SEEQS Portfolio Defense

Reasoning Analytically - ʻEleu

My Understanding

To me, the sustainability skill Reasoning Analytically means to be able to use your background knowledge to find evidence that would help you support your claim or idea. Reasoning Analytically is a skill that helps you go deeper into explaining your understanding and perspective. This skill will help you learn about other people's perspective and understanding too. If you have mastered this skill, you are able to “break problems into parts that can be named, studied, and understood. You make judgments based not on unexamined opinions, but on the review of data and the weighing of evidence.” In my own definition, this means to be able to give reasons and examples about your claim and work. You are able to ask questions that help bring out more perspectives and different truths.

A counterexample of Reasoning Analytically would be to write an informational text with information that you came up with from your own bias. For example, you may be trying to research who the greatest players in the NFL are. Instead of actually looking for statistics to prove that a certain player is good or not, you just write about how much you like that certain player. You would be telling people information that isn't based off of facts, but based off of your own opinion. If you were a person who didn't Reason Analytically, you would also only be gathering information from one source. You would be against looking at what other information there may be and just focusing on one topic and source. All those examples are against the definition of Reasoning Analytically.

My Growth

I have grown in Reasoning Analytically in my years at SEEQS. In 6th grade, I was introduced to the skill and adapted it to what I had learned in Elementary school. At Waikiki Elementary School, we learned about the Habits of the Mind. One of the habits that there were was called “Questioning and Posing Problems”. The summary of this skill was:

“What evidence do you have…..?”
“How do you know that’s true?”
“How reliable is this data source?”

When I remembered that skill, I thought that Reasoning Analytically was the same thing. And I wasn't completely wrong. I do still think that Reasoning Analytically is to convey evidence, a claim, and a warrant. It is still about how it is important knowing if a source is credible or not. I think the skill is also still asking the question “how do I know if that's true?” The reason for why I still think that is because when you want to provide evidence and give good reasons for actions and claims, it all starts with a question. Whether it’s “Is this true”, or, “ Why is that?'' are questions that start the path to Reasoning Analytically. The more you start to ask questions, the more you will learn about different perspectives. As I got to learn more and more about the skill Reasoning Analytically, I began to realize that there were more steps.

In 7th grade, my Conflict and Resolutions class was one of the classes that helped me learn more of the steps needed to Reason Analytically. One of the main steps I began to discover was learning about credibility and reliability. Since I was in 6th grade, I wasn't really taught a lot about how to find out if certain sites are credible or not. So when I got in this class in 7th grade, Mr. David taught me a lot because to this day, I still use it.

In one of our recent 8th grade ELA/Social Studies classes, we worked on this trail of research assignment. We were asked to research and start our path to writing an informational text. In 7th grade, I learned about the 8 spiders story. This story is basically about how people can pass down false information based on what they heard or read. Most people believe people swallow 8 spiders while they sleep in their lifetime. What we learned was that this rumor was spread in writing, although it was not true. This taught me that you can not always trust what you read or watch on the internet. In order to make sure what you are reading about is true, you need to do research. I am now using those skills that I have learned in my future academics and even out of school.

These projects helped me grow in my understanding of Reasoning Analytically because after this project, I was able to discover a different step in Reasoning Analytically. Researching is a crucial part of Reasoning Analytically. Through this work, I realized that when researching, you are backing up your claim. You are finding different ways to prove what you are saying is right. If you can master your ability to research and question a site's credibility, then you are getting one step closer to mastering Reasoning Analytically.

For example, now I Reason Analytically when I am having debates with my family. An example is debating about how the US is handling Covid-19. Before debating, I would use research to find facts from a reliable source such as watching the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. (The daily show is a source that I like to use when hearing about global news. This source is very reliable because it is being reviewed by several articles and websites) I use reasons and ideas to identify bigger ideas to explain them clearly. I do research, see if the information I am finding is true or not, and then I make a claim. When I am in my family debates, I am able to sound professional and confident.

Reasoning Analytically will help me in the future when I am needing to write informative essays and help make beneficial and accurate choices in my life. I will be able to reason with myself and hopefully make the right choices based on research and evidence. This skill will help unlock my potential to sound clear and understandable. I will have my claim, evidence, and my ability to look at different perspectives. When I want to learn about something happening in the world, I want to look at a variety of news sources, even those I may think I disagree with. For example, I don't really like to watch FOX news, because they have been caught for misreporting and lying several times. But when I want to hear more information, I will listen to what they say so that I might learn something new. I put my bias aside and stick to listening and gathering information from different sources. I know that there can be several different sides to a story. This is an example on how you sometimes need to look at different perspectives.

When you are Reasoning Analytically, you can not be narrow minded. You need to be able to zoom out and take different pieces of information. You then need to sort them out into categories that are true or not. When I would want to talk about global warming happening on earth, I would want to gather a lot of information about global warming from many sources. Then I would take that information and organize it to see if it is true or not. Then, when I have a lot of true data and evidence about what global warming is affecting on earth, then I would have a claim that is being backed up. Reasoning Analytically is getting more and more adapted into my mind as I try to ask and solve different questions.

What Project Helped Me Grow

The project that helped me grow in Reasoning Analytically was in 7th Grade Peace and Conflict Resolution class with Mr. David. This class in particular was about Sierra Leone. In the class, me and my partner Michael represented the country of India in the UN (United Nations). The end goal of the assignment is to have a final vote that is saying if your country will intervene in Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone is a country in West Africa, on the Atlantic Ocean. Sierra Leone is known for their trading of slaves. One of the biggest problems that the people in Sierra Leone face is the threat of the army. It's the violence from the army and being forced to join the army against the people's will. The RUF (Revolutionary United Front) is the army is Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone, the RUF is responsible for acts of murder, mutilation, rape, looting, and abduction against the civilian population. Groups of the army in Sierra Leone are recognized for their ability to kidnap children and drug them into soldiers. They kidnap kids from ages to 9 and older to fight in the army. They give the children drugs to feel less energized and dizzy. They put a gun in their hand and send them off to battle. Children suffer and act as slaves to the men. Our debate in this project as the UN, was to determine whether we would intervene in Sierra Leone and try to help the children and people escape from the army and battles.

