Claire Teegen

Politics, Debates, and Some Boys on an Island

We have just finished our final unit in PLP this year and it was a big one. We learned about many things including human nature, politics, and how to debate. When we first learned about this unit I was very excited because I love to debate and I find human nature very interesting. I couldn’t wait to get started.

Our first task in this unit was to sort ourselves into 6 groups for the unit. We have 25 students in our class so we had to sort ourselves into 5 groups of 4 and one group of 6. We were given no instructions and had only 20 mins to make even groups. I know this may sound easy but we have a lot of very strong minded people in our class so this was quite the challenge. We tried to start off by using a talking stick but that didn’t work at all and by the end it was ripped apart. We then had a few people take on leadership roles but that left some others very unhappy. There was yelling, standing on chairs, and tons of discussion but we managed to make 6 strong groups of people with many different skills. This was the first social experiment that we had to do to start this unit.

Now you may be wondering what these teams are for. They would be our groups for the debate and they were also our island. For this unit we had to read Lord of the Flies by William Golding and in that book many boys had to survive on an island so that’s what we had to do too. Of course we didn’t actually have to survive on an island. For about two weeks we played a game where you had to collect points from doing good things such as handing in work on time and being a good student during class. We could also lose points from doing bad things such as forgetting your iPad or being late to class. I was in a group with Hannah, Lucas, and Aiden and we named our group the NY Islanders. Here is the points system.

One of the other big aspects of the points game was the book quizzes. Every week for three weeks we did a quiz on 4 chapters of the book. Each quiz had 10 questions and if you got all of them write you got 100 points for your island which was a lot. I really enjoyed reading the book and I got really into it so my group did really well on the quizzes. We were one of only 2 groups to get 10/10 on one of the quizzes. We ended up coming in second out of the 6 teams by only 20 points which was pretty good. Here is the final results of the points game.

If you have read Lord of the Flies then you know that it is full of symbols. Pretty much everything in that book is a symbol for something. Symbols were one of our main focuses while reading the books. One activity that we had to do was fill out a work sheet and write down what we thought certain things symbolized. Here is my worksheet.

LOTF Symbols

Another thing we were focusing on while reading the book was the characters. They are all very different and change some much throughout the book. Our job was to fill out a character chart as we read the book. Here is my character chart.

A huge part of this unit was learning about different concepts. We were introduced to the concepts at the beginning of the unit.

• Power and Authority

• Humanity and Inhumanity

• Violence and Destruction

• Human nature

• Civilization and Savagery

• Individualism and Community

To learn about each concept we started off by making posters and writing down anything we could think of that related to the concept. Here are our posters.

To help further understand these concepts we had to write paragraphs on a couple of them. In these paragraphs we had to choose a topic within a concept and explain how it shows the concept. For example I did one of my paragraphs on how Japan’s actions during WWII showed inhumanity. Here are my two paragraphs.

Humanity and Inhumanity

Human Nature

It was very important that everyone knew and understood these concepts because they are what are final project was based on. For our final project we would be doing a debate. Each group would debate against another group on a topic based on one of these concepts. Debating was something we have never done before so we had to do a lot of preparation for these debates. One thing we did to prepare was play a couple debate games. For example one game we played was called pass the buck. To play the game one person from the group is given an object (the buck) and they are given a topic to talk about. They then have to give a short speech to their group giving their opinion on the topic then they pass the buck and the next group member has to add on to what they said. This game helped us with quick thinking on the spot and learning how to add on to what others had said.

Many of us had no idea about the structure of a debate so we had to listen to 30 mins of a debate podcast called Intelligence Squared. I listened to one about online dating and it was really interesting. It helped get a better idea about how a debate works. Another thing we did to prepare was watched a Ted Talk about the 7 secrets to being a great public speaker. This was extremely helpful and I learned so much from it. Here are my notes from the podcast and Ted Talk.

Debate Podcast Notes

Ted Talk 7 Secrets Notes

A big part of debating is quick thinking so to help us with that a few students did impromptu speeches. Our teacher gave them a topic such as “what is your favourite sport?” And they had 1 min to give a speech about it. While they were giving their speeches we had a list of things you absolutely should not do while public speaking and we had to see if they did them.

