Dear readers, there are some crazy people out there who has shaped and changed our community. They are the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do. With our latest project “Cray, Cray, yay, yay”, we will define those who shaped our community as a whole.
For this project, we had to make a portrait of our chosen community impact maker. I chose Lucien Lessard, who is the last living survivor of the collapse of the second narrows bridge. Lucien has a big focus on continuing the remembrance of his friend he had lost during the collapse, and so I decided to make my portrait in the format of an I Survived Book, since like the disasters in the series of books, the collapse was also very much real, and was labeled as the worst engineering disaster in BC.
In the portrait i chose the paint a picture of Lucien holding his well deserved trophy for surviving the collapse.
This project made me realize how much people there is that really shaped our community it wasn’t just those who were famous that were stars that change the world after all not all heroes are in the light!
Anyways, I do hope everyone has a very nice summer stay hydrated! was also very much real, and was labeled as the worst engineering disaster in BC.
Welcome readers, you can use shore to the core to describe someone who is a very strong supporter of their home land, and this very project was to tell readers about the history of the land my classmates and I live on. The project Shore to the Core was influenced by the Museum of North Vancouver, also know as MoNoVa. The driving question for this project is: What significant developments occurred after WWII in Vancouver and across Canada? With that question in mind my class and I interview our client, Carol Ballard, the program coordinator of MaNoVa.
Before we get into the interview with Carol, I will briefly introduce choose my local topic of choice, The Ironworkers Memorial second Narrows Crossing. This bridge played a huge role in connect North Vancouver through the Burrad Inlet to Greater Vancouver, which eventually resulted in the population growth and rise of the suburbs (learn more about that in Quinn’s post). The Ironworkers Memorial second Narrows Crossing was renamed to honour the 18 workers who died in the collapse along with the 1 rescue diver and 4 other worker who also died during the construction process. I thought my topic was significant to the people of North Vancouver because around 121,778 (as of 2021) vehicles pass through this bridge every day, way more that there are on The Lion’s Gate Bridge, without this the connection between North Vancouver and Greater Vancouver would be weak, and it would be less convenient to travel between the two lands.
Moving onto the interviews with the project coordinator and our client, Carol Ballard, we learned that our multi-paragraph composition must have multiple sources, which can include interviews, audios, and writings. A strong theme, this will hook your audience in and make sure you stay on topic. Another one was having a clear audience and purpose in our multi-paragraph composition. Since everyone in my class are making a multi-paragraph composition, Carol suggested that we organize all of our multi-paragraph compositions into a zine format.
(link to zine)
To answer the driving question, during the project, I notice a lot of things shaped the North Van it is today. As for my topic, without this connection of a bridge, the bond between North Vancouver and Greater Vancouver would be weak, this bridge North Vancouver a chance to grow and thrive as a individual community.
Welcome readers, have you ever wondered how all those rich people became so successful? Perhaps it’s because of their parents, but even so, if you do all these habits just might also become successful one day. For this project, which is named Believe in Good, has the driving question of: How do you plan to move forward to be your most effective self? which the answer will be shown in my assignment choice board. Believe in Good was based on the book Sean Covey wrote called 7 Habits for Highly Effective People/ Teens. These habits were split in to 3 section, the private victory, public victory, and the renewal.
The first section of the 7 habits was the habits of self management, the private victory. With habit 1 being proactive, habit 2 begin with the end in mind, habits 3 first things first. Habit 1 is where you prepare everything before hand, ask for help in advance, plan ahead, and think before you act. Habit number 2 habit number 3 are very similar, with habit number 2 hope you you overcome problems in life and find your values and what matter to you the most. Habit number three comes after that having a schedule and order to things that get you control of your life, this can include finding balance of your social, personal, and school life. For this section of the project I used audio reflection for my assessment choice board, which included three songs. Song1: this song is about a person prioritizing sportsmanship and went to the Mountain to practice in isolation. Song2: about instead of being upset that you have no money work for the money. Song3: this song is about forgiving yourself and let yourself prioritize in what you believe is the most important to you.
The second section of the seven habits was the habits of leadership, and the public victory. With habit for being think win-win; habit 5, seek to understand then to be understood, habit 6, to synergize. Habit 4, thinking win-win can boost the relationship status between you and your friends and family for making smart decisions on the way. Habit 5 requires you to listen to people sincerely, listen and consider others opinion no matter who they are, and most importantly don’t just say “uh-huh” while daydreaming about what’s for lunch when you’re talking to someone (example from Covey’s book). Habit number 6 requires you to do both habit for and habit five, an example of synergizing is having asked to be with people either you don’t like or don’t know for a project, but in the end it’s bad grades with bad relations or good grades ok or new relationships if you syllogize with your group or your partner. For this section of the seven habits I decided to draw a comic about the tortoise and the rabbit race but in the end they both win because they synergized with each other.
