How to Apologize

Well happy new year! 🥳 

It is a brand new year but still the same semester. So lets quickly talk about the project and exhibition that we just finished last year.

Driving Questions

How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered and not repeated today?

We used the exhibition as a way to educate about the past wrongs we studied. Education is very important in making sure that those past wrongs are properly remembered and accounted for in our society today.

Us grade 10’s were working on a project called “The Ology of Apology” where we studied historical wrongs towards different races of people in Canada’s past. The three main topics we studied were the Chinese head tax, Japanese internment during WW2, and the Komagata Maru incident in 1914. I ended up studying the latter and for an easy explanation of the incident I present to you my Keynote presentation, also known as “Keystone 1: Keynote of Transgression”.

The komagata maru

What does James Cameron’s “Avatar” reveal about our society?

Avatar brought up many themes present in our society today. Themes like militarism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, corporate greed, and such. Avatar magnified these issues as their world is almost an augmented reflection of ours. The Winter Exhibition was themed around this question and each room/area was to tackle one of the themes and how it was represented in the movie and in our topics that we studied. For the Exhibition, I was in the library room that was originally themed to represent racism but had to have a bit of remodelling done.

Our Memorial And The Exhibition 

The monument I created was in collaboration with Ines and Gwen. We had all studied different topics for our first 2 keystones so we wanted our memorial to relate to all 3 subjects. Gwen came up with an excellent idea of a figure breaking down walls to represent combatting racism and discrimination. I suggested that we put cutouts of racist newspapers and notices from the 3 events on the walls to give more meaning to the monument. We accidentally learned that spray paint actually eats styrofoam while trying to paint the walls black. We also were scrounging for paint and other supplies to bring our work to life. It was a work-in-progress up until the verify last minute. I LOVE our finished monument and was very proud to be able to display it at the winter exhibition.

I really enjoyed showing off my Keynote presentation and talking about our monument to all of the passers by at the exhibition. Despite being occasionally quite socially anxious, I actually really enjoy public speaking and commanding a room. So that was really nice for me to get in touch with that part of myself again. 

Conclusion 

After not attending any exhibitions last year, I can say that I think this exhibition was my best one yet. I am very proud of the amount of work I was able to put into this project and the fact that I actually had enough energy to go to the exhibition. Overall a successful semester in Humanities 10.

As Always, Brooke