Finally after doing all of this preparation we were given our topic and the group we would be debating against. We got to put down our top three choices for which concept we wanted to do and my group got our first choice which was human nature. The statement we were debating was “be it resolved that it is human nature to put yourself above others” and we were debating against Mimi, Parker, Ethan, and Kyle. Both times wanted to be on the pro side of this debate so we flipped a coin and my group ended up on the con side. After we were given our topic we had about a week to prepare our argument by gathering as much information from our units throughout the year into a concept chart. Here is my group’s concept chart and preparation.

Concept Chart

Finally after all of this was done it was time to debate. There were three different debates and they were all happening on different days. My group was lucky enough to get to go on the third and final day so we got to learn from the other debates. The debate was set up with each side having a tall table and the host in between the tables. The concept of the first debate was power and authority. Because we hadn’t done a debate before the structure of that debate wasn’t that great. Both sides had great arguments but we knew we had to make some changes for the second debate. One of the changes we made was spilling of the rebuttal into two one minute sections instead of one two minute section. Here is the structure of the second and third debate.

When it was finally my group’s turn to debate I was a little nervous but very excited. The debate went great. Everyone and lots to say and both sides had very strong arguments. At the end the students and teachers voted for which side won the debate and my side won! I was very happy to win because my group worked extremely hard on our arguments. In PLP we like to have evidence of our work so we recorded all of the debates and turned them into podcasts. The first debates statement was ” Be it resolved that power and authority lead to corruption” and the second groups statement was ” be it resolved that in order to survive you have to be savage”. Here they are.

Throughout this unit we also learned about politics. I’m not going to lie, I was not very excited for this part of the unit but it was more interesting than I expected. We started off with learning bout the different types of government. Each group had to do a presentation  explaining a type of government and my group did anarchy. Here is our document with all of our research and pictures.

Anarchy

The next thing we learned about was Canada’s constitution. A constitution is a body of fundamental principles that state how an organization is governed. There are for parts to the constitution: The rule of law, freedom, democracy, and minority rights. These give us our rights and keep our country organized. After that we learned about the political spectrum. The political spectrum is the spectrum that measures how much towards one side of politics you are. For example you could be wing which is more conservative or you could be left wing which is more liberal. We all had to take a quiz to figure where we were on the spectrum and I was close to the middle but defiantly more left wing.

Another thing we learned about was who’s who in Canada’s government. To do this we had to learn about the different positions in our government and then we researched who holds each position. We had to make a picture of this and here’s mine.

The last thing we learned about politics was the electoral systems. In Canada we have a system call first past the post. In this system the person or party with the most votes wins. It’s very simple compared to other systems around the world. I don’t even understand most of the other systems but if you would like to read about them you can click Here.

As you can see we learned a ton of stuff in this unit. I learned about human nature and many other concepts from Lord of the Flies. I learned about how to debate, the structure of a debate, and how to be a good public speaker. I also learned a lot about politics. I had so much fun with this unit because I had never really had a debate before and I didn’t realize how much I loved it. I am not a very strong public speaker so I had to step out of my comfort zone a little for the debate but I ended up having so much fun doing it. This was a perfect unit to end the year off with because we got to reflect on all of the other amazing units we did. I am so happy with how everything went this unit and I can’t wait to see what we’ll do next year.

Job Shadow

Every year in Planning 10 there is a big assignment every student has to do. For this assignment you have to contact someone with a job that you might like and shadow them for a day. We do this assignment to see what a day working is really like. People often think they know what they want to do but until you actually see what you need to do you don’t know if you’ll like it. We also have to contact the person and set everything up so it helps improve our organizational and people skills. The first thing we had to do was come up with a brainstorm and call list of possibilities for who we could job shadow. We have used a website called MyBluePrint where we did tests to figure out the jobs best suited for us to help us decide where to do our job shadow.

I have always had an interest in working in law but I haven’t had any experience with it so I didn’t know if I really liked. I decided it would be a good job for me to shadow. The first thing I had to do was contact someone who works in that field and try and set up a day and time. I knew my uncles girlfriend works in a law firm so I contacted her and we set a date for May 25th. The law firm she works at is DLA Piper. She emailed me my plan for the day which involved meeting with many people with different jobs in a law firm. I then came up with a list of questions I could ask while I was there.