The last part of this habits book is the renewal, which was all about allowing yourself to rest. This is the key to get control of your life, improve in relationships, make smart and sober decisions to overcome problems, be productive andddddd drumrolls… Be happy! This includes resting when you have to, not wearing yourself out, and being gentle with yourself. For example, let’s say you just came home after a long day of school, but you still got homework! No worries, take a 45 minute nap and power through your work maybe that would even work other than not resting and continuing on to your work for, let’s say, another 4 hours.
Over all, I use technology to construct knowledge by doing research and giving myself a stable understanding of the topic of research and contact peers who might know, connect to this topic and expanding my knowledge on this topic further more.
Welcome back wonderful readers, I hope that your winter breaks went great, if you have not read my recent blog post, I recommend you do so. Not only might you learn something new, but you will also hear a bit about what my current project is.
The project that we just wrapped up is called “The Ology of Apology” (meaning the study of apology), and our driving question is: How can we create a public memory of past wrongs so that they are remembered, and not repeated in the future? We looked at three past wrongs enacted by the Canadian government: the Komagata Maru in 1914, anti-Chinese racism in the form of the Head Tax and the Anti-Immigration Act from 1885-1947, and the Japanese Internment during the Second World War.
We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go on six different field studies throughout this project. Being able to learn about what we are talking about in class by going to museums, cultural spaces, and by walking around the actual sites where these events have occurred made it easier for me to visualize what the victims and survivors were going through during those times, especially the quotes on the walls we saw at Nikkei Museum.
we were asked to create a concept, as well as a scale model, of a practical, contextual, and impactful memorial that would educate the public about one of the three acts of injustice that we studied.
We were put into groups, and then assigned topics from the three main events. My group was Keenan, Nate, Josh and me. Our given topic was Japanese internment camps during WWII. There were six groups, and three topics, so each group was competing against another group.
During all the trips, something we saw a lot in memorials was some kind of landmark, but we also wanted our memorial to be interactive, and one specific landmark my group had in mind was a statue, in the morning there will a garden accompanied with the statue providing scenery, but at night a bright light will be shown onto the status making a shadow. Our group had the idea to create a statue with a shadow that can be interpreted into many things but the status itself must have a meaning, we wanted to tell as much of a story as we could while remaining interactive, cultural, and historical.
My group wanted to tell the story of the hard times that Japanese people were faced with, and the wrongdoings of the Canadian government at the time. The shadow which is only visible during the night time is there to represent the resilience and the strength within every Japanese Canadian that was wrongly treated during World War II. It also shows the lengths to which the Japanese Canadian parents went to keep their children from suffering during this terrible time. The foot falling off the edge represents how close their lives were to falling apart for both the parents and children.
Overall, I am proud of my group, and how much work we were able to get done in so little time. Even thought our memorial wasn’t as attractive as the other groups, I felt that I gained a really good understanding of my topic, and the other topics that we learned about as well. And honestly if I was ever to pitch this to the city hall I don’t think I would pitch it any more different than this way it is. We were given the opportunity go around and and learn more about this event while other kids were stuck in their classroom reading textbooks, I think this project let me realize these special privileges I have.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading this post please leave a comment and check out my other classmates post!
Hey lovely reader, now you might not know about this unjust incident that happened over a century ago when 376 Indians came to Canada or at least tried.
The incident
As creative the name of this incident could sound, spoilers, that was the ship the passengers were on during the incident.
“We have the power to exclude and to deport certain immigrants, and whom we deem to be unworthy of Canadian citizenship. We have the power to deport Hindus or anyone else”. In the early 1900s, nearly 5000 South-Asians had already arrived at BC the time that was said. Many (white) Canadians were concerned about the growing numbers of immigrants, so regulations were put in place to keep South Asians from entering the country. Legally Canada was not allowed to ban citizens of Idia as they too are British subjects, so the Canadian government created a loophole “the continuous journey regulation”, which meant that immigrants were only allowed to come to Canada in one continuous trip from their country of origin, or else they will be denied entry, at the time no ship could make a continuous journey from India to Canada, it was impossible. But in 1914, Baba Gurdit Singh, a Punjabi businessman, he hear fellow Sikhs had encountered trying to immigrate to Canada. He charter a Japanese steam ship SS Komagata Maru, sold tickets to his countryman, and on April 1914 and 150 passenger set sail from Hong Kong.
along its way stoping by China and Japan, picking up more hopeful immigrants and eventually reaching a total of 376 people heading to Vancouver on that ship, almost all were men except 2 women and 4 children, almost all were Punjabi.