I started this assignment by talking with my partner Michael about the problems happening in Sierra Leone. Some problems we identified were how people were treated and if helping them would impact us. For example, we also talked about what would happen if we didn't intervene. Some examples we found were that if we didn't interfere, we would probably take away the risk of ending up making things even worse in Sierra Leone. We had no idea what side effects there may be if we started a fight with Sierra Leone.

We discussed whether or not Sierra Leone would even let us into their country and allow us to help. My group mates and I knew that we had to establish a concrete plan regarding how we would help. When thinking about this, we did research. We looked up what specific demands of the people in Sierra Leone. We learned that there were many solider groups.

Based on that information we knew, we were going to need a lot of firepower. We would need our own army. We thought about what the possible outcomes could be. We reasoned with ourselves. Would we try to intervene? My partner Michael, had the idea to make blood diamonds have less value so that the slaves in that country would have less labor and have more of a chance to be free. I had the idea of sending our army troops to go to Sierra Leone and capture the slaves and provide them safer homes. To make the final decision, my partner and I needed to think about where the safer place would be to keep the slaves and children soldiers in the world. I thought about keeping them in India until more of the UN troops would come and wipe out the terrorist group in Sierra Leone. The UN would also probably arrest the Governor and RUF for child abuse and other violence actions.

When we thought about all these situations I realized that I was really starting to finalize my understanding in the skill Reasoning Analytically. I was building up a concrete definition because I was asking questions. I was doing my research. I was making sure that my information was true. I was making a claim. I had evidence. I was Reasoning Analytically. Our claim was that we wanted to interfere with the problem in Sierra Leone.

Our evidence was that we wanted to do the right thing. We wanted to help save those kids. After this class we knew that we had enough strength in the UN to take down the RUF. We had a plan to make sure that we could protect the people and (more importantly) children in Sierra Leone.

Finally, after Michael and I knew that we wanted to help, we placed our vote into the class. Everyone also wanted to do something about it. We were all asking and answering the same questions. I was following the points of the skill Reasoning Analytically. I grew at the skill in this project and will continue to use the skill in the future.

How This Project Relates To the Skill

I used Reasoning Analytically in this project when I had to provide reasons regarding how India is affected by Sierra Leone. In that assignment, I wrote that the situation in Sierra Leone affects India from a global perspective, the economic impact shows that 7.7% of India's Imports are from Sierra Leone. And India exports 5.9% to Sierra Leone. This means that they have an impact (small impact) on India's Import and Exports and since Sierra Leone is exporting a lot of materials for machinery, without Sierra Leone, India may have less machinery and technology. If India does not help in this situation, other countries in the UN would probably think that India is being a uneffective member because our country would be refusing to help people in this world. Since the whole goal of the UN is to provide peace and stop conflict, India would not be following that norm which would later probably lead to India getting kicked out of the UN. I Reasoned Analytically here because I had to reason with myself to make the right choice. I examined my options and chose the one that had the most logic. I also Reasoned Analytically when I gave exact numbers and quantitative data that was in the slides and put that information and data in my response. I was making sure that all of my data was being supported by my reasons and evidence for why it is true and accurate.

I believe I understood the situation in Sierra Leone because I was able to put myself into Sierra Leone's children's shoes. I had to imagine the pain and suffering that they had gone through in order to live. I used that feeling to provide my reasonings and give myself a better chance to write with empathy and to understand. This helped my writing largely because of how empathy for other people in Sierra Leone. I was able to use data to prove my point. I think this is an important step of Reasoning Analytically because if you are able to prove your point and back up what you are saying based on research and reasoning, you are Reasoning Analytically.

I can continue to improve my skills by giving more examples from resources when making a claim or stance. I can even go into other sources and get information from them to support my answers. When Reasoning Analytically, you want to make sure that you are making the right choices. To ensure that you are doing that, you need to do research. Just like what I have done in my UN project.

If I did not Reason Analytically in this project then I would have made a decision that probably didn't have much thinking into it. It would have been a reckless choice. I probably would have just done whatever came up to my head. Ignoring the several different options, not caring about what other people in my class or group had to say, and not thinking about the ways of how my choice may affect the people of Sierra Leone. I also would not have been asking the right questions. Instead of asking questions that would form a answer that would lead to a good solution (What do the citizens of Sierra Leone want from us? Have we heard about any information that would help us help them? What way would be the most safe and effective way to help the children and citizens of Sierra Leone?), I would be asking questions that had no affect of the Topic. Questions like, “Can I live in Sierra Leone?” “Is the food there good?” “What would you do if you found a blood diamond?”

This skill is important for my future when I am choosing what college I want to go to. I want to visit several different colleges so I can see what type of environment that school has. I would want to look at the certain benefits and disadvantages that the certain college may offer. For example, there may be an amazing college all the way in New York. They may have everything I want. A great acting program, great teachers, and a good price. But New York is very far away. Am I willing to be that far away from home and my family? Reasoning Analytically will help me choose the choices that are best for me. So that when I make those choices based off of data and information that I have collected, I will be proud of the decision I made.

View Other Sustainability Skill Reflections:
Managing Effectively
Communicating Powerfully
Collaborating Productively
Thinking Systemically