I arrived at the building in the morning and because they deal with a lot of people’s personal information the first thing I had to do was sign a non-disclosure saying I would not share any information regarding their clients. Sadly this also meant that I was not allowed to take any photos or videos while I was there so I apologize for the lack of media. After that I got to talk with Megan McAllister who is the head of Human Resources. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her because I had never even considered a career in Human Resources but I am now very interested in it. She told me about the many things she has to do including the fun part such as bring people together to work on things, and the hard parts such as having difficult conversations with people about their work ethics.

After learning about Human Resources I got to talk to Kerry Sheppard who is the director of the student programs at DLA Piper. He organizes the program for law students to work at the firm so they can graduate. We talked a lot about the schooling you need to do to become a lawyer and there is a lot. First you have to major in anything before you can even apply to law school. You then have to go to school and also work at a law firm during school to graduate. It is about 8 years of schooling. After we were done talking, Kerry gave me a 25 paged pamphlet on how to become a lawyer which I have briefly skimmed through and it is very informative. He then took me to meet one of the law students working at the firm.

I got to spend a lot of time with Joyce, a law student at Thompson Rivers University. She took me on a walk to the court house and answered all of my questions on the way. She told me what she had to do to get into law school and what it’s like. There is a lot of reading so you have to be a fast reader. The court house was very cool. It looked similar to the court rooms you see on TV but they are a lot smaller. Most of the cases DLA Piper deals with are small so they aren’t as dramatic as they are on TV. Joyce told me that to be a good lawyer you have to be good with people. You have to have lots of empathy and be able to resolve conflicts.

Because I was unable to get any media while I was at the firm I have made a short back with the answers to the questions I got in my interviews.

Being A Lawyer

The last thing we had to do was write a thank you letter to the people we shadowed. It just had to be a short letter to thank them for spending their time with you and organizing it. I only had one email so I sent it to her and asked her to tell everyone else I said thank you.

Spending the day at the law firm was a very unique experience. If I do want to get a job in a law firm I will have to improve my people skills and become a better reader. I will also have to do a lot more schooling and spend more time learning about law. I really liked how each day at a law firm is different so you aren’t stuck doing the same thing everyday. I didn’t really like how a lot of your job is spent behind a desk reading and writing. After talking to everyone I got a ton of answers to all of my questions but my favourite question was “what is the most rewarding part of your job”. Everyone answered the same which was helping people. Being a lawyer you get to help people with their problems and that is very rewarding. As of right now I am not sure if being a lawyer is the right job for me but I will defiantly consider it when I have to make a decision.

BC Tech Summit

Recently my class was very lucky to get the opportunity to go to the BC Tech Summit. The BC Tech Summit is an event where tech companies from all over North America come to show how technology is driving cross-industry growth and change, and how companies are emerging as global leaders in today’s data economy. Many extremely successful CEOs came to speak at the summit and share their stories of working in the tech industry. It is an extremely cool event and it is very hard to get into. It costs $999 for an adult to attend. We went on youth innovation day so we had to apply to go for free and we were accepted. I was very excited to go and I had a very fun day.

The day started off with us listening to a few speakers. One of our assignments for the day was to research two different speakers and take notes on their presentation. The first speaker I chose to research was David Katz, the founder Plastic Bank. Plastic Bank is a organization that allows people living in poverty to collect plastic and trade it in for money, items, or services. They then make the plastic reusable and sell it to companies to limit the making of plastic. In his presentation David Katz mentioned how removing plastic from the ocean is like trying to to mop water from an overflowed sink while the tap is still running. Way more plastic is being put in the ocean than is being cleaned out and we need to find a way to change that. His company is just a temporary solution that is trying to help this problem. Although this company seems like it’s cleaning our oceans and helping poverty it isn’t perfect. It is a profit company and David Katz puts all the profit in his pocket. If he really wanted to help he could use some of that money to with these problems more.