After sailing for 2 long months the Komagata Maru finally reach the Vancouver port. Baba Gurdit Singh not only wanted to help his fellow passengers reach Canada but also wanted to challenge the racist Canadian immigrant laws. On May 23 1914, the Komagata Maru dropped anchor and was greeted by unwelcoming immigration officials. When they were denied entry since their ship hadn’t made an continuous journey to Canada, a 8 week stand off with the Canadian government began. The South Asian community ashore quickly organized, forming the Shore Committee, lead by Banh Singh and a few others , they raised funds to hire a lawyer, J. Edward Bird to negotiate on the passenger’s behalf. The legal battle eventually failed, Bird was subjected to so many threats from the white people that he was forced to fleet Vancouver for a several weeks. Passengers despite having imprisoned for several week fight back back against the ones that tried to board the ship. 2 days later the navy arrived driving the Komagata Maru back, and on July 23rd 1914, exactly 2 months after its arrival, Komagata Maru was forced to leave Canadian waters, for many it would not be a happy homecoming.
When the ship finally docked in Budge Budge, passengers were meet with force. When the passengers finally left the ship the first time in many months, the British police open fire, killing ~20 passengers injuring 9, arrested several others. Baba Gurdit Singh escaped the massacre and lived in hiding for a several months be fore turning himself in. It wasn’t until 1967 that anti-south Asian regulations were abolished entirely.
The Apology
On May 18, 2016, Justin Trudeau will issue a formal apology in the House of Commons for events that took place surrounding the Komagata Maru. The ship arrived in Vancouver in May 1914, carrying 376 passengers of mostly Sikh descent, who were refused entry into Canada due to discriminatory laws. (Source) “An apology was very important for our community. What more there still areas where we feel that the non-whites are still under discrimination, course it’s not as much as it used to be, but I think it (the end to this unjust) takes time, it will happen.” – Ajay Rai, the manager of a Sikh Temple. (Source) Because of the struggle of those who was on the Komagata Maru it encouraged the ones who are on land to try harder and fight for the unjustified to be justified, and that’s why us as minority have such successful lives, says Jaswinder Toor, the president of the Komagata Maru Society. (Source)
Conclusion
I really think the bravery of Baba Gurdit Singh and the other on board of the Komagata Maru should be memorialized as part of our collective public memory as they were brave enough to to challenge the racist Canadian immigrant laws, which encouraged the other minorities to fight for their own rights.
Hello internet, it’s been less than two weeks since I last posted! As our first project ended the second came —Storm the Barricades! the project where we learned all about the American and French Revolution. For this project, our driving question is: How do revolutions transform societies? With the question in mind, we started to learn about the Crane Brinton theory and both of the revolutions.
With my group Keenan, Ryder, and Jakub, we planned out our first machine which was on Crane Brinton’s theory using metaphors. There we divided up into two groups one is the building group and one is the writing group. Ryder and I got the role of the writer, which is the one that writes out the script and the angles we will be using when we film our machine later. Though, I and Ryder did also assist with the machine. Then, we filmed our machine, edited and explained the metaphors. Later in the week, we did both our American Revolution and the French Revolution the same way.
The curriculum competencies are:
Creative Communicator: How might I use technology to create and communicate?
Establish Historical Significance: How do we make choices about what is worth remembering?
Analyze Cause and Consequence: Who or what influenced events to occur and what were the consequences of those events?
Designing Texts: Have I used writing and design processes to plan, develop, create, and refine engaging and meaningful texts considering purpose, audience, and message?
I learned lots of stuff during this project, like the four stages of revolution in Crane Brinton’s theory and the significance and the cause and consequences of both the American and the French Revolution.
Anyways that’s it for this post enjoy the rest of your day/ night, peace out!
Hello internet! It hasn’t been a long time since the last time I blogged, because the school year is coming to a end! Just recently us grade 8, 9, and 10 just did our Spring Exhibition. For the exhibition our driving question is: using one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a guide, how would you solve a problem facing our community/province/world? Having that question in mind, we first look at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, from there they discovered the 17 goals and I choose goal number 8 which is helping people to get good jobs or find ways to help economic growth. Then, I do my “how might we” form, pitch form, design/ blue print of my final product, and then lastly I make my product. Along the way we had to do our LAUNCH journal, which I will be showing below with the UN’s Sustainable Development.
The curriculum competencies are:
Communicate – How do I share my own ideas when I write, speak, and present? To answer the question, I share my own ideas when I write, speak, and present by handing my work in regularly to my teacher and I show them to my family, because that way they can have comment on my work and it helps me improve my learning.
