Hi folks, it’s Izzy again, I know it’s been a while. Today I’m here to write about my most recent unit in Humanities. In this unit we talked all about how lives for minorities have changed since WWII. Now to start this we looked at what a minority was. Our initial definition described a minority as “a small group of people that is commonly discriminated against” however we then got into the discussion if whether or not women would be classified as a minority. We came to the conclusion that women are considered a minority so our definition had to change to “a defined group of people that commonly face discrimination. Why am I telling this story you ask? Well for my partner Ruby and I’s project we chose immigrants as our minority. We believed that if a group as big as women counts as one so should immigrants as they face a lot of racism and struggles.

Our project was in partners to record a 7-10 minute long podcast discussing the change in lives for the minority we picked from WWII to now. We also had to interview at least three people, have a jingle, and a front cover. Our core competencies for this project were “comprehend” and “identify community and change”.

I think a really good example of how I showed my comprehend competency was in our weekly book chats. During this project we read this book called “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and shared our thoughts and inquiries about the chapters each week at our book chats. These were unmoderated discussions where we just spoke about what we thought. It felt really mature and I liked this style of novel study much more. While reading the book I would try and make as many connections to my life or something I’d seen before as a way to truly understand what I was reading, and if I was ever unsure of something I wrote a question to bring up at the book chat next week. I felt really engaged with this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was also very active and participated very heavily in the book chats making sure my contributions were heard. We also wrote a literary response to the novel in which I showed my comprehension by referencing actions and quotes from the characters in the book.

(Click here to read my literary response)

My podcast with Ruby and the research document are great pieces of evidence that prove I identified community and change. In the research document we had a section about the laws for immigration around

A research meme

WWII and the laws now. We researched about how things changed and why they changed and then brought it up in a section of our podcast. We also show the change with our interviews. We made sure our three different guests all immigrated at different time periods and asked them the same questions to see the differences.

(Click here to listen to our podcast)

Now after listening to our podcast you can probably tell that isn’t our best work and that’s because we really should have at least one more draft if not more. Unfortunately I was sick the last week before spring break and wasn’t able to go re-record some parts or get peer critique. Since I’ve gotten better the rules around seeing others have gotten much more intense due to Covid-19 and going to work with Ruby wouldn’t be safe. So we have to settle for the one draft we did make and be thankful we could complete it. However I will say the things we would change if we could. We would introduce ourselves and edit the script slightly to cut some parts out like we had to do in editing but in a way that topics flowed together more smoothly. We would also be re-recording a lot of our discussion parts so they didn’t sound so scripted. Finally if we had the chance we would’ve liked to go around to random people asking them if they thought immigrants were a minority and compiling the clips together to make an interesting introduction.

It’s very sad that we could not complete this podcast but I still gained a lot from this unit. I now know what reservations are, I strengthened my reading and comprehension skills a lot, I learned about minorities, I gained some knowledge around the laws of immigration in Canada, I got better and garage band, and I got to practice making podcasts. They certainly are not an easy thing to make and it’s so hard to judge how long they’ll be. Overall if I could do this project again I would’ve picked one focus point in Canadian immigration and talked about that as well as maybe only including one interview in the podcast itself. As for the book I’m proud of my comprehension and it has inspired me to read again. That’s all for this project, see you next time!