The other speaker I researched was Valerie Song, the founder of Ava Technologies. Ava technologies is a company that makes small indoor gardens that make growing your own foods easier and faster. They used technology from NASA to make growing your own food as simple as possible so everyone would want to do it. Her goal was to change the world and she might not have done that but she has made a difference. In her presentation she talked about how hard it is starting a company in the tech industry. There is lots of competition and 95% of the time the work isn’t very glamorous but she said it is all worth it in the end because of the rewards such as knowing that you are making a difference.

After the speakers in the morning we had the opportunity to sit down with some mentors from the tech industry and ask them some questions. I was at a table with a girl who works in entrepreneurship and a guy that works in medicine. I had many questions for both of them but we had very little time so I was only able to ask one questions. I was really curious about what it is like working in the tech industry as a women so that is the question I asked. I was able to record the conversation and I turned it into a podcast. It was very loud in there so the audio is hard to here but I tried to make it sound as good as possible. Here is my podcast.

After talking with the mentors we got to go to the university booths and talk to some schools about what programs they offered. I am interested in going into health sciences or medicine and there wasn’t a lot any of the schools their offered for me. BCIT has some cool programs for different specialties that kinda interested me. The part I liked about them was that you almost immediately get to start learning in a hospital which seems like a great way to learn.

Once our time was up at the university section we finally got to go upstairs to see the cool tech displays. There were tons of booths that were set up with so much cool stuff. I learned about a machine that can help disabled people walk, how you can grow veins to help sick people, and I saw my friend deliver a baby with a simulation doll. It was a very cool experience. After exploring for a little while we headed back downstairs for lunch then watched a few more presentations.

Going to the BC Tech Summit was an awesome experience. It was a little different than I was excepting but I learned so much about the industry and how it is changing the world. Tech is the future of this country and soon it will be apart of everything. The last task I had to do for the day was make a vlog. I took videos throughout the day then compiled them together. Here is my vlog of my day at the BC Tech Summit.

Perspectives of WWII

We have just finished a huge unit in PLP. In this unit we learned about WWII which was a very significant event in Canada’s history. Our curriculum only says that we have to learn about Canada’s perspective of WWII but that doesn’t allow us to see how other countries felt about the war. Our teacher decided that we would learn about the perspectives of many countries during WWII so we could be more educated on how the war affected everyone.

As you may know the war started on September 1, 1939 and ended on September 2, 1945 which is almost exactly 6 years. Because the war was so long there were a ton of events we had to learn about. Many of us had prior knowledge about the war so to narrow it down we started off by coming up with questions about information we wanted to know. This allowed us to focus on the stuff we were interned in learning. Here are some of the questions my class came up with.

Concentration Camps:

How were concentration camps viewed by those uninvolved in the war, as well as those involved?

How were they discovered?

Were Germans oblivious to what was truly happening at these concentration camps?

Hitler:

Why was Hitler and the Nazi army specifically targeting the Jewish population?

What different resistances worked with the allies, and which worked against nazis and allies?

What were some of the future plans of Hitler and the Nazis?

What would the world have looked like if the Nazis Won?

How were Italy and Japan persuaded to join forces with Germany?

Technology & Strategies:

How could the strategies of paratroopers been changed to better affect the battlefield

How was the Enigma code developed, produced, and solved?

What were the strategies of war used and how have they changed over time?

How did the Nazis come up with technology that took other countries forever to develop?

How was the advancement of war technology a good thing or a bad thing?

How do you think War technology has advanced and how will it advance in the future?

Did the advancements in technology make war more accessible and able to be started easily? What examples are there that prove this point?

What type of war strategies worked on Germany to allow them to advance? Why did these strategies work?

Could something have been done to shorten the war?

Was technical innovation one of the most important factors for military superiority?

How was the war disrupted by having new technology?

Why would the Germans target London knowing they would kill more civilians than soldiers?

Right at the beginning of this unit we were assigned a book to read about WWII. Throughout reading the book we had to take notes because when we finished the book we had to write a review on it. I chose to read All The Light We Cannot See. I wrote a post explaining more about the assignment and my review. If you are interested you can read my post and review Here.

