Yesterday

Well yesterday, I completely forgot to post what I did. So, I am going to do that now. We searched the Carnegie Library website yesterday for some books that may be useful to our projects. We were to find two books, but I ended up finding at least five. There are so many sources that back up my information. That's a good thing because I will never run out of useful information. I hope I can get these books when I am there tomorrow and possibly find some very useful information. I can't wait to go and find these books. They sound really good.

Here are the books I have found so far:

• The glass ceiling: a look at women in the workforce
• Mommy Wars: stay-at-home and career moms face off their choices, their lives, their families
• The stay-at-home mom's guide to making money: how to create the business that's right for you using the skills and interests you already have
• The milk memos: how real moms have learned to mix business with babies - and how you can too
• How she really does it: secrets of successful stay-at-work moms

The Main Essential Question

Today, we were listening to the presentations of everyone else in the class. Now I have an idea about all of the project ideas. I have to say that most of them were really good ideas. But other than that, I was finishing up my foundation questions and my main essential question. I think that they are pretty good, at least I hope they are.

Essential Question: How do women affect family life by entering the workforce?

• What are the advantages of stay-at-home moms?
  
• Who is affected other than the families when women work?
  
• How much do women work each day?
  
• How much time do working women spend with their families each day?
  
• Are women still facing the glass ceiling in the workforce?
  
• How much money would women make if they were paid for everything they do at home?
  
• What sis the percentage of working women compared to stay-at-home moms?
  
• Do children do better in school when they have working moms or stay-at-home moms?
  
• How old is the average women when she enters the workforce?
  
• How much stress is caused from working moms?

Essential Questions and FAQs

I know, I am so far behind in my blogging. I have a lot of catching up to do. But today we worked on our Essential questions and our FAQs. Tomorrow we will be presenting our idea for our grad projects and showing the class our blogs. I guess that is why I need to catch up so badly. Last week I finished my webliography and even had Mrs. Fossum look at it to see if there was anything that needed to be changed. It turned out that there were two annotations that needed to be cut out of my webliography and two more needed to be done to take the place of the other ones. So I worked on that for quite a while. I have been do my best to have everything done on time this trimester, and so far, I am doing better in this class than any of my others. Even though there is a lot of work to be done in here. I think I might already have my Essential question, but things could always change when you run them past Mrs. Fossum.

Webliography

Well our first annotation that we did was just a sample so that we could see how they would look and what they were to include. But now, we have to have 10 annotations by Thursday to make up our webliography. Thursday is when we will turn in our rough draft and we will have two people look at them and help make corrections. The final copy of our webliographies are due on Friday.

Sample Annotations

Today we had to do annotations in class. Well, at least one annotation. It was a sample that Mrs. Fossum wanted to see before we did all ten of them. It is actually pretty easy, just very time consuming.

Robo, Regina. "Salary.com." Dream Job: Stay-at-Home Mom. Copyright 2000-2005. Salary.com, Inc. Thursday, May 10, 2007. http://www.salary.com/careers/layouthtmls/crel_display_Cat10_Ser253_Par358.html

• Salary.com provided very good information about stay-at-home moms. It mentioned in the first paragraph, how there was a woman that never dreamed about being a stay-at-home mom because she was so caught up in the business world. There was also a chart in the article that shows all of the things that moms do and what the salary for that job is. It also gives statistics about stay-at-home dads vs. stay-at-home moms. This website will help me with information on all of the things that women do each day. It will also help me see some of the changes women have to make from being a working mom to being a stay-at-home mom. The entire article will be of great benefit to my project because I can compare the information from this article to the experiences of the people that I will be interviewing.

MLA Citations

Today we had to work on the MLA citations for the links that we have on our blogs. I have so many of them on here now that I didn't know which ones to do first. So I kinda worked from the top, well, the third one down. So here are three of them...

