Key+Elements

=== Our group has decided that our mission and vision concepts are acceptance and respect. When we think of respect, the thing that comes **to mind is manners and ettiquete. We think that if our school teaches us about other cultures, the students will learn to apreciate other customs and values and potentially become more respectful towards other people in general, no matter where they come from. They say that people are afraid of what they dont know. If we learn about these type of things, not only do the students become well rounded- but they also learn about consideration and are intrested in learning about people from other cultures. If there is lack of education and respect for other races, that may lead to hate crimes, specificly racial hate crimes since people dont know about other costums that are diffrent than theirs.**===

**Some statistics on racial hate crimes are:**

 * ===**In 2009, there were 7,789 reported hate crimes**===
 * ===**Hate crimes againts Latinos have increased from the years 2003-2007**===
 * ===**In 2007 there were 595 reported hate crimes against Hispanics.**===

1. What kind of community are we trying to create in our school and in the world? The type of commutiy that Iams is trying to create, is that of everyone coming together and sharing all of they're experiences. In the world, we are trying to teach students as much as possilble about diffrnt cultures and costums because its good to know a little bit of everything and everything we learn will help us someday in our life.
 * __ Element Three: Connection to IAMS __**
 * One of the great traditions here at Iams is Fiesta Cultural. Fiesta cultural is held every year, usually in April and what we do is all of our cultures that we have in our school come together on this event. There is food from places all over Latin America and there are special events like dancing, music and a raffle. On this day, everyone has fun and its an opportunity to learn about other customs and traditions from other countries and the whole school community is brought together. **
 * __ Element Four: Interview(s) __**
 * __ Element Five: Personal Experience __**
 * Edna: From my personal experience at Inter American, I have ineracted with students from diffrent backgrounds and had the oportunity to learn about other countries. The traditions here are very unique. The objective of our school is to teach the students about diversity and that a persons ethnicity is their identity and its something very distinguishing. Further more, having traditions, such as Fiesta Cultural, teach us about other value systems. Once we know more about diffrent practices and traditions, we are more open to them and that helps us accept the fact that there is diversity in the world and we have to respect people for who they are, no matter where they come from. **
 * __ Element Six: Personal Commitment __**
 * We are trying to build a community with in our school and make everything to make it more united. We have all doing our part to contribute to the school by making it a better place. We are trying to be a good example for the younger students by volunteering for the teachers and participating in extra curricular activites such as yearboook, bookclub and sports, The students are educated and learn about diversity. When we join a certain activity, we are commited to doing it and we are commited to our school. **
 * __ Element Seven: Connecting the dots __**
 * We are comparing our mission and vision concepts with those of another group iamsmission108, which are acceptance of cultures and diversity. Our mission and vision concepts being acceptence and respect, though slightly diffrent, we can find some similarities. Our connection to Iams is Fiesta cultural. As mentioned before, our mission and vision concepts are acceptance and respect, in Fiesta Cultural we learn about diffrent cultures and learn to respect them. The other group's mission and vision are acceptance of other cultures and diversity, through out fiesta cultural, there are so many cultures being brought together and share. **
 * __ Element Eight: Essential Questions __**