Christmas break has come and gone so quickly. This means that yet another brilliant exhibition has also happened. This year, I believe, was the biggest turn out, most fun to present, most entertaining and inquiring to watch, and the hardest and most we have worked. In past exhibitions each grade in the PLP program has a different topic and each student creates their own inquiry “Blue Sky” project to relate to the topic and show they’re learning. This was still true for the grade 8’s and 9’s. For us as grade 11’s we had a slightly different task to pull off. Our project was to create an immersive experience that took you through the time of World War I, starting at pre war and ending in the Great Depression. We had to transform the gym into a whole new world, and wow can I say that that was quite a challenge.

Visitors of the exhibition would enter through a side room onto the gym in small groups to begin their immersive experience. First they would walk through the time of Pre War where they immigrated to Canada and signed up for the war, next they went into the trenches, after that they went through the time of conscription, next making their way to the post war to see the hardships people faced, and finally they ended their experience in the Great Depression. As people went through we interacted with them as if we were in that time period and they were immigrants and war soldiers. Everybody who went through seemed to really enjoy it and surprisingly from what I heard from my parents, everybody seemed to learn a lot.

My group was pre war. To even begin creating the immersive experience we had to delve deeper then what we learned in class so we could replicate exactly what it would have been like in that time period. Our task was to figure out the key events that led up to World War I. For example we chose to start it off with someone greeting the people, or in the immersive experience they were the immigrants, and explaining about Canada’s new open door policy. Then they made they’re way through the immigration office and were greeted by me! I was the immigration office lady and the year was 1913. Being a lady was also a key part to this considering more jobs were being offered to women at this time and in the year of 1912 women were able to finally work in offices and be receptionists. People would walk up to me and I would treat them as immigrants as they signed their immigration papers. Everybody really enjoyed this part surprisingly. Also most adults were happy to see that their age was 35 on the immigration papers which I found quite funny. Also might I add that I created both the immigration card and registration card myself from scratch.

After seeing me the people would make their way through to watch a rally held by Borden. Then they would make their way to the final stop of pre war, the registration office. Again it was me sitting their as the officer who made them sign their papers. Then they made their way over to the trenches and through the rest of the experience. 

We only had two hours to transform the entire gym into a whole new place which was quite stressful and a lot of work. They’re were some technical difficulties as well as worrying about not being done in time. Fortunately everybody ended up getting it together and we were the hit of the exhibition. Although everybody who went through the gym would complain about how cold it was since the door was open. I even hid slippers under one of my desks so I wouldn’t be too cold.

Overall I definitely enjoyed this exhibition more then any other we have done. Since people were constantly coming through it gave us more of an opportunity to really show our learning and what we are capable of creating. Compared to other exhibitions where people just kind of walk around and look at your projects and the odd person asks a question, this really made me feel proud of the work I had made. I think I can say everybody else felt this way as well. Although it was a lot of work and late nights to finish it, it payed off. Next time if we ever do this type of project again a small break in the middle would be nice because everybody in the gym was freezing and most people were losing their voices. Also a lot of people were hungry since we didn’t have time to eat because we were s focused on getting everything set up and ready to go.

This type of learning and style of projects has definitely been one of my favourites. I feel I learned more and can say I still remember facts off the top of my head. I even know about what the other groups were about. It was something different, but I feel it was one of the most engaging projects not only for us as creators, but for the people who walked through and got to experience our learning.

If you want to check out my other group members perspective and experience on the exhibition click the link to their blog posts, you can find them here. Gabi, Tom, Jackson, Stanfield.