We started off this unit by learning about how the war started. We watched some clips from an amazing documentary show called World War II in Colour which you can watch on Netflix. We learned about how Hitler got into power and why he started a war. After that we learned about the main project for this unit. For the project the class was divided into small groups and each group was given a country that was involved in WWII. We got to fill out a google form picking out our top three countries we wanted to research or putting if we wanted to do a smaller country independently. Each groups task was to make a page on a website explaining their countries perspective on the war. Each country had to have details on before, during, and after the war. I was put in a group with Lucas and Will and our country was Japan.

The design requirements for the website were that it had to have a theme throughout it, it had to have pictures. It had to be visually appealing, and it had to have lots of information. To start preparing to make our website we had a lot of research to do. We had to learn everything about Japan from a few years before the war to a few years after it. We had to research the soldiers, military, technology, battles, and much more. My group divided up the different topics and we each researched a couple. The difference from this research and our normal research was that this wasn’t just taking notes. Instead we wrote a small paragraph or two for each topic so we could put it directly on the website. This made things a lot easier later on. Here is all of our research.

Japan-WWII Research-19f56ab

Although each group was only assigned one country we still had to learn about WWII in its entirety. We learned about many different aspects and battles in the war but one of my favourite things we learned about was the evacuation of Dunkirk. Hundreds of thousands of British and French soldiers were trapped on a beach in France surrounded by the German army. Their only way to escape was by boat but they didn’t have enough boats to get them all to safety so many civilians from nearby came in any boat they had to help save the soldiers on the beach. If you would like to read more about it you can go to the Great Britain page on our website.

Although the evacuation of Dunkirk was a significant event it wasn’t exactly a battle. My favourite battle that we learned about was The Battle of Britain. This was a very horrific battle that resulted in the death of many civilians. Germany wanted to conquer Great Britain and started off by bombing their harbours and shipping facilities. They then turned their aim towards cities and civilians and they bombed Britain for 57 consecutive nights. If you would like to read more about this battle you can go to the German page of our website.

Throughout this unit we had to learn about citations so we could properly cite where we got our information for our website. We learned how to cite a book, a video, and a website. To practice our citation skills we would write small paragraphs with a quote or fact from a specific book, video, or website then cite it at the bottom. This was very helpful practice and made citing our website so much easier. Here is a good website about how to do citations.

One of the aspects of our website was to have audio. This could be in the form of a podcast, interview, or whatever else we wanted. To help us with this we had a veteran from WWII come into our class to tell us about the war and answer our questions. As I mentioned before the goal of this unit was to learn all the perspectives of the war so we were lucky enough to have a soldier with a not often discussed about perspective of the war. His name is Helmut Lemke and he was a German soldier.

He was an amazing speaker and told us so much about his perspective of the war. It really opened my eyes as to how a German might have felt during the war. Each person in the class had to make a podcast from his interview and they turned out very good. I did a couple of drafts, got some critique, then did a final draft. Here is my final podcast.

If you would like to listen to the rest of my group’s podcast you can go to our Podcast Page on our website.

Once all of the research and preparation for the website was done we were ready to start putting it together. To make our website we used a program called Weebly. Weebly allows you to make websites in a very easy way. My teacher set up the website so all my group had to do was make our page. We already had all of our information and pictures done so we just had to import it to the website. We started off with using our iPads to do it but because the whole class was editing it at the same time nothing was saving. We then had to edit it on laptops and that was much more successful. I found putting the website together very fun because I love making my work look good. Weebly is a very good tool to use if you are a beginner and want to make a website. It is very easy and fun to use.

Once all the countries had finished their websites it was time for my favourite part of a PLP project. The Critique. Each country set up a station in the classroom with a laptop and we all went around and gave kind, helpful, and specific critique to each other. My country didn’t get very much critique of things we had to fix which made me really happy because I worked very hard on our page. My group changed the few things we had to and then our website was ready to present.

We were very lucky to get the opportunity to present to Kathleen Barter who is a District Administrator at North Vancouver School District and is also a historian. She came into our classroom and each country had 5 mins to present the highlights of their page on the website. My group was second to last to go which wasn’t very good because a few groups went over their 5 mins so we didn’t have very much time. We had to rush through our presentation but I feel that it went pretty well. Ms Barter gave everyone some critique or things to add to their website but because we were so rushed she didn’t have time to give us any. We then spent the next few days doing a little more editing and then our website was done. You can visit our website Here.

