This is the process we took to make our tree books (photos below). First, we adopted a tree on campus, mine was named Bob. We made a poem about the tree and these poems we painted onto a mat board which turned out to be the cover of our tree book. Next we collected vines, flowers, leaves, etc., took Geli plates, and took a brayer to make a print of the plant using Akua Ink, and pasted it on paper. Then we glued the mat boards on to paper and collaged with all of our plant prints and made a super cool looking book. Next, we took our writing that we did earlier, one was called salute to my roots, where we wrote about 4 people that have had an impact on our life’s, then we wrote about 10 things we want for our future and 5 things we want for the world. Then we inserted those writings into envelopes on the book.
An artist that came to our school and helped us a lot with our tree books and deserves a lot of credit, her name is Mrs. Gignoux. She has a lot of energy and enthusiasm and her artwork is great. Here is a link to her website: https://gignouxart.com/
Creating this tree book was really fun because it was cool making the book with all my friends and having something to talk about, also it really made me realize I can do anything if I really tried. For example, when our teacher showed us what the final result of our tree books would look like before we even started I thought, “No way I can make that” but I stuck with it and made it. Writing the 3 pieces of writings helped me reflect on my life in the past and what I wanna do in the future. This was really cool.
if you can’t see my writings here they are:
Salute To My Roots:
My mom has made an amazing impact on my life. What impacts me the most about her is that I always know she loves me, and not just when she says, “I love you” but also in the way she cares for my family and me. I always know she loves me when she gets out of work early to pick me up from school or when she gets me Chick-Fil-A a on her way home. She cooks food every single day no matter how much work she has, no matter how stressed she is, and no matter how tired she is. My mom has had one of the greatest impacts on my life because she is so caring and always believes in me. I love my mom.
My dad has had a crazy big impact on my life because he’s the reason I’m so competitive and he’s the reason I’m good at basketball. I get all of my competitiveness from my dad. When I first picked up a basketball, he’s never let me win. This made me always want to win and keep working hard until I win. I never realized it but this is the reason I’m so competitive now and my competitiveness is one of the key parts that makes me good at basketball. But my dad doesn’t just make me better at basketball, he always pushes me to do better at school even if I’m already doing well. One of my favorite quotes he has said to me is, “Don’t do something until you get it right, do something until you can’t get it wrong.” Everything my dad has done is to make me better and I want to thank him for that. I love my dad.
My oldest sister Mariam has made a great impact on my life because we are so alike. We always make the same jokes, we have so many inside jokes and we always laugh at the same things. Our sense of humor is so alike and this has an impact on me because it’s really entertaining to live in the same house with someone like that. If I’m mad and I make eye contact with her we just start laughing and I can’t count the number of times she has taken me out of a bad mood. I love her for that.
My sister Sarra has also had a significant impact on me. She toughens me up for the world. The reason I don’t care when someone insults me is because my sister has already told me all I need to know about myself that isn’t perfect. She’s the reason I don’t care what other people think. My sister has told me everything that someone would say to insult me, but I know she doesn’t mean it, so when someone else says it I don’t care. If I didn’t love my sister, I would hate her. Behind all those insults is a really caring person who is really nice and kind. I love her for her honesty and her toughness.
My Wish Tree:
- My first hope is that I and everyone I care about has a happy life: One reason I want this is because I want everyone to have a happy life and reach their goals. Another reason I want this is because the people I care about deserve the greatest and I wouldn’t want to live without them.
- I hope that I am successful in my basketball career (D1, hopefully NBA): Basketball is my favorite sport and it’s really fun to me. I’m pretty good for my age and I’ve seen myself, if you keep on working you will keep on getting better. This is reassuring because if the only thing stopping me from my goal is something I can control, there’s no reason I shouldn’t achieve it.
- I want to be a person that a lot of kids look up to: Whatever I do when I grow up, I won’t be the last person to do it, therefore some kids will most likely do what I am doing and they need to have some inspiration for what they want to do. I always want to make people happy, especially younger people. So I definitely want to be in the position to make kids enthusiastic and happy about a job or subject.
- I want to live my life to the fullest: We only live once, I might as well do everything I can do. If I live life to the fullest, then I will have a lot of fun and I will enjoy life.
- I would like to live with no regrets: If I don’t do something in my life, when I’m too old to do it I will regret not doing it. Then I’ll live the rest of my life knowing I could have done it and I will have a feeling in my heart that is always wondering what it’s like. I don’t wanto to live with that feeling. I might as well do everything I can do and not regret not doing something because we only live once.
- I want to have a great family: Family is the most important thing to me. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have my family. I am hoping to build my own family and have great kids so I’ll have people that love me and I’ll love them. This kind of support system makes a great life. Another reason I would want to have a great family is to have kids, mini me’s that run around without a care in the world, someone I love with all my heart and someone that I can care for. If I’m ever in a bad mood I know kids would take me out of it with their positivity. I would love to have kids.
- Visit Greece. After learning about Greece in history class, I really want to go there because of how cool the ancient landmarks would be. Another reason I would want to go to Greece is because I could experience first hand where all the old history went down and it would be really cool.
- I’d like to go to a good college. Education is one of if not the most important things in the world, so I want to make sure I get the best of it. Going to a good college would set me up for so many things in life and I really want to have access to those things.
- One day I’d like to go skydiving. One reason I want to go skydiving is because I want to feel that feeling where before you do something you’re super scared about it but then once you do it, it would be really fun. I want to live a fun life and I wanna take risks! Life would be boring if everything I did I knew the exact outcome of how it would pan out. Skydiving would hopefully be a great experience and I think it would be really exciting.
One hope I have for the world is that world hunger is solved. So many people have suffered or died from hunger that we need to fix it. My second hope for the world is that we find a way to stop global warming. It is causing a lot of problems and I think all the leaders of the world should try and stop it if we want our grandchildren to live in a healthy world. My third hope for the world is that the world needs more jobs. Many people have no job and this leads to them not getting enough money. If new jobs open up more people will have jobs and get money. Another hope I have for the world is that habitat destruction is stopped. So many animals have gone extinct because people destroy their habitats. The world belongs to the animals too so we should respect their habitats. My final hope for the world is that racism is stopped, so many people of color are hurt because of racism and racism doesn’t stop at hateful words. So many people of color have been hurt or killed by racists, from Asian hate crimes to police shooting black people. This needs to stop.I want to have a good job if basketball doesn’t work out: There are thousands of people per class that want to go to the NBA and only 60 people get in per draft class. This means a bunch of people won’t make it and having a back up plan is a must. There is more than life to just basketball, even if I do make it and retire at 35, what am I gonna do for the rest of my life? I need a specialty other than basketball.