Robo, Regina. "Salary.com." Dream Job: Stay-at-Home Mom. Copyright 2000-2005. Salary.com, Inc. Thursday, May 10, 2007. http://www.salary.com/careers/layouthtmls/crel_display_Cat10_Ser253_Par358.html

Tahmincioglu, Eve. “Workforce Management.” When Women Rise. September 2004. Crain Communications, Inc. Thursday, May 10, 2007. http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/23/83/13/index.html

McKay, Dawn. “About: Career Planning.” Women Face Glass Ceiling in Hiring. 2007. About, Inc. Thursday, May 10, 2007. http://careerplanning.about.com/od/forwomenonly/a/glass_ceiling_2.htm

Approved!!!

Well my letter of intent was approved today. Mrs. Fossum and I came to the conclusion that I would do a documentary for my final product of my grad project too. I will do an interview of people on both sides of my topic: Stay-at-home moms, as well as mothers that worked while their kids were growing up. Right now I have a really good friend that has a six-month-old baby and a two year old and she is always on the run. She works 12 hour days sometimes and is even called in to work weekends. She misses her children so much and you can tell that the kids are suffering from not having their mother around enough. It seems as if she is home to go to bed or grab a quick bite to eat and she is right back out the door. So I think that I will interview her as the working mother, as well as a few others. I still have to find someone that was a stay-at-home mom and interview her. But that can happen later. Right now I have to work on the assignments given to me. Today I finished the poster for my topic. If you get what I will be working on completely just by looking at the picture, then my poster was a success. I hope you enjoy it.

Topic Poster

So today we had to start a poster that has pictures and words that describe our graduation project. Since I am going to be doing my project on women in the workforce, I think I will have a couple of graphs that show some differences between women in the workforce and stay-at-home moms. I hope I can find some somewhere. But the Internet is so broad that I don't think I should have a problem finding anything. It is due tomorrow so I will upload the poster then so that everyone can see it.

Letter of Intent

So today in class we had to write a letter explaining what we wanted to do for our grad project. It had to explain what we wanted our topic to be, where we would get our research from, what our final project would be on, and that we agreed not to plagiarize any of the information that we obtained from any source. It was a very easy day in class today. We spent the whole class working on those letters. The only concern I have for the time being is that I don't know how I want to do my final project. Mrs. Fossum gave good suggestions though. I think I might use one of them. She said that I could do something like a documentary or even a web site that explained the differences between women that work and those that don't. I'm not sure which one I want to do, but they are both very good suggestions. Thanks Mrs. Fossum.

If Men Payed Women for Everything They Do...

So I did some research today on just some of the things women do (outside of work). If men were to pay women for everything they do, how much would it cost them? Well...the following information is from May 2004.

• Housekeeper:
  - $16,820/year
  
• Chauffeur:
  - $8.48/hour
  - $74,284/year
  
• Dry-cleaner:
  - $8.28/hour
  - $72,532/year
  
• Chef:
  - $12.00/hour
  - $105,120/year
  
• Banker:
  - $23,900/year
  
• Landscaper:
  - $16.99/hour
  - $148,832/year

Total: $441,488/year

And those are just a few of many things that women do every day. So I will be posting more things they do, with the yearly earnings, and by the time I am done with my project, women will be filthy rich!

Senior Comments and Suggestions

• Narrow your topic so that it is not as broad
• Have beginning and end points (Point A, Point B)
  - How (your topic) progressed
• Get involved in your project
• Use internships if possible
• Use all the resources that are available to you
• Don't make your project similar to anyone else's project
  - Yours will be compared to others'
• Do something to capture the audience's attention
• Don't pick something you don't like
• Don't waste time
  - Work the whole class
• Have a set idea by 12th grade
• When you schedule your presentation day...
  - Don't put it off to the last day
  - Pick one of the first days because you won't stress as much
• Ask to video tape another project so you know what your situation will be like before you present.
• Pick something people will remember
• Think to yourself...
  - "How will I remember a project the best?"
• Pictures last forever!
• There will be many nagging teachers
• Use other teachers
  - Have other teachers that don't know about your project read your paper
  - If they get the point, then you have succeeded.

These are some of the points that the seniors brought out that I thought were interesting and very useful for completing my grad project.