think. But we don’t do just that. We talk to our three advisors and tell them what we have learned. In Edge we also collaborate with our peers. If you don’t believe me by the end of what I wrote, then I have no clue what to say. It is all just your opinion.
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| Annabel's conception of fractals, The Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci Sequence, above. Image shared with the permission of Annabel. |
Conspiracies are big. They can go from a well-known president being shot to who caused 9/11 (or who took down the World Trade Center). Conspirators are people who look up information and go more in-depth with the knowledge they seek. They find certain spots that seem to connect everything together and say, “This is it! Here is my point of view on the story.” One of the conspiracies I want to debunk right now - because my peers and I have been told and asked about this many times - is this belief that Edge students do not do any work. Edge kids do actual work. We do more work than what is expected from typical classroom habits.
One of the many qualities of human nature is neophobia, or the fear of trying new things. People think that children must be sat down in front of a teacher and learn everything only according to that hierarchy, not allowing the child to go and figure out the information for themselves. This idea of a child being free can seem like the end of the world. The apocalypse. This must seem like doomsday to most teachers, parents, and traditionalists. Well, we Edge students do sit and think. But we don’t do just that. We talk to our three advisors and tell them what we have learned. In Edge we also collaborate with our peers. If you don’t believe me by the end of what I wrote, then I have no clue what to say. It is all just your opinion.
We have passed down knowledge to the next generation in a similar formation to hunting and gathering. I am still digging deeper into this idea, but the gist of it is that we as humans - if you believe in the idea of evolution - started to hunt and gather knowledge and pass it down to the next generation. We kept on doing this until we settled down into farmland and started to invent things like domestication and duplicating crops. After about 5,000 years or so, we sat down and created optional schools for children at a young age. This went into the factory system, which was invented in the 1800s. We started changing this idea in the 2000s and 2010s. But...this idea is not stopping.
Another thing, which I scratched the surface of, is fractals. This is a pattern where you see something and it keeps on repeating the more and more you get into it. Like, irrational numbers whose origins come from the Greeks. Like the commonly used Pi or phi. Wait! You never heard of Phi? (Gasps from the nonexistent crowd) Well, phi is 1.181639887498948 … this could go on forever because it is an irrational number. But the main reason why it is important is because it is used in the idea of the golden spiral. This is a spiral where the pattern starts at 0. Then you add 0 to 1 (0+1=1), and add 1 to 1 (1+1=2), and add 1 to 2 (1+2=3), and 2 to 3, and then 3 to 5, and so on. If you don’t get that pattern, here it is in simplified form: add the number before to the answer that you got before. To the left is an example of what I am talking about. The pattern is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, etc.. This is just one of the many examples I have found in my learning about fractals.
Learning about certain topics is a big pattern too. I am going to give an example. Say you want to become an English major. “English” is a very broad topic. You look at certain books, and you notice that you are very into science fiction. In a manner of speaking, you just hit about ten birds with one stone. Deadpool-style. With two guns, while we’re at it. But you are still stuck because this is still a big topic. So you say you want to look at Apocalypses. Good, you just killed 10 more birds. But here is the problem: what do you want to write about apocalypses? Another 10 birds after research. Editing part of the process? 10 birds. But then you ‘finish’ or summarize what you learned. That would be the end of a hundred of birds you just killed. (By the way, no birds were harmed in the creating of this description).
But what is the point of me joining Edge? Well, for one reason. To learn about something which I would otherwise never have had the opportunity for. I started out in a normal public school and stayed there for about 10 years. Never really knowing how to read like others, like the teacher’s “factory” way, or to do anything that is considered “normal” (which was go into a classroom and stare at a page for a long time thinking ‘what is this?’). I had some very bad times in that school district, but there was a new opportunity presented to me. That was, transferring to a new school. There I was slowly able to grow. I felt something going on. Like, there is a part of a pattern that we are all missing. For me, something very important was missing. So, I joined Edge thinking that creative writing was my passion, my main pattern. Patterns, on the other hand, would be something I did for art. Then I looked more into patterns. One day one of my advisors, Ms. Charlap, told me about this thing called Fractals. I worked my butt off trying to figure them out. I became a very complex, modern pattern master. Even though I am still trying to learn it, I am picking it up slowly.