Use Evidence from Various Sources – How do we evaluate evidence to decide if it is adequate to support a historical conclusion? We can evaluate evidence by researching on the internet about the artifact weather if it is a adequate to support a historical conclusion, to check if the resource I got was right I would look on other websites and see if the sources match.
As it for my final product, it is my story you can check that out down below.
Anyways that it for this post enjoy your summer break, see you!
Hello internet, I hope you are doing and feeling well. As you know, everything is cancelled and there is noting to do, which means all our schedules are messed up. For PLP kids, we were supposed to have our DI provincials last Saturday, but as I mentioned above, everything is cancelled, which includes DI provincials. At first, my classmates and I was celebrating, our obstinate PLP teacher moved DI online so we couldn’t escape it.By the way, if you haven’t seen my post about DI regionals click the link to check it out.
Anyways, going back a month ago I was in Fine Arts – picture this! – with four other people – Erin, Logan, Dries, and Josh, check out their blog and their most recent posts! my group and I thought about improving our props and back drops a bit. So what we were going to do is that we would use cardboard posters to make a 3D rocket and for our back drop we were going to make them out of takele cloths in Different colours, for example, the moon back drop would use black and grey cloths.
Well there isn’t much to talk about since DI was cancelled and since I heard that I didn’t bring anything back home to work on, which I was in charge of the 3D rocket. As always here is some photos we used in the online tournament as either backdrops or just a photo.
I hope you enjoyed this post, stay home, stay strong, stay healthy!
Hello internet, about two weeks ago, on an sunny yet chilly Saturday, the DI regionals is held in Seycove! I was so excited but also very nervous at the same time. Finally is 2:20pm, my group’s challenge time, after a ton of rehearsals we are ready to go, but still very nervous. 8 minutes later, the challenge is done and it surprisingly went… well! Our classmates loved it our teacher loved it, it went smoothly except that the flag didn’t really stand when we’re presenting.
Any ways, going back 1 month, was when we first met our groups and we know what categories we were assigned in. I was in Fine Arts – picture this! – with four other people – Erin, Logan, Dries, and Josh, check out their blog and their most recent posts! – one of the important thing our group first did was identifying and understanding the Challenge requirements as outlined in our challenge document, I was the DRI of the time choice elements which one of the most important part our presentation later. Right after we finished our first milestone for this project the teachers assigned the next, milestone two, where we map out a plan for the challenge and where we find a picture for our solution. Here is a picture of it!
To move on faster, we started milestone three, where we assign roles and responsibilities to each other, I was the DRI of the team choice element 1, we fist decided that a rocket was a good idea which later at the regionals we notice that the rocket was too small of a prop to be the team choice element. What hing the other fine arts team present, all of them doesn’t have cool cardboard costumes like our team so we decided that our team choice element is coming to be our costumes. Last but not least, milestone four! Milestone four is where we plan out the time of how long it will take us to do something. Since Im the DRI of the rocket (because we didn’t know we would be changing the team choice element to our costumes at that point) I planed that it would take us at least 30-60 minutes which it didn’t, the rocket toke us about 20-25 minutes.
Next was building time, I spent 1-3 hours, on average, after school working on our DI stuff. I didn’t have much pictures of us building but here’s some.
On the last Friday, we were so nervous, spent at least an hour on DI after school. The next day our flag wasn’t working, we started to panicking but according to my friends, classmates and teachers we did great! So here is a video of our presentation!
Hello reader! This week my class finished an humanities project. The driving question was: what was life like in the Middle Ages? How does it compare to today? Well my answer to the driving question is: life in the Middle Ages depends on you religion, your religion rules or life and you have to and if you want to go to heaven you have to do something good, comparing to today life is less depending on you religion.
Now lets get in to talking about what we did in this project. Basically we have to research 3 stuff and show how is has changed and continued.
milestones:
Milestones
Milestone 1: literacy plan, we plan when and what techniques are we going to use to help us read.
Milestone 2: character letter, we write a letter to someone in 1195 as our role (mine was a lord) without giving out who we are.
Milestone 3: book chats, we have book chats every Monday to show how far we are in the book and how much we have learn and understood the book.
Milestone 4: research! We do research on the topic we picked with our partner.
Milestone 5: presentation! We have one iPad Air playing our slide show with our notes open and we present to the class!
Milestone 6: (this post)
After we have that done we present it with a partner, and my partner is Dries go checkout his blog and his post! I well show you a video of my presentation!
I learned I lot while doing this project, I learned how life in the Middle Ages depend a lot on religion, how education was not open to everyone and not everyone can afford it, I learned much more! Thank you for visiting my blog, hope to see you soon!