I loved this unit so much. I’m very interested in learning about wars and I loved how much we learned about each country. Thanks to Helmut I learned so much about Germany’s perspective and it was probably my favourite thing I learned this unit. The only thing I would change about this unit was to focus a little more on the perspective. We got so into learning about the war that we kinda forgot about the perspective and had to add more to our website at the end. I loved making the website and I found that it was a very unique way to present a project. I hope we do more unique projects like this in the future.

All The Light We Cannot See: Book Review

For this unit we are learning about WWII. Everyone in the class had to pick a book to read that is based during WWII. This helped us to learn how different countries viewed WWII as each book showed different perspectives of the war. There were three options to choose from: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Weins, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I chose All The Light We Cannot See because I liked the idea of reading a book from two different people’s perspectives. Throughout reading the book we often had in class discussions and quizzes. Once everyone was done their book, we all had to write a book review. As a class we read a few examples and learned the important aspects of a book review, then we were ready to write. Here is my book review. Enjoy!

This historical fiction novel is a great thing to read if you have a long plane ride or a lot of spare time. It is a page turner and you will not want to put it down. The storytelling style is consuming and a very unique way to tell such a complex, intense story. It is brimming with details that fill all 5 senses. Set in Germany and France during WWII. This novel tells the stories of two kid’s struggles while trying to survive the war, and how their stories cross paths. It is written in the third person perspective and switches between observing each child’s life every chapter. Similar to one of Anthony Doerrs other books, The Shell Collector, one of the main characters is blind.

Marie-Laure is a little, blind French girl with brown hair and freckles. Marie-Laure is six years old when the novel begins, in Paris, 1934. She lives with her Papa, a locksmith and keeper of the keys at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. At the museum there is a one of a kind stone, The Sea of Flames. “It’s cold. The size of a pigeon’s egg. The shape of a teardrop.” The stone is supposedly cursed and whoever has the stone will live forever, but bad things will happen to everyone they love. The stone ends up in Marie-Laure’s care and she has to keep it safe so she can break the curse. Marie-Laure’s story was my favourite to follow because she had to face so many challenges and it always kept me on my toes.

Werner is a German orphan who lives with his sister, Jutta, in an orphanage located in the German mining town of Zollverein. Werner is 7 when the story starts. He is a tiny boy who has a thirst for knowledge and is extremely intelligent. In this book the stereotype of a mean caretaker is broken, the caretaker of the orphans is an extremely nice lady named Frau Elena. Werner starts off the story being afraid of becoming a miner when he turns 16, because his father died in the mines. He is willing to do anything to stay out of the mines, including join the war. Reading the story about a German soldier was very interesting. Seeing that point of view is very rare and it was cool to see how a German might have felt about the war.

Anthony Doerr is clearly a very thoughtful author. Writing about a blind girl must be challenging because you would have to be very descriptive, and creative to be to show how she views life. He did a very good job at this but sometimes he did too good of a job. There were some times where he would describe pointless details way more thoroughly than needed. For example when Marie is walking Doerr often described what was happening is great detail which got tiring because Marie walked a lot and it often wasn’t necessary to the story. On the other hand, there were some parts of the story that I would have preferred to have gone into more detail. Doerr often left me asking questions after significant events happened. For example Marie-Laure practically went blind in a sentence-“One month later she is blind.” The more significant parts needed to be more descriptive.

The first 100 pages of the book are a little hard to get through because of short sentences and lack of an exciting plot, but once you get through those, the book is exhilarating. It has so many different aspects that there is bound to be some part of the story that everyone would love. Doerr was very creative and made some risky choices involving perspectives that ultimately paid off. Even though just telling one of the children’s stories would have been good, telling both of them showed both sides of the war and how they connected. This book had some boring parts part the positives outweighed the negatives. I ultimately enjoyed the book but not as much as I was expecting too. It showed many aspects of the war in an honest and accurate way. Doerr told an amazing story and it deserves all of the awards it has received.

Anthony Doerr