I also had an opportunity to help fix a pattern. If you do not know, I am dyslexic. So, I am trying to learn how to read. It is a slow and super hair-raising, tedious process, but I am making strides. I was able to read a paper about my life story to convince senators to sign a form that would help the next generation. This bill would make teachers know about dyslexia in school and is called the A9116. I compared my learning and how I was trying to learn to using a scythe, a trowel, and a shovel. I need to find which tool let me dig effectively for my treasure of knowledge. I really did hope for the best. I then realized: a couple months later, this was a part of a pattern that helped fix the world.
If you have not noticed, I have been italicizing certain words throughout this piece. These are the words that I have been italicizing: conspiracy, qualities, knowledge, fractals, learning, opportunity and fix. These all do connect into one big project. Everything that I have written about is just the beginning to a big pattern that I am up against. And I will still be up against it. It is a never-ending fight to learn something new.
There is one word to describe all of those words, and that is realization. One of my greatest inspirations through my learning is Leonardo Da Vinci. He is dyslexic just like me. He founded this quote that helps connect this entire essay and my morals for my Edge project together: “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."
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| Annabel's calculations using the Fibonacci Sequence, above. Image shared with the permission of Annabel. |
Learning about certain topics is a big pattern too. I am going to give an example. Say you want to become an English major. “English” is a very broad topic. You look at certain books, and you notice that you are very into science fiction. In a manner of speaking, you just hit about ten birds with one stone. Deadpool-style. With two guns, while we’re at it. But you are still stuck because this is still a big topic. So you say you want to look at Apocalypses. Good, you just killed 10 more birds. But here is the problem: what do you want to write about apocalypses? Another 10 birds after research. Editing part of the process? 10 birds. But then you ‘finish’ or summarize what you learned. That would be the end of a hundred of birds you just killed. (By the way, no birds were harmed in the creating of this description).
But what is the point of me joining Edge? Well, for one reason. To learn about something which I would otherwise never have had the opportunity for. I started out in a normal public school and stayed there for about 10 years. Never really knowing how to read like others, like the teacher’s “factory” way, or to do anything that is considered “normal” (which was go into a classroom and stare at a page for a long time thinking ‘what is this?’). I had some very bad times in that school district, but there was a new opportunity presented to me. That was, transferring to a new school. There I was slowly able to grow. I felt something going on. Like, there is a part of a pattern that we are all missing. For me, something very important was missing. So, I joined Edge thinking that creative writing was my passion, my main pattern. Patterns, on the other hand, would be something I did for art. Then I looked more into patterns. One day one of my advisors, Ms. Charlap, told me about this thing called Fractals. I worked my butt off trying to figure them out. I became a very complex, modern pattern master. Even though I am still trying to learn it, I am picking it up slowly.
I also had an opportunity to help fix a pattern. If you do not know, I am dyslexic. So, I am trying to learn how to read. It is a slow and super hair-raising, tedious process, but I am making strides. I was able to read a paper about my life story to convince senators to sign a form that would help the next generation. This bill would make teachers know about dyslexia in school and is called the A9116. I compared my learning and how I was trying to learn to using a scythe, a trowel, and a shovel. I need to find which tool let me dig effectively for my treasure of knowledge. I really did hope for the best. I then realized: a couple months later, this was a part of a pattern that helped fix the world.
If you have not noticed, I have been italicizing certain words throughout this piece. These are the words that I have been italicizing: conspiracy, qualities, knowledge, fractals, learning, opportunity and fix. These all do connect into one big project. Everything that I have written about is just the beginning to a big pattern that I am up against. And I will still be up against it. It is a never-ending fight to learn something new.
There is one word to describe all of those words, and that is realization. One of my greatest inspirations through my learning is Leonardo Da Vinci. He is dyslexic just like me. He founded this quote that helps connect this entire essay and my morals for my Edge project together: “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."
